Two Journeys

Well, as we come to this section of Ephesians, we're going to see more and more how intensely practical the Gospel really is, that the Gospel really addresses rubber meets the road issues, practical issues of everyday life, everyday morality, key moral issues. And we're going to look today at two of them, the issues of lying and of anger.

To set this in context, we've already had in the Book of Ephesians the glorious vision of the Church of Jesus Christ. We have two different metaphors given us in the Book of Ephesians. One of a “spiritual temple, a holy house that's rising to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit,” that's the Church. And that's such a glorious picture, isn't it? To bring in that image from Peter of “living stones” being quarried or rescued from Satan's dark kingdom by the power of the Gospel and transferred over and put in the walls of this rising glorious temple. And you, all of you who are brothers and sisters in Christ, you've already come to faith, you're in those walls now. You're already members of the Church. And you will be for all eternity, and you will give praise and glory to God from this day on and forever. So that's that image, an architectural image.

We also have a biological image of the Body of Christ, Christ Himself, the head of the body, we members of it and all of us united together through faith in Christ, united in the Spirit. Growing and developing and becoming more and more mature, as the Church of Jesus Christ. So these two different images and in both cases, the idea of unity is huge, that we must be fit together in the walls, and we must be members together one of another, and as we're going to look at these moral issues, lying and sinful anger or unrighteous anger, they are very divisive in the Body of Christ. They fracture our unity. We're going to talk about that. 

So the context of all of this, Ephesians 4:1 it says, "As a prisoner for the Lord then," the apostle Paul says, "I plead with you. I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you've received. Walk in a manner worthy of that calling." And we're wanting to do that. Now right in the middle of Ephesians 4, we have a magnificent three-step process that's going to carry us through the rest of this chapter and then on into the next chapter on these specific moral issues. And then it becomes just a general recipe or mechanism for holiness that God gives us, and we saw it in verses 22 through 24, “that we are to put off the old man, the old nature, which is being corrupted, constantly corrupted. We are to be “made new in the attitude” or “the spirit of our minds,” and we are to” put on the new self,” created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

Old Life as Liars

So we come to the practical issue right away of lying, and isn't it amazing that the Apostle Paul begins with this?  Like Paul, if you're going to address a moral issue in the life of the Church, where do you want to start? He starts with lying. He starts with lying, with the issue of deceit. He begins, verse 25, with the word “therefore,” "Therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, if we are all members of one body." So the essence of the old life was that old corruption we had in lying and deceitful desires, we're told in verse 22, “deceitful desires,” desires that lied to us, and then we lied about them. So the deceitfulness of that, and we are to be transformed, “made new in the spirit of our minds,” primarily by the ministry of the word of God by the power of the Holy Spirit, and we are to put on the new self, and I like the Holman Christian Standard Bible here in verse 24, "To put on the new man, the one created according to God's likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth. Therefore, put off falsehood." Do you see the connection then? So it's in the purity of the truth, on the basis of that. So the Christian life is one of walking in the truth, walking in the truth and Jesus Christ is the king of truth, isn't He?

Prioritize Truth Like Christ

We want to have, as Christians, the same commitment to truth that Jesus has. We want to speak the truth with the same kind of passion that Jesus uses. Jesus has a commitment to the truth that's infinitely greater than any of us, even to the point of dying on the cross, rather than to lie about Himself. Remember when He was on trial before the Jews, "I charge you under oath by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God." He said, "I am." He gave that truthful declaration, knowing it would result in his death, because they wouldn't believe him. I, as a Christian, I want to have that same kind of commitment to truth that Jesus had, that's what sanctification is all about. Jesus, on trial before Pilate then mentioned His kingdom. Pilate seized on that, because He was there as somehow the leader of an insurrection, "You are a King then," and Jesus said, "You are right in saying I'm a king. In fact, for this reason I was born and for this I came into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” Jesus is the king, the king of the kingdom of truth. And in that way, He more than just teaches the truth, preaches the truth, exemplifies the truth. He is the truth. John 14:6, "I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." That's Jesus and Jesus in this way, and we saw that in the scripture, in Hebrews 1, is the perfect display of the character of God. Jesus tells the truth, is the truth, loves the truth because God, His Father is the exact same way in reference to the truth. Actually, Titus 1:2 says, "God cannot lie."

Think about that. It is impossible for Almighty God to lie. He always speaks the truth, and this Almighty God, who cannot lie, is omnipresent. He is omniscient. It is before Him that we will give an account for all of our words and actions on Judgment Day. It says in Hebrews 4, "Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight, everything's uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account." For this reason, we Christians should be passionately committed to the truth because on that day, there will be no secrets. On that day everything will be uncovered and laid bare, everything. And so we want to live a life of truthfulness. So David, in confessing his terrible sin with Bathsheba, in Psalm 51:6 said, "Surely you desire truth in the inner parts, you teach me wisdom in the inmost place." We want to be characterized by truth straight through. We want to be light with no mixture of darkness at all, because that's how God is.

The Kingdom of Lies

Now, we have been rescued into this kingdom of truth, that I've been describing, out of a kingdom of lies. Ruled by a king of lies, Satan himself, fundamentally, at his basic nature, Satan is a liar. Fundamentally a liar. Martyn Lloyd-Jones put it this way, "Just as it is true to say that nothing so represents God as truth and truthfulness, it is equally true to say that nothing so represents the devil as lies." The devil and his kingdom are characterized by lies. Jesus said to his enemies in John 8:44, "You belong to your father the devil and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning not holding to the truth for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks of his own nature for he is a liar and the father of lies." So that means his whole kingdom, his whole dark kingdom is based on lies. First and foremost, Satan fell out of holiness into wickedness, because he lied to himself, he deceived himself. He believed that he could take God's place on the throne of glory ruling over the universe, he believed this and he told this to himself. In Isaiah 14:13-14, "You said in your heart, 'I will ascend to Heaven, I will raise my throne above the stars of God. I will sit enthroned on the Mount of Assembly on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain, I will ascend above the tops of the clouds, I will make myself like the most high God.'" I mean, he lied to himself.

God was never going to give up His position of absolute holiness and sovereign rule to a created being, but Satan became entranced by his own power, his own glory, his own beauty, and he looked to himself and he lied to himself, and he was cast down to earth, but when he was cast down to earth, he then commenced to lie to the human race, to Adam and Eve at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Remember how God had clearly warned Adam, "You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it, you will surely die," but then Satan comes along and says, "You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open, you'll be like God, knowing good from evil.”

How complex are the lies of Satan. First, a flat-out lie, a denial of something God asserted, "You will die if you sin." The soul who sins will die. The death penalty, linked to sin, he lied about that. He said, "You're not going to die." He keeps on telling that same lie to sinners, "You're not going to die. You're not going to die. There's no death penalty, there's no accountability for our sins." He's telling that lie but then he brings in some elements of the truth for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open, and you'll be like God, knowing good from evil. That's true, but it's still a lie because the true statement in the service of an overall overarching lie, that's the essence of cults and false religions, they say a lot of perceptually true statements, but in the overall overarching framework of a lie, of false religion, Satan's whole kingdom is based on lies about God. All the atheistic scientific systems are based on satanic lies, all the godless philosophical systems are based on satanic lies. See, he has a complex system of lies that Satan has crafted, and those that are his subjects, those that are his slaves, they're liars, too. As a matter of fact, Psalm 116:11, the Psalmist says, "And in my dismay, I cried out all men are liars." Every human being, we're all liars. Romans 3:13-14, "Their throats are open graves, their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness." Just the way we use our tongues, the way we speak, we are liars.

Rescued from the Kingdom of Lies

And Satan tempts Christians to act in the old pattern, he tempts us to lie too, though we have been delivered from his dark kingdom of lies, and we have been brought over into the kingdom of the truth, he still tempts us effectively to lie to one another.

Well, you remember the story in Acts 5 of Ananias and Sapphira, you remember that, how they had sold a piece of property, but they kept back some of the money for themselves, debatable whether that was a godly thing to do or not, but one thing that was definitely ungodly is that they lied about it. They lied to Peter. They lied in front of the whole church. "Tell us is this the price you got for the land." "Yes, that's the price." Peter said, "Ananias how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you've lied to the Holy Spirit, you've not lied to men, but to God." And Ananias and Sapphira in turn both dropped down dead for telling a lie. I mean, do you not see the grace of God in your own life that you don't drop dead every time you tell a lie? I mean, think about that, thank God that whenever you're convicted about lying that you're still alive. I mean, we should tremble at the grace of God concerning this, and not be so glib about our lives. Ananias and Sapphira are a permanent warning to the Church. We have been rescued from a dominion of lies, amen. We've been set free from it. And the thing that's beautiful about us is the truth about us is only good news. We are going to end up in Heaven, free from all sin, so we're free from the need to lie. We don't need to lie, we can speak the truth to one another. That's the point of the Gospel here.

The Basic Command: Put Off Lying and Speak Truth

So we're commanded here to put off all lying, to put off falsehood and speak the truth to one another, put off the lying like a filthy garment that defiles and corrupts you, put it off and resolve to commit yourself to the truth and the pattern of Jesus Christ. Say, "Lord, Holy Spirit, work in me the same love for the truth that Jesus had. I'd rather die than tell a lie, work that in me, Lord. I know I'm not there, but that's what I want. I want to speak only the truth." 

Lies and Sin Go Hand in Hand

Now, we know that the problem here is that lying and sinning go hand in hand. They're like partners in the crime. A certain pattern of sin brings on lying to cover it up, so that the pattern can go on unchallenged. It's been going on since Adam ate that fruit. You remember? And God came to him in the garden and he called to him, and Adam was hiding from God, and there's this deception and hiding and a desire to present something other than what we really are. Now think about the scribes and Pharisees who Jesus called out as hypocrites, "Woe to you you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, you're like white-washed tombs. You look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside, you're full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way on the outside, you appear to men as righteous, but inside, you're full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” Well, that's what lying does. It puts a white-washed cover on a life of unrepentance in specific areas of sin, and so lying is a major issue. We must commit ourselves to telling the truth. 

Lying Flows Through All of Non-Christian Society

Now, as we live in this world we look around, we see lying flowing through just about every aspect of society and culture. It's just we're just used to it. I mean, take a party, for example, get a party of non-Christian people together, office parties, some Christmas party and all of the talking that's going on. How much of it is true, how much of the things that the people are saying about themselves or stories they're telling, or whatever are truth, or how much exaggeration is going, how much flattery is going on?  How much of these other things is going on? And there's just so much deception going on in the room, people trying to make themselves look good or powerful or competent, etcetera, and they're hiding their weaknesses by lying, this goes on all the time. People just become experts at shading the truth, stretching the truth, adapting the truth, arranging the truth, etcetera. Like it's some silly putty that we can arrange however we like.

Or take politics, for example. Presidential campaigns. Have you noticed how the networks after these debates will give this truth-o-meter, or something like that? It's just, we assume they're lying, we just want to know how bad the lie is, how egregious, or how obviously false it is, but we know that the politicians must be lying. Why? Because the truth is so unpopular and you need to be popular in order to get elected and so you have to come back from a statement of your full convictions on controversial issues. You have to couch it a little bit, put some slogans, and nuances because if you just simply tell the unvarnished truth, you will not get elected. Would Jesus Christ get elected in the American political process?  He would never lie or shade the truth about any controversial issue, and that's just simply unpopular in reference to unbelievers. And so, in politics, we are seeing it.

What about diplomacy? You ever wonder about diplomats sitting at the negotiating table? There's a great verse, one of my favorite verses in the Book of Daniel, it's not as well-known but Daniel 11:27, there in this incredible chapter of prophecy about the kings of the north, kings of the southeast, Greek kings and all these things are going to happen over Palestine, minor details of redemptive history, but God's showing off how much detail he can predict about the future, there's like 108 specific prophecies in the Book of Daniel, but minor Greek kingdoms that are going to follow Alexander the Great. It's an incredible thing, but I love Daniel 11:27, talking about these two pagan kings, "The two kings with their hearts bent on evil, will sit at the same table and lie to each other but to no avail, because the end will still come at the appointed time." I just love that verse. The two evil kings are just lying to each other in diplomacy. You see? And God says, "It doesn't matter because I rule. I rule over the kingdom of lies, and I will achieve what I will achieve when I want to achieve it." That's God's sovereign power.

Or, take law enforcement and the judicial process. We're told the policemen and detectives, they just assume that the people they're talking to, the persons of interest are lying, that somewhere in there there's lies, even lots of lies. And then think about the actual court trial, how much effort is made to get at what actually happened. Cross-examinations, examinations, and objection overruled, and all that. None of that's going to happen on Judgment Day. It won't be needed. God will just say the truth. Do you remember how God called up Sarah on laughing? Remember that? "Why did you laugh?" "Oh, I didn't laugh," she lied. And here's the final word on the matter, "Oh yes, you did laugh." See, that's Judgment Day. There's a clean efficiency to that, it's called omniscience, omnipresence. "You laughed. We're done. I don't need any cross-examinations, I don't need any witnesses. We don't need any material evidence. You laughed." And that's Judgement Day. God tells the truth because He sees it all the time. 

Lying Complicates Life

Furthermore, we understand that lying complicates life, as Walter Scott said, "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." As you begin to cover up your sins, you weave a cobweb of lies around your lifestyle, and it becomes harder and harder to remember the truth, harder and harder to remember who you really are. Every relationship in life is polluted and made more complex by lying. Biggest problem in the Christian life is that genuine holiness can only come about when people genuinely address the sin problems in their life and they stop lying about it. To me, that's the essence of a really trusted accountability partner, where you can tell each other the truth.

Self and pride is at the root of all lying and we lie to protect a projective false image of ourselves. Think about social media. How much of the image that people put on Facebook or Instagram or other social media is actually the truth. Or are they selectively putting photos, selectively putting things on to create an image. And that's a dangerous thing because you don't want to do that, you don't want to create an image. You want to be the truth. You want to be a man, a woman, a young person of integrity. That's what the Gospel calls us, to. And so we're called in verse 25 to “put off falsehood and speak truthfully to our neighbors, for we are all members of one body.”

It's pointing to the unity that we have, lying destroys that unity. Furthermore, it is by “speaking the truth in love, right doctrine that we build each other up.” “When we heard the word of truth, the Gospel of our salvation, that's when we were included in Christ, and we received the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Lying and the Christian Church

So it is the ministry of the truth of the word of God that builds the Body of Christ, we must speak the truth to one another, we must resolve to speak the truth. If you have a sin problem, be honest about it, and deal with it. Don't make excuses. Conversely, don't exaggerate your good works and achievements and make much about all the good things that you do, don't do that, don't seek to puff up your outward appearance. Now I need to say a couple of things here because we're just messed up.

It's like, "Pastor told me to tell the truth, I got to tell you what I really think about your outfit today. I'm just being honest." Okay, well that's not honesty, that's your own unkind opinion. We must make a distinction between biblical truth and your own unkind opinion. Alright and even if it might be true, you kind of have to earn the right to say some of those hard things to each other. And we see people and we're like, "They need this, they that." We're making these judgments. Is it you, are you the messenger to go say that? So let's be careful and let's be careful about TMI as well, you know what I mean? Too much information. “Yeah, my stomach is just really…” “I had the grossest thing this…” It's like no, really. That's not what I mean by speaking the truth. Okay? Each one needs to bear his own burdens. Alright, so don't need to hear about your toenail fungus. Your doctor needs to hear about it. But I have a need, a physical need, if you'd be praying for me. Good, thank you. I will. I will pray for you.

Fundamentally though, the most important truth we need to say to each other is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We need to speak the cross to each other consistently. We'll never be done with it. I think as I was thinking this morning about this point in the sermon, I just want to appeal to lost people to come to Christ because all of us are liars, Christians, non-Christians alike, but only Christians have the remedy and the covering and the forgiveness of Almighty God and how do we have that? Through the blood of Christ.

So the verse that came to my mind is 1 Timothy 1:15, which says, "Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst." So you could put in there Christ Jesus came into the world to save liars. And I don't know anyone who lies as much as I do, because I know my own lies. Everyone else they might be lying to me, I don't know, but I know when I lie and I need a savior and you do too. So if you're already a Christian, let's speak the cross, the grace of God to one another. It's the only remedy there is to any of these moral problems we're going to be studying. But if you're not a Christian, if you're not a Christian, then trust in Christ, look to Christ crucified. He is the Savior for liars.

The Next Issue: Human Anger

The second issue that he deals with, the moral issue he deals with here is anger. Look at verses 26 and 27 says, "Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and do not give an opportunity to the devil." Human anger, like lying, sinful anger is a powerfully destructive force in human relationships. Now, the issue on anger is complicated. It's complicated. There is something, I think, Paul's making a distinction here between righteous and unrighteous anger. There are some things you should be angry about, and there are many things that you regularly get angry about that you should repent from and not be angry about.

And so we have to make a distinction. Now, the NIV says, I think it kind of smooths it over, but it's not helpful how it smooths it over. It says, "In your anger do not sin." All the other translations just give that imperative. “Be angry. But don't sin.” So that's what he's saying here. So there is an aspect and I want to talk about it briefly, of righteous anger.

Righteous Anger is Right

Some counselors, some people would say it's never appropriate for us to get angry, but when you feel those feelings of, let's say, righteous anger, what do you do? Do you stuff them down? Like a cap volcano. We're living in a world characterized by such egregious unrighteousness. There is such a thing as righteous anger and Jesus gives us a great pattern of it.

In Mark 3, He's about to heal a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath and his enemies are ready to pounce. And He looks around at them and He says, "Which is lawful to do on the Sabbath, to heal or to destroy?" To save life or to kill, but they won't answer because of their hardness of heart and Jesus, it says there, in Mark 3, became angry at them because of their hardness of heart. Or even better, in John 2, Jesus comes to the temple and sees all the temple concessions there, all the animals and the doves and all of that being sold for a huge profit with injustice and unrighteousness going on in a river of profit going to Annas and Caiaphas. And He is righteously angry, enraged. And so what does He do, He sits down and weaves together a whip. That's just a picture of God being slow to anger, deferring judgment while He makes the whip. But when the whip was done, He used it. And he cleaned out that temple. He was filled with the righteous zeal for the glory of God and the purity of his temple. "How dare you turn my Father's house into a marketplace?" There's a sense of righteous anger at the wickedness on display there, so Jesus, displays that and in that again, He's just a picture of Almighty God. God throughout the Scripture, displays holy righteous wrath against wickedness and sin. God in His anger refused to allow the Israelites to enter the Promised Land because of their unbelief, but He commanded that they turn around and for 40 years wander the desert, directly ascribed to the wrath of God.

It says in Psalm 7:11, "God is a righteous judge, who expresses his wrath everyday,” everyday." If you knew what to look for, you would just need to go around to the police precincts, or to the hospitals, or the nursing homes, or just the streets of everyday life. And if you knew what to look for, you could see the wrath of God on display everyday. But we don't, and we just see really hard things happening to people, and God may be doing some things. I'm just saying this verse tells us every day God expresses His righteous wrath. And there is a day of God's wrath coming in the future when e will settle all accounts when his righteous indignation and wrath will be poured out on all the ungodly who have not found refuge in Christ.

Now God has an amazingly long fuse, stunningly long. As a matter of fact, He said to Abraham, "In the future, your descendants will enter and take this Promised Land but not yet because the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure." 400 years later, God's cleaned them out. God cleaned them out by Joshua and the Israelite army. 400 years He waited. That's the patience of God. So it's actually right for Christians to feel anger about the wickedness we see. Every January, we have Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, it is right for us to feel a righteous anger about abortion. We should feel a righteous anger about that. We should feel a righteous anger about the mocking of God and of Christ that goes on in our culture. We should feel a righteous anger about the martyring of Christian brothers and sisters by terrorists in Syria. 

Probably the thing that should make you angriest is the stubbornness of your own heart after all of the grace you have received that you still struggle with the same sins again and again. And cry out against yourself and say, "The very thing I hate, I do, and the very thing I want to do, I do not do, what a wretched man I am." And at the end of that encounter with Almighty God Job said, "I despise myself and repent in sackcloth and ashes." So there's a sense in which I hate my own sin more than anything else, and it makes me, it angers me that I still sin, but that's not all. It should bother you to know that hundreds of millions of people around the world have never heard the name of Christ. It should arouse anger inside you, when you hear of East African nations, the governments using food as a weapon in a political war so that their own people who they should be caring for are starving to death, literally. It should make us angry to hear about the graft and corruption of the Haitian government after the earthquake when tens of millions of dollars of aid goes in and government officials, some of them siphon off that money to feather their own nest, that should make us angry. And as a matter of fact, if you don't feel anger about some of these things, something's wrong with you. But we should remember that God is able to save amazingly sinners and separate out the ones who are doing these things from the actions that they're doing. You should say, "I'm yearning for you to repent, I want to see you come to Christ, I want you to know the same forgiveness because I'm guilty of the same kinds of sins." Alright, so that's the issue of righteous anger.

Most Human Anger is Not Righteous

What about unrighteous anger? "Well, Pastor, actually, that's not something I ever deal with, honestly." Well, go back to the earlier part of the sermon on lying, okay? There is a problem that we all have with unrighteous anger. “Be angry but do not sin.” Now, we could say, in your righteous anger, deal with it patiently, as Jesus did, but I'm going to just go over to the topic now of unrighteous or sinful anger. So much of our anger is based on the flesh. I mean, if you get angry 100 times in a stretch of period of time, whatever that is. How many of those, 90 or more are tied in some way to your flesh? I was talking to my kids about it this morning, I've got two in particular, two roots, two sources of sinful anger, pride and inconvenience. James says, "Also, you want something covetously and you don't get it and that makes you angry." So that's another one. But I look at these two as huge. Pride. We get angry when our pride is ruffled, when we are publicly embarrassed in some way. When someone isn't dealing with us as we ought to be dealt with. “Don't you know who I am? You can't talk to me like that.” You know that pride that leads to an angry reaction.

Cain got angry at his brother Abel, because God accepted his offering and not his own. Clear indication in the text is that he offered what God told him to offer and Cain didn't. But he got angry, angry enough to murder his brother. Moses became angry at Israel and struck the rock twice, lost his place in the Promised Land. Nebuchadnezzar became angry at Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego that they wouldn't bow down to his idol, became so enraged that he, I think just lost his mind. So anger is like a drug, and it makes you irrational. Saul, King Saul was enraged at David because of his pride was ruffled when these women of Israel went out and sang the song, you remember, "Saul has slain his thousands, and David, his tens of thousands," that really bothered Saul. It's like, Saul you're number two, it's okay, don't get discouraged. But he was galled by this, and he wanted to kill David as a result. It was all out of pride.

Alright, so look at your own displays of anger. Let me speak to your parent, you parents, alright. Let's say your kid does something disobedient and does it in the privacy of your home versus at Walmart, or at church, even worse. Okay and you are going to bring down the righteous judgement for that sin. Are you not telling me that there's a little more passion when you have been publicly embarrassed than there is when you're just dealing with it privately at home, and why is it? It's your pride. And so, you might chastise or discipline with more anger than you should, because you've been publicly embarrassed. Or when your kids foolishly break something in the house and it's going to cost time, energy, money to get it repaired and you become angry, because you've been inconvenienced in some way. Or all of us when we go out and you're in line and someone cuts in front of you in line, doesn't even look. They're talking on the cellphone or something like that, and it's like, "Oh, hmm, I'm feeling feelings right now. I'm feeling strong feelings right now. This ought not to be done, this is righteous indignation! I'm a human being, okay." "I deserve to be treated better than this. Excuse me, I know you're taking on the phone, but I have something I need to say to you." What is going on there? Well, your pride and your inconvenience both kicking in and you have unrighteous anger.

Or whenever you might become angry at an inanimate object or an animal. Have you ever been angry? Now, you say animals are different than inanimate objects, they should know better. Well, it's a debatable point but Jonathan Edwards resolved never to show the least motions of anger toward animals or inanimate objects. So that's a resolution. Have you ever wanted that you stood up into something, banged your head, and wanted to hit the thing that just banged you and your hand is stopping and you're saying, "What did I do?" Why compound it? You have a headache. Now you're going to have a broken hand. But what is it that moves inside of us? This is unrighteous anger. So, be suspicious of your own anger, be suspicious of it. I don't know, but one out of 100 times it might be righteous. One out of a 100.

James Calls Human Anger “Moral Filth”

James actually says this to us, "Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. For man's anger does not bring about the righteousness of God, therefore get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent," the word therefore means that James is calling human anger moral filth. It's like radioactive toxic waste, get rid of it. And by the way, that's the verb that in the New Testament, always uses for anger. Get rid of it, get rid of it, take it out like the trash. 

A Lifestyle of Settled Anger is Great Sin

A settled angry life is inappropriate for Christians. I'm talking about bitter, unforgiving, unhappy people. We should be forgiving, we should be gracious, we should be living for the future world, we should realize that we deserve to be in Hell right now, and whatever has ruffled us or made our life difficult, we should still be overflowing with thankfulness, for the grace of God, and instead of being bitter, unfriendly, unhappy people. Concerning other people's sins, we're told in 1 Corinthians 13, "Love is patient, love is kind, it doesn't envy, it doesn't boast, it's not rude or proud or self-seeking, it is not easily angered and keeps no record of wrongs." So we should not be irritable, irascible, grumpy. That's a choice we make.

The High Cost of Anger

I feel like our nation's getting angrier and angrier. We're angry people. I see a lot more public displays of anger. And I don't just mean road rage, I just mean people that are filled with hatred toward humanity and go down to literally gun down totally innocent people. I just wonder how many people are in prison right now, how many people are in prison right now, because anger like King Nebuchadnezzar, made them irrational, made them insane, and they did something, and for the rest of their lives, they're going to be paying the penalty for it. I wonder about that, it's like a drug, just takes over. How many marriages have been destroyed because of sinful anger and because people did not know how to deal with their anger, or dealing with pet peeves?

I was convicted by this topic of pet peeves. I have too many of them. I want to cut it down by half in the year 2016. It's hard, but things irritate me. I'm not going to tell you what they are, because you'll probably do them to help with my sanctification. But there's actually a website, I'm not going to read them to you, but it's getannoyed.com. There's like 150 pet peeves, you can write in with yours and they'll add them to the list. But we should be characterized by contentment in any and every situation, right? “We've learned the secret of being content and joyful in any and every situation.”

Quick to Forgive

And the verse says, in verse 26, "We should be quick to forgive." If somebody has angered us, somebody has sinned against us, the Bible says, the Scripture says, "Do not let the sun go down on your anger." This is strong advocacy for quick forgiveness. Now, I know a man, I'm not going to say his name, but he said to his wife, from time to time, "The sun has already gone down, so I've got another 23 hours that I can stew on this one." I don't think I've ever said those words. Oh, that was me. Now the idea is quick forgiveness. Be reconciled quickly. Don't let it fester, don't let bitterness come in, don't give the devil a foothold, don't give him a beachhead, like D-Day, to operate in your marriage, or in the Church. Go quickly with your adversary, Jesus said, who's taking you to court, "Do it while you're still with him on the way. Leave your gift there in front of the altar and go be reconciled to your brother” Immediately. There's no delay. Deal with it quickly, address it. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. And if they have sinned against you, Matthew 18 says, "Go show them their fault privately, just between the two of you and win them over.” But deal with it immediately, deal with it.

Anger: A Danger Zone of Demonic Power

And do not give the devil a place to operate. And when Christians settle in or are angry with each other, bitterness grows, and that destroys relationships. And we're going to talk at the end of the chapter on forgiveness. So I'm not going to say much on forgiveness now, we'll talk more about it later, but the Lord wants us to forgive as He has forgiven us, and so we must. So Paul is revealing to us the ramifications of the Gospel. Only faith in Christ can save, only faith in Christ can transform a life that's been immoral and unvirtuous and displeasing to God and make it pleasing to Him.

But now is the time for us to come to the Lord's supper. And we have the joy of fellowship with the Lord around the elements. And to me, this is a feast of grace. I prayed about it in my pastoral prayer. And I don't believe in the real presence, that the bread and the juice are actually the physical body and blood of Jesus, but I don't believe the other end of the spectrum, which many evangelicals say “It's just a mere memorial, it doesn't mean much.” It means a lot! I believe that here by the Spirit, by the ministry of the word, we can have an encounter with the living God. Come to the table expecting to partake in the body and blood of Christ by faith. That's why I say you must be a believer in Christ to partake. It says you're eating and drinking judgment on yourself if you don't recognize in the elements, the body and blood of Christ. So don't partake if you've not come to faith in Christ, and testified to it by water baptism, but if you have, you're welcome to come. And again, we had a time with Rick Lesh earlier to confess our sins, this isn't for perfect people, there's no perfect people here, we have all lied. We have all gotten unrighteously angry. We have all had bitterness and unforgiveness in our lives. This is a good time to repent from all of those things. Wherever the Lord has been convicting you of sin in these areas, confess it and come to the table. So, deacons, if you would please come and serve the table.

I'd like to ask that you turn in your Bibles to Ephesians 4, we'll be looking today at verses 22-24, zeroing in on, especially verse 22-24, a radiant garment of holiness held out for you to wear. That's what I have in mind today. As I was looking back on my own childhood growing up like most boys that I know, I had no great interest in clothing, honestly. I remember going to a party, I was about 10 years old, and a friend of mine was a pretty spoiled kid, I remember that, and we were all at this party, and you know the moms buy the gifts generally, and one gift after another was clothing. I don't know how it worked out, but this kid was becoming increasingly frustrated and angry. He would attack these gifts and rip open the paper and rip open the box and you know when a box in a certain size is probably a shirt, pants, hat, something like that, and he was becoming increasingly annoyed. And I started feeling, and I wasn't mature at all to understand what was going on, but just the basic ingratitude that was being displayed there. But I was relieved that I had actually given him a model airplane that my mother had chosen wisely. And I was on the good list.

So it wasn't until later years that I started to have some interest in clothing. You may say, "Pastor, I didn't think you had any interest in clothing." Some of you may say that. Now that's unkind, but I do have some interest in clothing. But I remember, especially in 1981, being for a guy anyway, uniquely interested and captivated by the wedding dress of Lady Diana Spencer. I remember feeling just jealous of them anyway, as they went off to a month-long holiday in the Mediterranean for their honeymoon, and I went off to a job that I hated. And I just thought it was so unfair. But the wedding dress was just spectacularly beautiful. And some of you old enough to remember that event, or you can look it up, it was 9000 pounds sterling, that one dress costs, and it had a 25-foot train and it had pearls and lace and all that. It was just a spectacular garment. And I remember thinking about that, that lavish outfit, and how much it cost and the amount of money that went into it and all of that to get her ready for a spectacular wedding day.

The Readying of the Bride

Well, recently I was reading in Revelation 19:7-8, and there is this beautiful picture of the Bride of Christ in garments of linen. A picture of holiness and purity. Listen to Revelation 19:7-8, it says, "Let us rejoice and be glad and give Him glory, for the wedding of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean was given her to wear." Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints. So in other words, as the saints act righteously, or as we act in holiness, we will be getting ourselves beautiful for the wedding day of the land. We will be covering ourselves with purity and holiness, and getting ourselves ready for Him, for Christ. And Ephesians 4:22-24 describes plainly how that garment of holiness can be spun up thread after thread of righteous acts, acts of self-denial, of purity, of holiness, that by them we will be making ourselves ready for the wedding of the Lamb.

In Ephesians 4:22-24 it says, “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, which is created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” So every time that we, by the power of the Spirit, deny the flesh, put off wickedness and sin, and put on holiness, we are, I think in light of Revelation 19:7-8, acting righteously. We are getting ourselves ready for the wedding of the Lamb, getting ourselves ready as the bride of Christ. And we are adding another thread of purity, of white linen, pure and clean to put on for that day. And that's exactly what the Lord is calling on each one of us to do.

Justification Precedes Sanctification

Now, let's get some context here. We are desiring, in this flow of simple, straightforward, moralistic perhaps commands in Ephesians 4-5 to set it in a theological context. The morality, the virtue of the Christian life is set in a theological context, the context of the Gospel. If you go back to 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." Well, Ephesians 1-3 gives us a sense of that calling. Ephesians 1-3 is that flyover, that beautiful satellite view of the sovereign work of God in saving sinners like you and me. It begins in Ephesians 1 with our election, our having been “chosen in Christ from before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight.” In other words, our yearning for holiness is for the consummation of the very reason why God chose us before the foundation of the world. “In love, He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ.” And we learn in other scriptures that that has to do with conformity to Christ, that being sons and daughters of the living God means to be like Christ and to be like God. We all have been atoned for by the blood of Christ, that by Christ's shed blood, all of our sins are forgiven. “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.”

And so, there is an ongoing cleansing work that the Lord does by the blood of Christ, but that justification, that righteousness that we receive by faith comes simply by faith in Christ, not by any works. We've been justified by faith. “It is by grace we have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it's a gift of God, not by works.” We, having heard the Gospel of truth, the Gospel of Christ crucified and resurrected with simple faith, we were justified, and we were marked in Him with a seal, we were sealed with the Spirit. And now we have been set to doing good works. We're not justified by works, we're not forgiven by good works. No works of self-denial or holiness can ever be used to pay for past transgressions and sins, ever. But we have been justified, we have been saved in order that we may do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to walk. And a lot of those good works or works of self-denial and personal holiness, as we're going to talk about today, this is the calling that we have received. And we are to be active also in bringing other people to faith in Christ. People who are currently dead in their transgressions and sins, they're lost, they're on the outside and we are to be reaching out with the Gospel and bringing them in as living stones in this rising temple that's becoming more and more glorious, more and more spectacular, larger and larger all the time with evangelism and missions going on.

And so we've got these two journeys that we talk about a lot here in the church, the internal journey of holiness, of growing in Christ-likeness, and the external journey of worldwide evangelization of reaching out with the Gospel. Those two in effect being one and the same journey, the building of the Church of Jesus Christ. And that's the calling we have received, and we're called on to live a life worthy of that calling. And in verses 17-24, he zeros in on the issue of sanctification, the mechanism of sanctification and holiness.

Now, last time, we looked deeper at the mind and heart of the non-Christian and we're commanded not to think like that anymore, not to live like that anymore. You remember what we said last time in verses 17-19? "So I tell you this and insist on it 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." Well, that's who the lost person is. We looked at it last week. We're able to look into the mind and heart of the unbeliever, and to say that all of us began life that way. And that we are commanded now by God through the Apostle Paul not to think like that anymore, and not to live like that anymore. We must no longer live in that way. In verses 20-21, he shows the incredible impact, the powerful impact of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He said, "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."

Now, it says in verse 21, in some translations, “if so be” or, “if indeed.” But there's no sense of uncertainty there, it's more like, “Given that you did hear the Gospel, given that you did, there's actually a sense of certainty that you heard Christ, you who are Christians, you heard Him and not in that old way of corruption and wickedness. But you heard Him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus.” That's what he's saying. And now he's going to turn to this kind of machinery, or this pattern of sanctification that's going to be with us the rest of our lives. "You were taught," verses 22-24, "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, three steps we're zeroing in on. Put off the old self, be made new in the spirit of your mind, and to put on the new self created to be like God. The result of this, of ongoing pattern of holiness, will be increasing conformity to Christ, we’ll be more and more conformed to Jesus Christ, that is sanctification.

Active in Sanctification

Now, as you can see from it, this is an active thing we're commanded to do. This is an active life of pursuing holiness, it's not passive. Some in church history have taught of kind of a passive holiness. "Let go, and let God" is the slogan you may have heard. There are some times that that slogan may actually capture some of what God calls us to do. But that's not the way holiness is taught in the New Testament. There was a movement called the Keswick movement, Keswick holiness. And they're saying that basically, if there's any striving, if there's any effort made, you've missed the Christian life, the power of the Christian life. And you need to just kind of let go and let God, and just kind of lay back into Christ, and just be carried along to the holiness. Well, that's not the way the New Testament teaches. Actually, it teaches much more like warfare, like there's a battle that we have to fight here. This is not going to be easy. I picture like whitewater and we're trying to cross a whitewater river, and if you just kind of lay back, you're going to get swept down the stream into corruption and into sin.

But instead, we have to strive in sanctification. Our works play no role whatsoever in justification. We are justified by faith in Christ, apart from the works of the law. Absolutely. So all forgiveness of sins and our right standing before God, is always based on Christ's work on the cross, not based on any effort we can give. And in the future, we will be glorified at death. At the moment of death, our soul will leave our body and be instantly transformed, and made perfectly radiant and glorious, free from evil forever. No works required for that either, it will be done to us by the sovereign power of God. But in between this, no works for justification and no works for glorification, the rules of the game are different. Sanctification, we must work. “We must work out our salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in us.” And how do we work? Well, we work by putting off the old self, being made new in our minds and hearts and putting on the new self created to be like God, that's it. So let's look at it one step at a time.

You Were Taught

First, verse 22. "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.” Now, verse 22 begins, “You were taught.” And so, we have to start with the role of the Word of God in all of this. We have to start with the role of doctrine. It all starts with careful accurate doctrinal instruction. "You must be taught concerning this, and you have been taught," he says. Now this goes back to verses 21-22, "Surely you heard Him,” Christ, “and were taught in Him in the truth that is in Jesus,” etcetera, to put off your old self. So this is a doctrinal thing, we're being taught in Jesus this new way of living. We've seen again and again the role of Christian instruction here. Back, earlier in Chapter 4, we have these five gifted roles that he gave some to be “apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, some to be pastors and teachers.” Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers all have in common the delivery system of the Word of God, that's what they are.

The word of God originates in the mind of God, and He speaks it through the apostles and prophets, and the evangelists take it on the road, they take it the distant places, and to the ends of the earth, and then pastors and teachers settle in and teach it to the saints going forward. And so, it's a delivery system of the word of God, and they prime the pump for the works that build up the Body of Christ. So it all starts with good doctrine. We get the same thing in Verse 14. He talks about how in Verse 14, “we are being moved from immaturity to maturity. You'll no longer be infants tossed back and forth, instead we're going to be conformed to the faith.” In verse 13, unity in the faith in the knowledge of the Son of God. So no longer immature, no longer moved around easily by doctrine, but instead, united in the faith. That's in Christianity and doctrine, united in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood. So we're fully mature in Christ. And so, verse 15 depicts maturity as “speaking the truth,” that is, right doctrine, “in love.” So that's right beliefs coupled with a heart of love.

And then Paul, as we saw in verses 17-19, focuses very much on the darkened mind, and the darkened heart of the unbeliever. And so, this is very much a teaching issue. It's an issue of right doctrine, of understanding the Bible properly. So he says, "As you think so you will live," that's a basic principle. As you think so you will live. If you want to live a new life, you must think new thoughts, you must be transformed by the renewing of your mind. There has to be a change in your mind and your thinking. And so, little by little, the non-Christians, they are hardened and increasingly corrupted and have increasingly bad lifestyles. The remedy therefore to bad living is right thinking, pure thinking, and that right thinking is worked by the sovereign grace of God, by the ministry of scripture, by the ministry of the word of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit. That's how it all happens. So it all starts in verse 22, you were taught. And what had he taught them, what had they learned? “Well, 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.”

Negative Sanctification is Essential

So, now we come to the issue of negative sanctification, things that we Christians must not do. There are just certain patterns of lifestyle that must never be part of the Christian life. Negative holiness or negative sanctification. And there's also a positive side that we'll get to as well. There are some things that we should delight in, some things that we should do, etcetera. So both of those things together make up holiness. Both of them make up sanctification, things we must not be and do and think, and things that we must be and do and think, that together makes up this issue of sanctification. Now, when we come to negative sanctification, sometimes people are well, negative about negative sanctification, they might even make fun of it. You know, they make fun of the ones that say, “I don't smoke or drink or chew or go with girls that do,” something like that. And that's holiness and they kind of mock that kind of thing. But honestly, as we look at it, there are some things that are poisonous and corrupting to the Christian life.

Martin Luther said “Love God and do as you please.” But I'm telling you what, we have a hard time hearing that rightly. We can hear that and it's like, “Oh.” Then, and off we go. No, no, there's some very clear prohibitions in the New Testament in reference to the Christian life. If you only strive after the positive side of Christianity trying to be loving, and kind, and a nice person, and patient and positive, and happy, but you're not at war with the corrupting sins that the Bible warns us against, you're not putting those sins to death, you will be destroyed by the poison of sin. And that is to some degree the role of some that are called antinomians, those are people that see no role of the law in the Christian life. The law has no role in the Christian life. But that's just not true. There are so many commands like even these in these Epistles that are given to us as Christians that we must obey, and some of them are prohibitions. Some things we must not do.

On the other hand, however, if you're only focusing on negative sanctification, only focusing on putting off evil things, and you don't see the beauty and the attractiveness and the holiness, and putting on the alluring attractive aspect of holiness, which I'm going to talk about at the end of the sermon, and it's all about what you don't do, movies you don't see, what places you won't walk into, what language you don't use, you're going to lapse eventually into a kind of works righteousness, you'll be stripped of joy in life. There'll be a kind of an ascetic sternness to your life, and you won't be commending the beauty of our faith to unbelievers, and many have lurched off in that direction as well. So we have to keep a balance here on the negative sanctification, and the positive as well.

Focus: The “Old Self”

Now, the focus here is on the old self in this verse, some translations give us the old man or the old self or old nature, and it's linked here to your former way of life. Who you were in Adam, who you were before you were a Christian, okay? The person that you were born into as a human being. We were all born in Adam, we were born into original sin, and we had a positional status as sinner before God, having been born in Adam. The moment we came to faith in Christ, that position died forever. That old man that we were in Adam died and we became a new person in Christ. However, there are certain things that we bring with us now into our new life that cause us trouble. I think Romans 6:6 makes this very, very clear. Just listen to what Romans 6:6 says, "We know that our old man” or “our old self was crucified with him, in order that the body of sin might be rendered increasingly powerless," is a good translation there. "Our old man was crucified," dead forever, "in order that the body of sin might be rendered increasingly powerless, so that we might no longer be slaves to sin." So I think the body of sin, or the sin nature, what sometimes verses call the “flesh,” that comes with us into our Christian life, and that's the issue that we have to fight. This body of sin, this old tendency or old natures of the habits that we formed in our old way of thinking, that led to an old way of living, that old mindset and old habits that makes up what Paul is talking about here, the old man, that's what he's meaning here. So, they're habits.

Now, what do we mean by habits? Well the mind and the body are trainable. If you do things over and over, you repeat them, you're going to train your mind to think a certain way, and you're going to train your body to react a certain way. We have it in terms of the areas of sin, we use the word addictions, we become addicted to sin to some degree. We know what that means. There's a magnetic pull on our bodies toward a sinful pattern, made very well aware of that with certain addictions like tobacco, for example. You know, let's say a teenage kid, a boy, gets tempted by his friends to smoke, and he's drawn away by them, and he picks it up and starts this habit, he starts to smoke, and there's a mentality that comes with it, you know, "Smoking's cool, all of us are doing it. You can't run with us if you don't do what we do," and all that, and there's this pressure on him and he picks up a cigarette and starts smoking repeatedly over a period of time. Soon, I don't know how long, different for different bodies, but soon there's just an addiction that takes over. And he's going to feel the yearning for the drug, for the nicotine, he's going to want it, he's not going to feel normal until he has a smoke. And so, his mind has been addicted to the pattern of smoking and his body also is addicted to the actual toxins and chemicals that are drawing.

Well, the same thing in different ways, but the same thing happens with all sins, all of them. There's a mental side and a physiological side that draws us into all sin patterns. So, liars become addicted to lying in certain situations. It's what they use to get out of accountability for what they've done. Sluggards become addicted to laziness, and to oversleeping, and procrastination and making excuses for things they didn't get done. Complainers become addicted to complaining, they just are used to just saying negative things about their circumstances and they just become addicted to it. Gluttons become addicted to turning to food as an idol, and overeating when they should be turning to God. Drunkards in the same way become addicted to alcohol. So there's a mental and a physiological side to it, it's drawn into this. Vain people become addicted to seeking out compliments and turning every conversation back to themselves. It's just a pattern of sin that we become addicted to and we just do it again and again, that's the old nature. And Paul describes this old nature is “corrupted by its deceitful desires.” So it's getting worse, the old nature becomes more and more corrupted by deceitful desires.

So what are deceitful desires? Well, you could rephrase and say, they are lusts that lie. They lie to us, they're lusts that pull us in, but they lie to us, about what they're going to do. Deceitful desires. The lusts don't come and tell us the truth. They don't come and say, "I am here to ruin your world, I'm here to destroy everything you cared about." These lusts are deceitful, they do not tell us the truth. And so it says in Hebrews 3:13, “encourage one another daily, as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness, hardened by sin's deceitfulness.” There's a hardening effect of the deceitfulness of sin over a period of time. So every time lust comes knocking on our door, it doesn't honestly say “I'm here to kill you,” but that's what it's here to do. It's a soul assassin, these deceitful desires.

The Command: Put Off the Old Self!

Well, Paul's command here is plain, “put off the old self, lay it aside, lay it down, take it off like a garment.” We're to take off that old pattern of life, all of its particulars, put it off away from ourselves. This language is used again and again. I picture here the prodigal son, don't you? He returns back from his journey into sin and excess, and he's squandered his inheritance on riotous living. Recently, he's been feeding pigs, and you can imagine, I picture him still wearing the garments that he wore in his last job. So he's coming back, having just finished feeding the pigs as best he could, longing to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating. Covered with mud, mud and pig dung, and it's in that condition that he's standing in front of his father. And do you remember how his father when the son says, "I've sinned against you and against Heaven, I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Please take me back as one of your slaves." He says, “Put a new robe on him, and put a ring on his finger, and shoes on his feet.” That's the picture I have of a beautiful garment of holiness being held out for us to put on. 

Well, I imagine that first, we have to take off that old garment of corruption and wickedness that stinks in the nostrils of God. Take it off, in order that we may put on this beautiful robe that the Father is offering to us. And the beautiful thing is, there's no need for you as a Christian, there's no need for delay. As a matter of fact, that's putting it mildly, you must not delay. You don't have to earn your way up to putting off sin, you don't have to work up to it like you have to take a class in order to put off sin, etcetera. You can just put it off, you can stop sinning. And this is the thing, we have freedom from Christ to never sin again, ever, the rest of our lives. 

No sin will ever come to you as a Christian with a compelling force, so that you will be able to say to God, after you sinned, there was nothing I could do, I couldn't help it, there was no way I had to give in. He will never allow you to say that. He'll say no, no, you had enough resources, through the Spirit, by the shed blood of Christ to put that temptation to death. And so we don't have to earn our way into putting off the old nature, we can do it immediately. However, I know there's a momentum to sin, we know that Romans 7 says, “the very thing we hate we do.” And we're going to be struggling with sin. So I do not teach perfectionism. Though perfection is possible, and we have no excuse when we do sin, we still know that we are going to sin, we're going to stumble in many ways.

So the strategy I continue to give to all of you is this, death by starvation, starve it to death. Starve your sins to death. Put some distance between you and the last time you fell in that area. And the more distance there is between you and the last time you fell in that area, the weaker will the gravitational pull of that temptation be on your soul. Just put some distance between. Get through one hour, get through one day, get through one week, step-by-step, and don't worry about tomorrow, fight today's temptations today. “Tomorrow has enough trouble of its own,” Jesus said, fight for today, fight to be holy today. And so, he's going to give us examples and we'll do it in the rest of the Chapter, not today, but looking at specific examples of falsehood and lies, of stealing, and sinful anger, and sexual immorality, and drunkenness, these patterns of immorality, put some distance between you and your sin. It will get weaker and weaker if you do. Alright, so that's the first part. Put off the old self.

External Moralism Will Not Suffice

Secondly, be “renewed in the spirit of your mind.” To be “renewed in the spirit of your minds.” This is the inner working of the mind, the key to the Christian is the mind and the heart, the very heart. And if you want to live differently, you must think differently, and you must love differently. It's a different thinking and different loving. And this is the core of the transformation that we're talking about here. We're not looking for merely an external morality, an external virtuousness. Non-Christians can do this, they can do these things. You look at the list, “falsehood, lying, stealing, drunkenness, immorality, there are non-Christians.” There are atheists that will do many of those things better than Christians. I think about how ascetic Gandhi was in terms of his life and how kind he was, and careful in his speech and all that. You can do that, and not have any love for Christ in your heart, not have any love for God in your heart. So that's not what we're talking about here, some external morality or show of morality. It is possible for us to do that kind of thing and have no transformation at all.

My daughter is a student at Liberty University, and I read some time ago, there was a Brown University undergraduate, his name was Kevin Ruse, interesting name, Ruse. Anyway, he went undercover at Liberty, he was not a Christian, not born again, but he was doing basically an expose book on evangelicalism. So he enrolled as a student at Liberty University. The book is called An Unlikely Disciple. To pull it off, Kevin Ruse had to learn the language and external behavior patterns of an evangelical undergrad student at Liberty. And he did very well, he had everyone fooled, as a matter of fact, he was chosen to be a small group leader on his dorm floor. So, I mean, imagine later reading about all of this, and thinking, "How could we have missed it?" Anyway, Ruse studied the 46 page code of conduct called “The Liberty Way,” which outlines the rules and regulations of student life. No drinking, no smoking, no R-rated movies, no dancing, no cursing, no hugs lasting longer than three seconds, and so on.

Christi said that they've changed that rule, I don't know, is it stricter? Is it two seconds now? I don't know, never mind, tell me later, but down to two seconds, up to four? But at any rate, he took all of this external pattern on like a garment, but no heart behind it. There was no heart of love for Christ or for neighbor in that pattern, and it is possible to learn the pattern of Christianity and not have any of its transforming power. As a matter of fact, many Gospel hypocrites, in the Bible Belt, pulled that off for decades. They were unregenerate church members. And they had no love for the scripture, they had no love for Christ crucified and resurrected, but they knew the patterns of church involvement and church behavior. But that's not what we're talking about here.

What Does “Renewed in the Spirit of Your Mind” Mean?

We take off the old self, but the second thing it says in our text is to be “made new in the attitude,” or “the spirit of your minds.” Paul adds the word spirit, NIV has “attitude of the mind,” but that seems a little light. I want to go to the “spirit of the mind,” the true abiding spirit or tenor of your mindset. Now, non-Christians can think amazingly well, they can do amazing things with their minds, they can do incredible things in poetry, or music, or art, or literature. They can do incredible things in science. You get a pharmaceutical researcher who'll go into the lab, and just through his brilliance and his skill will be able to come up with drugs that are very effective in curing cancer, or other things like that, and they're thinking amazingly well and brilliantly, but they're not doing anything out of love for God through faith in Christ. And so, there's a hollowness, they are white-washed tombs to some degree, and that can happen morally as well. But God wants us to know Him and to love Him. Jesus said in John 17:3, "This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." So, fundamentally what we're talking about is not just what you think about, but what you love and what you hate. What you yearn for, what are you ambitious for? What do you choose and what do you reject, as it flows from your inner person, the mind, the heart? And so, in order to live a new life, you must be “made new in the spirit of your mind,” you must think new thoughts, you must think Christianly.

The Role of the Holy Spirit and the Word

Now what happened, the moment you were genuinely converted, that's something that the Holy Spirit did for you, “He gave you a new heart, the heart of stone removed and the heart of flesh put in.” He gave you a transformed nature. 2 Corinthians 5:17, if anyone is in Christ is a new creation, the old is gone, the new has come. So your new creation soul is eternal, it cannot be killed, it can only grow and flourish, and it will survive Judgment Day and will go on into eternity, this new creation self you are. But that's what you have to put on. You have to learn more and more what it means to “love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” To learn how to do everything for the glory of God. To learn how to love righteousness and hate wickedness, how to hunger and thirst for righteousness at every moment. It means to have the mind of Christ and to use it more and more.

Now, the grammar is literally that “you are to go on”, “go on being made new in the attitude of your mind.” If you're a Christian, you are already made new, you're made a new creation, but now you have to go on being transformed by the renewing of your mind. 1 Peter 2:2 says, "Like newborn babes, you should long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation." You're hungering and thirsting for scripture, you're being “transformed,” Romans 12:2, “by the renewing of your mind” through scripture. Jesus said in John 17:17, “Sanctify them by the truth, your word is truth.” Now, the Holy Spirit has been given to illuminate, to make the scripture clear. The Holy Spirit wrote this book through apostles and prophets and then the indwelling Spirit causes the Scripture to come alive in your heart. And you see the light and the truth, as it says in Psalm 119:105, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." That's a direct contrast to the darkness of the mind and heart of the unregenerate person. So that's what he's called on us to do. 

So, the Holy Spirit then will work in you to see every situation in your life, spiritually. So the sexually immoral man, now converted, increasingly sees sexual sin from God's point of view. He repents continually, he fights continually to be pure, because he can see with spiritual eyes, increasingly clearly, the holiness of Christ on His throne. He can see the fact that Christ sees everything he does all the time, “nothing is hidden before the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account.” He sees that clearly by faith, he sees also the coming Judgment Day when he will have to give an account for everything he does with his body. And so, he see sexual sin in light of these invisible, spiritual realities. So also the liar or the slanderer, or the gossip, or the arguer, or complainer. They see each of those verbal sins in new light, in light of Christ, in light of holiness, in light of who Christ is. And they want to use their tongues now to bring grace to the hearer. Not to have the corruption of those sins.

So also the husband, who has been dealing harshly or unkindly with his wife, increasingly sees his marriage in light of Christ and His Church. And He wants to love His bride “like Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for it.” He increasingly wants to be a Christian husband and he sees his marriage spiritually, so also the wife sees her role spiritually. Or maybe the mother of small children, maybe she's been complaining about how much work it is to raise small children, and then she starts to see her mothering in light of eternity, in light of God in Christ, and to not complain anymore, but to want to pour herself into her children and bring them to faith in Christ. They start to see everything differently. The employee who's been lazy and cutting corners and procrastinating, when the boss isn't around, suddenly starts to see that his real supervisor is Christ and He's with Him all the time, and he wants to glorify God with his work, and he becomes an excellent employee as a result. Everything changes. The materialistic, selfish person who's been spending money on himself and just loves to go to the mall or buy things, or hobbies, or electronic gadgets to make himself happy, starts to see money as a tool for the advancement of the Gospel and starts to invest it into missions and into the relief of the poor and needy, and to get ready for Judgment Day and to use his money to store up treasure in Heaven where moth and rust can't destroy and thieves can't break in and steal. The Holy Spirit just causes us to think differently about all of these topics and see them spiritually.

And then finally, in verse 24, to “put on the new self.” We were taught to “put off the old self, corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be made new in the attitude of our minds by the ministry of the Word of God and the Spirit, and to put on now, the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” This now is the positive sanctification, the beauty of Christ's holiness.

Put On Like a Royal Robe

Now, here's the beautiful aspect of being a Christian. We believe that Jesus came, was born of the virgin Mary, and was truly human, and lived a truly human life. He didn't just seem to be human, He actually was human, and He was tempted in every way, just as we are, yet He never sinned. What that means that He never sinned is that He perfectly fulfilled the law of God at every moment. He loved God with all of His heart, soul, mind, and strength at every moment, and He loved His neighbor as Himself at every moment. Perfect righteousness. Look at it like a perfect robe of holiness that He has crafted, and at the moment you trusted in Jesus, that robe was given to you in justification righteousness to put on, and in that robe, you will stand on Judgment Day. But now what we're called on, is to every moment effectively put it on and live it out ourselves by the power of the Spirit. We're told to imitate Christ at every moment, to put on His holiness and His righteousness. The robe is Christ. And so, it says in Romans 13:13-14, "Let us behave decently as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy, rather put on the Lord Jesus Christ." Do you hear that? Romans 13:14, “put on the Lord Jesus Christ and do not think about how to gratify the cravings of the sinful nature,” the flesh. Put on Christ.

Now, you could put a picture like a beautiful robe, that's great, for like a coronation day or a wedding day, that's fine. Or, another way to look at it, because I said it's warfare is that it's an armor of light. Put on Christ like an armor of light. Now later in Ephesians 6, we're going to talk about the armor of God, but Romans 13 actually pictures Christ in this way. It says, in Romans 13:12, "The night is nearly over. The day is almost here, so let us put aside the deeds of darkness, and put on the armor of light." So we're called on to put on the armor of light, which is Christ, and get ready to fight, and we're going to have to fight these temptations. Now, this idea is the image of God is created, it says, this new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. We are to imitate God, we are to be holy because He is holy, and we're to be drawn after God, purity in God.

Jonathan Edwards, in his personal narrative, described the attractiveness and beauty of holiness. I'm not going to read it, I've read it before, but I'm just going to put it in my own words. Basically to him, holiness was like a beautiful wildflower, humble, low on the ground, in the dust opening up its bosom to the dew and the sunshine from heaven, and putting off a scent, a fragrance of beauty, such beauty as you could scarcely imagine. So imagine you're in a garden filled with all kinds of aromatic spices and flowers and all that, holiness is that beautiful. It's that appealing and attractive. The holy life, the virtuous life, is the most beautiful possible life you could ever live. It is attractive and appealing to love God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself. It's the best way you can live at any moment.

Now, Satan is so good at deceiving us, and telling us that these corrupting desires are the best possible kind of life. They're not, they're evil and wicked and so more and more as we see things as they really are, it's like, what I really want today, what I'm attracted to, what I yearn for more than anything else is holiness. I want to be like Jesus, I want to talk like Jesus, and think like Jesus, and act like Him, that's what I want. It's so appealing and so engaging and that's what you want. So if you don't have that view of holiness, ask the Lord to give it to you. You're going to be spending eternity living like that in the New Heaven, and the New Earth, it's going to be the best possible life you could ever live then, you can live it now by the Spirit. So yearn for a positive attraction to holiness. I want to say one final thing, and then I'll be done.

This Can Only Happen If You’re First Born Again

All of these things that I've been talking about: Putting off the old self, being made new in the spirit of your mind, and putting on the new self created to be like God, and beautiful righteousness and holiness, all of that is only possible if you're born again. It's only possible if you're a Christian. If you have not yet been born again, you can't do any of these things. But what you can do as you listen to me now, you can, in your own mind's eye, you can see the truth about Christ and about yourself. Know who Christ is, that He is the sinless Son of God who died in your place under the wrath and punishment of God, and He came to take away all of your sins, and to give you the gift of a perfect righteousness that I just described a moment ago, that you can just put on by faith, not by works. You'll be seen to be holy in God's sight. If you trust in Christ, all of your sins will be forgiven. And you will live forever. And once you do that, then you can do the things I've been talking about today. Beginning a journey of personal holiness that will grow and grow, but until then there's nothing more for you to do. “This is the work of God, to believe in the one that He has sent.” Believe in Christ. Close with me in prayer.

Father, Ephesians 4:22-24 teaches us how to be holy, it teaches us how to put sin to death. It teaches us oh Lord, how to be “made new in the attitude of our minds.” It teaches us how to yearn after, and hunger and thirst for holiness, as the most beautiful way we can possibly live. Father, I pray that we would believe this Gospel, that we would trust in Christ and by faith and by the power of the Spirit, increasingly be conformed to Christ. Lord, I pray for any that are here as yet unconverted who don't know you yet, who haven't trusted in you yet, that they would be attracted to Christ, and drawn to Christ, and that they would know themselves to be sinners apart from God, but that they would find an openness, and a welcome through the love of the Father to find forgiveness, like the prodigal son who came home. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

The Dark Heart of Humanity

Well, we live in amazing times of development, of transformation, of rapid change, right before our eyes. I alluded to it a moment ago in my prayer. Thinking technologically, I'll never forget, and I've mentioned this to some of you before, the first calculator my family ever owned. My father bought it back in the 1970s for $150. And it had four rubber feet and it sat on the desk, and it had a thick power cord that you plugged in and an on-off switch that clicked. And when you clicked that switch, these glowing orange digits came up, and it could do all four of the functions. It could add, subtract, multiply and divide. We wouldn't have known that it didn't have memory, we would've had no idea whatever that was, but we were thrilled. And I was mystified by this thing. Now I have this smartphone which has a clock app on it that you'll be glad to know about, letting me know that it's 11:20 AM. But it also can do far more on its calculator app than that thing did and that just came along with the phone. Smartphone. When I was a kid phones were up on the wall, and you actually did hang them up. I mean, what? We have to come up with a new verb for ending a phone call because you don't hang this thing up. But we had things you'd hang up, and we had these rotary things that you'd put your fingers in, and some of you know exactly what I'm talking about, others of you have no idea. When you call home, you push “Home,” and it calls, and you don't even know your own home phone number. That's scary. We have to be able to keep saying these numbers, because we will lose all track of the things that the computer keeps record of.

But that's happened before our very eyes, technological advances point to human brilliance, intellectual achievement, scientific advancement, but yet we see around us the truth of the text that Herbert just read, that people can be scientifically brilliant and technologically advanced, and still dark in their minds. And we see the evidence of spiritual darkness ever escalating and increasing in our time. We see it whether in terrorism or racism, or poverty, or just the evening news, as you watch basically, in effect the crime bladder, or the things, the tragedies that happen, both in our community and to the ends of the Earth. It's a tragic time for us to be alive, and we need to understand it from a spiritual point of view. We live here in a community of brilliant people. In a community of people that are being trained in some of the best institutions of higher learning in the world. And they come from around the world to be educated here. Some of them settle in here. Others just come here to do their research in pharmaceutical companies, electronic companies, in the RTP. This is an amazing place to live, similar to my home area of Boston. But yet we also see the darkness of our own community. We see the evidence of sin right in the streets of Durham, and in the community right around us. And we need the word of God to tell us the truth, we need to know what's really happening in the world, and we need to know ourselves properly too.

And so, as you heard the words that Herbert read, as you heard Ephesians 4, it was directed to the church at Ephesus. Yes, it was about unbelievers, but it was directed to people who had been rescued out of that darkness, and exhorting them to live differently than their surrounding lost neighbors and friends. To live a life of holiness, a life of purity before the eyes of Almighty God, and that the Gospel has come to do precisely that. Every Christian is a miracle of transforming grace. We don't fully understand what's happened to us, we don't fully understand how much we have been rescued and saved by sovereign power, and that Satan's grip on us was broken by a far more powerful conqueror, Jesus, who “rescued us out of that dominion of darkness and brought us into this kingdom of light.” And we underestimate how much those old sin patterns are still rooted in our hearts. And how much we have to hear the truth from Ephesians 4. And so, that's what we're going to look at today as we begin to look at Ephesians 4, 17 through 24. Called on to no longer live the dark life.

Now, the context there in Ephesus is quite remarkable. Ephesus was a city in Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey, and it had one of the seven wonders of the ancient world there, a magnificent temple to Artemis. Amazing architecture, amazing size, and people came from all over that part of the world to worship there, if we can call it that. It was a thoroughly pagan community, a thoroughly pagan place. Artemis was the goddess of the hunt, the goddess of fertility in some ways to look at it, protector of women, and Gentile worshipers would come from all over the Roman empire to indulge in sexual immorality in the worship services there at the temple. Some historians list Ephesus as one of the most licentious cities in Asia Minor. The temple of Artemis was a major center of this debauchery and wickedness. Like most pagan worship rituals, the worship of Artemis was an extension of human inner darkness described in Ephesians 4 that you just heard.

And there were perversion there that I won't list, but just evils and perversions that were going on in connection with that religion, and that society. Fifth century Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, referred to Ephesus as the “darkness of vileness,” and said, "The morals there were lower than animals and the inhabitants of Ephesus were only fit to be drowned." Well, that was the community into which the Gospel came as a light shining in a dark place, and individuals rescued out of that darkness were being called on now by the Apostle Paul to shine in that dark community. Now, one of the things we need to know about the Bible, people say, "How do we know that this book is still relevant 20 centuries later?" Well, one of the doctrines of the Bible is the immutability, the unchangeableness of God. God never changes, ever. But one of the things you start to learn as you read the pages of the Bible is that human beings don't essentially change either. And the same issues that the Ephesian Christians were facing back then, we face in 21st century America too. And we need to hear this message, we need to hear it here in Durham, and we need to hear it in America, and in this world.

Now, let's get some bigger picture context, again, in Ephesians, and trace out the flow of this magnificent book. In Ephesians 1-3, we have depicted, from 50,000 feet or 100,000 feet up, a satellite look down on the overarching work of Salvation in Christ. Looking down at the eternal purposes of Almighty God, in saving sinners like you and me. And so, we have in Ephesians 1 verse 4, that “God chose us in Christ before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless before Him.” And so, that's the ultimate end of our salvation, that we should be “holy and blameless.” What that means is we need to live a different life than the surrounding pagan world around us. We were chosen for that. We're destined for that. That's where we're going. And we're told there in Ephesians 1 that “in love He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ.” And so we bear the family name, how we live is a reflection on the name of Christ, the name of Almighty God in our community. So it matters very much what kind of life that we live. We're told that all of our sins, all of our wickedness and our corruption, has been paid for by the shed blood of Christ. That He atoned for our sins, “in Him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.” So not only do we have forgiveness of sins, but we have the gift of wisdom and understanding to know what's happened to us, and what's going on in the surrounding world.

We're told also that the Ephesian Christians, when they heard “the word of truth, the Gospel of their salvation, having believed they were marked in Christ with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit.” And so we, Christians, just by hearing a message, the message of the Gospel, and believing that message, we have received the gift of forgiveness of sins, and adoption in the family of God and the sealing with the Spirit. We are marked, with the Spirit, as His own possession. All of that had happened to the Ephesians Christians has happened to us. Now, in Chapter 4, in verse 1, the apostle Paul is calling on the Ephesian Christians to live a life worthy of the calling they have received. We are to live up to these lofty exalted eternal themes. We're to live up to holiness, we're to live up to being adopted and forgiven by the blood of Christ. All of these things are to be part of our lifestyle.

So we talked about the unity of the Church, and how we should make every effort to keep that unity, but then he talks about the diversity in the Church, diversity of spiritual gifts. Looked at that for three weeks, and we've seen that the goal of the diverse spiritual gifts is to build the Body of Christ, the Church, up into full maturity in Jesus that we would be conformed to Him in every respect and we'll “no longer be infants tossed back and forth by false teaching.” And we're not going to be infants blown back and forth by temptations. But we're going to be rock solid and mature, and more and more conformed to Christ. That's the goal. And so that's the context of where we're at.

And then it goes from that into this appeal for holiness. A different kind of life, there's a different kind of life that must flow from the Gospel. So look at it again, verses 17-24. "Therefore 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 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 have 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.”

Personal Holiness Confirms Salvation

So we're going to look at this passage this week and next week, but we're going to begin by zeroing in on what Paul tells the Ephesian Christians is true of non-Christians around them there in Ephesus, it's still true in our day as well, and the call to live a different kind of life now from that. From now on we are to live a different life, verse 17. It links it to the word therefore so in light of the spiritual gifts, in light of maturity as each part does its work, in light of all of this, I'm telling you, we've got to live a different kind of life, we've got to walk, the verb here is, walk, and sometimes it's translated, live. But it's that idea of a daily walk with Christ, day after day, left foot, right foot, just the way you live your daily life, you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do. Daily life has to change, and your personal holiness must come and confirm your salvation. The saving work of God in your life. Some people are cynical, outsiders are cynical of the true Gospel. A full forgiveness of sins apart from works? Kind of like easy believe-ism they think it is. Somebody who's been a terrible criminal and they're in prison and they suddenly have some conversion, and we're supposed to believe that? There's a lot of cynicism. They understand a morality that comes through hard work and hard effort and achievement, where you earn moral status by your efforts. They understand that, but this? And yet this is exactly what the apostle Paul is teaching, "For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of yourselves, it's a gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast." So full forgiveness of our sins, past, present, future. Forgiveness is always a gift of grace. It's never earned, it's never connected to your good deeds, ever, and never will be. We are forgiven, we're adopted, we're in the family of God by sheer grace through Christ.

It's hard for people to understand, but they also don't understand the fullness of Salvation. The personal holiness confirms that justification has even happened. And if there's no works of holiness in your life then you've not been born again, your sins are not forgiven, you're still dead in your transgressions and sins. So the lifestyle validates the saving work of God in your life, it validates it. And so, there have to be works of grace, there have to be works of holiness. James says, "What good is faith without deeds? Can such faith,” that kind of faith, “save you?” It cannot. “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead.” And I would think we would go first and foremost to works of holiness. Of putting sin to death by the Spirit, of saying no to temptations, of growing in grace and godliness. These works I think James would've said are primarily what he has in mind, even more than any other, giving to the poor and needy, caring for others, evangelism, these things. Is there a pattern of holiness in your life? So there has to be a radical change. We must no longer live as the Gentiles do, we have to think differently now.

The Radical Change of Conversion

He's going to say later in Ephesians 5:8, maybe there's a few paragraphs down on the page, "For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of the light." So we're called on to live as children of the light. Now, this is a command, this is a command from Almighty God through the Apostle Paul. This is not an option. There's not a higher level of Christian, this has to be in your life. This pattern of holiness. He says in the ESV, which you heard Herbert read, verse 17, "Now I say this and testify in the Lord," it's a sense of a strong word coming from the apostle Paul, this is something that must not happen, the days of visiting that filthy temple of Artemis are over forever. You must never go back, the days of lying and stealing, and slander, and gossip and blasphemy must end forever, the days of sexual immorality, there “must not be even a hint of that among you.” Those days are over, they must end. Peter puts it this way in 1 Peter 4:3, he says, "For you've spent enough time in the past, doing what pagans choose to do, living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing, and detestable idolatry.” He calls it a flood of dissipation. We're done with that. We're done, immediately done. No more, no longer. There's a sense of urgency here, in what Paul is writing. You must not live like that anymore.

I think he really makes the urgency very sharp in Romans chapter 8, verse 13, and 14. There is contrasting the carnal mind, the mind of the flesh with the mind of the Spirit, and it all comes down to this, in Romans 8:13 and 14, "For if you live according to the flesh you will die." And in context that means go to Hell, die forever, eternally die. You'll be condemned. That's the life that leads to destruction, as Jesus said, and many travel through it. 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.” That means go to Heaven. Because those who are led by the Spirit of God, these are the children of God, you see, and only those. Led, but where? Led into battle, led into holiness, led to put sin to death, that's the life that leads to Heaven. If you're not living that life, you're on the road to destruction that Jesus described. So this is something that must happen. This holiness worked out by the Spirit.

Powerfully Clear Depiction of the Darkness of Life Apart from Christ

Now in verses 17 through 19 he describes the darkness of life apart from Christ. Look at it again, "So I tell you this and insist on it the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thinking," he says. Verse 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. 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." So he begins by looking at their hearts. Their darkened hearts, their hearts are filled with darkness. He zeros in on their thinking. He says in verse 17, "You must no longer live as the gentiles do in the futility of their thinking." They have a futile way of thinking. Futile means empty, foolish, amounting to nothing. It doesn't go anywhere, ultimately vain and foolish. That's the way they think. They're looking for purpose from life, they're looking for meaning for life, and they're coming up empty. What do they come up with? They come up with effectively “let us drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.” They don't have an answer. You must not think like that, we can't have this futile empty thinking anymore the way that the Gentiles do. And the futility of their thinking leads to a worthless way of life.

Darkened Hearts

Now, perhaps these enlightened Greeks there, Greek speakers there in Asia Minor, would've been offended, say, "Hey, we have some of the greatest philosophers that have ever been in history. Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle, are you telling us that's all emptiness and darkness? We have some amazing mathematicians, like Archimedes, we're able to put up the temple of Artemis. So are you telling me that those achievements are nothing?" You say ultimately they are nothing. They are nothing because they are empty. You're separated from the life of God, you have no connection with God, and so you may do all these great achievements, but God's not impressed by them. He's not surprised by them either. He knows what He made in you, he knows what's metaphorically "under the hood". He can lift up the hood, he knows what kind of engine his put. He knows how “fearfully and wonderfully made” your brains are. He knows that you're created in the image of God and that you can do astonishing things with your intellect. He made you.

You remember back at the time of the Tower of Babel, and remember when the people discovered how to make bricks and bake them thoroughly, and cover them with pitch. And I look at that from a mechanical engineering point of view. Tt's like, “alright, greater compression strength and you start getting some higher and higher buildings. Hey, I have an idea. Let's build a tower that reaches up to the heavens so that we can make a name for ourselves.” And that passage is so enlightening on just what God thinks about human science and intellectual ability. He says this in Genesis 11:6, the Lord said, “If as one people speaking one language they've begun to do this, then nothing they propose to do will be restrained from them." That's high praise. Keep in mind he also had to say within the Trinity, "Let us go down and see that puny, little tower that they're building." It doesn't say “puny, little” look it up say, "Pastor, you said ‘puny, little.’" I said it and I know. But that's the image. It's like the gap between our highest achievement and God is infinite, so God's not impressed, and he's saying apart from Christ, you're darkened in your thinking and in your understanding, doesn't matter what you achieve intellectually.

In the 1930s, Germany was a worldwide leader in technology. Some of the best physicists in the world were there, Einstein, and Schrodinger, and Heisenberg, and Max Plank, they were German. They were leading the world in the study of electromagnetic radiation which led to modern telecommunications, the greatest rocket scientists in the world were German. Nuclear physics. They were leading the world in aviation as Charles Lemberg made very plain when he visited and saw their Luftwaffe. Yet within 15 years, Germany lays as a big pile of smoldering rubble, and why? It's because of the darkness, the darkness of their heart and the wickedness of the leadership and the wickedness of the achievements and all that, etcetera. Technological achievements, undeniable, but that's still darkness apart from a life of God and a knowledge of God. So mere intelligence and academic achievement and inventiveness, and all that does not commend us to God. God is not impressed.

Probing of the Unregenerate Heart

Paul extends the probing of the unregenerate heart, he says, "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." So this darkness extends to everything. Their understanding is corrupted, they understand things skewed. The affections of their hearts are corrupted, what they love and what they hate, it's messed up. The will is a slave to that messed up affection structure and so they're going to choose what they corruptedly love and reject what they corruptedly hate, and that's what their will is doing and their emotions are twisted. Every aspect of the heart.

Number of years ago there was a flood in Bangladesh and the water mixed. Fresh water, salt water, and waste water in ways that were deadly dangerous to the populous so that you couldn't go to your well and drink because it might very well be polluted. The contagion had spread and connected all of the water supplies and it was a big health issue. I think that's a picture to me of the corruption of original sin going to actual volitional sin corrupting every part of the inner person. That's what Paul's talking about here.

Cause for this Darkness: Separation from God

And the reason for this is separation from God, they're separated from the life of God, separated. Earlier in 2:12 it said, "without hope and without God in the world." they're separated, it's a gap between them and God and therefore there's a gap between them and life, that's the nature of being dead in their transgressions and sins, they're separated from life. In John 17, Jesus praying said, "Righteous Father, the world has not known you." It's like a cry from his heart. The world has not known you but I know you. And He said earlier in that same prayer in John 17:3, "now this is eternal life, that they may know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." that is what life is, it's knowing God. But these folks, they're hardened, they're calloused. Do you see those words? There's a hardness to them an unresponsiveness. Their conscience is seared. There is a picture in another verse about a seared conscience. In 1960 I read about a Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia, he won the Olympic Marathon in the burning streets of Rome running barefoot. Think about that. If I have to go across the sidewalk in the summer, I have tender feet and they're going to burn but this man had been running for his whole life with no shoes and so his feet were completely calloused and he ran better that way. And so that's a picture that building up of callous, it's a picture of insensitivity, unresponsiveness to spiritual things. So, they're hardened and they're darkened through this depravity.

It should hurt us to sin. There should be a hurt that happens. We're going to talk later about “grieving not the Holy Spirit of God.” It should hurt when we sin. There should be that responsiveness but these folks are hardened and calloused and they don't weep over sin, and not only that, but they're addicted to it. There's a continual lusting for more and more. It's never enough. Sin is addictive. You have to have more and more of the drink, more and more of the drug, more and more of the porn. The porn isn't enough, it's have to get weirder and weirder. There's a pushing and an edging all the time, why? Because there's a law of diminishing returns, and we become seared and hardened and need more and more, and that's the addictive nature. C.S. Lewis, in his book Screw Tape Letters where an older demon is training a younger demon on how to tempt humans, and he said, "The recipe is this, ever-increasing slavery to ever decreasing pleasure, that's the recipe for success." and that's what happens more and more enslavement less and less joy and pleasure out of it.

I just want to stop right now and say, "Is there anyone here who knows exactly what I'm talking about because I'm describing you?" That you know that you're separated from the life of God, you're on the outside. You don't know forgiveness. You don't know joy and happiness, perhaps you're afraid to die, maybe you're not because your hardness is such that you don't think about where you're going in all of this. You're not afraid of Judgment Day or you're terrified of Judgment Day. Either way, you know you're on the outside. All I can say is I thank God you're here. I prayed specifically this morning that God would bring some folks here. I actually prayed that they would come, that people would come, who didn't know they were coming when I was praying that prayer. And that may be describing you, maybe God brought you here and you know you're on the outside looking in, I plead with you to flee the wrath to come and go to Christ the savior. Jesus came and died on the cross for sinners like you and me. We were all like this, there's no difference. Paul's saying, “that's how you used to be Ephesians but now you have come to faith in Christ, you know that God sent his son who lived a sinless life, perfectly obedient to the law of God, and who died an atoning death for sinners like you.” Call on Him, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."

Praise God for Salvation in Christ

So he turns in verses 20-21 and says, "What about you? That's not how you learned Christ." He's talking to Christians now. Look at it, verses 20-21, "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." All I can say is, Praise God for the Gospel, amen? Praise God for salvation for sinners like us. He just abruptly breaks his incisive probings of the unregenerate pagan heart and addresses the Ephesians Christians directly. “You didn't know Jesus that way. That's not how it happened. You're not included.” There's been a decisive break made between me and sin. Praise God, a decisive break through Christ. And he says, "You didn't learn Christ through wickedness and depravity and hardness, not at all. Rather light was spoken into your dark heart." God said, “let there be the light of Jesus in your heart,” and He opened up the eyes of faith to see the light of the glory of God in the face of Christ and you were saved. Now he's calling on you because “God is light and in him there's no darkness at all,” He's calling on you, 1st John, to walk in the light as He is in the light. That's what's going on here.

And he refers to their hearing of the Gospel and it says literally, "Surely you heard Him." Now the ESV, NIV makes it more like Jesus is the topic of what you heard but that's grammatically not correct. It's not “Surely you heard of Him” or “heard about Him,” that's true, we did hear about Jesus. But the grammar actually says, "Surely you heard Him." and that's so much better, isn't it?

I remember I was converted when I was in a lab and I heard a voice in my heart. I know you're going to think I'm weird but it's true. That's how I was converted. It was telling me I'm going to a retreat with Campus Crusade for Christ, a fall retreat. He told me. Didn't ask by the way, He doesn't ask, He tells, He's a king. And I said out loud, "No, I'm not." I'll never forget. If you had been in the room like, "Who are you talking to?" "I don't know, but I'm not doing what that voice is telling me to do." Later found out in John 10, this beautiful passage, He's the good shepherd. “My sheep hear my voice, I know them and they follow me.And I give them eternal life.” So surely you heard Him calling into your darkness like you're a spiritual Lazarus and He said, "Lazarus come forth." and you came forth, that's what you heard, you heard Jesus calling, and He did call you and He said, "Come unto me all you who are weary and burdened and I'll give you rest," speaking right in their hearts. Isn't this what you heard? And you heard Him, and you were taught in Him in accordance with the truth in Jesus. You've heard about these things.

Now, over the next few weeks, we're going to talk about the basic rhythm of sanctification that follows. I'll just read it and describe it quickly and we'll be done. It says, "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," this is good translation spirit of your minds, "and to put on the new self-created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness." Now, that rhythm is going to bring you to ever higher levels of holiness the rest of your life. And it's applied to every topic you'll ever find in life. He gives you examples right in Ephesians 4, example number one. Falsehood and truth-telling. So stop lying and start only telling the truth, verse 25. He's going to do the same thing in verse 28, “Stop stealing and instead work and give to the needy.” So put off, put on. So it's not just stop doing, but there's something good you're going to do now. Third example in verse 29, “Stop using corrupted speech, corrupting unwholesome words, but only say those things that are going to give grace to those who listen.” Fill your mouth with grace, fill your mouth with the word of God. So put off, put on. That's what we're going to look at as we go forward.

Alright, so by way of application I've already made my appeal to you. If you're an unbeliever, I plead with you, don't leave this place unconverted. Talk to me, talk to someone, say "I want to know forgiveness, I'm afraid to die. I know that what this text says is true of me. I've been darkened. I've been living a life of lust and corruption and I want to be free, I'm addicted but I want to be free." Come and talk to me or one of the elders or any member to say, "I want to know more about Christ." So do that. But Christians understand, this was for you. The text says he's appealing to you as Christians to not be like this. So be aware of the danger, be aware of the fact that the seeds of your own destruction are in your heart. You're going to be fighting the flesh the rest of your life. So go over these verses and say, "How am I living like pagans? How am I living like a darkened calloused person? Is there a principle of sin in my life that I am not addressing like I need to, need to put to death? Am I living a holy life, and am I being renewed in my mind?" We're going to talk more about this over the next few weeks, but is there a regular pattern of Bible intake in your life?

Are you having your daily quiet time? Are you getting up and reading the word and feasting on the word of God, and being transformed in your mind? Different thinking leads to different living. If you want a different life, you have to think differently. That's what the word of God does. So just get your mind in the stream, the clean river of God's truth day after day, memorize the Scripture, just have it flowing through you. And also see the non-Christian world around you in light of these verses. There's a lot in Ephesians about what the non-Christians are like. They are dead in their transgressions and sins, they are without hope and without God in the world, they're darkened in their understanding, they need Christ. Does this insight motivate you to evangelism and missions? Does it motivate you to have courageous conversations with coworkers and fellow students and even professors, or bosses, or total strangers? A pattern of outreach built on compassion, because this is what they're going through, this ever increasing lust for sin.

Now over the next few weeks, we're going to talk about sanctification. We're going to talk about the rhythm of all that, come to that, but already begin putting these things into practice. Look at areas of your life where you need to grow, put off the old be made new in the spirit of your mind and put on the new. Close with me if you would in prayer.

Father, thank you for the things we're beginning to learn in Ephesians 4:17-24, thank you for the insight that the word of God gives. Thank you for the way it tells us the truth about our neighbors, coworkers. Thank you for the way it tells us the truth about ourselves, and we pray that you would continue to do a work of sovereign grace in our hearts transforming us, and make us an effective evangelistic church. Oh Lord, I pray that we see more and more baptisms here, more and more people who are being transformed by the Gospel. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

This morning I was pondering a question that came, you know, just because of current events, thinking about different things. And the question is what brings significance to your life? When you're on your deathbed, and you look back on a successful life, what will you say was the most significant thing you were ever involved in, most significant thing you ever did, that you invested yourself in? What will be the crown jewel of your life's work?

The Emptiness of a Godless Life

Two weeks ago, Glenn Frey founding member of the rock group the Eagles died, and various programs that I listen to were just ruminating with that thinking about the passing of an era. I watched an interview with him and he said these words, he said, “The greatest thing I ever did was to be part of the Eagles, to tour with them to record songs write songs with them. That was the greatest thing I ever did.” So I was thinking about that, and I thought about other such statements that I've heard from various ones. For example, I saw an interview with a NASA engineer that had been involved in the Space Race and been involved also in that amazing rescue of Apollo 13 that later there was a movie and he said, “The greatest moment of my life, is when we got those astronauts back safely from outer space back to Earth.” I knew a man some time ago, his name was Jim and he was a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, and seemed like if you gave him three minutes, he would talk about the Battle of the Bulge decades later, and it seemed to be without a doubt, the most significant thing that ever happened to him, he was part of a group, he never missed the VBoB meetings, Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge and it was just seemed to define his whole life. Saw another interview with Ron Howard, and he was talking about what it was like to be part of two really significant TV shows, The Andy Griffith Show, and then Happy Days, and he made a similar statement, the greatest time in my life was to be part of those shows. And you see interviews from time to time with athletes, to talk about what it was like to be on that team that won the Super Bowl etcetera. And they use that same type of language.

And honestly for me as a Christian, all of that just seems empty. It all seems temporary, and the more I meditate on spiritual gifts, and the good works that God has for us to do, the more I see the incredible grace God has shown us in Christ to not just deliver us from condemnation, and wrath and judgment that we will be completely forgiven, and that we would be adopted into his family, but more than that, that we have been graced with gifts, spiritual gifts and ministries connected with that, that will have eternal consequences. That we're delivered from wasting our lives, and that we'll be able to say at the end of our lives. The most significant thing I ever put my hand to was the building of the Church of Jesus Christ. And I think that's going to be abundantly clear to us on Judgment Day, when Jesus torches our “pile of works, and the gold, the silver, the costly stones, the wood, the hay and the straw, are all going to get tested by fire.” And then we'll see the unifying theme of those things at last, those things they were done for the glory of God, by the power of the Spirit that brought Him glory, and built the Church of Jesus Christ. That's what's going to last, and God has given us through these spiritual gifts and Avenue, a pattern of ministry that he wants us to do.

What Are Spiritual Gifts?

So this is our third sermon now, third time looking at the topic of spiritual gifts. What are spiritual gifts? Spiritual gifts are special abilities given to us by the grace of God, that enable us by the Spirit of God to build the Church of Jesus Christ. Special abilities. Now, big picture, we know that we have been saved, delivered from our sins, so beautifully unfolded for us in Ephesians 1-2, chosen before the foundation of the world, predestined to be adopted as His sons and daughters, predestined to be holy and blameless in His sight, Jesus shed His blood for our redemption, we, having heard the word of truth, were included in the Church of Jesus Christ by repentance and faith, that we have been saved, rescued from serving Satan, from being enslaved to Satan's dark kingdom. And we've been delivered from that by the sovereign power of God, not by our own works. “For by grace we have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.”

But having said that, then we have that beautiful Ephesians 2:10, which says that, “we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God planned in advance that we should walk in them.” And what I am saying to you these spiritual gifts a third time we've had a chance to look at this, will organize many of the good works God has ordained for you to do. Many of them will come along the pattern of your spiritual gift ministry. And that's a beautiful thing now in that same chapter, in Ephesians 2, we have this grand and glorious vision of a church, a holy temple, a spiritual dwelling place that's rising, in the Lord, more and more glorious, all the time more and more ornate, bigger and bigger all the time. With every sinner that comes to faith in Christ. We are part of that. To bring it in language from 1 Peter 2, we are “living stones” set in that spiritual temple. And so that's a glorious picture.

I get the picture of a medieval Cathedral, and there's this master craftsman, this architect, that has the blueprints and the plans, and just runs the whole worksite. But then you have these skilled craftsmen, these stone workers, masons, you know these carpenters and glaziers, experts in glass and those majestic stain glass windows, and then common laborers, and all kinds of workers on this work site in this cathedral that just rises from the surface of the earth 120 feet off the ground. But this is even better, this is eternal, this is glorious and we all have a role to play. Every Christian has a role.

Grow in the Spiritual Gifts

So what we're going to do one final time, here is we're going to look at spiritual gifts and organize it along the pattern of these four Ds that I commended to you. Discover spiritual gifts, delight in spiritual gifts, develop spiritual gifts, and deploy your spiritual gifts. So we're going to look one more time at these. We're going to start again with “discover,” and what we're going to do is take the “discover” section, break it into two parts, discover generally about spiritual gifts, that work is mostly done. But I'm just going to go through Ephesians 4:7-16 one more time. So we understand what they are, generally. Then, we're going to go over to Romans 12 and I'm going to use Roman 12, Romans 12:1-8, and I'm going to take you through that so you can already begin flipping there, or turning there, or pressing there. I don't know what the verbs are anymore, but clicking there. But we're going to get there Romans 12:1-8. I'm just going to walk through that text because I just don't think there's a better text in the New Testament for answering the question what yet, but “What are my spiritual gifts? What role do I personally play? How can I discover my personal gift?” So that's the Discover section.

Secondly, I'm just going to exhort you. It shouldn't be hard to just delight in this whole glorious thing. I want to give you a vision, again, of the heavenly in Jerusalem. I want you to delight in it, I want you to enjoy it, and I want you to delight, in your heart, in building it, I want you to do your gifts with the light. And then, thirdly, I'm going to advocate that all of us have to develop our spiritual gifts that you should be better if the Lord allows you to live, and doesn't return. You should be much better at your spiritual gift package, in the ministry that corresponds to it, 10 years from now than you are now. You should learn how to do it better than ever before. I should be a better preacher and teacher and Pastor 10 years from now, than I am now if the Lord gives me time. And all of us should develop our gifts. And then finally, I'm just going to advocate that you do them, that you deploy yourself, get busy, and you've got an insert, and in your bulletin we're going to look at that various avenues of service. I'm going to just look at that as an incredible menu, and you say, "Well I just don't know what to do." Well, there are ample ways and on-ramps into ministry here in this local church, and I want to talk about that. Okay, that's a road map.

Gifts Given by Grace

Let's look first at “discover” generally one more time, look at the text in Ephesians 4:7-16. I just want to start at 4:7, “But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it,” so the word “but” means we're going to go in a slightly different direction. He was just talking about unity, “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is overall, and through it all and in all.” Unity, unity, unity. But to each one of us grace. So unity, but not uniformity. We are all part of one body, but we don't all have the same function, same role, we've already talked about that, “but to each one of us.” So every Christian has a spiritual gift package. I prefer that language than just to the singular spiritual gift because there's just an array of abilities that God's going to give you that line up with a pattern of ministry He wants you to do and He's going to gift you for that, and that's everybody, “but to each one of us,” grace. I already said why this is grace. God didn't have to do this. How gracious of God to give you a role to play Amen.

You should be so thankful and see that you got far more than you deserve, but by the grace of God, you have this ministry and you can work hard and do things of eternal consequence, but to each one of us grace has been given, according to the measure of Christ. So Christ has measured out, the Greek word “metron.” I love the sense of careful thinking he has pondered you and has chosen a spiritual gift package, for you and a spiritual gift ministry, for you. According to the measure of Christ, we know also from other texts, that the Father has done this in the Spirit as well. So the Father, Son and Spirit together have gifted you, everyone. Now, in the next few verses, it talks about how these spiritual gifts are part of what Christ won for us by His victory at the cross and the empty tomb it pictures Christ as an ascendant victorious Conqueror who came down from Heaven to Earth to rescue sinners like us and then goes back up from Earth to Heaven, leading captives in his train. And just pouring out gifts to everybody.

And so it's like booty, or plunder, something like that, a sense of the spoils of the victory and through the Spirit, He just gives us these good things. That's the image in verses 8-10. And then he gives us some examples, but they're not just any examples as we've talked about. “He gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, some to be pastors and teachers.” Those are five gift type ministries, each of them has their own gifting. And we talked about this, but they unify around this one theme, the delivery system of the word of God from the mind of God through these gifted ones “apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers” to the people of God, the word of God is delivered. So the ministry of the word primes the pump for the use of spiritual gifts.

Christians Prepared for Works of Service

So, we go right from that to prepare God's people for works of service. So God's people are made ready by the ministry of the word of God, to do works of service. The works of service, do the building up of the body. Does that make sense? So all of the works of service, that's what builds up the Body of Christ, so the Body of Christ may be built up, and that's the goal of spiritual gift ministry, the maturation, the full maturity of the Body of Jesus Christ that were moved from “being infants blown back and forth by the waves,” immature doctrinally immature in our understanding of Christ and of the church, and of the world to full maturity in Christ-likeness. And so, when every individual elect person has been brought from death to life through evangelism and missions, and then discipled and trained by a healthy church ministry, up to full maturity and then even more in glorification. When we graduate the ultimate graduation moving from earthly life to heavenly life, when all of the elect have been glorified then the work is finished. And that's what spiritual gifts are given to do. And that's a glorious thing. And so as each part does its work, the Body of Christ is built to full maturity. So spiritual gifts are vital to this whole redemptive plan of God. And as we individually use our gifts and as we're out and about using the gifts, and then as we're receiving other people's gifts, all of us grow up, we grow up by serving and we grow up by being served with the spiritual gifts and that's what a local church is all about. It's so sweet and powerful. So that's the picture, generally. So water spiritual gifts, Ephesians 4:7-16 really gives us a glorious overall picture.

Live in Light of God’s Gospel

Now, let's get to specifically,. “discover” my gifts, “how would I do that?” Well look at Romans 12:1-8, let's zero in on that in particular. Romans 12:1-8 is almost like a step-by-step field manual in how to discover your spiritual gifts. Often, people quote Romans 12:1-2, and sever it from the flow of thought that follows. So I think a real impact comes in connecting the famous Romans 12:1-2 with the not-so-famous Romans 12:3-8. Keep them together and you will see a powerful image and we're going to walk through Romans 12:1-8, and just bring it back again and again, to the touchstone of spiritual gifts. How can I know what my spiritual gifts are? Romans 12:1-8 is the biblical answer to that. Okay, we start with this. “Therefore brothers, in view of God's mercies, I urge you to present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing and perfect will. For by the grace given to me I say to every one of you do not think of yourself more highly than you ought” and he goes off to talk about spiritual gifts. So just start at the beginning, Romans 12:1-2 and see it in the light of spiritual gifts. So how do I know what my spiritual gifts are? Well, begin by having a view through the scripture, through faith of the overarching glorious mercies of God, Romans 1-11, or Ephesians 1-3. The overarching picture of the redemptive plan of God start there in view of or seeing God's mercies in Christ.

Present Your Body to God

Next, “present your bodies to Him as living sacrifice.” So I would say in view of God's mercy, just starts with faith in Christ. This is for believers, not for non-believers. If you ask, "Okay, you know I'm a visitor here and I'm not a Christian, but I'm interested in spiritual gifts.” Can I just say set that aside, that's not what you need. When they came to Jesus and said, "What must we do to work the works of God?” He said to them, unregenerate people. This is the work of God, believe in the one he is sent, so you need to trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins that's the mercies of God.

God sent His Son to die in your place, to take your wrath on Himself, and to give you His perfect righteousness that's the mercy of God. You don't have any spiritual gifts, you don't have any spiritual life, if you're not a Christian, if you're not born again so don't leave this place “dead in your transgressions and sins,” but repent and trust in Him right now, and then immediately you'll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and He will work a spiritual gift ministry in you that's the order. So, in view of God's mercy, then Christian present your body to Him as a living sacrifice.

So what is this presentation? Well, Romans 6 makes it very plain what it is but basically used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to sin, now offer the parts you of your body to God. And so here's the thing, the image I have here is you're just presenting, you're saying, "I am yours to command, I want to use my life for your glory, I offer myself to you, to serve you.” Now you say, "When do I do that?" Well, in one sense you do it once for all, at conversion. When you come to faith in Christ, you said “I am yours, you are my king, I am your servant. I’m yours.” And that's true, but the image here is one of continual presentation and we get that from the idea of a living sacrifice. Old Testament was all about a dead sacrifice. It was an animal blood poured out and its body burned, and send it up, and it was an offering, but now we've got a different idea, same idea of sacrifice, but now your body offered to God continually, as a living sacrifice. So in your morning quiet time. Yes, but throughout the day. Abiding in Christ continually thinking about Him and just saying, I'm yours, I'm yours, I'm yours, I'm yours to command all the time, continual offering of yourself, your hands, your feet, your eyes, your mouth, every part of you.

Don’t Be Conformed to this World

And then he says “holy and pleasing to God.” You will be able to discover your spiritual gifts, better and better the more you put sin to death, if there's no sin clouding your judgment, there's no wickedness going on in your life. If those things are going, you will not be able to discern what your spiritual gifts are. That's not the top priority for you. And we're never going to be perfectly holy, but our discernment and our ability to understand the spiritual gifts of God are in proportion to being holy and pleasing to Him. And he says, “this is your spiritual act of worship.” This is what worship is for you, this ongoing presentation of your body holy and pleasing to him. So how do I know what my spiritual gifts are? Start there in Romans 12:1, do that, and then he says, “do not be conformed” or masquerade or act like, “the world any longer.” Don't do that, don't. Another translation, “don't let the world squeeze you into its mold.” Don't be conformed.

All right, so it was after the spiritual gift and the lifestyle that flows from it. Don't think like the world about your life, don't have worldly goals for your life. Learn now, what is going to be “gold, silver, and costly stones” on Judgment Day, and live for that and not for the stuff that's “wood, hay, and straw,” which is going to get burned up. Live for Christ, live for His kingdom. “Seek first His kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.” And these things that get added or not while you're alive. And so, don't think like the world about your life anymore. Don't think like the world about your time and energy and money and how you're investing yourself. Don't think like the world about your career and what you want to achieve, but instead “be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Now though the word of God is not specifically mentioned here, we all know that's the only power there is to do that. How do you think differently? It's the power of the Holy Spirit who uses the word of God in changing the way you think, and if you change the way you think you will change the way you live. I'll talk about this more later in Ephesians 4. New thinking leads to new living.

Be Transformed by the Renewing of Your Mind

And so “be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” be in the Word, be listening to good preaching. Be getting good teaching, be reading good Christian books, be in the Word every day your quiet time all the time, then, he says, As you are transformed more and more by the renewing of your mind, you will be able, and I like the NIV's translation here. They unfold the Greek word, I think pretty well for us. You'll be able, equipped, to test and approve what God's will is, for you. “His good, pleasing, and perfect will.” So the big question we're asking is “discover.” “What are my gifts?” This is just leading you by the hand to answer the question. You'll be able to test and approve. Well, what do we mean by test and approve?

Well, one of the images I have here is of the Great Gold Rush, the minor 49ers and all that in 1850 and all that, and they go to the California and they're getting rocks out of rivers and out of mines, and they're bringing them to a place called an assayer's office, and the assayer is an expert at looking and saying, “That's fool's gold, that's real goal. The quality of it silver too,” whatever, that's what they do, they're able to assess what's on the table in front of them and say, what it really is. Well, that's you, you'll be able to test and approve God's will for you, this is God's will for me. And not only is it God's will, I know what it is, but I like it, I approve it, I want it, that's something good for me. So already we've come a long way. Romans 12:1-2 just gives you step-by-step how to answer the question, “What is my spiritual gift?”

Do Not Think More Highly Of Yourself than You Ought

But Paul is not done 4:3, “by the grace given to me,” and that's code language for spiritual gifts, later in the same text in Romans 12:6, I think it is. We have different gifts according to the grace given to us, that's exactly what he's thinking about. “Okay, by my spiritual gift of Apostle I say to you X.” That's the language he's using. “By my spiritual gift package of being an apostle, I'm going to give you some advice about your spiritual gifts.” So, “by the grace given to me I say to every one of you,” and the first thing he says is, “do not think of yourself more highly than you ought.” He starts right away with humility, humble yourself, don't think of yourself as a first round draft pick on God's team, okay? Don't think of yourself as indispensable. “God is lucky to have me.” Every one of us is dispensable, every one of us is replaceable, be humble about that. Think how blessed you are already to even be on this team doing this work. Humble yourself.

And that's going to be even more true as you progress and develop your spiritual gift and God uses you more and more and gives you a wider and wider platform of ministry, and you see fruit and you start to get tempted to be elevated and forget where it all came from, and how you can't do anything apart from Jesus, and He's just being gracious to you to even let you be involved and any change that ever happened in another person's life, it's been happening by the word of God in the Spirit. If you are the avenue the conduit of it, praise God, be happy. But it was God that did it. And so don't think of yourself more highly than you ought, but now comes a hidden step, which is so vital, but the more I talk about it, it just makes perfect sense. But think about yourself, do think about yourself.

Value Feedback from the Church Members

So you're like, “All right, how do I discover what my spiritual gifts are?” Ponder yourself, like the thinker. Who am I? I'm pondering not my spiritual naval, but I'm pondering my tendencies, my habits, my patterns, my proclivities, my likes and dislikes, pondering what I do, and specifically in the light of spiritual gifts. “What kinds of ministries do I enjoy? What kinds of ministries have come to me, and I've done them and I've enjoyed doing that. And this is the beauty of being a really healthy church. I've gotten a feedback loop of encouragement from the Body of Christ.” And so, I think you discover your spiritual gifts, the more you get involved in a local church, a healthy local church, will help you discover what your gifts are. That's just a plug for being a covenant member of a healthy local church, know and be known on spiritual gifts, know other people's gifts, and let them know your gifts.

So I'm just going to do a brief segue here. Stay in Romans 12. But just in your mind, a corresponding thing you are thinking about yourself, you also want others thinking about you. And those things come together  for discovering your gift, right? So who should think about you? The church, the local church, how? Hebrews 10:24, it says, "Let us consider one another, to spur toward love and good deeds. Not neglecting meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another and all the more as you see the day approaching.” That's a partner to think about yourself with sober judgment. They’re partner verses. So you think about yourself as sober judgment and get some good friends to think about you as sober judgment, let them consider you, “Who are you? What are you good at?” And they should, lovingly, encourage you about what you're good at, and what you're blessed at. See? I'm blessed by that. 

Marveling at the Spiritual Gifts in Action.

And so I was thinking about that and I pondered it, and I have all of these examples of encouragement that I wrote. I think about different people who have blessed me. Now, if you're listening to this and you're like, "I know I'm that person,” All right? Well, you probably are, but I didn't put any names in here, but I'm just blessed all the time, by members of this Body of Christ. So I think about people who have the gift of hospitality and I want to say to that brother or sister, “You have such a gift when you open your home you make me feel like you're doing me a favor for us being there, like you're so incredibly blessed to have 43 people come to your home for home fellowship.” That's just a gift of hospitality. There's not a sense of burden at all, it's a gift, Thank you, praise God for that. 

Or the gift of service. Brother, thank you for coming every Sunday morning and making coffee for so many people. 12 pots one after the other, all different types of flavors. Very few people may see you do it, but thank you for that gift of service. I'm encouraged by the way you serve. Or evangelism. “Brother, when you go out witnessing and you just get in these conversations and it just seems to flow, and even though you don't know them, they don't know you, pretty soon you're talking to a lost person, so easily about the Gospel. I just want to ride your coattails, I want to be with you. Can I just come and watch it and get credit for doing evangelism? I just want to do that, because you have such a gift.” I love that.

And then, the gift of mercy. “You have such a heart for the poor and needy, sister. I'll tell you what, when I drive through this community, I don't see it the way you do. But you see needs, you see avenues of service, you see people whose lives are broken, and you have such a heart of compassion for them. I am so blessed by that.” The gift of prayer. “I love praying with you, I just love the way you pray, I just feel like we're in the presence of God, the way you pause and the way you have your tone of voice and the things you say in prayer. I'm blessed by that, you have a gift. And I'm blessed by that.” The gift of leadership, “I love the way you organize mission trips, the way you organize ministries, the way you think about details, the way you cast a vision for it, the way you're able to call people to make sacrifices for that vision, and to move out and go in that direction. I'm blessed by your gift of leadership or the gift of giving, you just give so regularly, and so faith filled, I know that God's blessed you and abundantly.”

But you don't see those things as yours ultimately you see them as God's, and you give generously. You give generously to missions, you fund mission trips, you fund laborers for the harvest field, you give tithes and offerings to the local church as well. I'm just blessed by the way you give. The gift of teaching. “When you open up the Scripture, I hear things in the word that I hadn't, I see things that, they're there, but I never saw them and I'm blessed by that. Thank you for showing me things in the word of God that strengthen my faith.” Or the gift of music or worship. “The way you play your instruments, and the way you sing. I feel like I'm just laid on the heavenlies, and that my emotions flow, and there's just such a beauty to the gift of music.”

And then the gift of administration, of organization, the caring center ministry, so many details. Clothing comes in, clothing goes out. There's money, there's all these things, the whole thing's set up so well. “Thank you sister for the way you have organized the caring center. Your gift of administration with a gift of counseling. “Our marriage was not doing well, but we sat down with you as a couple, and you showed us sin, patterns in our lives, and you counseled with us, from the word of God, and you really saved our marriage. Thank you.”

Now, when all of those practical ministries are being done and there's that beautiful feedback loop. I couched all of that in light of encouragement. The Body of Christ encourages people to “loving good deeds.” And so, it's our job to think about ourselves, definitely think about ourselves, but we need to think about one another too. We need to think about each other. And so, as that happens, we can discover our spiritual gifts, what they are. So think about yourself with sober judgment. Get involved in ministries. You're going to get a chance at the end of this message to look at it. Don't worry if you don't know what your spiritual gifts are, you really don't know. Just get busy. Do some things along the pattern of the ministries we suggest and just see how you are, see how you fly like that balsa wood airplane, the way that the wings are set. Are you going to do a barrel roll, are you going to fly for distance? What are you? Are you going to curve left or right as you get the air under the wings you're going to show your tendencies? Get busy. So think about yourself with sober judgment in accordance with the “measure of faith that God has given you.” And then he goes on to teach about spiritual gifts.  So I would just step by step by step go through Romans 12, and you'll discover what your gifts are. Okay? 

Now, at the end of that section, he says this, and we'll come back to Romans 12:6-8 on the final D. But it says, “if it is encouraging, let him encourage. If it is contributing to needs of others, let him give generously. If it is leadership, let him govern diligently, if it is showing mercy, let him do it,” what? “Cheerfully.” “Cheerfully.” I think about 2 Corinthians 9:7, talking about financial giving, says, “not reluctantly or under compulsion,” why? “Because God loves a cheerful giver.” You have to have a delight in your heart when using your spiritual gifts, you have to delight in it, and I think the best way to delight to be a cheerful giver is to see the glorious vision of what you are doing. I've already given it to you, I'll give it to you again. It is the heavenly Zion of Isaiah 62 “Arise and shine O Zion for your light has come and the glory of the Lord shines upon you.” 

It's the New Jerusalem that at some point in the future is going to “come down out of Heaven like a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband.” It is this city, this golden, glorious, transparent amazing city that's radiant with the glory of God. And you know what occurred to me? All local church ministry is temporary. All of it. But the eternal church is eternal, and get this. I love this. I gave you guys that image of the small cover or cloud cover. Sometimes you have to fly up above the clouds, and see, from a heavenly perspective, the New Jerusalem, and you know what the Lord is saying to my heart about that? Yes, local church ministry is temporary lots of changes, lots of things happen, but things are looking really good from up here. The New Jerusalem every day gets a little bigger and a little more glorious, a living stone gets put in the wall. Every day, there's not a single backward step, for the New Jerusalem. Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us and He's doing it, and oh it's glorious! It is glorious. So you should be very cheerful using your spiritual gift, you should delight in it, because you're doing an eternally glorious work.

Spiritual Gifts Need to Be Developed

All right, thirdly, “develop.” How do we develop our guests? Well, you developing by using them, etcetera, but that you should develop the gift. I'm just wanting to command this one text. 1 Timothy 4:15, all right? I'm just going to read 1 Timothy 4:13-16, and we'll talk briefly about “develop.” There, Paul, the mentor says to his protegé, Timothy, about pastoral ministry about preaching and teaching, and shepherding, and doing the work of an evangelist all the things that go into being a pastor, he says, “until I come,” 1 Timothy 4:13-16, “until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of the word of scripture to preaching into teaching.” Devote yourself to it. Then he says, "do not neglect your gift, which was given you through a prophetic word when the body of elders laid their hands on you.” Don't neglect your gift. Another place he says, “fan it into flame.” That's going to be the same image but I'm zeroing in here.

1 Timothy 4:15, “Be diligent in these matters, give yourself wholly to them so that everyone may see your progress.” So, Timothy, let it be said there in Ephesus that when they come five years later they’ll say, “Timothy, you're a much better preacher now than you were five years ago.” Don't be hurt by that, be happy, be encouraged. Be a better preacher in five years, be a better shepherd in five years. Well, I'm just taking that idea and extend it to all the spiritual gifts, all of them. Devote yourself fully to your spiritual gift ministry, so that everyone may see your progress. Be a better giver. 10 years from now than you are now. Be better at administration or leadership 10 years from now than you are now. Study it, as a science, as an art, however you want to say it devote yourself to your spiritual gift ministry and get better at it. That's all. He says “watch your life and your doctrine closely. Persevere in them because if you do, you'll save both yourself and your hearers.” 

I think that's true of all spiritual gifts. That as we use our spiritual gifts, we will be instrumental in the salvation of the saved. Like huh, well you said save both yourself Timothy and your hearers. He's saved doesn't he? But yes, Already, not yet. He is saved, but he's not done being saved. And so as we use our gifts and progress in them, we will see the church growing more and more toward maturity in Christ. That's salvation. So we've seen discover, delight in the gifts, develop, now, finally deploy.

We Develop Them by Using Them

Deploy is kind of a military term, I guess, to some degree. First time I went through this years ago, I used the word “use,” but I've been inspired by my alliteration friends. So you got to have all the same letter, do you know it's the same letters all the time, is Ds and Ps and all that? Poor letter Z or X, I mean whoever does alliteration with those? I guess kids on Mother's Day if they can get 26 ways that they love their mom. Don't use the word Xerox. She's not going to be encouraged by that. That's not good. But deploy. It's a military image, it's like God is going to deploy us on the battlefield. This gifted Church, He's going to deploy. So I'm urging you to deploy your gifts, use them. So there we go back to Romans 12:6-8, “we have different gifts according to the grace given us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith, if it is serving, let him serve. If it is teaching, let him teach. If it is encouraging, let him encourage, if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously. If it is leadership, let him govern, diligently if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.” Do it. What good is the gift if you're not using it, and this is where I just want to convict you, look at your lifestyle, look at your pattern. Are you using your gifts? Are you involved in a regular pattern of spiritual gift ministry?

And as I've said a few weeks ago, if not the first thing you really did need to do is to repent, say, “Lord, I have wasted some time up to this point, I've not really been using my gifts, I've not been investing in the Church the way I need to, and I want to do that. I've been worldly. I've been living for worldly goals, and I don't want to do that anymore, I really want to get involved in ministry.”

So “deploy.” You know remember the parable or the talents, the five talents two talents, the one talent? You don't want to be the one that got a talent and hid it in the ground. Matthew 25-25, he said, “so I was afraid and went out and dug a hole and hid your talent in the ground.” Here's what belongs to you. All of our gifts, we're going to give them back 'cause they're not ours. He's going, “I want to know the interest. What did you do with it? Did you invest it? Show me the increase, show me the growth.” That's what Judgment Day is going to be like for all of us. So let's deploy our gifts. Let's get involved.

Now, you might say, "How do I do that? How do I do that?" Well, this is a really encouraging brochure that some on the staff put together, did a great job, and it breaks opportunities for service into three main categories. Ministry teams, those are run by the deacons in a beautiful way, but so many ministries flow through these ministry teams, many of them have to do the infrastructure and the strength and health of the Church, and you can see them Children's Ministry, there are various needs there, Encouragement Ministry, Meals and Preparations, it's like Meal Baby. Or if there's a bereavement issue such a blessing for people to step up and do that. Facilities ministry just taking care of the building, etcetera. Host Ministry is just how we present ourselves to visitors. How do we make ourselves open and welcoming to visitors and they just do a phenomenal job with that. The Host Ministry does. And then there's Membership Assimilation.

New members come in. We're going to have a New Member Sunday real soon, and we're going to see a bunch of new people and they're going to be like, "Okay, here I am. Teach me about FBC how can I get assimilated?” And the new member assimilation team does a great job of getting those folks assimilated. Then there's Men's Ministry and later because it's alphabetical, but Women's Ministry, both of those focused on issues relevant to men's discipleship and women's discipleship, and there are teams of people that are doing both of that and you may have a heart for that and want to get involved.

Opportunities to Deploy Spiritual Gifts

Security Ministry, there are needs there. Homebound Ministry, Senior Adult Ministry, etcetera. Worship Ministry, including Lord’s Supper preparation. Then I see what we call International Connections. Tremendous out-reaching opportunities. I don't think there's an easier way to do evangelism in our church right now, than through international ministry. Every Wednesday, they come here wanting to learn English, and let me put it gently, willing to put up with Bible or Gospel to get the English. And you know how we're fishers of men, and we can draw people in, and they have felt needs and somewhere in there that might be a turn and say, “I came here for English, I found Christ.” And how sweet is that just how beautiful is that? To just sit down, in our building, with a lost person and talk to them about their background. They're very intelligent gifted, talented people, but they need Christ. That's the IC ministry that's there.

Isn't this awesome? So many opportunities. Then there's Home Fellowship, and Home Fellowship is a great platform for spiritual gift ministry. You think all of the gifts there are they're all at work during home fellowships, hosting, teaching, welcoming, administration aspects. It's a wonderful way to use your gifts. And then there's just outreaches that we can be doing, they're all listed here. Recently, my wife and I went to Cheesecake Factory. I'm blown away by their menu. I don't know, what they have, 50 different chefs back there? They’ve got page after page after page after page after page in 12 major categories. It's like, “how can it be? How can they be good at all of these things equally?” I don't think they are. But this is like that. I was going to use Golden Corral, but I decided Cheesecake Factory better, all right?

All of the opportunities you're like, "I don't know what to do, there's no on-ramps, there are on-ramps to serve, so just find a place to serve. Find a place. Friends, our life is going to be over soon. “It's a mist, it's a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” Only one life ‘twill soon be past, only what's done for Christ will last. Build the church, build the church. Close with me in prayer.

Father, thank you for the time we've had three weeks now, looking at spiritual gifts. God please, unleash this church, unleash the members of this church into patterns of spiritual gift ministry, that you have thought out, and prepared them for, that this church may become rich with good works and rich with maturity and rich with converts that are new disciples and are growing, God, make us rich we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Pastor Andy Davis preached at Sanctity of Human Life Sunday based on the Gospel of John.

 The book of 2 Corinthians 6:10 gives a phrase that is much on my mind in pastoral ministry, “sorrowful yet always rejoicing.” Sorrowful yet always rejoicing. And recently, I've thought to put in the word, sometimes sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. The reality of sin and death in this world will make the times of sorrow inevitable, but the victory of Jesus Christ at the cross and at the empty tomb is so incredible and infinite in its dimensions that we are told that it will swallow up all death and sin in victory. Jesus was, we are told in Isaiah 53, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering, and yet that same book of prophecy tells us that the coming of Jesus brings in an age of joy so unspeakable and so full of glory, it's akin, in Isaiah 9, to the time when people rejoice at the harvest, and as men rejoice when dividing the plunder. “For to us a child is born and to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders, and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” So the same book testifies of the same man that he is both a man of sorrows and also one who brings infinite joy. Sorrowful yet always rejoicing.

And so when I come to today's Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, I'm sorrowful and yet I'm rejoicing. Sorrowful that legalized abortion is still the law of the land, and has been now for 43 years, sorrowful about that, but rejoicing that someday the King of Kings will return and establish a righteous government in which all unjust laws will be gone forever. I'm sorrowful that over, well over a million babies were aborted in the United States of America last year, but I'm rejoicing that Christ has conquered death and that his resurrection from the dead gives the only silver lining there could ever be in the face of death.

I'm sorrowful that people, men and women, have been defiled by this issue, that their consciences have been defiled, that they are guilty, and that they have sinned in this crucial issue of the sanctity of human life. It makes me sorrowful. But I'm rejoicing that full forgiveness is available through faith in Christ, and that sinners can have their consciences cleansed, the Book of Hebrews tells us, from acts that lead to death so that we can serve the living God. I'm sorrowful that Planned Parenthood continues to operate and do its wicked things, but I'm rejoicing that they have been more fully exposed in 2015 than they've ever been before, and that people are able to see them for what they really are, the depths of their depravity. I'm sorrowful that we still have so far to go to see legalized abortion in our nation removed forever, but I am rejoicing that we have, through the Scripture and the indwelling Spirit, by the power of the Gospel, everything we need for life and godliness, and we are fully equipped for the role that we have to play in our country.

So we come to Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, and I'm looking at the entire Gospel of John this morning. They asked me what the Scripture reading was going to be, and I said, "All right, why don't we read the entire Gospel of John?" But we couldn't do that, and so we looked at verses 1-14, and I'm not here to preach an expositional sermon on these 14 verses. Would love to do it. But what I wanna do is use the Gospel of John to think about life, to think about biological life and to think about eternal life, spiritual life. So that's what we're going to do. Now, when we talk about Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, what does that mean? Sanctity means holiness or sacredness. We believe that human life is special, it's set apart unto God. It's different than any other kind of life there is in the world. We get this from Genesis 1:27-28, where we're told that “God created man in his own image, in the image of God, he created Him, male and female, he created them and God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, fill the Earth and subdue it.’”

So the sanctity of human life means that God has set apart human life unto himself as his own precious possession. Now, the key moment in his ministry, the Lord Jesus was asked, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?” Jesus said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.” Now, there is a similarity between the love vertically that we are to offer to God and the love horizontally we are to offer to one another. We get that from Jesus's words, “the second is like it.” So what that means is all of the Law and the Prophets, all of the ethical behavior there is in life comes first and foremost from the commitment, the commandment we have to love God, Almighty God, and the understanding that every human being we ever meet is created in the image of God, and that to love them is a subset in the end of loving God with all of our heart. 

Now, this was established, re-established after the flood of Noah. We're told before the flood, the heart of sinners had become so wicked and depraved that their thoughts were only evil all the time, and it seems like one of the things that happened before the flood was a river of murder, a river of death in which humans were killing other humans. So one of the things that God did after the flood was established again the sanctity, the sacredness of human life. In Genesis 9:6, he said, "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God, has God made man." So the law forbidding murder is linked to the fact that God has made man in his own image. To kill another human being is to attack the image of God. Now, in the New Testament, James extends this to even something as simple as insulting or cursing another human being. He says in James 3:9-10, “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men who have been made in God's likeness, out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be.”

So we should not even speak harsh words about another person because they are made in the likeness of God. Now, why do we commemorate or focus on the sanctity of human life this Sunday in January? Well, it's to commemorate, I think, one of the darkest days in the history of our country. On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down an infamous seven-to- two decision in the Roe vs. Wade case, making abortion legal throughout the nation. Since that time, it's estimated, we don't know the true numbers, but almost 60 million babies have been slaughtered, 60 million. It just boggles the mind. So, every year at FBC, we pause to reflect on this issue, and we do so with a sense of sorrow, of grief. Also a sense of repentance, a sense of resolve in prayer, and determination in action, and I hope, a sense of hopefulness about the future. 

So I like to stand every year and look back at this recent year, the year in review and in some ways the pro-life cause has made some wonderful gains. Lots of states passed more and more restrictive laws making it harder and harder to get abortions. We know, as I alluded to, these Planned Parenthood videos came out exposing the selling of body parts in relation to abortion for a certain price, which is really very staggering, and the reaction to that was encouraging in that people show their conscience and the fact that there's a sense of horror at the selling of body parts connected with abortion. So that's encouraging. 

Now, the key issue on abortion, and for me, it's just so important that we keep our mind focused on this, it has always been, it always will be the humanity, the personhood of the pre-born. We have to zero in on that and never lose sight of that. Pro-abortion forces have tried a variety of ways to obscure this, like saying that the baby is really a fetus, which is just the Latin word for “young one,” but it's dehumanizing or even worse, product of conception or “mass of tissue,” and that it depends, amazingly — and I just have a hard time ethically even understanding this — depends on the choice of the mother in terms of whether it's a person or not. So it's “ascribed personhood” based on the choice of the mother.

And it also engenders illogical, weird political slogans, like the one I've heard from a number of even presidential candidates, this one. I never fail to boggle at this one: abortion should be safe, legal, funded and rare. Just ponder, safe? Safe for who? And then rare. Why? Why should it be rare? If it's just a mass of tissues and there's nothing there, there should be no ethics concerning this. It’s because we know in our hearts we're suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. And why should Planned Parenthood shrink back from saying that they are selling these body parts, why would they try to twist it and spin it and hire PR firms and get the politicians to do double-speak on it? Because they know that they're suppressing the truth and unrighteous and their hearts are hard. In any case, this war against abortion continues to rage. But the truth of the matter is, it's still the law of the land, it's still legal to get abortion. And every year over, up, well over a million babies are aborted in this country, and so the battle has to be for our hearts and minds. We have to keep understanding biblical truth on this. We have a responsibility in this matter, and we have to win that battle.

And so what I wanna do is, I wanna zero in on the Gospel of John, and I just want to celebrate life. I  wanna look at life. And at specifically Christ, Jesus Christ as the giver of life. So I wanna begin in verse 1, 1-4, if you look at it in your Bible or just listen. John 1:1-4 says, “In the beginning was the Word, 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 nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Well, the overall purpose of the Gospel of John is to portray, to proclaim Jesus as God, the deity of Christ. And secondly, that the readers of the Gospel might have life through faith in Christ. And then thirdly, I think, to show us what that life is like. What is the life like that Jesus came to give? So right from the beginning, we have the deity of Christ established, John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And then in verse 14, we have, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we have seen his glory.”

And then in verse 17, it says, “The law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” So we're not left wondering who John is talking about. Jesus Christ is the Word who became flesh and in verse 1 it tells us that he was with God from the beginning, and he is God. But then it tells us in verse 3, “Through him all things were made, and without him nothing was made that has been made.” It's stunning in the book of Genesis, which I think John is thinking about when he says “In the beginning,” but in the book of Genesis, we have this statement of how God creates all things, he says, "Let there be," and there is. And so God speaks the creative word and then things pop up into existence. Well, John helps us to look deeper and more theologically, saying in effect, Jesus was the Word through which God the Father made everything. Now, I don't fully understand that. I just know that as the text says here, there is nothing in the universe that does not owe its existence to Jesus. All things were created by him, for him, through him. All things, and that especially focuses on human life, on life, John gets specific about the issue of life.

In verse 4, “In him was life, and that life was the light of men.” There is a vast difference between living and non-living things, creatures, living and non-living creation. Life itself is a vast complex mystery. It’s very, very difficult to define what is life, but from the beginning of the gospel, the apostle John makes it plain that God the Father has linked Jesus with life. There is no life apart from Christ. So, I mean biological life, and I also mean spiritual life. So let's speak biologically. What do we mean by life when we're talking about biological life? Well, websites and biology textbooks show how difficult it is to define life. Many just tend to list the characteristics of living things that non-living things don't have. So living things are made up of cells. Living things adapt to their environment so as to promote their own survival. Living things can reproduce organisms of the same type. Living things are capable of growth and development at some point over their lifespan. Living organisms obtain energy from their surrounding environment in creative and fascinating ways, plants, by photosynthesis and animal life, by eating. And Genesis 1 says that God created every living thing by the word of his power, God said, "Let there be," and there was. And so through Jesus, God made everything.

So when you think about plant life, vegetation, every blade of grass that's swaying out in South Dakota or Montana, in the grasslands out there, Jesus created them. They're created by him and for Him. Every mass of algae in a pond in the Smoky Mountains or a large amount of plankton out in the seas, or every coral reef that's teeming with tropical life, fish — all those things were created by Christ and for Christ. And that extends to animal life, insect life, but especially to human life. And there's a focus in the Gospel of John, as it is throughout the Scripture, on human life. Jesus is concerned about the sacredness of human life, and taking this idea from John 1, it means that every single human being derives his existence or her existence from Jesus Christ, whether they acknowledge him or not. It is through Christ that God knit them together in their mother's womb. As it says in Psalm 139:13, “For you created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother's womb.” And so through Christ, every single person was creatively and intelligently and step-by- step knit together by the sovereign power of God through Christ. 

Now, the central issue in abortion always has been the humanity of the pre-born. This is a human person that should be protectable under the laws of our country. For me as a Christian, the clearest evidence of this always will come from Scripture. I don't need anything else than that. Now I know that the unbelieving world does not accept the testimony of Scripture. But if I can say to you, Christian brothers and sisters, as you go out in the world, that doesn't matter, speak Scripture anyway. Tell them the truth. Say, “the Bible says,” “the Bible says,” “the Bible says,” “the Bible says.” Say it with sweetness, say it with love, but say it with conviction, because that's the truth, and the Bible has the power for their conversion and salvation. Anyway, it's by believing Bible verses about Christ that they're going to be saved. Faith comes by hearing the Word and so speak the truth from the Scriptures. 

So, what Scriptures would I commend to you? Well, there are so many of them, but there are two in particular, I wanna commend to you. The first is in Psalm 51, in verse 5. There the psalmist David says this, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” Meditate on that. He's saying he was sinful at conception, but sin is essentially human. We believe theologically, it's a weighty doctrine, but as Christians we believe in the doctrine of original sin, and that the entire human race was knit together genetically in Adam and spiritually represented by Adam at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and in Adam we sinned and died, and in Christ, we are righteous and live. And it's just a beautiful thing but basically, David was saying, “from the moment I was conceived, I was human and therefore sinful.” To me, I just think that's conclusive. Sinful from the moment of conception. But then you have this evidence, more anecdotally, from Luke chapter 1, which I always point to, and that is the time when Elizabeth, the pregnant mother of John the Baptist interacted with Mary, the pregnant mother of Jesus. And so you have two pre-born babies involved and their mothers and the way they interact, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, says this to Mary, “Why am I so favored that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For as soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.” 

Again, I think the humanity, the personhood of the pre-born is established by this. How could John leap for joy? Except that he's a person. And in some way, the Holy Spirit moved in him to start living out and expressing out what he would do in his life and ministry, and that is, get really excited about Jesus and proclaim Jesus to a lost world. But then even more significant, there's Mary just a few weeks after the conception of Jesus, already called by Elizabeth, “the mother of my Lord.” The humanity of the pre-born, I think, clearly established.

Then we have biological evidence, 18 days after conception, the baby's heart starts beating. Most mothers don't even know they're pregnant yet at this early stage. Ron Halbrooks, another good friend of mine, one of the elders and a medical physician, he says, you come into a room, two hearts are beating, how many people are alive in that room? It's just that simple. Just medically, that's just the way it's seen. There are two people alive. Twenty-one days, that's three weeks after conception, it pumps its own blood through separate circulatory system with its own blood type. At 28 days, eye, ear and respiratory systems begin to form. By 42 days, there are brainwaves recorded, skeleton complete, reflexes present. Seven weeks, there's a photo of a baby at seven weeks thumb-sucking. I have a picture on the door of my office, it's been there for years. I think about this issue year-round, think about this all the time, but it's of a baby inside his mother's womb, sucking his thumb, at seven weeks, that's capable of happening. At eight weeks, all bodily systems are present. By nine weeks, the baby squints, swallows, moves his tongue, makes a fist. By 11 weeks, spontaneous breathing movements, has fingernails, all body systems are working. By 23 weeks, there's a 15% chance of viability outside the womb.

That number just keeps going up by the way, as medical science does wonders. Talk about the schizophrenia. Of all of the work done to save a premature baby, and I've seen it with members of our church, amazing. And then abortion at the same time. At 24 weeks, that number rises to 56%, 56% of babies can survive outside of the womb, at 24 weeks. By 25 weeks, it's up to 79% viability. Amazing. Baby looks like a human, has a genetic make-up of a human, has all the organs of a human in proper place from, 12 weeks on. I love the fact that medical technology has given us these 4D ultrasounds in which women can see their babies in kind of real time moving and having facial expressions and all that, and women who are still struggling with whether they're going to get abortions or not, don't know what to do, often, just seeing the 4D ultrasound ends that discussion. 'Cause it's so obvious. 

So biological life is a gift from God through Jesus Christ, but dear friends, eternal life is an infinitely greater gift, and it's in the name of eternal life that I stand before you today. That is our hope, that is our joy, that's what Christ came to give. Jesus gives eternal life, He's the only one that can do it. It's the whole point of the Gospel of John. At the end of the Gospel of John, John said [John 20:30-31] “Jesus did many other miraculous signs which are not recorded in this book, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” So the writing of the Gospel of John was given to feed faith. So dear reader, dear hearer of the Gospel of John, believe in Jesus and you'll have eternal life. That's what John is saying. Jesus entered the world to save us from sin. Sin comes to kill us. It has a killing power. The link between sin and death was made in the Garden of Eden by Almighty God as he commanded Adam, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it, you will surely die.” We're told in Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” And so Jesus came into the world, he took on flesh, that he might take our death, our sin and death on himself.

We were conceived in sin, and as soon as we understood right from wrong, as soon as we understood law and the existence of God — Paul says in Romans 7, “sin sprang to life and I died.” And so it says in Ephesians 2:1, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live.” Living dead, and Jesus came to take that death and that judgment on himself and to give us life. Jesus said in John 10:10, “Thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.” So he does this by dying in our place. John 6:51, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” Jesus said also in John 10:14-15, “I am the Good Shepherd. I know my sheep and my sheep know me. Just as the Father knows me and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep.” 

But he also came to rise from the dead. Same chapter, John 10:17-18, “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life, only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have the authority to lay it down, and I have the authority to take it back up again. This command I receive from the Father.” And then he said in John 14:19, "Because I live, you also will live." And so Christ died in our place on the cross, shed his blood for sinners like you and me. And on the third day, God raised him from the dead physically, and he appeared to his disciples, and there they were in the upper room with the doors locked for fear of the Jews. And Jesus came and stood in their midst and said, "Peace be with you," and they were overjoyed when they saw the Lord, and he showed them his hands and his side, and then he said, "Peace be with you." He linked the peace we have with God to his death by crucifixion. By faith in Christ, we can live forever. By faith in Christ, we can know full forgiveness of sins, and so sanctity of human life, I say the best way to celebrate it is to believe in Jesus as your Lord and Savior. There's no better way to celebrate the sacredness of human life than to come to Christ.

Now, what is the nature of the life Jesus came to give? Well, there's so many answers to that, and I just wanna give you some pictures from the Gospel of John, and each one of these could be its own sermon. We don't have time for that, but I just wanna give you a sense of the beauty and fullness of this abundant life that Jesus came to give us. And we really need this, don't we? It's so discouraging to stare into a pit of darkness and death and look at this abortion issue and say, “is there any hope?” Yes, there's hope. The same God who raised Jesus from the dead can give life even in the midst of this sad and sorrowful situation.

So what is life like? The life that Jesus came to give us. Well, life is like being born again by the Spirit, it's such a radically new thing to become a Christian, that it's similar to being born physically, biologically. Jesus said this in John 3 to Nicodemus, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again." "How can a man be born when he is old?" Nicodemus asked. "Surely, he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born." Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit." So yeah, that's what happens in the womb, flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Holy Spirit has the power to transform a lost sinner, man or woman, boy or girl, and bring them over from death to life. From the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of life. He has the power to do that, and it's so radical, so much changes at that time that it's like being born again. “If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation, the old is gone. Behold, everything is new.” 2 Corinthians 5:17.

Secondly, it's like having a spring of living water inside you, which just bubbles up to eternal life. Jesus said that to the Samaritan woman in John 4. "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water that I give him will become, within him, a spring of water welling up to eternal life." There's a picture of refreshment, of life, of renewal, of cleansing and joy that comes from that, and it comes from the inside you by the power of the Spirit. Later in John's Gospel, in John 7, Jesus stands up. And on the last and greatest day of a Jewish feast, he said, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scriptures said, streams of living water will flow from within you." 

He was talking about the gift of the Holy Spirit. Well, if you look at the Samaritan woman, she was in trouble, she had problems because of sin, and Jesus exposed her sin. He said, "Go call your husband and come here." "I have no husband," she said. Jesus said, "You're right in saying you have no husband. The fact is, you've had five husbands and the man you're living with now, he's not your husband. What you said is quite true." As I look at the abortion issue, I just see sin woven all the way through it. So many of the babies that are aborted are conceived through illicit sex through immoral sex, and so there's a yearning for sexual pleasure, there's a yearning for relationship and connection, there's a yearning for those things. And then as a result, a baby is conceived, what's known as an unwanted or crisis pregnancy, and that leads directly to abortion. 

And then on the other side of that comes a yearning for socioeconomic success, finances, and that fuels the industry, the selling of baby parts, but it also fuels an individual not wanting to be tied down or burdened with a baby because of the economic implications, ramifications, and all that's true, but that feeds this whole machine. Jesus is the only one who can deliver from sin, He's the only one that can cover past sins and cleanse our guilty consciences, and He's the only one that can give us power through the spirit to stop sinning and to live a righteous, godly, holy life. That's what this life is like, it's like the Bread of Life, Jesus said in John 6, where you can feed on Jesus, on his, in effect, his death and his resurrection, you can feed on it and receive nourishment and life from Christ, and it's delicious and it's a feast, and it gives energy to serve God, that's what this life is like.

John 8 and 9, Jesus said, "I am the light of the world." The life that Jesus comes to give is like, suddenly, you see everything as it really is. Jesus said in John 8:12, "I am the light of the world, whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." And then in the very next chapter, as he's going along, he sees a man there who was blind from birth, and he links the concepts together. He said, "While I am in the world, I am the light of the world." Then he spits on the ground and makes mud from the saliva and puts it on the blind man's eyes, and he sends the man away to go wash in the Pool of Siloam, which John tells us the word means sent. And he washed, and then he could see, and I just wonder if I could have been with that man that day. You wanna talk to him and say, "What do you see?" It's like, how do you even put into words what a blue sky and a radiant sun and green trees and the world looks like for the first time? But the life that Jesus came to give, is like that spiritually, you can see into the spiritual realms. Almighty God on his throne and Christ at the right hand, interceding and a beautiful world that's coming, the new heaven and the new Earth where we will be eternally happy, a life beyond sin and death. You can see these things based on the Word of God. He is the light of the world. And you can see the physical world with new eyes too. You can see what's actually happening here. What's going on physically in the world. He is the light of the world.

And finally, he is the Good Shepherd. In John 10, “This The thief comes to steal and kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.” Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil because the devil came to destroy the work of God. The devil was a murderer from the beginning and a liar. That's what he does, he murders and lies. But Jesus came instead to give us life, and that life is so full and rich, it's like having a good shepherd who knows what's best for you, and you're under his protective hand, and his rod and his staff comfort you, and he leads you and you come in and go out and find pasture. And you lie down in green pastures and you drink cool refreshing waters. And surely goodness and mercy will follow you, will actually hunt you down and seize you all the days of your life, that's your good shepherd. He's like, I'm not gonna let you be miserable, I'm gonna hunt you down and take hold of you until you are eternally happy. That's our Good Shepherd. Oh, how beautiful is this life Jesus came to give us.

So how can we live under the grace of God in light of this? Well, if I can just stop right now and just speak if I can, a tender word to broken-hearted sinners. Every time I preach on this, I remember because of some things that happened early in my ministry, just please remember to preach grace and mercy to people who feel sinful and feel corrupted, and feel guilty and wanna know, is there any possible forgiveness for me? And the more I meditate on this abortion issue, the more I see it touches everybody, everybody.

Certainly, we immediately think about a woman who years ago or even recently got an abortion, just wants to know, they just can't, she can't shake it and can't stop feeling guilty, and can't stop crying. Others may be a little more hardened, but they still know something's there and they just can't shake it, and they're hearing this and they wanna know, can I be forgiven? The answer is, absolutely. The grace of God in Christ is infinitely greater than your sin, and he welcomes anyone who repents and trusts, and he will cleanse all of that sin. But it's not just the women, there are men. When I used to do abortion ministry, or pro-life ministry, outside clinics, I was always stunned by how hard the men were, who had arms around women who looked real scared and they're moving them through the line and going on to get in there 'cause they wanted the abortion more than she did, it seemed. And so there are men who have impregnated women or who should have provided and protected for daughters or others who didn't do it and who should feel guilty and perhaps do feel, “Is it possible for me to be forgiven?” The answer is yes.

Or it could have to do with, you're a medical professional, unlike Walter, maybe up to this point, not been committed to life and you've actually been involved in abortions and you've seen it and you've actually put your hand to it and you wonder, “can there be any forgiveness for me?” Yes, there can be forgiveness for you. Or maybe you ran a clinic. I actually did some counseling this week with a woman whose sister runs an abortion clinic, and she was talking to me, “How do I witness? What do I say?” Tell her the Gospel, tell her the forgiveness that Christ can offer. So there's forgiveness for all of us.

And then there's all of us. We live, as I said earlier, in a country that's defined by the people, the government of the people, by the people, for the people, let's own up to our responsibilities. We have not done enough as a Christian nation, as Christians in this nation. Let's put it that way, to change the laws. The laws are still there, and all of us can feel guilty about that. We all feel we could have done more. Is there forgiveness for us? Yes, there's forgiveness for us. For all of us. So we'll start there. 

Secondly, let's just understand. There is a battle to fight. There is work to be done. Let's just be aware of it. I'm actually surprised — I did research — how few Americans were even aware of the Planned Parenthood videos. Apparently, I don't know that much about it, but some lion died at that time, and that became the dominant story in the news, and there was outrage over the death of this lion. Is that right? I don't know, it's something to do with some lion, and there was rage at the ones that killed the lion and all kinds of language that went after the ones that killed the lion, but I'm like, where is the outrage over Planned Parenthood? And some progress was made in Congress, but it got blocked in the end politically, by some spin and some other things. There's a battle to be fought, and we need to be aware of this, and we need to be willing to be soldiers, you need to be willing at the workplace or in family discussions or with people who don't agree on the college campuses, in dorm rooms. You need to be willing to speak up for life, we need to fight with truth and be willing to be courageous, have that conversation. Share the Scriptures I shared with you and others. Psalm 139, Psalm 51, Luke chapter 1, and let's win the battle for the mind.

When I was doing pro-life ministry early on, we did a ministry of persuasion. At that time, Operation Rescue was doing a ministry of blockade, they would like... blocking doors so people couldn't go get abortions, and they were mockingly called by the pro-abortion forces, “Operation Reschedule.” Until the hearts and minds are changed, nothing is gonna change. And we have in the Scripture everything we need to change hearts and minds, by the power of the Spirit, we have... By the power of the Spirit, everything we need.

Thirdly, let's be sexually pure. It's sad what the abortion stats are within the Evangelical Church, because they're similar to the immorality statistics in the Evangelical Church. Romans 13 says, “Let us walk in decency as in the daylight, not in carousing or drunkenness, not in sexual impurity and promiscuity, not in quarreling and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no plans to gratify the lustful desires.” Start there, be committed to purity, to sexual purity and holiness. 

And then fourthly, be active in the pro-life cause as you are gifted and called to do. And there's lots of ways to be involved in the sanctity of human life, lots of things. This bulletin insert — you can contact Anna Johnsen about this, April 9th. This is a support raiser for a crisis pregnancy center in Wake Forest. We have one also in Durham/Chapel Hill as well. They are doing really front-line work. Basically, crisis pregnancy women, they come in, they need counsel, that's where the battle gets fought and crisis pregnancy centers, Christian pregnancy centers all around the country are doing awesome work to transform people's minds and hearts. So if you wanna be part of that, pray for it, fund it, or walk in it, that would be awesome. 

But there are other things. Pretty soon, we're gonna have a BFL class coming up real soon, “Theology of Abortion Care” taught by Joshua Snyder. So go to that, the idea of adoption and care for orphans is connected, tied to this. Others will be led to get into more direct action politically. I know that there are some brothers and sisters in Christ that are directly involved in state government or perhaps federal government or other governmental levels. Let’s pray for those brothers and sisters, that they’d be like Daniel, giving counsel to unconverted leaders, godly counsel. And let's pray that God would raise up godly leaders in this country, and that we would see them elected. 

Nathan Mah, I was talking to him this morning, is involved in a refugee ministry, and I would love for you to talk to Nathan about that. One of the ways that we can just be involved in upholding the significance of life at every level, refugee — I also mentioned recently, undocumented aliens — this ministry is amazing. As I was listening to him in BFL class talking about, you can get involved, just one hour, go down to the airport and greet some people as they come, just say hello and be friendly and smile, if that's all you have time for. And on up, in terms of ever-increasing involvement with some of these refugees. So Nathan Mah is sitting right over there where you can contact him. He will give you all the information you need about getting involved in refugee ministry. And finally, be filled with hope. And this one...be filled with hope. This is a sad topic, but I'm telling you, Jesus is gonna win, and in the end, we're gonna look back and we're gonna say, yes, Satan meant all of this for evil, but God meant it for good, to the glory of God and the salvation of souls. So be filled with hope as we confront this issue in our time.

Let’s close in prayer. Father, we thank you for the time we've had to look at the sanctity of human life and the things we've considered. And Lord, I pray that You would just give us boldness to speak the truth to people who need to hear it, to be winsome and to be loving, but along with that, to be courageous and unyielding, to be really strong in what we believe and to win life, and Lord, ultimately to proclaim the good news of faith in Jesus Christ, which is the only hope that we have. So we pray for these things, give us joy, give us energy, give us repentance where needed and a sense of Your forgiveness. All of this in Jesus' name. Amen.

So this week I had the opportunity to eat lunch with a dear friend who's a member of this church, and we were talking about evangelism, and the desire that we have to share our faith, and both of us acknowledge that we don't do it as much as we'd like, that we would like to be more faithful in sharing the Gospel. And he told me about a friend of his in Raleigh, who was at a restaurant, and he wanted to share with the waitress that was working the table. And so, at a certain moment when there was time to talk, by the way, that happens right as they're bringing you the check. They're very chatty at that time, I've noticed. You ever notice? They're really eager for a conversation. They're really friendly at that moment, for whatever reason. And that's a good time, that's a good moment. If the restaurant's not too crowded, that's maybe a chance that you can talk to somebody. But anyway, this friend asked this question, "Why are you here? Why are you here?" Now, She answered here at this restaurant and etcetera, but no, no, no, he meant, “Why are you here on Earth?”  Have you ever asked that question? Have you ever asked, “Why am I here on Earth?” And that opened the door to a marvelous Gospel encounter.

So, I would commend that to you as a way of beginning a Gospel conversation, because people want to know ultimate reasons and meaning, and, “Why am I here?Do I have a purpose in life?” So much of us feels empty. We don't seem to have a direction, don't seem to know why we're here. And it's sad if that happens to Christians, because there's no good reason that that should ever happen to a Christian. So why are you here? And I don't just mean here this morning, but why are you here on Earth?

And the bigger picture would be another question similar to it: What is God doing in the world? And beautifully, those things come together for me today as I look at Ephesians 4, on the topic of spiritual gifts. I believe that God has left me on Earth, after I've come to faith in Christ, after I've won the victory that there is to win in this world, which is faith in Christ. I didn't die, God didn't take me immediately into His presence in Heaven, He left me here on Earth. Why? And I believe spiritual gifts and the good works that flow from spiritual gifts are a big part of the answer, not the only answer, but they’re a big part of it. I am here, in part, to use my spiritual gifts to do works of service, to build up the Body of Christ. And so are you. If you're a believer in Jesus, that is why God left you here after He saved you through Christ.

And so for the second week now, we're going to look from Ephesians 4, at the issue of spiritual gifts. Spiritual gifts, it's just a marvelous topic. It's rich and full. And if I can just lay my cards on the table, my desire is that you would be convinced from Ephesians 4 that you have, as a Christian, that you have a spiritual gift package that should flow into a regular pattern of good works, organized by those spiritual gifts, for the up-building of the Body of Christ, that you have spiritual gifts. And either way, no matter whether you can see that kind of ministry going on in your life or not, that all of us would look in the mirror of God's Word here and study our lives and say, "Lord, am I being fully fruitful here with my spiritual gifts? Am I using my gifts maximally?"

Now, let's just settle this thing in terms of context. Ephesians is a marvelous 6 chapter epistle, very brief, breaks into two main sections; Ephesians 1-3 gives us the doctrine and salvation, reaching back to eternity past, before the foundation of the world, Almighty God set His love on us, the elect, in Christ, and then at the right time, saved us through faith in Christ, and just three chapters of marvelous doctrine. But then in Ephesians 4-6, we have three chapters of application, of practical application. It begins with this marvelous statement in Ephesians 4:1, "As a prisoner for the Lord then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received." And I think everything that follows could be a subset of that; How do we live a life worthy of our calling as Christians?

One in Christ

He immediately goes from that into a strong assertion of unity, and the need that the Body of Christ has to be one in Christ. So look at verse 3-6, "Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all." So there's this strong assertion of unity. But then we saw last week in verse 7, there is this change of direction with the word "but". “But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.” So we go from unity, I think, to diversity; the diversity of gifts, of spiritual gifts, and a role that we play in the Body of Christ. And he says but, and this is by way of review, we went over this last week, but “to each one of us,” etcetera. So every single Christian has a spiritual gift package, or array of spiritual gifts that God, that Christ has given to you.

And He gives it to you according to His measure of grace. He measures out. I love the word "metron", a sense of the measuring out of spiritual gifts. Again, I think of an array or a package of gifts, and He gives some of this, a little of that, a lot of the other, etcetera. Then He puts it together in a package, and that's your spiritual gift package. And He gives each of it, each of us this gift according to His wise measure. It's a beautiful thing to think about, as Christ apportioned it. So Christ thought about you, pondered you, and then measured out a gift package to you. It's marvelous, isn't it?

Spiritual Gift Package

And then in verses 8-10, again by way of review, these spiritual gifts are flowing to us as a result of Christ's triumphant descent from Heaven to Earth. His work on the cross, His bloody redeeming work on the cross, His bodily resurrection from the dead, and then His ascension through the heavenly realms to sit at the right hand of God, filling the whole universe with His greatness. You get a picture of a victory train going from Earth to Heaven, and we, the former captives of Satan, are in His victory train, and Jesus, this conquering hero, is just dispensing booty and plunder and just giving out gifts, and it's just flowing. And so all of our spiritual gifts are blood bought. They were very expensive. And so, Jesus shed His blood to give you this spiritual gift package, a marvelous picture.

What Kinds of Gifts?

And then in verse 11, he gives us examples of the spiritual gifting that can happen. But it's not just any that He chooses, we'll talk about it more later in the message, but I've already said what. And it says in verse 11, "He gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers." So those are examples of gifted individuals who then have a ministry to play. But it's not just any that he chose there. I believe, as I said last week, those five roles, “apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers,” are the delivery system from Almighty God, from the mind of God to the hearts of the people of God of the Word of God. The Word of God delivered from God's heart to ours by means of the “apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers.” We'll talk more about it later in the message. Did mention it last week. And then, as the Word of God flows to the people of God, verse 12, these apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, are given to prepare God's people, that's all of us, to prepare God's people for works of service, good deeds, acts of service, so that the Body of Christ may be built up.

So, the ministry of the Word of God, as I said last week, primes the pump for an incalculable number of good deeds, small and great, and the good deeds grammatically, the good deeds build up the body to maturity, all of them, not just some of them, not just the preaching, teaching, everything builds it up. And so that's the whole doctrine here. And the goal is, we'll talk about more in a moment, is total conformity to Christ.

What is a Spiritual Gift

So what is a spiritual gift? Spiritual gifts is a special ability given by Almighty God to believers in Christ for the purpose of building the body up to maturity. Special ability. What we call in common everyday secular language, a talent. We could even use "gift". He's really gifted, a gifted musician, or a gifted scholar, etcetera, a sense of gifting or appointment by God. Now, as I've counseled with individuals, especially young men, Seminary and others that are growing, they want to know what are my gifts? What's my ministry going to be? I've really benefited from these two words that help me differentiate gifting and non-gifting, and it's the difference between functioning and flourishing in an area, between functioning and flourishing. So what do I mean by that? Well, spiritual gifts, generally take a common Christian activity. And in the hands of Christ, by the power of the Spirit, in the life of an individual, it just flourishes like a a verdant garden, that functioning area just flourishes. So, spiritual gifting has to do with flourishing, not merely functioning.  So, let me give you some examples.

Functioning vs. Flourishing

I'll take an example from my own life. I was asked recently rather pointedly, not negatively, but pointedly, "Why did you leave the mission field?" We were on a two-year church planner apprentice program with the IMB, and at the end of the two years, it was a time of evaluation, they evaluated us, we evaluated them, and evaluated the life. I came to the conclusion that I did not have the spiritual gift of a missionary. I was functioning in Japan, not flourishing. I felt that God had a better sight of ministry for the way He'd put me together. The next step for me was to go to Southern Seminary and get a PhD because I have an academic or bookish bent to me, to develop those gifts, and then God led me here, because I was gifted more as a shepherd than a professor. So it was gifting that led me eventually here. But I would stand and say, I am not gifted to be a cross-cultural missionary. I was functioning, I wasn't flourishing. So that's an example from my own life.

But you look at all of the gifts, like the gift of, let's say, the gift of serving. Alright. People with the spiritual gift of serving, well, all Christians are called to serve, we're all servants. But somebody with the gift of servant-hood, they just see serving tasks far more abundantly than those that don't have the gift, and they do them and things just shine when they do them. So it's just a beautiful thing to watch. Or let's say the gift of hospitality, all of us are called unto be hospitable, to open our homes, but people with the gift of hospitality, it just flourishes. It's more than just the mint on the pillow, you know what I'm saying? There's just a flourishing of the gift of hospitality. You just feel like they couldn't wait for you to come, not that they couldn't wait for you to leave, you know? There's a sense of, you just love having us here, it's like we're doing you the favor. It's a gift. Or the gift of prayer. I love being with people, praying with people who have the gift of prayer, there's just a way that they pray that you just feel like you're ushered into the presence of God. And some of that gift, the gifting of prayer, most people never see it, people “go into their room and close the door, and they pray to their Father unseen,” and no one ever sees it.

So you can have a spiritual gift ministry and be flourishing and no one hardly even knows about it. But it has led to specific deeds again, and again, and again. You took a matter and got on your knees and prayed. So there are actions. The gift of evangelism, we are all responsible to share the Gospel, and I believe it wouldn't be surprising if for every single one of us, there is an elect non-Christian out there, and God wants you to bring them to Christ. And you may not lead tons, dozens and dozens of people to Christ, but you're going to lead that person to Christ. And so all of us are evangelists, we're called on, we have a responsibility for evangelism, but we're not all gifted in evangelism, and it just flourishes in that area, etcetera.

Then there's the gift of giving, alright. We don't all flourish in the gift of giving, but Christian giving is part of the healthy Christian life. Some people, let me tell you, they flourish at Christian giving. It's not just how much they give, it's the delight and the freedom and the way that they give. So that's what I mean by flourishing not functioning. I hope that's helpful. So now let's look at the goal of spiritual gifts.

Perfect Unity by Conformity to Christ

God's goal here is perfect conformity to Christ. Look at verse 13, again, at verse 15. The idea here is that these gifts are given, verse 13, until “we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God, and to become mature," this is the NIV, "attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ." So the word "mature" sometimes is translated perfect, but that's misleading. I mean, we're heading toward perfection in Christ, but it's like the perfecting work or the maturing work. I just love verse 13. Listen to ESV, which you just heard Ben read, verse 13 in the ESV says, "Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." Or then the Holman Christian Standard Bible has it this way, "Until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God's Son, growing into a mature man with a stature measured by Christ's fullness."

So the picture here is, let's take it like the Apostle Paul, or even Jesus, growing from an infant to a toddler, to a boy, to a teenager, to a young adult, to a mature man, to mature manhood. The idea is one of development, fully mature in all respects. And so this is the unity of the Body by each individual member becoming more and more Christ-like, more and more conformed to Christ. You get the same thing also in verses 14 and 15. Look at verses 14 and 15, it says, "Then we'll no longer be infants tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching, and by the cunning and craftiness of men and their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Him who is the head," that is Christ. Same image, same goal. So the goal of the spiritual gifts is the maturing of the saints, the maturing of the Body of Christ to full maturity, conformity to Christ, that we will be made like Him, that we will be like Christ in every way.

What is Perfect Conformity to Christ

Now, Christ-likeness, conformity to Christ, is the goal of sanctification, it's the goal of the Christian life. Once you come to faith in Christ, God has set before each of us those two infinite journeys we've talked about again and again, the internal journey of sanctification, of becoming more and more conformed to Christ, and then the external journey of evangelism and missions, leading others to faith in Christ that they would be mature. So that's the idea. So our goal then, personally, individually, in our internal journey is total conformity to Christ. I want to be like Christ, I want to be like Him.

Conformity of Mind

Well, in what way? I want to be like Him in my mind, I want to think like Him, I want to think like Him about everything. I want my thoughts to be totally conformed to the thoughts of Christ. I'm told I have the “mind of Christ,” I want to use it all the time. I want to think like Jesus does about everything. I want to agree with Jesus. And the Word of God tells me what Jesus thinks about everything. I want my mind conformed to Christ.I want my thought life to be like Christ. I want to think about what's “true, and noble, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable, and excellent, and praiseworthy.” I want to have the mind of Christ all the time, I want to be conformed to Christ in my mind. I want to be right doctrinally, I want to be pure in my mind that's conformed.

Conformity of Heart

And then in my heart; I want to love what Jesus loves, and I want to hate what He hates. And I want to love them to the measure with which He loves them. I want to love God and love my neighbor the way Jesus did, that's conformity to Christ. And then I want to have desires and ambitions for the future the way Jesus does. I want to yearn for what's coming. And I just want to choose it, I want to use my will the way Jesus did, saying, "Not my will, but yours be done," in Gethsemane. I want to live like that. And I want my emotions to be conformed to Him, I want to rejoice at what He rejoices at, and I want to mourn at what causes Him grief. I want to be conformed in every way to Christ in my heart.

Conformity of Body

And then, ultimately, dear friends, I want my body conformed to Jesus. Don't you? Aren't yearning for the resurrection body? Be done with aches and pains, be done with aging. As Augustine said, we'll be 21 for eternity. I don't know that he was right, but anyway, we'll be in maximum physical condition forever, and we will be radiant and glorious, we will shine like the sun in the kingdom of our Father, we will be conformed to His resurrection body, and death will have no mastery over us. That, dear friends, is perfection, that's total conformity to Christ, that's what the gifts are given for. That's what the gifts are given for. The gifts are given to move all of the elect around the world from being dead in their transgressions and sins and in Satan's dominion, rescued, brought over from death to life, and then growing and flourishing more and more in conformity to Christ, until we are all, all the elect are in our resurrection bodies. That's the big picture. And friends, that's exciting, that's why we're here. Amen? You don't ever need to lack for purpose. Like, why am I here? This is why you're here, this is what God is doing in the world, and oh, is it exciting and sweet. Oh friends, don't you want more and more baptisms? Amen. Don't you yearn for that? I would love to see more and more baptisms. And even better, to see those baptized still walking with Jesus five years later, amen. And far more mature in growth, that's what the gifts are given for. So that's it.

Centrality of God’s Word

Now, verses 11-16, we're going to see again and again the ministry of the Word of God is key to everything. I glossed over it lightly before, mentioned it more in depth last week, but I want to zero in on it. I want to focus on it. Throughout this passage, the Word of God is central to everything. Central to everything. Everything comes about because of the Word of His power. Physical creation, the physical universe, the sun, the moon, and the stars, planet Earth, all of the mountains and rivers and oceans, and all of the swarming insects, and the land creatures, and the sea creatures, and man, male and female, created in the image of God, all of it by the Word of God's power. God speaks, and it's so. So, by the Word of His power.

And also, we're told in Hebrews 1:3 that Christ “sustains everything also by the Word of His power.” So it's the continual giving of the Word of God, that's the key to everything. Well, that's strong in this passage, too. It was in Ephesians 1, we know that it was, “when we heard the word of truth," Ephesians 1:13, "the Gospel of our salvation, having believed it, we were included in Christ. And we received the sealing of the Spirit." So, it's in the hearing of the Gospel, so also it's the ministry of the Word of God that primes the pump for everything going on in the Body of Christ.

So look again at verse 11, it was said, “He gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, some to be pastors and teachers.” What I said last week, and I've already mentioned briefly this morning, the thing that holds those five together is the Word of God. The apostles and prophets are the gifted ones by which we have the Scripture, by which we have the Bible. Then the evangelists are God's marvelous delivery system by which, first, the Gospel and then the implications of the Gospel are delivered to lost people. Evangelists take it within, I think, one culture. Missionaries take it across cultural divides, but they're doing essentially the same work, they're bringing the good news to those who are as yet on the outside. And then shepherds, ESV has shepherds, I love that, pastors and teachers settle in in a locality. And pastors and teachers shepherd those individuals until they die, until they are done, out of this world. Doesn't mean that pastors have to stay with one body and be with those people, etcetera, but God raises up shepherds and teachers to pastor the people for the rest of their time on Earth. The beauty. But all of this is a delivery system of the Word of Go, and it primes the pump for everything.

Faithful Teaching Leads to Works of Service

The immediate effect of faithful teaching, biblical teaching, are “works of service,” verse 12, “to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the Body of Christ may be built up.” I love that idea here, to prepare God's people for works. Just think about that. Prepare the people to do the works, but we already had in Ephesians 2:10, "We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God went ahead of us to prepare in advance." So He's working both sides of the equation. He is out there providentially in the world preparing good works for us to walk in. And meanwhile, here in church, and I just don't mean Sunday morning, but throughout the week, the ministry of the pastors and teachers with the prior work of the apostles, prophets and evangelists, is to get us ready to do those good works. Isn't that beautiful? So God's working both sides of the equation. He's getting you ready right now for the good works you're going to do this week, month, year, 10 years, getting you ready right now for that. And then, conversely, he's providentially, in a very cool, amazing way, getting good works ready, for you in particular to do. Marvelous.

So why are you here? For that. Those good works are the way that God builds up the Body of Christ, that's how it happens.

And so we have this image of the body of Christ in Ephesians 2:21. Some of you can just look there on the page or just listen. It gives you this beautiful picture of the Church as a building, a spiritual temple. Ephesians 2:21, "In whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord." That's weird. By the way, it's my job to tell you when something's a little weird and interesting, and pausing at it, you look at it. It's like, "What's so weird about that?" Okay, here's what's weird: The verb is a biological verb, the image is an architectural image. That's what's interesting about this. So you have a growing building. Isn't that amazing? A living building. And then here, amazingly, in verse 12 it says, "To equip the saints for work of ministry for the building up of the Body of Christ." What do we have there? A biological image of the Church with an architectural verb. So, we're going to construct the body, and we're going to grow the temple. And it's really amazing this mixing, it's the living reality, this church, and God is working on it, He's growing it and building it all the time through these spiritual gifts.

Goal: Doctrinal Unity

Now, the goal of this is doctrinal unity. Unity in the faith, it says, and in the knowledge of the Son of God. And become “mature, attaining the whole measure of the fullness of God.” So, the purpose of ongoing pastoral ministry, preaching and teaching, is to get everyone thinking the same things, doctrinally. That we all agree about biblical doctrine. There's the unity, unity in the faith. The words "the faith" in the New Testament is a body of doctrine. Starting with the Gospel, teachings about Christ, how He was born of the Virgin Mary, fully God, fully man, lived a sinless life, died an atoning death on the cross as our substitute, was raised bodily from the dead. The the things that Abby said she believed in, that's the Gospel, that's the faith. But it's more than that, but that's the start, the Gospel. Raised from the dead, ascended to Heaven, sits at the right hand of God. If you trust in Him, all of your sins will be forgiven; past, present and future, that's the faith.

So I just want to pause and say, spiritual gifts are for Christians, not for non-Christians. They're not given to non-Christians. If you're here today, and you know you're on the outside looking in, you're not yet a believer in Christ, I'm just calling out to you now. And when I went over the sermon this morning, I prayed just for this moment. I just prayed that you would hear forgiveness in the Gospel, that you would hear that Christ is reaching out with His hands and saying, "Don't stay on the outside, don't stay under the wrath of God. Come into faith in Christ, trust in me for the forgiveness of your sins. And if you do, you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." And part of the gift of the Holy Spirit is a spiritual gift package. So, come to faith in Christ, don't walk out of this place under the wrath of God. I'm pleading with you. I'm pleading with you. But that's what unity in the faith is. But the faith doesn't end just with the basics, the milk of the Gospel, there's all kinds of doctrinal truths that just expand from there. Expand. And so, we're going to get good teaching so that we grow in our understanding and embracing of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God. So it's more than just doctrinal like facts and figures, and getting things right on the test, it is that, it's like you're going to be tested. But that there are perceptual truths that we believe, but oh, it's so much more than that, isn't it? The knowledge of the Son of God.

Doctrinal Maturity

Like we were talking about the end of Ephesians 3, that you would have power together with all the saints to grasp how much Christ loves you, that you have a sense of the dimensions of Christ's love for you. Regularly, that idea literally brings me to tears, and did this morning. I'm like, "I've got to pull myself together, I got to go preach in a couple of minutes. It's no good to have my face red and puffy. Oh Lord Jesus, thank you for loving me. But can we talk more about it later? I need to get ready to preach." Because it melts me. And so it's doctrinal but it's also experiential of knowing that Christ loves you, the knowledge of the Son of God, that's what he's talking about here. And then as a result of this experiential and doctrinal maturity, we will, verse 14, no longer be immature. We're no longer going to be infants. So the issue here, the picture is of instability.

A few Sunday mornings ago, I saw one of the kids of one of our musicians. She's beginning to walk, actually, she's beginning to run. I never knew she could walk, and now she's running. But it's a tottering kind of run. Have you ever seen little kids? They just like skipped the walking and went into running, and it was just fun to watch. But a little nerve wracking, but it was right down here, so I felt pretty safe. If she were running along here, I'd be nervous. There's a teetering instability to immaturity. And that's the image that Paul gives us in verse 14, isn't it? He brings in the weather image of blown and tossed like you're a little dinghy in a bad storm, and you're just blown and buffeted and tossed back and forth by false doctrine, unable to resist false doctrine. It seems so alluring. And there are so many different false teachers, prosperity gospel teachers, and legalism teachers, and others. And we're drawn by it, it seems so plausible, and it's cunning and crafty, and Satan is behind it, and he's alluring, and if you're immature, you can't resist it.

But, if you sit under good teaching, and you take it to heart and you grow. To change the metaphor, but you get a root system now. And you're not moved anymore, you're stable doctrinally, and you're able to refute false teachers, like elders need to do in Titus 1. And like the church at Ephesus was able to hear and reject the Nicolaitans and the false doctrine. Just knew it and said, "No, that's wrong." And so we're no longer infants blown back and forth. Let me tell you something, I think this is one of the big problems in the American Evangelical Church, is that there's a lot of doctrinal immaturity. Doctrinal immaturity. People haven't grown up into maturity, they're not able to face hard verses and talk about hard words like predestination or election or whatever, and they shrink back from it. Look, it's not that they're not brothers and sisters in Christ, but they haven't grown up into full maturity dealing with the meat of the Word. And so we'll no longer be infants, we'll no longer be immature, Satan buffeting us.

Speaking the Truth in Love

Instead, verse 15, “speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Him who is the head, that is Christ.” And so this image here is of a mature church, a local church, or individual, brother or sister in Christ, speaking right doctrine, that's what I think it means here in context. Speaking right doctrine, the faith, in love. Isn't that beautiful? Now, I've heard so often “speaking the truth in love” has to do with going to a sinning brother or sister and be willing to say hard truths, say some hard things, you confront them and deal with them and their sin. Look, that's a biblical theme but that's not what this verse is about. Other verses teach that. Galatians 6:1, "If someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should go gently and restore them." Got it. That's great. That's Galatians 6:1. This is not about that, this is, we're going to speak out true doctrine, the truth, mature doctrine. We're going to talk about it, but we're not just going to talk it like head knowledge, we're going to delight in it and love God and love our brothers and sisters and love others. We're going to be characterized by love.

So, having grown up into maturity, we are characterized by love. And that's, I think, the whole purpose of 1 Corinthians 13, isn't it? 1 Corinthians 13 is situated in a series of chapters about spiritual gifts. 1 Corinthians 12, about spiritual gifts. 1 Corinthians 14, spiritual gifts. 1 Corinthians 13 is about weddings and should be read at weddings. Well look, it should be read at weddings, I think love is vitally important in marriage, but it's about spiritual gifts. And if you look at it, 1 Corinthians 13, "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels," that's the gift of tongues, "But I have not love, I'm only a resounding gong” or a, “clanging symbol.” “If I have the gift of prophecy," he says, "and I can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing." So there's all these gifts, gift of faith, gift of prophesy, gift of tongues. "If I give all I possess to the poor and I surrender my body to the flames but I have not love, I gain nothing."

Alright, well, what is love, Paul? “Love is patient, love is kind.” “Love is patient, love is kind,” just that. That's maturity, to be a consistently patient kind man or woman. It isn't rude, it's not proud, it's not easily angered, it's mature. There's a maturity there, a mature love and delight in the Body of Christ. That's what these gifts bring about. So, we're going to speak right doctrine in love, in that kind of love. So verse 16, all of God's people are spiritually gifted to serve. From Him the whole body joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work. Now, here's how I think about it; individuals and the whole body, both grow by these spiritual gifts.

Maturity Comes Through Experience

You grow individually by getting out and about with your spiritual gift and doing ministry. That becomes the matrix of your own personal sanctification, as you're busy doing works of service. Meanwhile as you're busy doing works of service, the whole body is growing up. This local church, yes. But the universal Church of Christ is growing by people actually doing works of service. And as each part does its work, the whole thing rises to maturity. And that's a beautiful thing. That's how the spiritual gifts work.

So how do they work? Well, very practically, as we look at just application, spiritual gifts, as a stream of good teaching is going on, gifts start to rise and flourish and function in the Body. Okay, so those with leadership gifts, they exercise them, they organize God's people in faithful outreaches to win the lost in the community. The leaders lead out boldly, they set an example so that more inexperienced evangelistic Christians can just follow their example. That's how my discipler at MIT taught me how to share my faith. So just be quiet and watch. I really do want you to be quiet, okay, because I had nothing good to say. Anyway, just be there and listen and watch. But I felt so at peace. He was taking the heat, but I was learning Evangelism by watching him do it, by operating, leaders going out.

Gifts in Action

People with the gift of hospitality, as they use their gifts, they provide a warm, inviting matrix for Bible studies, for home fellowships, for discipleship going on, for mentoring between older couples and younger couple, hospitality. As people with gifts of service exercise them, as I already mentioned, the hundreds of behind the scenes details for putting on a worship service like this or a short term mission trip, all the phone calls that have to be made, all the logistics. Friends, if it were left to me, things would get left behind. Mistakes would happen. I love it when you get on the plane and someone dear to you, someone very dear to you says, "Do you have your passport?" I'm like, "We're already in the air." Or, "Do you have... " The time to think of that is ahead of time, and people with those gifts think ahead of time, that detailed gift. Alright.

I think about Jack Evans, and how many mission trips he organized to the Caribbean. Those of you who have been on a mission trip with Jack, you know what I'm talking about. The details. I'm so glad it was him and not me. He used to gather all our passports and get us through customs, and that was awesome to watch. So people with gifts of service. People with gifts of prayer exercising their gifts, and as they do, and nobody sees what they're doing, but guess what? Doors start to open, visas are given by reluctant governments. Hesitant bosses suddenly are interested in the Gospel. You've been trying to share with them, but you've got a workplace evangelism thing going on. Church planners suddenly find that school officials are willing to have that church plan to meet in their cafeteria. Why? People were praying, invisible, behind the scenes.

Brothers and sisters, do you realize that First Baptist Church made our Lottie Moon goal? $153,600, I think. Now, days ago we were about halfway there. Days, not weeks, days ago. How did we get from halfway there to all the way there? Ponder. People with gifts of giving gave by faith, generously. What's the result? Missionaries go out, more acts of service through the IMB, because people gave, because of the giving. Praise God. I'm just blessed by that. That was just a sweet moment for me, so praise God. And many gave small gifts along with those big gifts. As people with gifts of counseling use their gifts, then marriages, broken marriages are healed, and they don't go and get a divorce, but instead they're together. Or people that are struggling raising their kids get some good insights on parenting. Or premarital counseling is given and a couple is on a solid basis before they even get married. People with gifts of counseling. As people with gifts of discernment use their gifts, they see wise paths of action, and they give good counsel to what ministries, let's say the church should be involved in and what we should not. It's very difficult to discern between good, better and best.

Future Sermon: 4 D’s

Now, next time we talk about spiritual gifts, I'm going to talk about 4 D’s. Not going to take time today, but 4 Ds. Alright, 4 Ds. And I think these are going to help us. Alright, next time. Not next week, next week's Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, but two weeks from now, we'll finalize this sub-series on spiritual gifts. The 4 Ds are… What are they? Sorry. Discover your gifts, delight in your gifts, develop your gifts, and then deploy your gifts. These are the four, and we're going to talk about it especially from Romans chapter 12. I think is the best sub-section of Scripture on how to do these things. So discover what your gifts are, and what the gifts are. We've been doing that already. And then delight in them, that that would already be happening. You just see the wisdom and the delight of God in this and you'd be motivated by it. And developing the gifts, we'll talk more about that next time, but that the gift would be much better and sharper and more skillfully done 20 years down the line. And then, deploy. Now, the standard verb would be "used", but it doesn't begin with a D. So deploy, that's what we'll talk about next time. Close with me in prayer.

Father, thank you for the time we've had to study today. Thank you for the Word of God. Thank you for the truth of spiritual gifts. Thank you for this church. There's nowhere else I'd rather serve than here. And I'm grateful for the brothers and sisters that just really, abundantly use their gifts. I can think of dozens of brothers and sisters whose gifts I've seen operating today already, and who have blessed me by what they do. God, help us. I pray, if there any that are here that are not using their gifts, maybe they've held back or they've been a little worldly in the way they've looked at life, God, help us to repent and be willing to start serving in vibrant, new ways. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Turn in your Bibles, if you would, to Ephesians 4, we'll be looking at verses 7-16. We're going to have, God willing, three weeks to consider the subjects of spiritual gifts and spiritual gift ministry. That's what we're looking at today. Now, last night, my son Calvin and I, 14-year-old son Calvin and I, we were out in our driveway, Calvin received, from some very dear friends, a telescope. And a number of years ago I got a telescope from my dad, and I broke that out of our storage, and we were looking at the stars, and it was the first clear night we've had in a while. He's been asking many, many nights to go out and I just said, "It's not going to work well on an overcast drizzly night, so let's wait until we can actually see some stars." And it's just amazing, isn't it? When you look up at the night sky, and you just see the evidence there of the greatness of God, the wisdom of God, and the power of God. And when you can see that radiantly displayed in a starry night sky, think about what the Psalmist said in Psalm 8, "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have created, I have this thought, 'What is man that you are mindful of him?'" We know the same Psalmist also wrote, "I will praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made." So actually, in all honesty, Calvin and I are a greater display of the wisdom and power and glory of God than the night sky ever will be.

The human body is astonishingly complex. All of its systems, like the eyes that we were using to look through the telescopes and be able to see, and the mind to understand what we were looking at, fearfully and wonderfully made. And all of the bodily systems that are in our skeletal system, with its strength and its flexibility, and the fact that our bones have at the core a soft factory where red blood cells are being crafted constantly, continually, and then the body's circulatory system taking those red blood cells all around the body and delivering nutrients and oxygen, and receiving waste products back, and the whole thing just amazingly, fearfully, wonderfully made. And the more you meditate on the body, the more astonishing it is. And the body itself is a clear display of the wisdom and the power and the glory of God, isn't it? The more you understand it scripturally. 

But I would say that the Body of Christ, the Church, is even more so. If you actually know what to look at, how God has assembled Christians, that He has redeemed from “every tribe, and language, and people, and nation,” assembled them into this mystical union called the church, the Body of Christ, and that's the analogy that Paul uses in these verses. That is an amazing display of the wisdom and power of God, isn't it? We're going to contemplate that over the next number of weeks. The issue of the Body of Christ and its various members. We are all members of the Body of Christ, the Scripture teaches. Look at verses 15 and 16, it says, "Speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Him who is the head, that is Christ." Verse 16, "From Him," that is Christ, "The whole body joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work." So Paul portrays the Body of Christ, the Church, as a unity, but that is also in some sense immature, in some sense incomplete, needing growth, that we need to grow up to full maturity in Christ, total perfection in Christ, that's how he presents the Church, the Body of Christ here. And that this will happen only as each member, each part does its work as the Lord has ordained.

Now, this work is assigned in an amazingly complex way by the triune God, apportioning to each member that role that God has figured out for each one of us. And as we do our role, the Body will keep growing and making progress toward full maturity in Christ. And that's awesome. So over the next few weeks, this week and two more weeks beyond it, God willing, we're going to be looking at the issue of spiritual gifts. Now, my desire is that each member of First Durham, each member of this church, will have an identifiable spiritual gift ministry, and that you'll be doing it. So that if a pastor, or a fellow member, or somebody in your home fellowship said, "What is your ministry?", you would be able to say what it is, and you would be able to talk about your ministry, and what it is you're investing your time and your energy and your money in doing.

So my desire is multiple steps, that you will understand spiritual gifts by clear teaching from the Word of God, and that you'll delight in the idea of spiritual gifts, you'll see the wonder and amazement of all of that, you'll be drawn into the sense of grace that there is, that you'll be able to discern your gifts particularly. You'll have a sense of how God has equipped you and prepared you to serve Him. That you will also learn how to develop your gifts maximally, and then deploy your gifts fruitfully. So that's what we're going to be looking at over the next number of weeks, not doing all that today. So our goal is simple, every member ministry, we want all of you to be rich in good works along the pattern of your spiritual gifts on Judgment Day, so that the Body of Christ can grow to full maturity, that's what we're talking about. 

Overwhelming Assertion of Unity

So, let's look at the context here, and the context here in verses 1-7 is the idea of unity and diversity, unity and diversity of the Body of Christ. So, we have in verses 3-6 an overwhelming assertion of unity, don't we? We saw this last time, look at verse 3-6, it says that we should “make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit just as you are called to one hope when you were called, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all, and through all, and in all.” It's an overwhelming assertion of the unity of the Body of Christ. Now, this is a subset of God's eternal purpose in the universe that we already saw. If you look back at Ephesians 1:10, what is God doing in the universe? What is He doing through Christ and His redemption? His purpose there in Ephesians 1:10, He said is to, “bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.” That's His ultimate purpose, and the Body of Christ is the centerpiece of all that. So, there is a stunning supernatural, perfect unity that God is working in us, in the Church, after the pattern of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and Spirit, so that all of us will be one as the Father and the Son are one. So there's this overwhelming assertion of unity in Ephesians 4:3-6.

Key Word: “But” (vs. 7)

But then in verse 7, we have a key transitional word. Do you see it right there at the beginning of verse 7? "But," do you see that word "but"? "But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it." That's the NIV's translation. All of the translations though, begin verse 7 with the word "But". That's what we call a disjunction, we've been moving in a certain direction, we've been talking about one theme, but now we're going to talk about something different, we're going in a different direction. If we're going to go in the same direction and add more information along the same vein, we would use the word "and". But we're going in a different direction now, so we're going to talk about something different. We have been talking about unity, now we're going to talk about diversity within that unity. That's the purpose of the word "but" at the beginning of verse 7. So we have this body analogy of unity and diversity, diversity of function within an overwhelming unity that we have spiritually in Christ. And so he uses this analogy in Ephesians 4, which he also does in Romans 12, and 1 Corinthians 12, of the body, the human body.

The Body Analogy: Unity and Diversity

So the church is like the human body. Something we can understand in this way, we can't see the Church in this way, it's not this building that we come to, we know that. In terms of the work that He's doing with people, we can't see it with our own eyes, we have to understand it spiritually. We have to understand it in terms of its truth, and we can't see it except by faith. And so he uses an analogy to help us understand what's going on, and it's the analogy of the body. So he uses this in Romans 12, listen to Romans 12:4-8, it says, "Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts according to the grace given us." So the diversity Paul's talking about there in Romans 12, is spiritual gifts. We have a different function, we have a different role to play in the body, but there's just one body. We have different gifts. And then he says, "If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith, if it is serving, let him serve, if it is teaching, let him teach, if it is encouraging, let him encourage, if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously, if it is leadership, let him govern diligently, if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.”

So there's the whole array of spiritual gift teaching in the Romans 12. He does the exact same thing in 1 Corinthians 12:12-14, he says this, "The body is a unit though it is made up of many parts, and though all its parts are many, they form one body, so it is with Christ." So it is with Christ. "For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Now, the body is not made up of one part but of many.” So we have the same image there in 1 Corinthians 12 that we do in Romans 12. And friends, we have the exact same image here in Ephesians 4. Look again at verses 15 and 16, there it says, "Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Him who is the head, that is Christ.” Verse 16, "From Him, the whole body." So there's that word again, "From Him the whole body joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work." So in all three of these key passages, and these are the key passage in the spiritual gifts in the New Testament, we have the same illustration, the same image.

This is a beautiful picture then of specialization or diversity within unity. We need to understand both, unity and diversity when it comes to the Body of Christ. We have one body, but diverse members, or cells, or organs, or systems within that one body. So the unity of the body down to the cellular level is something that we understand perhaps better than any previous generation, especially with the emergence of the understanding of DNA, and how a crime scene investigator just needs a small sample of human tissue left at the crime scene to link a person, a specific person to that crime scene, that they were there. And that's because every cell in your body has, it seems, the blueprint for your entire body. And it means that down at the cellular level, through DNA, it's clear that this cell belongs to the whole body. And we have that same idea here spiritually. By believing in Christ, by having the indwelling Spirit, we are all members, one and the same, of the same body, that's the unity. But then we have different functions. So, all of my liver cells, and my skin cells, bone cells, blood cells, all of those nerve cells, they all are part of my body, and they can be identified through the DNA signature, but they have different functions in my body. That's the analogy that Paul's using here.

Definition of “Spiritual Gift”

So what are spiritual gifts? What do we mean by spiritual gifts? This is very plain in Romans 12, that's what he's talking about, and he doesn't use the same language here, but similar language here, what do we mean by spiritual gifts? I know you've heard about spiritual gifts before, how would I define them? Well, I give this definition: Spiritual gifts are special abilities given by the sovereign grace of God to individual Christians for the purpose of bringing the Church of Christ to final maturity by the power of the Holy Spirit. Special abilities given by God to individual Christians for the purpose of bringing the Church to maturity. So, if you just boil it down, special abilities, you could call it talents, but they're spiritual, and they have a role to play in building the body up, they're spiritual talents, individual talents or abilities given by God. Wayne Grudem, a theologian, puts it this way, "Spiritual gift is an ability that is empowered by the Holy Spirit and used in any ministry in the Church." So a special ability that the Holy Spirit empowers to enable that ministry to be done.

So what are examples of spiritual gifts? Well, 1 Corinthians 12, gives a list of spiritual gifts, Romans 12 gives a list, you just heard it in Romans 12. Ephesians 4 gives a list, there's a very abbreviated list of two types of speaking and serving gifts in 1 Peter 4. So in 1 Corinthians 12 it lists, in verse 28, “apostle, prophet, teacher, workers of miracles, kinds of healings, helps, administrations, tongues, etcetera.” Also in 1 Corinthians 12:8-10, “words of wisdom, words of knowledge, faith, distinguishing between spirits, interpretation of tongues,” that's the list given in 1 Corinthians 12. Romans 12 adds, “serving, encouraging, contributing, leadership and mercy.” Ephesians 4 adds, evangelists, pastors, teachers. There are other verses that people look to in terms of musical or artistic gifts, and I think it's valid to bring that in. The fact that there are different lists in every case shows that no one list is meant to be exhaustive, but rather suggestive. So you can compile that list and still know that there are probably others besides. You'll have a sense of what we're talking about as you look at the list in other examples.

Now, you may want to know what about that list in 1 Corinthians 12, that's a little bit interesting. He's got all kinds of stuff in there that's controversial, if you know anything about church history, they're called the sign gifts, things like speaking in tongues, prophecy, miracles, those kinds of things, healings, the gift of healing. Do those gifts still function today? Well, you'll notice in Ephesians 4, that's not even addressed, so I'm not going to talk about it, so I'm just going to move on. Oh now some of you are hissing me, that's unkind. We're getting off to a bad start here in 2016. Alright, if you want to know, those that believe that sign gifts do not function any longer, but were only for the apostolic age, are called cessationist, I am not a cessationist. I think it's hard to be a cessationist scripturally, it's hard to find scriptural evidence for the ceasing of the sign gifts. However, I do see a very strong linking of some of these gifts to the apostolic role, and therefore I do see a very strong linking to the apostolic era.

And so when the Apostle Paul says, "The evidence of my apostleship are," and then he lists including the working of miracles, I would think that that would give us an indication that in that providentially, we don't see that thing at the same level. I'm not saying I've never seen astonishing healings in answer to prayer, I have, but I haven't seen the gift of healing that travels with an individual from place to place to place, I've heard about it. Okay, you know some of these individuals, alright, they make a lot of money doing it, alright. There's something a little bit sketchy about all that, that doesn't seem to be what was going on in the apostolic era. So, I would have to say I'm not a cessationist for exegetical reasons, but in terms of my everyday life experience, I haven't personally experienced any of the sign gifts in a way that my conscience feels clear to say, "Yes, that's definitely what's going on there," but I am respectful of brothers and sisters that think the spirit of tongues and prophecy and all that or the gift of tongues is still going on today, that's the best I can do.

Spiritual Gifts Called “Grace”

Moving on, spiritual gifts are a particular grace from Christ. What do we mean by that? Well, they're called, first, “grace.” Let's understand this word grace, look again at verse 7. Now, verse 7 is a key verse here, "But to each one of us grace has been given, as Christ apportioned it." So spiritual gifts come to us, and it's actually related in the Greek to the idea of a gift given, it's grace from the Lord. So the fact that God would even do this for us is grace, amen. That He would actually even gift us and give us a role to play in the Body of Christ, is lavishly generous. So let's go back to my definition of grace, what is grace? Grace is the settled determination in the heart of God to do us infinite good, we who deserve infinite wrath. That's how I define grace. It's a determination in the heart of God.

Now, from that determination flow big gifts and little gifts. The biggest gift of all, friends, is salvation, amen. There is no bigger gift. "For by grace are you saved through faith." The greatest gift. But there are lesser gifts as well. And the same God that gives us the infinitely great gift of salvation in Christ, gives us now the lesser gifts of spiritual gifts to do in the Body of Christ. He gives us a role to play. It would be lavish grace for God to forgive your sins and say, "Now, stay out of my way, get out of my way, I'm going to do my work and I'm doing it through the angels, not through you." No, but instead He wants us, if we could put it this way, in the game. He wants us in the battle, He wants us on the construction site, He wants us working, and He gives us the equipment to do eternally significant things. How lavish and how generous is that?

So we just need to go back and say, "Okay, my spiritual gifts are amazing grace from God." And those gifts that, amazing grace enables us to do the good works that He has ordained in advance for us to walk in. Remember in Ephesians 2:10 it says, "For we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God laid out or prepared in advance, that we should walk in them." Now, what I would say is that you Christians, if you're healthy and you're living in a mature New Testament kind of biblical way, the majority of your good works will be done along the lines of your spiritual gift. Not all of them, but most of them. So most of the good works that God has prepared in advance for you to walk in will be in the line of your spiritual gifts.

And so Paul here calls spiritual gift roles grace, and they are grace. Think about how it was in Paul's life, Paul never stopped being astonished at God's grace in his life, and neither should we. It's amazing to Paul that he wasn't struck dead on the road to Damascus; he had violated God's laws, he was a sinner, he was not trusting in the righteousness that was given as a gift through faith in Christ, he was trusting in his own righteousness, and he was destroying the Church. And the Lord confronted him from Heaven with heavenly glory and said, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?" And Paul answered, "Who are you, Lord?" And He said, "I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting. Now, get up and go into the city and you'll be told what you must do." Is that amazing? His spiritual gift ministry was intrinsic to his moment of salvation. I have worked for you to do. Now, get up and I'll tell you what to do, and that's awesome, isn't it? And Paul never lost sight of that. 

We already saw it. If you look back in Ephesians 3:7-8, he said, "I became a servant of this Gospel by the gift of God's grace given me through the working of His power. Although I am less than the least of all God's people, this grace was given to me to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ." He never lost sight of the grace of God in his ministry. It's amazing that I have anything to do at all that God wants me to do, so it's His grace. And he says the same thing beautifully in 1 Corinthians 15:9-10, there he says, "For I am the least of the apostles, and I don't even deserve to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God, but by the grace of God, I am what I am. And His grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them, yet, not I, but the grace of God that was in me."

So we have our spiritual gifts as a gift of grace, and we don't deserve them. So, application, I'm just going to be sprinkling applications through the sermon, I'll just do it right now. What application can we take for this? Well, thank God, if you're a Christian, thank God for the grace of your own spiritual gifts, just thank Him for what He has given you to do. Thank God for your own gifts, and thank God that He saved you and is choosing to use you for eternal purposes. And then go beyond that, thank God for other people's gifts. The same grace that gave you gifts, gave that brother, that sister, their spiritual gifts too. Just thank God for it all. Just application right in the middle. So we have this idea of grace.

Spiritual Gifts Given by Christ’s Sovereign Wisdom

Now secondly, spiritual gifts are given, they're grace given by Christ's sovereign wisdom. By His sovereign wisdom. Look at again at verse 7, "But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it," it says in the NIV, “Or, according to the measure of the gift of Christ,” or “Christ's gift.” I love that word "measure." The Greek word is metron, so you get metronome or metric system. There's a sense of measurement here. And behind that measuring, it's like the Lord has sized you up and thought about you and pondered you and has equipped you specifically, and that's an awesome thought, isn't it? The wisdom of Christ in giving you whatever your specific gift is.

Now, it's interesting that 1 Corinthians ascribes all that to the Holy Spirit, almost exactly the same language. 1 Corinthian 12:11, "All of these gifts are the work of one and the same Spirit, and He gives them to each one just as He determines." Now, we shouldn't imagine some kind of controversy between Christ and the Spirit, where they're jockeying. It's like, "That one's mine. I'm going to gift him." Or, "She is mine, I'm going to gift her." It's not that. It's said that Jesus and the Spirit are actually completely working together in the gifting. And then, 1 Peter 4 ascribes it to God the Father, and also, 1 Corinthians 12:6. 1 Corinthians 12:6, "There are different kinds of working, but the same God works each one of them in each one." So, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit have pondered you, if we could use that human language, they have measured you, they've considered you, and they have gifted you, Father, Son and Spirit.

So, the measure has to do with what gifts you get and in what proportion, in what sense of magnitude that gift is. Not all the gifts are the same. So, many people in the church have the gift of teaching, and many have the gift of preaching, but not all are equally gifted at preaching and teaching. You have that as a gift. Some have incandescent levels of giftedness, so that centuries after they've died, we're still talking about what God did through them. I mean, just stunning levels of giftedness. I think that there is no one living today that had has as much passion or effectiveness in evangelism as George Whitefield did. I don't think there's anybody I've ever heard of in church history, other than the apostle Paul, that had that level of effectiveness in evangelism, and passion, stunningly effective. He would tell you, he will tell you, it was all the grace of God in him. But God gave him an incandescent level, just a magnitude of evangelistic gift that no one else has even touched.

Or think about just the ability to preach that Charles Spurgeon had, just the ability to form language and illustrations, and just his giftedness at preaching. He's probably one of the greatest pulpiteers, or preachers in church. I don't think there's anybody today like him, I don't think there ever will be another like him. Or you think about the doctrinal precision, the mind of a John Calvin, or similar, the mind of a Jonathan Edwards. It's just different levels of giftedness, and just even centuries later, we're benefiting from their writings and their ministry. Or the gift of compassion of  Amy Carmichael, or the gift of nurturing care that George Müller showed for 10,000 orphans. You may have gifts in the same category as these men and women, but not to the same measure.

And the same is true horizontally, people alive today, so that you may have a gift of preaching and teaching or administration, whatever, but others have it more, others have it less. And so it's not for us to compare ourselves with one another and be jealous towards some that have greater measures of gifts or be arrogant towards those that have less measure of gifts. This was given according to the wisdom. Also, we need to keep in mind, and this is so powerful, if you think about it, 1 Corinthians 12:26, we're all part of one body, right? If one part is honored, the whole body is honored with it. So I'm honored that my brother George Whitfield was that effective in evangelism. I'm honored by his honor. So there's a sense of unity, and that's marvelous. How amazing is all of this? Do you not see it? How marvelous is this, the wisdom of God, that He has in some sense, pondered you? I get this picture of Jesus taking you shopping for clothes, and He's like bring you to these expensive boutiques in places you can't afford, and He knows exactly what's going to look good on you. And you may disagree, but it doesn't matter, He's going to buy it and you're going to wear it. And He's picking out shirts and pants and shoes and outfits, and He's giving it to you to wear. And that's a delightful image for me to think of Christ at the boutique, buying me clothes, alright. And telling me this is what my gifting is. Thank God for His grace.

Spiritual Gift “Package” Given to All Believers

Now, I think not in terms of a spiritual gift, but I think in terms of a spiritual gift package. More of a kind of a recipe for you. That He has arranged an array of gifting that will enable you to do the ministry He has in mind for you. So I'll take for me, my own ministry as a senior pastor and an elder with regular preaching responsibilities. Alright, in order for me to do that gift, I have to have an array of abilities, not just the ability to preach or teach, but there are other aspects to the job, if we could call it that, that the ministry calls for. If I'm going to flourish in that, I have to be able to do some leadership, some vision, faith, mercy, hospitality, etcetera. Now, on each one of those, there are definitely brothers and sisters that have more of that particular gift than I do, but I need to be able to have that whole package put together. And so I tend to think in terms of a spiritual gift package, in which God is gifting you for the ministry He has in mind for you to do.

Now, it's very vital that you see that there's this spiritual gift package given to every believer. Look again at verse 7, "But to each one of us,” to each one of us, “grace has been given as Christ apportioned it." So, every Christian has a spiritual gift package, every single one of us, there is no one left out, no one is worthless, no one is insignificant, no one does not have a ministry, no one will be able to appear at the judgment seat of Christ empty-handed and say, "You didn't give me anything to do." So you must, dear brother and sister in Christ, listen carefully to the truths in these three sermons. You must very much take them to heart, no matter what you think about me as a preacher. The evidence in the text is overwhelming that you will be called to account for the gifting that God has given you. And you will not be able to say as a Christian, "You gave me no gift, or I didn't know you gave me gifts." All of us have gifts. So you have to look in the mirror, you have to apply yourself and look at this. And if you don't know what your spiritual gift package is, you need to begin pleading with God, "Show it to me." So we all have a spiritual gift package. It's lined up with a spiritual gift ministry, different ministries in the church. It could be a children's ministry, or to run the Caring Center, or plan and prepare for a short-term mission trip, or plan and execute a worship service, there's just different functions that happen, and God gifts for each one.

Spiritual Gifts: A Part of Christ’s Mission from the Father

 Now, verses 8-10 say that these spiritual gifts are given as part of Christ's mission from the Father. Look at verse 8-10, "This is why it says when he ascended on high he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men." Verse 9, "What does it mean, or what does 'He ascended' mean, except that he also descended to the lower earthly regions." Verse 10, "He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens in order to fill the whole universe." So let me just explain simply what I'm saying here. Our spiritual gifts were blood-bought by Jesus, He went to war for us, and He won these gifts, and He's now like scattering them to the Body. That's the image we have here. He is a warrior, conqueror king, who now is leading a procession of captives, it says, who He is then, in that moment dispensing the plunder, the booty, the treasure that He's won on the battlefield. So all of our spiritual gifts are blood-bought, they're bought by the blood of Jesus.

But to look a little more carefully at it, Paul is reaching for the descent of Jesus to Earth, and then His ascent from Earth back up to Heaven. Now, what do we mean by His descent? Well, I think this is just His incarnation, that Jesus was sitting on a throne of glory, He took on a human body, descended to the lower region of the Earth, and this we celebrate at Christmas time. In His incarnation, He lived His sinless life, He died His redeeming death on the cross, won that great victory, and is now ascending, or has ascended, back up through the heavenly realms, through the sky, through outer space, through the spiritual realms, plural, however many there may be, and He is far above all of those realms, and is at the right hand of God, and has received from the Father the gifting of the Spirit which He now lavishly bestows on us. That's the image that we have here.

Now, some translations imply that Jesus descended to the lower regions of the earth, implying like He descended to Hades, or descended to Hell even. Some of you know that this is a verse that's used for Christ's descent to Hell in the creed. I think that's very bad exegesis. I don't think Jesus descended to Hell at all. If you're shocked by that, come and talk to me afterwards. I think that He went right from the cross into the Father's hands, with the thief on the cross, into paradise, amen. Like, today you'll be with me in paradise. We can debate that later, but at any rate, even if you do think there's a descent to Hell, this is not a good place to defend it, because it just says He went down to the lower regions of the Earth. Instead, I think we were talking about the incarnation here. “Jesus, being in very nature God, didn't consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, becoming a human, and being found in appearance as a man, humbled Himself lower and lower, that's His descent, and became obedient to death, even death on a cross.” There's the descent.

And then turned around and ascended higher and higher. He rose from the dead. And then as His apostles were watching, He ascended through the skies until the cloud hid Him from their sight. And the book of Hebrews picks up the journey there, He moved through the heavenly realms with His own blood, and then sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. And so, on the day of Pentecost, He poured out all of these lavish spiritual gifts. As Peter explained in Acts 2, God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact, exalted to the right hand of God. He has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit, and has poured out what you now see in here. So, get the picture of Jesus the conquering hero, triumphing on the cross, moving up through the heavenly realms, and just scattering gifts to the poor and needy, that's us. So that's the image we have here.

Now, Jesus received the gifts from the Father and gives them to the people, and then receives the glory and benefits when those gifts are used. Now, I'm not going to spend much time on this, but if you were to go back to Psalm 68:18 and read it, you might be a little troubled if you are meticulous. This is how Psalm 68 sounds, "When you ascended on high, you led captives in your train and you received gifts from men." Okay, so eyebrows should be going up. Okay, wait a minute, Psalm 68 says that, “He received gifts from men,” and then Paul takes it and reverses it 180 degrees. He says He gave gifts to men. So how do you explain that? Well, the way you explain that is like, when you're an ambulance driver, you can run red lights, but we can't. When you're an apostle, you can do this kind of thing. Paul knew very well what Psalms 68 was saying. But I think there's a better explanation than that. Jesus gives gifts so that He may receive back gifts from us. And it ends up, frankly, the same in the end.

For from Him and through Him and back to Him are all gifts. So, everything you have came from Him, and someday you're going to give back to Him all of these good works and your spiritual gift ministry as a gift to Him, that's your active worship. So, that's how I put it together in Psalm 68. But in any case, the point is clear, our spiritual gifts are a vital part of the mission of Christ in the world. They're clearly related to His descending to Earth in the incarnation, His further descent to death on the cross, His ascent from the dead into life, His ascending through the skies, through the heavenly realms, and the sitting at the right hand of God. Spiritual gifts are intrinsic to all of that. That's how our gifts fit in. So look at this assertion in verse 10, "He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens in order to fill the whole universe" This picture of Christ is astonishingly glorious, He's at the right hand of God and He's dispensing gifts and receiving blessings back from His Church. 

Christ “Gave Some to Be…”

Now, verses 11-13, the ministry of the Word of God primes the pump for everything, it primes the pump for everything. Look at verse 11, "It was He who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers." So what does this mean? Well, Christ gave gifts to the Church. What does that language mean? Gave some to be apostles. How do we understand that? Well, this is how I understand it: He equipped men to be apostles, He equipped them to be prophets, He equipped people to be evangelists and pastors and teachers, He equipped them. But in equipping them, He then bestows them in their giftedness as gifts to the church. So honestly, every brother and sister, every gifted brother and sister is him or herself a gift from Christ to the Church. And so He gave apostles to the Church, and He gave prophets to the Church, and He gave evangelist to the Church, and He gave pastors to the Church, and teachers to the Church.

What Roles Are Listed Here?

So, what roles are listed here? Well, what are apostles? Apostles, back then, were eyewitnesses of the life of Christ. We could think of it this way: The 12 were apostles, they were chosen to be apostles. The word means "sent out ones". And so there were 12 apostles that were chosen. You could use the word that way. It was on the foundation of their eye witness of Jesus and His life that the New Testament was written. So we could use the word apostles in that language. Or you could talk about Barnabas and some other key individuals, who have an authoritative early role to play, and they're called apostles as well. I do not believe that the role of apostle is for today, as I've already said. There's such an evidence that it was linked to miracles and authority and the writing of Scripture, that I believe the apostolic era is done. I know other brothers and sisters in Christ use the word “apostles” today, I just don't think that's appropriate. But He gave apostles.

Then second, prophets. These are those that speak the Word of God directly. They say, "Thus says the Lord, and it is so. It's the Word of God." And there was a prophetic gift going on back in the apostolic era. Again, very debatable whether it's going on today, but it's the ability that some men and some women had to speak directly saying, "Thus says the Lord, and it is the Word of God." Apostles and prophets. Then you have evangelists. These are individuals that take the Gospel to those who have not yet heard it or have not yet believed it, at least. So an evangelist could just cross the road to a home across the street, or they could be a missionary getting on a plane and going to some unreached people group, but they're taking the Gospel message to some distant place or nearby place, going toward lostness to take the Word of God to those who haven't heard yet or haven't believed yet. That's evangelist. Bunyan, in Pilgrim's Progress, He has Christian's journey begin with a man named Evangelist who comes and shares the Gospel with him.

And then you have pastors. Pastors are shepherds of the soul, as the ESV has, “shepherds.” These are individuals that settled down in a locality, and they carry on a ministry with the people of God, shepherding souls, helping people through the ins and outs of daily life through sanctification and growth, right up until death. So they settle in, and they shepherd, and they minister right through death. And then teachers are those that just are equipped and are able to unfold the Word of God. I think it's good to keep pastors and teachers somewhat separate, so all pastors are teachers, but not all teachers are pastors. So I think we have different roles there, although there's overlap.

Common Ingredient

Now, I want you to notice the common ingredient in all five, and that is the delivery of the Word of God. All five, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, deliver the Word of God to the people. They are the delivery system for the Word of God, that's what they have in common. And so, God gives the Word through the apostles and prophets, and it travels and moves to a locality through evangelists, and then pastors and teachers settle down and shepherd by means of that Word. It's a delivery system for the Word of God. But look how it continues, verses 12-13, "To prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God, and become mature, attaining to the whole measure, the fullness of Christ."

Now, we're going to unpack that more next week. But the idea here is that the works of service, that the ministry of the Word of God prepares individual Christians to do works of service. Do you see that? As apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers do their work, individual Christians then do works of service. Then the works of service are what God uses to build up the body to full maturity. So that's what I mean by "primes the pump". My job as a pastor this morning, is to prime the pump for each of you to do works of service, works of service. I don't know what they are, God knows what they are. You may not know what they are yet, but God has works of service for you to do. As you do those works of service, all of you, this body, this local church will be built up to maturity in Christ. That's the spiritual gift ministry that God's given us to do.

Repent and Believe

Now, we're going to pick this up next week and talk more in detail about it. Let me just stop and do some application for you, and then we'll finish. The first clearest application I can ever give to anyone, any group of people this size, is to come to faith in Christ. There are no spiritual gifts for people who are “dead in transgressions and sins.” Spiritual gifts are given after we have been justified by faith in Christ. They're given after repentance and faith in Christ. So, if you were to come to me and say, "You know, I'm not a believer. I was interested in your sermon today, what is there for me?" I would say, "The work of God for you is this: Believe in the one that God has sent. Believe in Jesus. Trust in the Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins. Start there." Spiritual gifts are for Christians.

God Gifts Every Christian For Service

But then secondly, keep in mind, spiritual gifts are for every Christian. They are for every Christian. A regular pattern of ministry is for every Christian. Now, let me just ask a hard question, just look at yourself, look in the mirror of the text. Do you have an identifiable regular pattern of ministry that lines up with spiritual gifts? Is that true of you? As you look at your life, are you investing yourself in a regular pattern of ministry in this local church? Just think about that. And if you say, "Well, I don't know," I say, "Well, if someone were to ask you, 'What is it?', you need to be able to say what it is." I mean, you could be involved in the Caring Center, you could be involved in International Student Ministry, you could be involved in Meal Baby, organizing the Meal Baby, you could be involved with the children, with Bible for Life at different levels. You could be involved in prayer ministry, you could have more of an ad hoc ministry among women, some of you older women discipling younger women. But there has to be some answer.

If you look and say, "Honestly, there's nothing. I don't really think I have a regular pattern of ministry." then what you need to do is just begin by repenting and say, "Lord, I think I've wasted some time up to this point. I don't think I've been faithful the way I've needed to be. I want to repent, I want to have a spiritual gift ministry. Please help me." And then the next couple of weeks, we're going to talk about how to discover your spiritual gifts, and how to develop them and how to deploy them. So we're going to do that over the next couple of weeks. But I just want to begin with each person who's hearing me right now, first assess, "Am I a Christian? Have I come to faith in Christ?" And then secondly, "Am I using my spiritual gifts? Do I have a spiritual gift ministry?" My prayer is that God will use these three sermons to help you come into a whole new level of faithfulness in using your gift here at the church.

Please close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the things that we're learning in Ephesians. We thank you for the power in the Word of God. We thank you for the truth in the Word, and we ask, O Lord, that you would please strengthen each one of us to know what it is you're calling us to be and to do. And I pray that you would please be moving those that up to this point have not been able to identify what their spiritual gifts are, to identify and delight in their gifts, and then to develop them and use them. And Lord, I pray for those that are already using their gifts fruitfully and powerfully, Lord. Give them sustaining grace, expand their horizons, expand their field of ministry more and more in this church and throughout this community, even to the ends of the earth. And Lord, help all of us to do this in light of eternity, in light of the glory of God, for it is for your glory and for your name, Jesus, that we do these things. It's in your name we pray, amen.

Well, as I meditate on Christmas, and I have that privilege of thinking about it every year and thinking about what I want to say to you at this time, and meditate with you on the goodness of God and sending His Son, so many thoughts come to my mind, so many themes. One of the thoughts that hit me this week as I was meditating on Christmas and on the incarnation and the gift is that it's really a tale of Three Kings.

Now, I'm not thinking about that song, "We Three Kings of Orient are... ", and all that, which talks about the Magi, but I mean the account of three different kings and how differently they extended their kingdoms. A history is filled - it's replete - with the decrees and the deeds of kings of mighty men of power and ambition, whose decrees moved armies and changed landscapes and built kingdoms. And most of the time their ambitions were ungodly, they were ambitions of power and greed, and they were written, those deeds and decrees were written in blood. Sometimes there were good kings, who used their positions of power well. Many of those were Christians, believers in Christ, who sought to honor their Lord.

But, as I look at the accounts in Matthew and in Luke, I think about Three Kings, I think about Caesar Augustus, who was the king of the Romans, the most powerful man on earth at the time. And because of his decree, he the mover and shaker, we think about kings being movers and shakers, his decree caused the entire population of the Roman world to move out, it moved Joseph and Mary to leave Nazareth and go down to Bethlehem where Jesus was born, in fulfillment of the prophecy in Micah Chapter 5. So, Caesar Augustus, I think motivated by a desire for taxation money and to control his empire, issued that decree.

And then you've got a second king, King Herod, who was in Jerusalem, and you remember how jealous he was for his throne and how much he yearned to keep his little throne under Caesar Augustus. And how when the Magi came and said to him, "'Where is the one who has been born, King of the Jews? We saw His star in the east and we have come to worship Him.'" He was threatened by that. He was threatened by it, and so he decreed that all the boy babies in Bethlehem and its vicinity be murdered so that he could stamp out this threat to his throne.

Now, it's really an amazing thing to meditate on that third king, and that is Jesus, who is born King of the Jews. Now you think about that, no one's born King, inevitably they have to grow up into it, their father's are already on the throne, etcetera, but Jesus was born king. And I think as we meditate on Caesar Augustus, as a mover and shaker and his decree caused empires to move, and populations to move. And then you think about Herod, whose decree caused soldiers to move out and how Bethlehem was shaken. I look at the third King Jesus, and He is the one who Himself was moved, who descended from heaven to earth, and who Himself was shaken by the decree of God the Father, that He would die on the cross for our sins. What a different way of building a kingdom. And so, I want to meditate with you today on John chapter 6, and how Jesus the King left His throne above and came, He was moved. He left a position of power and authority and comfort and adulation, and came to Earth to be shaken to the roots of His being by dying on the cross.

Now, this summer, I had the privilege of visiting one of my favorite cities in Europe, Prague, which is the capital of the Czech Republic, a beautiful city. Been there several times and in the old town near Prague Castle there's this imposing bronze statue. And I've taken pictures near it, I had my picture taken near it, it said I didn't know at first who it was, but the first time I came, I asked. And it is Wenceslas, who is the patron saint of the Bohemian people? He's viewed by them as their protector saint. Wenceslas as you know, is well remembered by the Christmas hymn, Good King Wenceslas. I love history and I went over all the history of Wenceslas in the sermon this morning, and I thought, "If you're interested, come and ask me, I've discarded it." It's really fascinating, but when you wrote it and you're preaching it and you're bored by it, get rid of it.

Alright, but there are some interesting features to Wenceslas' life; he was born to a pagan mother who hated Christianity, but he had a grandmother who loved Christ and who raised Wenceslas as a Christian. Eventually, his mother threatened by him, had the grandmother killed and tried to get Wenceslas away from Christian influence. But in due time, he rose to the throne of that part of the world of Bohemia, and he became a good monarch. He desired to use his power and his authority to bless the poor and needy and is especially charitable to children, to orphans, to slaves. Eventually, he was assassinated, a young age, at age 22, and he is revered by the people there.

Now, the hymn, Good King Wenceslas was written by John Mason Neil. It was first published in 1853, and in the story, I rewrote it because it's in this kind of old Victorian English, but this is basically what happens in the hymn. In the hymn, Good King Wenceslas is standing in his comfortably heated castle, and he's looking down from that lofty, comfortable perch on the snow-covered ground below. It's night time and it's bitterly cold, but the moon is shining brightly and Wenceslas can see plainly, a poor man braving the frigid temperatures in an effort to collect firewood for his family.

Now, moved by compassion by this pathetic site and the suffering plight of this peasant, Wenceslas calls one of his servants to come stand near by him. The two of them stand and watch this man gathering firewood, and Wenceslas asked his servant, "Do you know who that man is, and where he lives?" "Yes, Sire," the servant answers, “He lives almost four miles away at the base of the mountain near St. Agnes' fountain." Then King Wenceslas sprang decisively into action, "Bring me some meat, bring me some wine, bring me some pine logs and firewood from my personal store, this very night, you and I are going to watch this poor man feast in his own home with the provisions that we bring."

So, the godly Wenceslas and his servant go out into the storm, out into the bitter cold in the wind, it's made far worse at that point by a howling wind, they're both heavily laden with all these stores that they're carrying, the food, the wine, the firewood, and after a while, the servant begins to complain that it's difficult to make headway against this wind, carrying all of these things. "Sir," the servant said, "The clouds are hiding the moon, it's getting harder and harder to see. The wind is really kicking up now. I don't know if I have enough strength to make it all the way to that hut." Wenceslas answers is servant, "Walk behind me in the footsteps that I've laid in the snow. Walk in my footsteps with good courage, follow my example, know that I am also bearing this terrible weather, and if you follow my footsteps, you'll have the strength to get there." So, the servant follows in his master's footsteps, the tracks he made in the snow, in some mysterious way, the servant is somehow warmed by the footsteps themselves. They get to the poverty-stricken man's hut, and they surprised him with the lavish blessings that they have carried in their arms to his hut.

I can't imagine if it really ever happened, the man hearing a knock on the door during a stormy night, he opens the door and there is this king carrying all of these things and saying, "If you don't mind, we'd love to share a meal with you." And I think of how special that would have been.

Now, there's no historical record of this actually happening, it is consistent with the record of his benevolence to the poor and needy, Wenceslas, I mean. But it's also a beautiful picture of the benevolence and the love of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I picture it this way, The Book of Amos speaks of God dwelling in a high, lofty palace with its foundations on the earth. And so that's a poetical picture of God seated on His throne, and we would have to picture Him in absolute perfect comfort and pleasure. He's comfortable up there, He's filled with joy. Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ was worshipped by a 100 million angels, completely adored, completely at peace. And He sought to brave the storm of sin and death for our sake, He sought to bring in His arms a feast and to lay it out for us and enable us to feast on Him, really, forever and ever. Now, as you look at the stories, the two almost can't be compared. The kind of journey that Jesus made, His command didn't send forth a bunch of soldiers to build a bloody kingdom, He Himself left His throne and went forth, and the gifts can't be compared, the sacrifice can't be compared but it's symbolic.

I think about 2 Corinthians 8:9 which says, "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes, He became poor. So that you through His poverty, might become rich." This is the real Christmas present, this is the real joy of this season, contemplating how through faith in Christ and through the cost he paid, how wealthy we are, eternally wealthy. So, what I want to do is I want to go through John 6, and I want to talk about Jesus leaving His Father's heavenly throne and descending down to earth. And you may wonder why I zeroed in on John 6, but it just has to do with the many times, it says in this Chapter that He descended from heaven to earth, and in that descent, we see the Christmas theme. We see the idea of the incarnation, John 6:33, for example, Jesus speaks of "the bread of God," as "He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." See that in verse 33? And then in Verse 35, "Jesus declared, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty," and "I am the bread that came down from heaven," in verse 41. And in Verse 50 and 51, "Here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of the bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."

So, this is the central mystery, the central wonder of Christmas, and that is the mystery of the incarnation, how Christ descended or came down from heaven to earth to save us. So, I want to feast on this idea, I want to feast on Christ by the ministry of the Word and by the power of the Holy Spirit. In order to do that, we need to get a little context in John, chapter 6. Jesus, at the beginning of that chapter, feeds the 5000, we have that account in all four of the Gospels, and then in John's Gospel, after He has fed the 5000, they want to take Him by force and make Him king right away. But they don't understand the nature of His kingship or the kingdom that He sought to bring, and they certainly didn't understand how He would have to give His body on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. And so, He hid from them so they could not take Him by force and make Him king.

He sends His apostles, His disciples, across the Sea of Galilee in a boat, and He himself goes up on a mountain to spend time with His father in prayer. During the night, as His disciples are toiling across the lake in an adverse storm, Jesus comes to them walking on the water, they're terrified, but He assures them that it is He, and they're willing to have Him into the boat, and immediately the boat goes to the other side. Now, the next morning, the crowd that had traveled by boat across the lake, get there and they're shocked to see Him, they don't have any idea how He could have gotten there, because they're always aware where Jesus is and they know He didn't get in the boat with them. And so, they're amazed. They said, "Rabbi, when did you get here?" And Jesus confronts them concerning their true motivation, this is in John 6:26-27, He says, "If I tell you the truth, you're looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs, but because you ate the loafs and had your fill. Do not labor for the food that spoils, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On Him, God the Father has placed His seal of approval."  Well, their minds were on earthly things, earthly food, earthly drink, earthly comforts and earthly kingdom. That's what they wanted, that's all they understood.

Jesus wanted them by faith in the Word to lift their eyes up to the heavenly realms, to heavenly things, to things that would last forever, so He uses throughout this teaching a dominant metaphor, the idea of bread of life, which descends from heaven to earth to feed the world. So, we're going to begin where Jesus' mission began, and that is heaven. Seven times it's asserted in this chapter, I've already read them for you, but I want you to look at it with your own eyes. Look at verse 33, "For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." You see it again in verse 38, "For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but to do the will of Him who sent me." Verse 41, we have it again, "At this, the Jews began to grumble about Him because He said, 'I am the bread that came down from heaven.'" And then in verse 42, they said, "'Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can He now say, I came down from heaven.'" In Verse 50, "'But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die.'" Again, verse 51, "'I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.'" And then again in verse 58, "'This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever.'"

So, behind all of this, we get a really staggering concept, Jesus entered the world willingly, He decided to enter the world, that is completely unique in human history. There is no other human being who can be... It could be said, he or she decided to enter the world, He's the only one, he made a willing choice. He existed from eternity past, He is the eternal Son of God, He existed with His Father before the foundation of the world, and His kingship is an eternal kingship. It says in that very passage, that prophecy that I mentioned earlier, Micah 5:2, it says, "But you Bethlehem Ephratah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come from me one who will be ruler over Israe1," listen to this, "whose origins are from of old, from ancient times." So, Jesus sat on a heavenly throne before His incarnation. We have a beautiful picture of that glorious throne in Isaiah 6, the vision that Isaiah had of “…the Lord, seated on His throne, high and exalted, and the train of His robe filled the temple.  And above Him there seraphim, each with six wings.  And with two wings, they were covering their faces, and with two wings they were covering their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of His glory.'"

And it is the Apostle John that tells us, Isaiah said this because He saw Jesus's glory and spoke about Him. So, that is Jesus on His throne in heavenly glory, and from that throne, He made a willful decision to enter the world. He said this to Pontius Pilate when he was on trial for His life, remember? He mentions the nature of his kingdom, Jesus did. Pilate says in effect, "Aha. So, you are a king, you are building a kingdom. You are a king then," he said. Jesus said, "'You are right in saying that I'm a king. For this reason, I was born, and for this I entered the world to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.'" Now, that's staggering assertion, which He makes before an unbelieving Governor, holds His life and His death in his hands. He said, "Yes, you are right. For this reason, I entered the world to testify to the truth."

He made a willing decision to enter the world, to descend from heaven to earth, but also we know that He entered the world obediently. He did it in submission to the command He received from His father, we get this again and again in this very chapter. Look at verse 38, "For I have come down from heaven not to do my will, but to do the will of Him who sent me." So again and again, we get the idea of Jesus not merely taking it upon himself to enter the world, but entering the world, obediently on mission from the Father. "The Father sent me," Jesus says again and again. Again, verse 44, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws Him and I will raise him up at the last day." And again, verse 57, "The living Father sent me and I live because of the Father." So, Jesus is completely father-centered here, His mission came from the Father, the Father sent Him.

Now, how did Jesus descend from heaven to earth? Well, it's not so plainly asserted here, but it is hinted at. Look at verse 51 again, He says this, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." So here we have the doctrine of the infleshment or the incarnation of Jesus, He took on a human body. It's told plainly, more plainly, theologically earlier in John's gospel, in John 1:14, "The word," that's Jesus, "Became flesh and made His dwelling among us, and we have seen His glory. Glory of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth."

Well, we get the more clear record of it in Luke's gospel. And in Luke 1:31-35, we have the visitation of the Angel Gabriel and he comes to the Virgin Mary, and he says this to Mary, "'You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give Him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of His father, David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, His kingdom will never end.'" Now, Mary asked a very reasonable question, "'How can this be since I am a virgin?' The angel answered, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So, the Holy One to be born of you will be called the Son of God.'" Well, that's exactly what happened. She was with child by the power of the Holy Spirit in a miraculous way. But then He was born in the natural way. We find therefore that Jesus is supernaturally conceived, but naturally born and so, He is fully God and fully man.

We have the account very famously for us in Luke 2:1-7, where it says that, "Joseph went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem, the town of David, because he belonged to the house and lineage of David, and he went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. And while they were there, the time came for the baby to be born. And she gave birth to her first born, a son, and she wrapped Him in cloths and placed Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn." So, Jesus supernaturally conceived, but naturally born, fully God and fully man. That's how He descended from heaven to earth, that's how His mission began.

Well, why did He come? What was the purpose of His mission? Well, there are many answers to this question, even in John 6, but let me zero in on just a few. First, He came to give life to the world. Look again at Verse 33, "For the bread of God is He, who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." Jesus came to give us life.

Also, He came to bring us fullness and satisfaction, that's where you get the eating kind of idea, feasting on Jesus. Feasting brings fullness and satisfaction. Verse 35, Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty." And so, Jesus satisfies. Now, Jesus satisfies our deepest longings, everything that you want, all of the desires you have in your heart that are God-given, all of those are met in Jesus. And He has more satisfaction still to give you, He yearns to satisfy you every moment of your lives, the rest of your lives. He doesn't want you to be satisfied with idols and with created things, He wants you to be satisfied with Him and Him alone. And then when you die and when you're taken into heaven, and when you sit at table with Jesus, and when you see that new Jerusalem, and you see that new heaven and a new earth, you are going to be perfectly, completely satisfied, you're going to be filled with pleasure. Because at His right hand are pleasures forever more. He came richly to satisfy us. Sin doesn't satisfy. Sin actually starves us, it starves our souls, it tries to lure us into addictions and then deprives us of all joy until we are enslaved to that which gives us nothing but starvation. Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly. He came to satisfy.

And He says, He came to raise up the elect on the final day. Look at verses 38-40, Jesus said, "'For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but to do the will of Him who sent me. And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that He has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in Him shall have eternal life, and I will raise Him up at the last day.'" So, Jesus came to raise us up, what does that mean? To call us out of our graves, to give us resurrection bodies, that we will live in glorious resurrection bodies in a resurrected world, filled with His glory forever and ever, He came to do that. So, He descended from heaven to earth to give us final resurrection.

He came to feed us so that we would never die. Look at verses 47-50, He said, "I tell you the truth, he who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died, but here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die." Well, Jesus doesn't mean there merely physical death, we know that Christians die physically, but the Book of Revelation speaks of a second death, which is eternal torment in Hell. And Jesus descended from heaven to earth that He might rescue us from hearing, apply to us those dreadful words, "Depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." That is the true death.

And Jesus gave His flesh on the cross, He gave His body that we might eat by faith and not die eternally. So, He gave His flesh for the life of the world. Look at verse 51, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this flesh, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." This is the mission Jesus came down from heaven to do, lavish generosity to the sinners of the world, and He came to feed us with His flesh that we might live eternally.

Now, no Christmas gift can possibly compare with that, it doesn't matter what's wrapped under the tree waiting for you or what gifts have yet to be bought, if you're anything like me. Alright, let's not talk about that. Every year, I resolve to do better and not procrastinate. I told the postman, I promised him, I said, "A year from now, actually 11 months from now, in two weeks, I'm going to be here." And he said, "Yeah, right." I keep trying not to procrastinate on gifts, but it doesn't matter what gifts we select, whether from Amazon or you go to the mall or whatever, there is no gift that you can give that is eternal.

I don't even think - I think the average Christmas gift, like 19 out of 20 toys that are given under the tree break within one year, one out of 20 makes it through a year, isn't that amazing. Sorry, kids. That's what's coming your way. But you know, right in the text, in verse 27, it says, "Do not labor for the food that spoils." Don't labor for things that don't satisfy, don't labor for things that don't matter, don't put your hopes on that, but instead for the food that feeds you for all eternity, that gives you eternal life. Labor for that.

Well, we need to see though, right in the text, the divisive nature of Jesus's mission. You know, you think, this is such good news, this is such a great story, why doesn't the world care about it? Why is the world all wrapped up in the materialism, wrapped up in the trappings of Christmas and the symbolism of Christmas, but without the reality and no concern about Christ and His gift? It's because of the divisive nature of the mission itself. Jesus said, "Do not suppose that I came to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." And so, He came to divide people, and you see it right in the text, the divisive nature of Jesus's mission.

Well, this gift that He came to give is received only by faith, that's the only way we can receive this gift. Look at verse 28 and 29, "They asked Him, 'What must we do to do the works of God? To do the work God requires.' Jesus answered, 'The work of God is this, to believe in the one He has sent.'" Do you see that? We always are saying, what can I do? What good work can I do to feel better about myself. And there are all kinds of charities, like every time you walk in the supermarket, you can drop some coins into The Salvation Army pot, there are all kinds of charities people can give to and they're good charities. But some people are convinced that by these kinds of actions, they can be paying for their sins. To the unbeliever, to the outsider, to the sinner who's outside of the grace of God, that comes and says, "Look, I've got it; I know I'm a sinner. What good work must I do to gain eternal life?" Jesus says right in this text, "'This is the work of God, believe in the one He has sent.'"

Believe in the name of the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. There's no other salvation. He says it many times in this passage, not just once. Look at verse 35, "Jesus declared, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty." So, to come to Christ means you'll never go hungry, to believe in Christ means you'll never be thirsty, that means to come to Christ, equals to believe in Christ, it's the same thing. So, you come to Christ not by moving yourself geographically or coming forward at an invitation, but in your heart believing that Jesus is the Son of God and died for your sins. So, to come to Him as a sinner and to feed on Him, on His work on the cross, where He gave His flesh for the life of the world, that is salvation. That's the work that God has for you to do.

But here's the thing, no one can do that unless God works it in them by His sovereign grace. No one, you can't of your own free will, over your own choice, up and do this. He says it very, very plainly, and that's why there's a division in this passage, many people resisted Jesus's teaching. Look at verse 36, "'But as I have told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe.'" And again, verses 41-43, "At this, the Jews began to grumble about Him because He said, 'I am the bread that came down from heaven.' They said, 'Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can He now say, I came down from heaven.' 'Stop grumbling among yourselves,' Jesus answered.”

Well, the division actually intensified, got worse as the chapter went on. Look at verse 51-55, "He said, 'I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.'" Verse 52, "Then the Jews began to argue, sharply among themselves, 'How can this man give us His flesh to eat?' Jesus said to them, 'I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up the last day, for my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.'" Well, verse 60, "On hearing it, many of His disciples said," I think a vast understatement "'This is a hard teaching, who can accept it?'" I might actually intensify it and say, "This is actually an impossible teaching, for the natural man to accept, impossible actually." And then in Verse 66, we have this incredible statement, "From that time, many of His disciples turned back and no longer followed Him." It's staggering, because of this teaching, because He said, "Eat my flesh and drink my blood." They turned back and would no longer follow. So, there's a division here right away, between believers and unbelievers.

And so, in the middle of that, explaining all of that, we have the absolute sovereignty of God over salvation, plainly asserted. It is a moral and spiritual impossibility for anyone to come to Jesus unless the Father draws him or her, it's impossible. Look at verse 43 and 44, "'Stop grumbling among yourselves.' And Jesus answered, 'No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up at the last day.'" No one can equal; it is impossible for anyone to do this on their own, the Father has to draw you. The Father has to draw – and now I'm speaking to Christians - the Father has to draw your co-workers and relatives and neighbors and people you're trying to share with in this season, He has to draw them, or they'll never come. But secondly, if the Father does draw the person, they will inevitably come, isn't that awesome? If the Father is at work in someone's heart, drawing them, they will most certainly come. Look at Verse 37, "'All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me, I will never drive away.'" So, it's a moral and spiritual impossibility for anyone that the Father is drawing by the Spirit to refuse, they're going to come. And thirdly, if the person does in fact come to Christ by faith, it is a moral and spiritual impossibility for Jesus to lose any of them, they will all of them be raised on the final day. Look what He says in verse 39, "'And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that the Father has given me. But will raise them up at the last day.'" I find that incredibly encouraging. Isn't it?

And now I know I am a Christian. I was thinking about this, I was listening to a Christmas hymn just the other day. I hadn't heard it in a while, and it talked about how the Father's love pierced into the singer's heart, and I thought that was it. I was resisting, I was hardened, I wouldn't, I didn't want to be a Christian, I thought they were weird, I don't want to go on the fall retreat, no way, etcetera. And then the Lord reached through all that hardness by His hand of sovereign grace, the Father reached out and drew me powerfully and tenderly into His kingdom. And if you're a Christian, you're listening to me today, He did the same to you. Different way, different time, different people spoke to you, but He did the same work in your heart that He did in mine. And that's why you celebrate Christmas as a Christian and not as a pagan, because God in His sovereign grace worked it in you. Simple faith, look at verse 40, "'For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in Him shall have eternal life, and I will raise Him up at the last day.'"

So, we have a question at the end of this chapter, who can accept such a difficult teaching? It's an important question, isn't it? Look at verse 60, "On hearing it. Many of his disciples said, 'This is a hard teaching, who can accept it?' Aware that His disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, 'Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of man ascend back to where He was? To where He was before. The Spirit gives life, the flesh counts for nothing. The words I spoke in to you are Spirit, and they are life, yet there are some of you who do not believe.' For Jesus had known from the beginning, which of them did not believe and who would betray Him? He went on to say, 'This is why I told you, no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.'" Verse 66, "'From this time, many of His disciples turned back and no longer followed Him. 'You do not want to leave too, do you?’ Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy one of God.'" Peter said it for all of us, we have nowhere else to go. Jesus, you are the word of God and you have the words of life. Where else can we go? Now, if he had said a little more, he said, "I don't get it, the eat my flesh, drink my blood thing makes no sense to me, but I know who you are. And maybe in due time, I'll understand the eat flesh, drink blood thing, but I know who you are, you are the holy one of God?" Jesus's answer was this, "Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? And yet one of you is a devil." And so by His sovereign grace, He reaches out and chooses those whom He gave, the Father gave to the Son from before the foundation of the world, that's what's going on when we celebrate Christmas, not just this time, but year round.

So, the call of Jesus's mission is this; believe and live, or we could say, believe and feast and live, how about that? Believe and feast and live. At the end of this gospel, it explains the whole thing, “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not recorded in this book, but these are written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.” That's the central message of this chapter and of the whole gospel.

Will you labor for the food that spoils? Or for the food that endures to eternal life, which Jesus alone can give you? What are you going to set your heart on, not just Christmas time, but year-round? Are you going to live for created things? Are you going to live for the food that spoils, or you're going to live for the eternal things that God has given you in Jesus? And so, I yearn for all of you to believe in Christ, to trust in Him. I know this time of year, there are some people that visit Church and they come and there'll be some Christmas Eve. Every year, Christmas Eve, I see a lot of people that I don't recognize, some of them are relatives, but sometimes they just come because they want to be in a Christmas service, and they do it the Sunday before Christmas, or they'll do it on Christmas Eve or something like that. They just want to get close, they want to have some religious feelings and all that. If you're like that, can I just plead with you? Trust in Christ, acknowledge that you're a sinner. Acknowledge and feast on Jesus by faith, say, "I believe that your body was sent into the world to die on the cross for my sins, and that God raised you physically from the dead in a resurrection body. I believe that, I trust in you, forgive me for my sins."

Now, if you're a Christian, I'm going to say the same thing to you, "Feast on Christ through faith." It's amazing how many times you have to do that. I mean, even just recently, I was in a situation, I was like, "Alright," and I just closed my eyes and I said, "I need to believe in you, Jesus, right now." Because circumstances overwhelm you, you could be overwhelmed with shopping, you could be overwhelmed with grief and an affliction, you could be overwhelmed with busyness or fatigue, whatever, it doesn't matter. You just close your eyes and say, "Lord Jesus, you're my savior, you're my life. I want to walk by faith and not by sight, I trust in you, afresh and anew." That's what we need to do, we feed on Him by faith, based on His word, and guard your hearts from laboring for the food that spoils, you know it's a temptation.

You know that all of the swirl of allure of the world and all that, it's constantly assaulting our souls and drawing us away from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. And embrace the absolute sovereignty of God over salvation. Let's be faithful as witnesses, amen. Let's be faithful to share the Gospel, but let's not be children as we do it, let's be mindful of the fact that most of the people we're going to talk to, are going to reject. But let's be confident that there going to be some that God shows before the foundation of the world that haven't been converted yet, and the father is going to use you to share the gospel and through the words of the Gospel as you share, He's going to powerfully draw those sinners to faith in Christ. So, let's be active in doing that, throughout this week and throughout the year, and let's delight in Christ, let's realize what we have yet to come. The best things are yet to come. Jesus said in Matthew 8, "I tell you the truth, many are going to come from the east and the west, and they're going to take their places, at the banqueting table in the Kingdom of Heaven with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." So, picture that feast that's yet to come, and let's be involved in missions. I love Jonathan and Gohar McDonald, I love their commitment to Christ, I love all of the workers that we've sent out around the world to lead others to Christ. I'm grateful for that. I'm pleading with you, financially, let's make sacrifice to make our Lottie Moon offering goal. Let's do that. Look at yourself, look at what you've given or what you have given, and say, "Lord, what do you want me to do?" Give yourself to the Lord first in commitment and then to the mission work as the Lord commands.

Now, let me say one thing, I don't usually mention this, but don't forget to give to the church budget too, okay? We're a little bit behind on the budget, I usually don't mention it, but it's not either, or. It's both, and. So, our budget enables us to reach out here in this community, enables us to do the works we have to do here, so just as you're making a commitment financially and all that, pray about what the Lord would have you do and be generous. One final word before I pray, remember, we're going to be praying this week, Wednesday morning at 6:00 AM, and then keep doing that throughout the season.

So, if you've got some time, maybe you have a little more time, maybe you're off from work, join us in praying. We're praying for God to do a work, a supernatural work of holiness in this church, and a supernatural work of evangelistic fruitfulness and power reaching out. We've had more than 20 people joining with us for prayer, come and join us, we'd love to have you. Close with me in prayer.

Father, we thank you that you sent your Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, He descended from Heaven to Earth to make us rich. We think about that hymn, Good King Wenceslas, and how the king looked down into the storm and the cold and saw someone suffering and not making it. And he was moved with compassion. How much greater, O Lord, did you see from your holy throne? How we would not make it on judgment day, a storm of judgment was coming our way, and we were not ready. Thank you Jesus, for taking on flesh and dying on the cross, shedding your blood that we might live forever. Enable us by faith to feed on your death and your resurrection, that we might live forever, in Jesus name. Amen.

Church History: Zinzendorf

Oh, man, well, I love church history, and one of the things that I love to do is just learn some of the great stories of brothers and sisters in Christ that have gone before us, and one of my heroes is Count Nicolaus von Zinzendorf who headed for many, many years the Moravian enclave or community of Herrnhut. Now, Nicholas von Zinzendorf was born in the year 1700, and he was raised in a pious German home surrounded by German piety, but he was really not walking a Christian life until he was a university student in Wittenberg, almost about 200 years after Martin Luther posted the 95 thesis. He was there in Wittenberg, it was 1719. And he was in a museum, and he saw a painting of Christ with a crown of thorns on His head and blood coming down His face, and there was a caption under the painting, and it said this, "All this I have done for you, what are you doing for me?"  Well, that became a life changing moment for him. He looked at his life and he realized that he was not, as the text says that you just heard read for us, “walking in a manner worthy of the calling that he had received.” Now it's easy to hear some challenge like that, and start going over into works and think, "Oh, now we have to earn Jesus's blood, we have to earn the forgiveness," that's not true. And Zinzendorf didn't hear it that way, but he wanted to live a life worthy of the calling.

And as we come now to Ephesians chapter 4, and we're coming to a whole new section in the Book of Ephesians. To some degree, there's a bit of a continental divide between Ephesians 1-3 and Ephesians 4-6. A major transition in the letter from deep doctrine, amazing doctrine, or you could even say soaring doctrine to lifestyle, “How then shall we live?” Ephesians 1-3 has soared over the redemptive plan of God almost like a satellite looking down on the surface of the Earth and you can see to the edge of the Earth east and west, and this grand, glorious, majestic work of God in Ephesians 1-3. Like Ephesians 1, right away, Paul who wrote Ephesians, “praise God for His eternal purposes in Christ, how God, even before the foundation of the world loved us and chose us and predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He, Christ, might be the firstborn, among many brothers and how He adopted us and He redeemed us by the blood of Christ, how by the shed blood of Christ we have received forgiveness of sins.” He says that the Ephesians, “having heard the word of truth, the Gospel of their salvation, having believed it,” they were included in Christ. And Paul there at the end of Ephesians 1 prays that they would, that the “eyes of their heart would be enlightened” so that they would understand these glorious spiritual things that have happened to them. That they would know the hope of their calling and the riches of the inherited and is waiting for all of us in Heaven. How rich we are, we're going to be in Heaven and the incredible power is at work in us to get us from Earth to that heavenly life. Hope, riches and power. And He prays for that, and He likens the power at work in our lives to the very same power that was at work in Jesus when God raised Christ from the dead physically, and ascended Him through the heavens, physically, and He went through the heavenly realms, and sits at the right hand of Almighty God and rules over all things in Heaven and Earth for the benefit of His Church.

That same power was at work in us, Ephesians 2, because we were “dead in our transgressions and sins,” and we were enslaved to sin. We were in Satan's dark kingdom and we were “by nature objects of wrath.” I don't think we can meditate on that too much. We were under the wrath of God for our sins, and if we had died in that state, we would have been eternally condemned, justly condemned for our sins. But God because of the richness of His mercy in Christ. “Even when we were dead in our transgressions and sins, God made us alive with Christ, and He raised us from the dead spiritually and through union with Christ, we are together with Christ seated with Him at the right hand of God in the heavenly realms.” And he made it very, very plain, it is by grace that we have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it's the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. And so we have this 100,000 feet pie like in orbit looking down at all of these grand and glorious things. And that we would know that we as Gentiles, at one time, were outsiders. We were on the outside, we were aliens and strangers, we were “without hope and without God in the world.” But God brought us close, even though we were aliens and strangers, He brought us close and He did an amazing thing with Gentiles like us, He destroyed the “barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” that kept us as outsiders. In the Old Covenant, there were laws and regulations, circumcision, dietary laws, all of that, that separated Jews and Gentiles, He removed all of that through the body, through the death of Christ. And he's brought us in and now all of us together, to borrow a bit of an image from 1 Peter, we are “living stones now built on the foundation of Christ”, and there's this glorious spiritual temple that's rising higher and higher, it's getting more and more majestic all the time. This is the Church of Jesus Christ and we as Christians, we're included, eternally included. We are “living stones” in the walls of  this temple that's rising to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit, Ephesians 2.

And Paul wanted the Ephesian Christians to know of his ministry. He's about to pray for them in an amazing way which we looked at over the last four weeks. That he want them to know who he is. He's the apostle of the Gentiles, and he was called, specifically called, to preach the “unsearchable riches of Christ.” Let me think about that, the “unsearchable riches of Christ,” and that's his ministry, the privilege he has, the gifting he has, the role that he has to preach and to be an instrument of salvation for Gentiles who are lost to come over and hear the Gospel and be included in this grand, glorious work that God's doing, this temple that's rising and becoming more and more glorious, and larger and larger all the time. Every sinner that comes over. That was Matt Blackstone and work that he's doing overseas and that other servants are doing. Every time someone hears with faith the Gospel of Christ, the temple, this invisible spiritual temple is getting bigger and more glorious. It's the work that God's doing in the world.

And Paul stops and prays for the Ephesian Christians, we spent four weeks on this, and how he prays that they would understand and have strength through the Spirit, to grasp the infinite dimensions of Christ's love for us. “How wide, and long, and high, and deep is the love of Christ?” That we'd be “strengthened through the Spirit in our inner man,” to grasp that and that there's this weighty massive conception of the love of Christ for us, that all of us underestimates, every last one of us and that we actually would underestimate a little less that God would “pour out on us through the Spirit,” a sense and experience a feeling of that love that goes beyond knowledge, that we would be “filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” and he finishes that whole section of that magnificent doxology. "Now to Him who is able to do immeasurable, more than all we ask or imagine according to His power that's at work in us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever, amen."

Major Transition: From Doctrine to Lifestyle

So that's Ephesians 1-3, and as Paul has given us this view 100,000 feet above looking down, he is now making a transition, that's the doctrine. How then shall we live? What kind of life are we going to be living? And he says that we should “live a life worthy of our calling.” That's the immediate command here, and that's going to stand over the rest of the book. For the rest of the book, we're going to keep going back again and again to this statement, this desire, this command that Paul has to “live a life worthy of the calling that we have.”

Now immediately he's going to talk about unity, and the need that we have to “make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit” and that's today's message. But then he's going to transition and go from unity to diversity. And he's going to talk about the diversity of spiritual gifts and how the unity then diversity leads to maturity, to the maturity that all of us have in Christ, that we will grow up into full maturity in Christ. So the spiritual gifts are given to bring the full-elect body of Christ from dead in transgressions and sins across the line into life in Christ, and then up into full maturity. That's what's going on. So, we're going to see that that's part of living a life worthy of the calling we receive, using our spiritual gifts.

Then he's going to talk about in Ephesians 4, 17-24, living a life of heart purity, hating sin. No longer thinking like the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking,” their darkened minds, but being made new in the attitude of our minds and living and thinking as Christ would have us do, like God in true righteousness and holiness. And he's going to give us details of this holy life, that we are to live, lots of details, Ephesians 4:25 to 5:21: Negatives and positives things we must not do; Lying, sinful anger, unforgiveness, stealing, laziness, evil speech, bitterness, brawling, some of you struggle with brawling and I'm telling you, you have to put that to death. So we're going to get serious about that sin of brawling. And all sins, all things that are not worthy of the calling that we have, negative things slander and sexual immorality of “which there must not be even a hint in this congregation.” Negatively things we must not do.

And then positively, by contrast, what we must do; hard work, using the fruit of our labor to help the needy not stealing, but working hard and using our mouths to bless people not to tear them down or to liars or slander, being kind and compassionate, forgiving one another, and worshipping together by the Spirit, summed up in that beautiful command in Ephesians 5:18, that we should “no longer be drunk with wine which leads to debauchery, but instead be being filled with the Spirit.”

And goes from that into Christian marriage, so beautifully. I had the privilege this morning in the BFL class of touching on that, and the beauty of a Christian marriage of wives submitting to their husbands as to the Lord, and husbands loving their wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up. We're going to see all of that as part of living a life worthy of the calling that we have. And then Christian parenting, how fathers are two to train up their children “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,” and children are to obey and submit to their parents. And then the master-slave relationship we're going to talk about all that, all of these relationships by the power of the Spirit, living a life worthy of the calling that we have received. And then he ends up with spiritual warfare. We're going to have time to do all of that God willing.

Paul’s Moral Authority and Overarching Command

So all of that, that's where we're going, where we’ve been and where we're going. So we're a bit at a continental divide now, as we turn from doctrine into the kind of life that we have and he gives us this overarching command. Verse one, "As a prisoner for the Lord, then or therefore, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received." Now this calling is a magnificent thing. I love what Daniel was doing in worship, as he was talking about that. And then we looked at And Can it Be. And I just think that's beautiful. Charles Wesley gave us a great picture of it. The calling is the sovereign work of God similar to his statement. "Let there be light," and there's light, or similar to what Jesus did with Lazarus when he calls out, "Lazarus come forth," and there's life, and then obedience. This is a sovereign calling of God, a powerful thing which creates that which it calls. When God as soon as God says, "I think the word light, there's like, "Let there be light," and there's light, and so God does that in our hearts the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ that radiates, and we see it. That's our calling, and we have this calling.

Our Calling: Out of Spiritual Death to Perfection in Christ

Now, God's eternal purpose is clearly stated, if you look back at Ephesians 1:4, I covered it in summary a minute ago, but look at it Ephesians 1:4, He God the Father “chose us in Him,” God the Son, Christ, “before the creation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him,” or, “in His sight,” that's our calling, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. “In love, He predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ.” So we were chosen and predestined. Now, I'm going to bring in Romans 8 to talk more about this calling. For "Those whom God foreknew He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom He predestined, He also called,” with the Gospel by the sovereign power of God, and “those whom He called, He also justified, and those whom He justified, He also glorified."

So that's what it means. Our calling is to be glorified, it's to be completely conformed to Christ in every way. Eternally predestined to be conformed to Christ in every way, to love what Christ loves and hate what Christ hates. To yearn for and desire, what Christ desires and to choose what Christ would choose and to reject what Christ rejects and to think like Christ thinks about every topic. No disagreement at all from the mind of Christ that we have the mind of Christ and we would think like Christ thinks. And our emotions, we would feel and rejoice and grieve like Christ would rejoice, and grieve in every way conform. And then it goes actually to our bodies that we in the end will be perfectly conformed to Jesus's glorious resurrection body. How awesome is that? Paul captures it I think very well in Philippians 3:21 talks about Jesus, “by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies and make them like his glorious body.” How awesome is that? We're going to be conformed to Christ, resurrection body. So that's our calling. The calling we have received is the sovereign power of God to rescue us from spiritual death described in Ephesians 2: 1-3 in “Satan's dark kingdom, enslaved to our lusts and passions, living dead even while we lived we were dead, spiritually.” “By nature objects of wrath” out of that into life, eternal life, and then increasingly conformity to Christ in every respect until at last, we share a glorious resurrection body with Christ. That's our calling.

Now, at present, we believe that we Christians are spiritually positionally in the heavenly realms with Christ, we're seated with Christ in the heavenly realms. If you don't believe me, look again. Ephesians 2:4-6, “but because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,” Ephesians 2:5, “made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions, it's by grace you have been saved,” Here it is, Ephesians 2:6, "And God raised us up with Christ, and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms, in Christ Jesus."

You're already there, positionally you are already in the heavenly realms in Christ through your union with Christ. But you are to live a life worthy of that. You are to live here on Earth a life worthy of your heavenly position united with Christ. So we have what Paul calls in Philippians 3, a sense of “upward calling of God in Christ Jesus,” a sense of upward calling. So for the rest of our lives, we're straining after a life worthy of this perfection. So he says in Philippians 3:12-14. "Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining” pressing, “toward what lies, ahead, I press on for the upward call of God on my life in Christ Jesus,” Philippians 3:14. So Jesus took hold of us, by the sovereign grip of grace for the purpose of our total perfection in Christ. He's got a hold of us and He's never going to let us go that corresponds to us pressing day after day to take hold of Him for the same purpose, perfection. So that's how I hear live a life worthy of the calling. Live a life worthy of the calling. Our heavenly calling. So we're going to press on, we're going to be holy because He is holy. Ultimately, our calling is heaven itself, the New Heavens, the New Earth, the New Jerusalem, the home of righteousness, where only holy people can dwell where everything is perfectly pure and free from sin, where the entire redeemed in the universe will live in a redeemed universe, a New Heaven, New Earth. That's our heavenly calling and so we are to live a life worthy of that.

What is a Life “Worthy” of That Calling?

Now, what does that mean? To walk in a manner worthy? Well worthy means something that conforms or is proportional to that high calling. It lines up with it, it reflects it, it's caused by it, it's completely synced up with it. We are royalty. We are future kings and queens under the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, that's what we are, we're to live like it. We're to live, like royal sons and daughters. We are sons and daughters adopted and beloved children, so we have full access to the throne room of God, we should live like it, we should live a life worthy by going regularly into the throne of grace and making great requests of him, we should think like that.

Unity is the Goal of Christ’s Redemption

So Paul's going to be describing this life worthy of the calling that we received over the next three chapters, and He begins with an urgent appeal for Christian unity. This is the central command here, Verse 3, "Maintain unity in the Spirit." So look at verse 3. NIV gives it this way. "Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace." The First thing he says is this issue of unity. Unity is the goal of Christ's redemption in the universe. That's what he's doing, go back and look at Ephesians 1:10, we've seen this before, but Ephesians 1:10, a very significant statement, how God made known to us the mystery of His will He gave us wisdom to know what He's doing. What is he doing well in Ephesians 1:10 it says that he is “bringing all things in Heaven and on Earth together under one head, even Christ.” Remember when I preached on that in Ephesians 1:10, I said sin has had the effect in the universe spiritually and physically, of a fragmentation grenade. Remember that blew it to bits hurdling away from the center away from God. Christ, God, His redeeming work through Christ is to reverse that and bring it back together and make it one. All things together, one under Christ, that's what He's doing.

Unity is the Essence of the Spiritual Temple Christ is Building

And so He's doing this work of redemption of restoration and unity is the essence of this work in the Church, it's the essence of the spiritual temple, that He's building. Remember, I described that at the end of Ephesians 2. And so we, living stones, quarried from “every nation and tribe and language, and people all over the world,” through repentance and faith in Christ we're brought in and we are made one together with other brothers and sisters in the walls of this spiritual temple. So look again at Ephesians 2:12 and following, it says "You were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world, you were outsiders, you were out in the cold, you were distant, you were out there." But now Ephesians 2:13 "In Christ Jesus, you who were once far away have been brought near." You see that?  So we were like pieces of a fragmentation grenade Flying away from God, he stopped that turned us around, through repentance and faith, and brought us back together with other brothers and sisters who He did the same thing in them as well, and brought us together to make us one in this majestic spiritual temple, that's rising. And so there's this togetherness language in Ephesians 2:14-16. Listen again "For He,” Christ, “He Himself is our peace, who has made the two, one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing in His flesh the Law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in Himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace and in this one body, to reconcile both of them to God through the cross by which He put to death their hostility.” Skip ahead to verses 21, 22, Ephesians 2, 21-22, “in Him,” in Christ “the whole building is joined together,” there's a picture of unity right joined together to become a holy temple in the Lord and in Him, you too are being built together there it is again, “to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit.”

Unity is Patterned After the Trinity

Now, I never tire of saying that this unity that we have in mind here is patterned after the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, it's an infinite mystery, the Godhead, but the Father and the Son and the Spirit, three persons of God perfectly one. And this work of unification that God is doing through the Gospel, puts the Gospel itself on display. And so in John 17, He prays that all who hear this Gospel message may be one, Father, Jesus Christ says, “Father that they may be one, as you and I are one. I in you, they in me. May they be brought to complete unity,” progressively perfected in unity, “to let the world know that you sent me.” You see, so we put the Gospel on display as we increasingly and more perfectly become one with each other. This is a huge deal. This is what God is doing in the world. 

The Focus: Church Unity

So the focus here is on church unity. Paul has in mind here, not only the universal Body of Christ, what we call the mystical communion of Christ, the invisible Body of Christ. That's true, that's in his mind, but he's also talking about the local church. He's talking about the Ephesians church there in Asia Minor had a specific place in time where they'd assembled to worship and all that. I don't think they had a website, I don't think they had an email address, I'm sure of that. But they definitely had a physical location where you could go to at a certain time And worship with them. The local church, and so he has in mind the unity of a local church, not just the spiritual or mystical unity of the Body of Christ. He yearns therefore for local churches to put on display the supernatural unity, that is ours in Christ. He knows, as Jesus prayed, that as the Church earnestly loves one another, and forgives one another, and is kind to one another, and serves one another and use spiritual gifts in one another's lives that will put the Gospel on display for the watching, outsider, cold distant world. And they'll say, “I want in. I want to be part of whatever God's doing there.” That's what he's praying for that a local church will put that on display. But by contrast, if the church is fractious, and divided, and unforgiving, and bitter, and living in sin, it will have zero attractional power to the world. So this is a big, big deal.

Unity is Already Ours

Now, unity is already ours in Christ, we have it. It's something we already have spiritually, positionally we are all united with Christ through faith and up in the heavenly realms, positionally. All of us around the world, positionally one. So, Paul uses language here of “maintain” or “keep” or “protect” that unity. It's not something we have to go achieve it's something we have to protect. It's already ours in Christ. So the idea here is to keep, protect, defend against all attacks, that's the idea. This unity has been won for us at the cross, it's been applied to us by the Spirit, so now we have to live it out and protect it from all attacks. So, many of the New Testament commands to us are, “This is what you are now live it. This is what's true of you now live it out.” And so we have this issue, consistent issue of unity in the church. 

Consistent Issue in the New Testament

How many of the Epistles deal with this? First Corinthians that church was ripped apart by factions and divisions. “I follow Paul, I follow Peter, I follow Paul, I follow Jesus,” and so he says, "I plead with you that you would be perfectly united in mind and thought, and there'd be no divisions among you." Corinthians. Same thing in the sweet letter to the Philippians. You have these two ladies, Euodia and Syntyche who are just not getting along. And they're the only ones we know by name, but we know in general he's pleading with them, the Philippians he said, “if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from His love, any fellowship with His Spirit of any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility, consider others better than yourself. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but the interests of others, and you should have this mind in you, which was also in Christ.” And then that incredible statement about Christ humility. So it's going on in Philippians as well. Galatians they're ripping each other apart, because of false doctrine like wild beasts they’re biting and devouring each other, they need to be one. The acts of the flesh or factions, divisions, fits of rage, and all of that going on in Galatians. The Romans. He has a whole chapter in Romans 14, on church unity especially Jew-Gentile unity. About disputable, debatable issues. So every church struggles with this, every church does, and we have to embrace our responsibility and supernatural effort is required.

Conquering the Threefold Enemy

Look again at verses 2 and 3, "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. This effort, this will not be easy to do. Our unity as a church, first term's unity will be under constant assault as long as this church lives. Even down to person A and person B, there's going to be constant assault, the world, the flesh, the devil, those ancient enemies, will come after our unity and seek to divide it. So many different ways, but that's Satan's goal. And so we have to understand how the flesh, our own fanatical commitment to self-interest, destroys unity. And we have to be mindful of how Satan cleverly orchestrates temptations and circumstances that our flesh responds to to divide unity, and how the world is going to be pulling on us and attacking us, alluring us with materialism, and all that, to destroy unity, or persecuting in some parts of the world and probably increasingly in this part of the world. There's going to be hostility and persecution, to the point that brothers and sisters might actually even betray each other to the authorities, destroying unity so the world, the flesh, and the devil are going to be constantly assaulting our unity, and we have to make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. So what this means is we have to be on this all the time, we have to be alert to this issue all the time.

 Make Every Effort

“If you're offering your gift at the altar,” Jesus said, "And there you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled with your brother, then come and offer your gift.” So there's a sense of diligence and speed, quickness. Later in Ephesians, He's going to say, "Be angry but do not sin, and do not let the sun go down while you're still angry.” Same kind of teaching urgently quickly deal with anything that would break your horizontal fellowship with someone else. Our church covenant, says, “to be slow to take offense and always ready for reconciliation, mindful of the rules of our Savior to secure it without delay.” So the image I have here is of constant vigilance on the walls. And we're walking and we're doing a patrol through the night and we're just going to be watching for any attacks on our unity and we're going to be zealous.

Be Completely Humble and Gentle

In order to do this, we have to be completely humble like I said, our flesh fanatical commitment to self, the Gospel destroys our pride doesn't, amen. “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” "Be completely humble." He says "With all humility." Pride destroys more churches than any other sin. And so, thinking, You don't need God's grace, thinking you're better than other people pushing your own agenda, you've got an idea of what's best, and you push it forward because you have a special interest, and you're pushing that. That creates factions and divisions, and we are to be completely humble. I tell you, there's enough power for humbling in the Gospel, isn't there? Doesn't the cross of Christ humble us? Don't we come as broken sinners and need forgiveness? So, be completely humbled by the bloody cross of Christ and be gentle. There's a gentleness he talks about here "Be completely humble and gentle." I have a picture of Jesus as the Lamb of God. And the Holy Spirit as a dove coming down out of heaven and resting on the Lamb of God. There's a gentleness there, it's the only description, I ever find that Jesus gives of Himself. Where He says "I am gentle and humble in heart, and you'll find rest for your souls." There's a gentleness, a mildness.

Hasn't this weather been amazing? Any of you hot? I'm really hot right now. I've been here for 17 plus years. It's hard to preach to a hot crowd, alright? And congregation. So hang in there, fan yourselves alright. But this weather has been so mild. And I was out in the sunshine, yesterday, I was waiting for Calvin's basketball game to start, and I was just sitting in the sunshine and this gentle breeze came across my face as I was just waiting there, and I just closed my eyes and I said, "Yes, yes, yes, Lord, December in North Carolina. Thank you. Thank you." I don't miss the blizzards I don't miss the cold. I know there's almost zero chance of a white Christmas alright. Now, I've been told whether could change in a while. I know it could still happen. You kids out there, you're hoping for a white Christmas, not looking good right now, but it's so mild, and pleasant like it's August or September or something like that. But there's just this mildness not a sharpness or harshness, that just destroys fellowship. “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger,” Proverbs 15:1.

Be Patient, Bearing with One Another in Love

Let's be mild with each other, and let's be patient, bearing with one another in love He says, "Be long-suffering, be like God who puts up with so much sin, He is not quick to anger." Let's bear with it. I found the longer you're with someone, the more their habits start to grate on you. Alright, if you ever been on a long mission trip with a small group of people, you know what I'm saying? After a while... Never mind. But anyway, it just starts to happen. And I'm sure it's happening the other way too, and we have to make every effort to cover people sins with forgiveness and to bear with their habits that irksome and annoying

Unity of the Spirit in a Bond of Peace

Make every effort it says to keep it says the unity of the Spirit, it is the Spirit that does this for us, the Spirit gives us unity and makes us one, it's beautiful to see. You go overseas and there's a brother or sister in Christ, don't even speak the same language, never met. There's a unity between us and that brother or sister through the Spirit. "In the bond of peace," the text says. And what I think of, there is both the status of peace that we have, justified by faith, with Christ, we have peace with God, God at peace with us, we at peace with God. That's fine, that's the basis of it. But then there's that peacefulness. A feeling of serenity. He never flies off the handle He is a serene being. And so there is a status of peace we have with each other, but then there's a peacefulness in the relationship such as Philippians 4:6-7. "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And the peace of God, I would say peacefulness, from God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." So I think that's what it means to keep the unity of the “Spirit in a bond of peacefulness with each other.” So we're getting along well with each other, and we're at peace with each other and that's a delightful thing.

Stunning Assertions of Doctrinal Truth: Seven-Fold Unity

And then in verses 4-6, He gives the seven-fold basis of our unity. “There is one body and one Spirit just as you were called to one hope when you were called. One Lord, one faith, One baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all, and through all and in all.” This is a stunning assertion of the doctrinal basis of our unity, seven-fold Unity, how perfectly one we already are if we are in Christ. And note the Trinity here.

The Trinity: The Basis for All Unity

There's, “one body and one Spirit just as you were called to one hope are called.” One Lord, that's Jesus. One faith, one baptism. One God and Father of all. That's the God the Father. So God the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, all here, the perfect unity of God, how God is perfectly one with himself, the Father, the Son, the Spirit perfectly one, never a shifting shadow of disagreement between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, that's how we are to be with each other. And that's a beautiful thing.

One Body

And he says, "There is one body." Christ is working one body in the world, there's one Lord, one body and he's not doing separate works in Iran and something different in China and something different here in North Carolina there is worldwide one body of Christ. And we're going to get this image more and more unfolded for us in detail in the next section, but this body growing and building itself up in love, together, one in Christ and one Spirit. We don't receive a different Spirit from someone else around the world when they come to faith in Christ, the same Holy Spirit indwells us. And “one hope when we were called.” So when you're having trouble in a Christian relationship, could be in marriage, could be with another brother or sister in Christ here in the church, we have one hope. We're going to the same destination. We're traveling to the same place. When we were missionaries in Japan, we had the privilege of being on the Shinkansen, the bullet train, and I love that thing. It was like flying on earth Magnetic Levitation, we're going 300 miles an hour. It was awesome. But we're all going to one destination believe me, alright. There's no one getting off half way there. And they would arrive within two seconds of their stated destination time. It was all computer-controlled and nothing can get in the way.

It's a picture of the sovereign grace of God, the redemptive plan of God we are all going, all of us, the elect, to the same place, we're going to Heaven. So when you're in a conflict with your spouse, with a friend, someone in a home fellowship, another Christian brother or sister, something's going on. Keep in mind we have one hope here, the same delight of Heaven, the same New Heaven and New Earth, and New Jerusalem we're going the same place. And then “one Lord, one faith, one baptism,” take them all together, but that's what Christmas is all about one Savior, Jesus Christ, that's one Lord, one faith in Him, that “if we confess with our mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts God raised Him from the dead. We will be saved.” One faith, and then, one baptism, which I take really is the baptism of the Spirit then testified to by water baptism. By one spirit, we're baptized into the “one body, one Lord, one faith, one baptism.”  It is for this reason, Christ came. And so we get to preach that. And I think about that. I mean, this time of year, we get to proclaim the Gospel, and I don't know that every one of you that listens to me now that you're born again, but that's what Christmas is for. God sent his son into the world, who died on the cross, this one Lord, to give us salvation by faith in Christ. And so, the call of this message on you, if you're outside of Christ, is to believe in him. There's no unity apart from that.

And then he finishes with this statement, “one God and Father of all who is over all, and through all and in all.” This is the Almighty God, who rules over Heaven and Earth, He is over all. So the picture of God seated on his throne, high and lifted up, and all the nations before Him are like “a drop in the bucket and dust on the scales and like grasshoppers before Him.” “One God and Father of all who is over all and through all,” for Paul says in Acts 17, “in Him, we live and move and have our being,” “and in all,” that's our unity. 

Self-Examination

So applications I've been weaving applications all the way through, but begin this by asking this question. "What am I doing right now with my life that's worthy of the calling that I have as a Christian? How am I living my life? Like picture in your mind, Christ crucified and him saying, "This is what I did for you. Now I'm calling on you to live for me. What are you doing for me?” What aspect of your life is conforming to this high calling that you have through Christ crucified? Is my attitude, and then ask it minutely, "Is my attitude about this brother in Christ, or that brother is it worthy of the calling that I've received? Is the movie I'm watching on Netflix worthy of the calling I've received? Is the way I'm spending my time and my money worthy of the calling that I have received?"

Sacrifice for the Body

I look on the Lottie Moon Christmas offering as a subset of living a life worthy of the calling, we have received. By the way friends, we are halfway to our goal, praise God. Isn't that encouraging. We're halfway there, but we're not going to make it all the way there without sacrifice. I would urge each person if you gave to Lottie Moon last year, calculate the percentage difference from our last year goal, which is $130,000 to our this year goals of $150,000. It's a certain percentage more. And then give that amount, more than you gave last year. It's a sacrifice, that's what the calling is. And so, your financial giving to missions is part of living a life worthy of the calling you've received. So everything comes under this.

Prize the Unity of the Church

Secondly, prize the unity of the church more than you ever have before. Be very careful not to have crosswords or dark thoughts about other brothers and sisters in Christ. Don't let the sun go down on your anger, be forgiving. If there's anything you need to forgive, then forgive. If something's happened and you've done something wrong, seek forgiveness, keep short accounts with one another. This is especially true in marriage, so husbands and wives give and receive forgiveness and “maintain unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace with each other.” It's the most important relationship in this church.

Be Prepared for Opposition

Thirdly, expect consistent satanic attack, on the unity of your marriage in this church. Expect it, don't be surprised. And take on these attributes of humility, and gentleness, and patience, and forgiveness with each other that's needed.

Work to Build Up the Body

And finally, let's work hard at the positive good works that build the body of Christ. I was so blessed, yesterday, to be part of the youth raking effort. And just to see you, young people, a number of you I've spoken to and some I haven't had a chance to thank, but thank you for being there and serving some senior adults or other folks that have a hard time looking after their homes, that actually maintains unity in the Spirit through the bond of peace when you go rake at someone's yard, when they can't do it. So when you visit someone in the hospital, you're doing good works that maintains unity in the spirit through the bond of peace. So do those good works. Let's be rich in good works.

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for this rich text there's a lot in here. We thank you for the things that we've learned in it. Father, I pray that you would make FBC Durham more unified than we've ever been before that we would be perfectly united in mind and thought help us to give and receive forgiveness to be humble with each other, especially help husbands and wives to do that, build that unity at the home and at the church and Lord help us to reach out with the Gospel to this community. Help us to share the Gospel plainly at this time when people can hear it from us. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Turn in your Bibles, if you would, to Ephesians chapter 3. We're going to be looking at the very end of this chapter now, as Kyle mentioned, for the fourth week, looking at this remarkable prayer that the Apostle Paul prays for the Ephesian Christians, and I believe for us, and that we can learn from it. And three weeks ago, I put a slide up, as you may remember, of the City of Kathmandu, which is in somewhat of a bowl, and you can see the city in the slide, the picture, and then above it a layer of smog and air pollution and cloud, and then above that, majestic mountains, the Himalayan mountain range, and a desire to set that image in your mind as somewhat of a parable of the ordinary Christian experience of how we Christians can live our lives in a smog covered haze with our head down, drizzled on all the time, and not aware of the mountain of majestic experience, of a sense of the “love of God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit” that is available for all of us. And that if we would just exert ourselves and believe that there is a better kind of experience of Christ's love available for us through the Holy Spirit, “the deposit guaranteeing our future inheritance” in Christ, then we will begin to climb. And by the power of God, we will start moving up higher and higher a mountain of Christian experience to some rarefied air that we didn't even know existed, and begin to breathe healthier, in this parable that I'm using this illustration, and have sights of the world that's coming in ways that will empower us for the mission God still has for us to do. And so, this is my fourth and final week preaching, and I think for many of you this whole theme has been new and unusual. Others have told me you've had these kinds of experiences, and that's been amazing for me. But you can see step-by-step Paul just taking the Ephesians and lifting them higher and higher and higher as he goes through this text.

A Magnificent Unfolding, Step by Step

Look at verses 14 and 15, Ephesians 3, Paul's prayer for the Ephesian Christians, he prays to the Father on their behalf. "For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom His whole family in Heaven and earth derives its name." So, he has a view of the whole church of God here, not just the Ephesian Christians, but he's kneeling and praying for them. Step two, that God would, strengthen the inner man of these Christian people, the inner being, “out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being.” So there's this sense of strengthening through the Holy Spirit inside you. Step three, so that Christ would, “settle down in your hearts through faith,” that you would have a daily powerful experience of feasting with Christ, that you would just live with Christ and He would settle down in your hearts through faith, verse 17. Step four, that they would be “rooted and established in love.” You see that again in verse 17, “you, being rooted and established in love.” When I preached that, a different picture of an oak tree and of a vast building, both of them a sense of rootedness, stability, strength, not being easily moved. But one of them more of a living picture of an oak tree with deep root systems sucking nutrients and moisture from the subterranean areas there, and then growing and just flourishing like a mighty oak tree, or then a building, like Jesus said, built on a solid rock as we sang earlier, immovable. “Rooted and established in love, that you would have power,” some translations just say "be able," but I think the whole theme of power just pervades this text, “so that you would have power together with all the saints.”

This was something that could happen to all Christians all over the world, all generations. We'll talk about that in a minute. But all Christians could have this kind of power, that you would be able to grasp, to comprehend the infinite dimensions of Christ's love for you. That you'd actually have a sense of it, and that you would actually in some ways, through your reading of the Scripture, through the power of the Holy Spirit, be able to travel in your minds to see the limits, and there are none, of Christ's love for you, how wide and long and high and deep. And to know that love that surpasses knowledge, something that goes beyond anything you've ever experienced or could know. Knowledge is part of it. It's not contrary to knowledge, it's just beyond knowledge. This love of Christ “poured into your heart by the Holy Spirit,” Romans 5:5. that you would have power to grasp that, to know that love that surpasses knowledge. And here's the summit now of Christian experience that we're going to begin looking at today, along with the doxology; that you would be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God, that being the summit of Christian experience, the best you can have in this world, a foretaste of Heaven.

And Paul concludes this prayer with an astounding doxology, a beautiful doxology. Which proves that we're not going too far in this analysis, we're not going over the top. “Maybe pastor, you know, pushing this just a little too far.” You can't push this too far. When you look at the doxology in verse 20 and 21, however high you think that God can bring you in Christian experience, He can actually do immeasurably more than that. Verse 20, look at it, "Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all you ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us." And then, the only way we can finish this is just to worship. To that God, to this God who can do immeasurably more, "To Him, be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, throughout all generations forever and ever, Amen."

What Kind of Experience is Paul Talking About Here?

So now, what kind of experience is Paul talking about here? What does he mean? What does he want to happen for these Ephesian Christians? I think his own experience that he describes in 2 Corinthians 12, is a sense of it, a picture of it. We're not necessarily going to have exactly what happened to Paul, he clearly thought his experience, the visions, was different than the norm, that set him apart as an Apostle. But still, dear friends, brothers and sisters, less than we'll all have in Heaven. Amen. So God can elevate us to this level. He says, 2 Corinthians 12:2-4, he says, "I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago was caught up to the third Heaven. Whether he was in the body or out of the body, I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man, whether in the body or apart from the body, I do not know, God knows, was caught up to paradise. And he heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to talk about." It was just such an overwhelming experience of Heaven, a foretaste of Heaven, that he heard some things that he's not allowed to talk about with everyone else and you can't put it into words and he's not even allowed to try. That's what is waiting for all of us in Heaven.

So that's an experience Paul had this side of death. Or again, we have the experience of Stephen as he was dying, as he was being martyred, as the stones were killing him, he was being stoned to death, it said, "But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to Heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 'And look,' he said, 'I see Heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.'" That's an experience just before death that he had of what it's going to be like for him when he is escorted into Heaven.

Should We Seek Such an Experience?

Now, we've looked week after week, this is our fourth week looking at this, at various testimonies of brothers and sisters in Christ who have had these kinds of experiences. One of the most moving that I read was written by Pastor John Flavel, who lived in the 17th Century, around the time of John Bunyan, the Puritan pastor. He's not talking about himself, but another pastor friend that he knew. And that pastor friend was on a journey, he was traveling from point A to point B. And as he was traveling in England, this is the account:

"Thus going on his way, his thoughts began to swell and rise higher and higher, like the waters of Ezekiel's vision, until at last, they became an overwhelming flood, such was the intentness of his mind, such were the ravishing tastes of heavenly joys and the full assurance of his own future guarantee in them, that he utterly lost all sight and sense of the world, and all the concerns thereof. And for some hours knew no more where he was than if he had been in a deep sleep upon his bed. Arriving in great exhaustion at a certain spring, he sat down and washed and drank and earnestly desiring at that point, that if it was God's pleasure that might be his departing place from the world. Death had the most amiable face he could have imagined, except the face of Jesus, which made it so. And he does not remember, though he believed himself dying, that he ever even thought of his dear wife or of his children or frankly, any other earthly concernment. On reaching the inn, this influence still continued banishing sleep, still the joy of the Lord overflowed him, and he seemed to be an inhabitant of the other world."

Now, he writes in that account, it's not written here in my sermon, but how, at some point, he felt the influence abating, like an ocean tide going out, and he never felt it again, never happened again. But years later, as he looked back, he said, it seemed to him to have been one of the days of Heaven. Wow, has anything like that ever happened to you, honestly? Is that even part of the salvation package? Is that something we could ask God for? Well, that's the very point of these four sermons, that you would have a yearning for something like this. Maybe it would just happen once. Maybe frankly, it would never happen. But still a greater elevation of your sense of the joys of Heaven than you've ever had before. Still, that is worth pursuing. Many other testimonies. I read one about Sarah Edwards, I've read from this pulpit before, how she felt like a dust speck floating in a beam of light, and that whole night she aid, "I can't put it into words, but it seemed to me that one moment of that experience that night was greater than all the pleasure I'd ever experienced in my body in my entire life up to that point, it was just pure pleasure.

This time of year at Christmas time, some of us who like classical music love Handel's Messiah. Perhaps you've heard the story about how it was composed in, I think, about three weeks. It was about an hour-and-a-half of music that's still being played centuries later, composed in a very, very short amount of time. And the story goes that he locked himself in his apartment and was just focused on this to the point that his servant who was bringing food would come back and most of the food wasn't touched, and this just kept happening day after day for these several weeks.

Finally, the servant became so concerned that he kind of bashed in the door, didn't care if he got fired or whatever would happen, and saw Handel on his knees with tears coming down his face, streaming down his face. You know, he's the one that wrote the Hallelujah course, all that, it's all part of the Messiah. Streaming down his face, and this is what he said, "I think I did see all Heaven before me and the great God Himself." And he later added these words, "Whether in the body or out of the body, I don't know." So, I'm not saying that members of our church might write the next Handel's Messiah or whatever is coming next, that was a gifting of God. But God gave him a vision of Heaven, a vision of the greatness of God. Now, the question that's in front of us is, "Should we seek such experiences?" Again, John Flavel, the one who gave us that testimony of his pastor friend, said this, "Ecstasy and delight are essential to the believer's soul, and they promote sanctification, they promote growth in Christ. We are not meant to live without spiritual exhilaration. And the Christian who goes for a long time without the experience of heart-warming will soon find himself tempted to have his emotions satisfied from earthly things and not as he ought from the Spirit of God."

You're going to go after some thrill, you're going to go after some exhilaration, some ecstasy, and if you're not seeking it in Christ, you're going to seek it from the world. And so, therefore, he says, "Because the Lord has made Himself accessible to us in the means of grace, it is our duty and privilege to seek this experience from Him in these means till we are made joyful partakers of it." Now, notice that he makes a distinction between ecstasy and delight. Let me just say plainly, I don't know that most of us, if any of us in this room here will ever have the ecstasy, on this side. It seems to be rare. But you can have the delight. And you might say, "Well, what's the difference between ecstasy and delight?" I would say it's the difference, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, between a feast and a meal. Now, I say, you can't live without the meal. You can live without the feast, but if God wants to give you a feast, why would you refuse? If He wants to greatly expand your sense of what heavenly joys will be like, why would you say no to that? And wouldn't it be worth seeking? It's first comment. And he says that they're essential. You're going to seek some kind of exhilaration in something. If not in Christ, you're going to seek it in some worldly thing.

When I shared some of these things at the men's retreat, I gave the illustration from the movie Hunt for Red October. I don't know if some of you have seen that submarine movie years ago. And there's this submarine called the Red October, and he's defecting to the West, it's a very powerful weapon, and Sean Connery plays a Russian. Americans can't tell the difference between a Scottish accent or Russian accent, so we're good.

And you just listened to that, and it works fine. And he's the Russian captain, and he's defecting. Well, the Russian navy mobilizes to sink the Red October, and there's an attack sub, at a climatic part of the movie, that launches a torpedo right at the Red October. And they are able, through some maneuvering, to escape that torpedo, which is now active and acquiring, seeking something in the water to blow up. Now, that torpedo, homing, seeking, like yearning for some big hunk of metal, is a picture of our souls. You can't stop that, that's how God made you, He made you for Himself, to seek Him. And if you're not going to seek exhilaration in Christ, you're going to find it somewhere else, in some idols, that's the point. So let's look at carefully at the verses. We've been moving slowly through it. This is the last sermon perhaps that I'll ever preach on Ephesians 3. And so, I know we have marinated in this text, but it was intentional. Because these themes are unusual to us.

“Filled to the Measure of all the Fullness of God”

These are things that we're not used to, and you can just read through, it's like, "Oh, Paul's praying for the Ephesian Christians, chapter 4." But instead, I think for us to go carefully looking at it, and then, we're pretty much at verse 19, “that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Now, what does that mean, that you would be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God? Well, first of all, the NIV is the only one that uses this word "measure". Most of the translation just say, "filled with the fullness of God." But I think the grammar and the Greek implies a certain proportionality, implies that, and so “you would be filled proportionally as God is filled,” or as the NIV puts it, I think, well, to the measure of the fullness of God. Alright, so what does this mean?

What it Does Not Mean

Well, let me start with what it doesn't mean. This doesn't mean that we reach some kind of empty, floating Nirvana in which we finally come to realize that all of life is an illusion, and that we are an illusion, and that pain and pleasure are illusions, and this is achieved by meditation on weird things, like what's the sound of one hand clapping, and things like that. That's Eastern meditation and mysticism, that's not what we're talking about. Neither are we talking about some Christian versions of that that seem to be atheological, contratextual, not looking for anything from the Bible, just want an experience. It's not that. And being “filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” does not mean we become gods and goddesses ourselves. It doesn't mean that. The Mormons teach about Jesus. Listen to this, “What we are he once was, what he is, we may become.” Friends, that's a heresy. There's an infinite gap between us and Jesus, essentially. He is God, and we will never be gods and goddesses, that's not what it means to be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

There are incommunicable attributes of God. There are things that are true of God, and will never be true of us. Theologians call them incommunicable, that we can't share these with God, He can't share these attributes with us. For example, God is eternal, He had no beginning, will have no end. We had a definite beginning. God is immutable, He never changes. We are changing all the time, our sanctification is essential, constant change in us that we become transformed, and made more like Christ. God is self-existent. He can say, "I am who I am," and all existence derives its existence from God. Of us, we can say, as it says in Acts 17, "In Him we live and move and have our being." So God is self-existent, God is omnipresent. That means, throughout the vast universe, God is fully everywhere there is a location. Also, it seemed to be the immensity of God, God's omnipresence and immensity are the same, really, I think, and we are not immense, and we're not omnipresent, and never will be. And God is omnipotent, all power in the universe is His, and we're going to talk about this in a moment, but we will never be omnipotent. So for Christians to be filled to the measure of the fullness of God does not mean these extremes. Neither is it mere kind of literary rhetoric where he's kind of going exaggeration going over the top to kind of make a point, not at all. Frankly, the implication is anything you're thinking is undershooting the mark. It doesn't matter what you've understood about what Paul wrote in Ephesians 3, it's less than the experience he's talking about.

God is a “Full" Being

Alright, so what does it mean? Well, first, let's just ponder the fullness of God. How full a being is God? Don't misunderstand why God created the universe. God didn't create the universe out of emptiness and loneliness. The Triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit wasn't lonely at all, but rather out of fullness, a display of fullness. So I love what it says in Psalm 115:3, "Our God is in Heaven He does whatever pleases Him." He's a very full, pleased, happy being. God is filled with love, He is filled with joy, He's filled with power, filled with compassion.

Do you remember that encounter that Moses had on the top of the mountain? And he said, "Now show me your glory." He just wanted an encounter with God. Now show me your glory. Exodus 34:6. “And He,” God, “passed in front of Moses proclaiming, ‘The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger,’” now listen to these words, "abounding in love and faithfulness." What does abounding mean to you? How about full of? Overflowing with love and faithfulness? That's our God. A river flows from God.

Actually, there are two pictures in the Scriptures, of a throne and a river flowing from the throne. One is in Daniel 7. And in Daniel 7, there's this image, this vision of four terrifying beasts, godless beasts that represent world empires coming one after the other, and in the center of it, there's this horn, defying God, representing ultimately, I think, the antichrist, in Daniel 7. And then in the middle of it, there's this vision of God on His throne, high above all of that. And it says in Daniel 7:9-10, "His throne was flaming with fire, and its wheels were all ablaze." Daniel 7:10, "A river of fire was flowing from the throne." That is a picture of terrifying wrath and judgment by God on the Earth. But then you have a radically different picture at the end of the Bible. In Revelation 22:1-2, it says, "Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life flowing clear as crystal from the throne of God and of the Lamb." So here's His throne and there's this river flowing from the throne. A river of life down the middle of the street of the city.

So Paul is praying for us to have an overwhelming sense of the fullness of God and be filled ourselves with it. Filled with the joy that comes from being in His presence. Wouldn't you like that? Wouldn't you just love to stand in the presence of God and be filled with joy? Greater joy than you've ever had in your life. Psalm 16:11 says, "In your presence is the fullness of joy, eternal pleasures forever more at your right hand." Wouldn't you just love that, to be in the presence of God and to be filled with pleasure and joy? Fullness of God. Isaiah 6:3, “the Seraphim are crying to one another ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty, the whole earth is full of His glory.’" Fullness, shining, radiant with His glory, the New Heaven and the New Earth will be shining with the radiant glory of God. And so, then for us, it would be to be filled with the Spirit like it says in Galatians 5. Yeah, Galatians 5, the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit: “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control,” these things filling us like a balloon, just completely full. And you're like, "I didn't think I could ever be this full," but you could be even fuller. If somebody with like powerful lungs blew even more air in, then you could be completely full, and even be more full. And God can fill us to overflowing with the fullness of God. That's what he's praying for.

The Key to this Fullness: Christ in Us

Now, I think the key to all of this is union with Christ. If you're not a Christian, you can't know this. It's only by union with Christ that we can experience this fullness. Why do we say that? Because it says in Colossians that “God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Jesus.” And it says in Colossians 2, “we have received fullness in Him,” our fullness comes from union with Christ. He's the vine, we're the branch. And that fullness can only come from union with Christ. So let me just stop and ask, is this true of you? Are you united with Christ by faith? Have you repented of your sins? Have you trusted in Christ as your Savior? And having had that, do you experience fullness in Christ? This is meant for self-evaluation as we read this prayer.

 Astounding Doxology: A Word of Praise

Now, he finishes here with this magnificent doxology, finishing with worship, as we must. Look at verses 20 and 21, "Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that's at work within us, to Him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever, Amen." It's an astounding doxology, and it's the only appropriate way to finish this amazing prayer. He's praying for the Ephesian Christians to have an amazing experience of the dimensions of Christ's love for them. The ultimate purpose of that is that we'll return it back to God in worship. We'll be filled and say, "Oh God, what a good God you are." And praise Him and worship Him. That's what we were made to do. And he's praying this for the Ephesian Christians, and by extension he's praying for every generation of Christians there has ever been since that first generation of Christians. “Throughout all generations,” so that includes us, we're included in all generations. And so he's praying that we would have this sense of the fullness of God, and not just once, but for ever and ever.

When God Overwhelms Us, We Worship

When God overwhelms us, we worship. This past Wednesday, 30 of us, I guess, gathered for prayer, 6:00 AM. We're going to do it throughout December and throughout January. And if you couldn't make it last week, please come this week. If you can't make it at all, your schedule doesn't allow you to, I understand that, but if you can, please come. And it was a wonderful time. Wasn't one of those extraordinary times, but it was a sweet time of fellowship. And so, I'll talk at the end of the sermon on the ordinary and extraordinary workings of the Spirit.

But John Wesley writes in his journal, January 1st, 1739, listen to this: "Mr. Hall, Ingham, Whitefield, Hutchins, and my brother Charles, were present at our love feast in Fetter Lane with about 60 of our brethren. About three in the morning, as we were continuing instant in prayer," listen to this, "The power of God came mightily upon us, in so much that many cried out for exulting joy and many fell to the ground. As soon as we were recovered a little from the awe and amazement at the presence of His Majesty, we broke out with one voice, 'We praise Thee, O God, we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.'" You see what happened? The love of God was poured out in power on a group of people praying, and they were knocked to the ground, many of them, and then they immediately returned it back up to God in worship.

Praise to the Omnipotent God

Now, I'm not promising anything like that will happen this Wednesday, but it might. And why couldn't we ask for God to do something like that? But even that's not ultimately the point. Ultimately, the point is that we will be filled with the sense of the power of God. And so he wants to praise God. I mean, the doxology is simple; to God, the one who does all these great things, “to God be the glory, both in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever.” That's what he's saying, to God be glory for all of this. Look what he does though, specifically. "Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine." This is a clear statement of the omnipotence of God, isn't it? Look at it again, "Now to Him,” to God, “who is able to do immeasurably, infinitely more than anything you ask or imagine." So this is praise to the omnipotent God. Now, in verses 18 and 19, he was focusing on the immeasurable love of Christ, the infinite dimensions of the love of Christ

God is Able to Do Immeasurably More...

But now in verse 20, the infinite dimensions of the power of God, “and God is able to do immeasurably more than anything you could ask.” You can't limit what God could do with your own brain. There's no limits to it. Many verses assert this. I'm not going to read them all, but one is very familiar, around this time at Christmas, we think about it. You remember how the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary? Remember? And told her an astounding thing, that she was going to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Though she was a virgin, she would be pregnant and give birth to a son, and he would be the son of David and the son of God. Mary didn't know how that was possible. "How can this be? Since I am a virgin." And the angel said this, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth, your relative, is going to have a child in her old age, and she who is said to be barren is now in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God."

Isn't that awesome? A great statement. Nothing is impossible with God. Jesus said the same thing when a man came, bringing his demon-possessed son, and he brought him to His disciples. They couldn't do anything and he said to Jesus, "If you can do anything, could you please help us?" Do you remember what Jesus said? "If you can? All things are possible to him who believe.” “Do you not know who I am? Nothing is impossible for me." So the omnipotence of God is this: Anything that can be done by power, God can do. No, God can't make two plus two equal five. Don't waste my time with that kind of stuff. Or, no, God can't make a rock so big that even God can't pick it up. Have you ever heard these kind of things? Who comes up with these? They have too much time on their hands to be thinking. They should be worshipping God. No, power can't do those things. Anything, however, the power can do, God can do that, and immeasurably more than anything you think He can do. And the great obvious measure of the power of God is creation around us, right? “Lift up your eyes to the heavens, look at the starry host, who created all these? He calls out the starry hosts one by one and gives them each a name, because of His great power and His mighty understanding, not one of them is missing.” That's a display of the power of God. Now, the text says He can do immeasurably more, infinitely more. Paul is actually stretching the Greek language here, finding words to say, infinitely, immeasurably, super-abundantly more than anything you can ask or think, more than you can ask.

Immeasurably More Than All We Ask or Imagine

We're always tempted to worry about over asking, think about that. But actually the problem with us is we under-ask, amen? We ask less than we should, because we forget how powerful God is, and “He's able to do immeasurably more than all you can think” or “imagine.” We hold back the request because we think that the person who might be giving to us will be offended by the size of the request. I think about maybe a missionary, or a church planner, or Christian worker, he's going and he's meeting with a wealthy Christian businessman, and they're having lunch together and having a good time. But then the business man says, "Okay, I know we're not just here to have a good time. Did you have something you wanted to ask me?" "Well, yes, I was hoping you would partner with our church planning effort." "Okay, what did you have in mind?" Interesting moment. At that moment, you might be thinking this, but you're going to ask for this, because you're afraid of offending and over asking. You can't over-ask with God. And I like what it says that He's able to do immeasurably more than all you ask or imagine, the NIV says. All the other translations say "think", and that's the right translation for the word. But NIV stretches a little bit, and I think in this case, it's fine. Look, all imagining is thinking, but not all thinking is imagining. So what then is imagination? What is it when you're imagining? You're stretching your mind to the limit, like a fantasy author or something like that, thinking of a whole new world that no one's ever thought of before, imagination, using their imagination. “Our children, children use imagination. We adults don't need it as much anymore, so they're…” No! Use your imagination. “Whatever you can imagine God can do, He can do immeasurably more than all of that.” So I like the NIV translation here.

God’s Omnipotence: Useful Outside the Context of Ephesians

Now, this verse, verse 20, can be taken out of context with no harm. What do I mean by that? Well, you can attach it to anything you could ever ask God to do, ever. So what? Well, perhaps there's a loved one in a hospital with a very serious illness. As a matter of fact, the diagnosis is very dire. You're able to take Ephesians 3:20 and say, "God, you are able to do immeasurably more than anything I could ask or even imagine. Please heal my loved one." Now, we know God may not heal, but we're stretching our mind to think of His omnipotence. God can do anything. Or you might have a situation that you're in financial trouble, or you need a job, or a company you own is struggling. It could be some kind of an economic issue and you're able to bring that back to God and say, "God, I know that you're able to do immeasurably more than anything I could ask or imagine. Would you please meet our need?" You can do that. There's nothing wrong with that. Usually, you want to take verses in context, I'll talk about that in a moment. But perhaps you're in imminent danger, maybe you're out boating and the boat overturns and you feel like you're drowning, and you've got very little strength, and you can call out, "God, I know you can do immeasurably more than all I ask or imagine." You might just want to, at that point say, "Help! Saved me." Because you don't have time to quote Ephesian 3:20, but you know what I mean. It's in the back of your mind. God can do it. Or maybe there's a tornado bearing down on your community or a hurricane, or some other thing, and you're saying, "God, deliver us." Or perhaps the call is, you're a missionary living in a city and you're seeking to reach them, several million people with the Gospel. And you're able to gather together those that are laboring with you and say, "God, you're able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, please reach the city, even use us to do it."

Powerful in Context As Well

So all of that's fine, but in context, it's very powerful too. We've been talking about the Ephesian Christians having a sense of Christ's love for them, poured out in their hearts by the Holy Spirit. A sense so great that it gets to this level of being filled to the measure of all the fullness of God, and actually, God can do immeasurably more than anything you could ask in this area of experiencing Christ's love for you. That's the verse in context. And he ends up with praise, "to God be the glory." Verse 21, "To Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever." This God, His power brought to bear according to his power that's at work within us, that power brought to bear so that he would get the glory in the church," That's the point of all of this, that God would be glorified in the Church, that we would be “living stones” that radiate with a glow from with inside. That really having learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, we're actually buoyantly hope-filled saying, "Heaven is infinitely better than anything I'm going through now. I consider that my present sufferings aren't even worth comparing with what's going to come to me." You're so radiant-ly filled with hope in Christ. “To God be glory in the Church, that the Church would shine with light in this dark world, and in Christ Jesus, because all glory comes through Christ.” That's what he's praying for.

Trust in Christ

So, what application can we take for this? Well, the application would be that we would seek this experience, that we would seek a sense of the goodness and the glory of God. I've already mentioned, if you're not a Christian, if you're not a believer, I yearn that you would come to Christ. That's what the purpose of this season is, that's what the purpose of the sermon is, that you would know the forgiveness of sins that only Christ can give. Jesus shed His blood on the cross for sinners like you and me. Trusting in Christ, not by works, but by simple trust, all forgiveness of sins for you.

Christians, Seek This Experience Diligently

But if you are a Christian, I'm asking that you would seek a far greater experience of God's love poured into your heart than you've ever had before. It's something that God would do to you. It's not something you can earn. I think there are ways that we can prepare for it. This is my fourth week saying it, through personal holiness, putting sin to death, because God is jealous and He will not come and bless us if we're willfully sinning. And then even setting aside some things that are good pleasures for a time, it's called fasting, it could be from food, could be from electronic entertainment, could be from the big game, it could be from a hobby that you love, and you say, "I want Christ more, I want to know Him. I'm going to set those things aside because I'm going to seek Him." And you see it through persistence. You don't give God twenty hours, and if He doesn't answer, then that's it, but you're going to persistently seek Him.

And you're not seeking it like a disembodied experience, but you're seeking Christ, you want to know Christ, and Him better than you ever have before. And you seek it, as the Bible said, by the means of grace, by Scripture, by meditation on Scripture, and by seeking God in prayer. And you can just say, "Lord, what you did for Sarah Edwards, do that for me. I want to be a speck floating in a sunbeam. I would love to be able to see Heaven open and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, if you wanted to do that for me. I would love to have a foretaste of Heaven at whatever level you give me. I would love that. And I want to have the ordinary workings of the Spirit, but I'm asking for the extraordinary working, too."

Persevere in this Pursuit

So I would say that, I want to emphasize that He may never do any ecstatic thing in any of our lives, but we can seek it. But the ordinary ministry of the Spirit is delightful. And what He will do is, He will give you peace and joy and confidence in your Christian life. A sense of security that you are His, a greater sense of assurance, a greater sense of mission in the world, of works He wants you to do, greater power in doing them. Those are things that He promises for us, those are the ordinary workings of the Spirit. And that may be all we get, and that's infinitely amplified. Or He may give us vastly beyond that. So I would say, seek Him. And if you can, come to prayer on Wednesday morning at 6:00 AM. Close with me in prayer.

Lord, we thank you for the study that we've had these four weeks in Ephesians 3:14-21. Lord, it's been magnificent, it's been challenging. Father, I pray that you give us strength for the journey, give us strength to pursue you and seek you as we've never done before. Give us strength to experience the love of Christ poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Help us to know that. And give us power to reach our community with the Gospel, give us power to reach lost people with the good news of Jesus Christ. We pray this in His name, and for His glory. Amen.