Meadowbrooke Church

The Walk of the Wise (Part 1)

From the Pulpit of Keith Miller
Meadowbrooke Church
August 18, 2024
 
 
The Walk of the Wise
Ephesians 5:14-21
 
Introduction:
I understand that Ephesians 5:1-13 is a difficult section in the Bible, for at least 50% of the men and about 25% of the women in churches across America view porn at least once a month.  To listen to three weeks of sermons on Bible verses that address sexual sins when you already feel defeated is surely discouraging.  According to one study, 43 percent of Christian men and 20 percent of Christian women acknowledge that your exposure to porn (and any sexual sin for that matter) has worsened their relationship with God.[1]  What that means is that some of you not only feel stuck and defeated, but you also believe that you are far from God and that He is so disgusted by you he wants little or nothing to do with you.  I want you to know that if I just described you, you have bought into a lie! 
 
One of the titles given to the devil is “the accuser” and what is said of him is that he is, “the accuser of our brothers and sisters... the one who accuses them before our God day and night” (Rev. 12:10).  Jesus said of the devil that, “He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.  Whenever he tells a lie, he speaks from his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).  The devil is both master accuser and master liar, and he wants nothing more than for you to believe that your ongoing pattern of sins is making you more inaccessible to a Holy God whose wrath is being stored up against humanity for sins such as sexual immorality, impurity, and greed (v. 3). 
 
It is for the above reasons that I wanted to spend so much more time on Ephesians 5:14 then we were able to last week.  What you must remember is that Paul is not writing to non-Christians in his epistle to the Ephesians, but to Christians whose most dangerous adversary exists in their own flesh.  It is the thing that the apostle Paul wrote about in Romans 7:14-23,
For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am fleshly, sold into bondage to sin. For I do not understand what I am doing; for I am not practicing what I want to do, but I do the very thing I hate. However, if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, that the Law is good. But now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I do the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin that dwells in me.
 
I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully agree with the law of God in the inner person, but I see a different law in the parts of my body waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin, the law which is in my body’s parts.
 
What is important to point out is that Paul was not paralyzed by the tension and struggle he experienced with sin in light of his relationship with Jesus, for it is in what he wrote in response to the war he experienced within that should help us to appreciate Ephesians 5:14-21.  What are we to do with the evil that is present within?  Listen to what Paul writes in Romans 7:24-25, “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.”
 
I have four points that really serve as a plan to keep you from spiritual apathy that can result in the atrophy of your faith and relationship with Jesus.  I will spend all this sermon on the first point and next week, we will look at the remaining three.  However, I want to list my four points so that you know where we are going in Ephesians 5:14-21.  Here is a pathway I believe the apostle gives us through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that will keep you from spiritual apathy and atrophy:
Run to Jesus as your only advocate (v. 14)
Use your time wisely for what matters (vv. 15-16)
Live with an awareness of God’s will for your life (v. 17)
Be intentional about what you consume into your mind, soul, and heart (vv. 18-21)
 
Apathy is the kind of thing that happens when you are so paralyzed by shame that you stay in your shame instead of allowing it to motivate you into repentance.  Repentance is never stagnant but always mobile in the direction where Jesus can be found.  Apathy is what happens when you give up and are no longer interested in moving forward.  Spiritual apathy, if left untreated, will lead to spiritual atrophy.  Spiritual atrophy happens when your shame renders you spiritually immobile.  
 
Run to Jesus as Your Only Advocate (v. 14)
Ephesians 5:14 is not so much an appeal to non-Christians to find Jesus, but for Christians.  Most commentators/scholars agree that verse 14 is most likely a verse from an early church hymn quoted by Paul that was familiar to the Christians in Ephesus.  What I find so fascinating about the placement of verse 14 is that it is sandwiched between verses 3-13 that address the need to refuse to participate in the “useless deeds of darkness” and 15-21 that encourages the Christian to live wisely as children of light. 
 
Here is what I think was going on and why I believe Paul felt the need to write what he wrote in Ephesians 5:3-13. I believe that there were some Christians who were spiritually and morally apathetic towards certain forms of sexual immorality, impurity, greed, filthy and foolish talk, and vulgar joking.  Not only were they apathetic, but their apathy resulted in a type of spiritual atrophy resulting in their participation in certain forms of sin, which Paul listed.  In a very real sense, there were some in the Ephesian Church, as is true in churches today, who were slumbering in certain sins.  One of the many reasons why I believe this is the case is what is written in Romans 13:11-14,
Do this, knowing the time, that it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep; for now salvation is nearer to us than when we first believed. The night is almost gone, and the day is near. Therefore let’s rid ourselves of the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let’s behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and debauchery, not in strife and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.
 
As is true with many of the hymns and praise songs you are familiar with, the one quoted in verse 14 is infused with language from the Bible.  In fact, there is so much packed into verse 14, that I could preach multiple sermons just on this one short verse, but I will not do that.  What I will do is share four scripture passages with you that will open Ephesians 5:14 up to you in the same way they probably did for the Christians in Ephesus. I am not going to say a whole lot about the verses, I only want you to see them for reasons I believe will be obvious.  So, here we go:
Here are two passages on what is waiting for those who have been redeemed by Jesus: 
“Arise, shine; for your light has come, And the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. ‘For behold, darkness will cover the earth and deep darkness the peoples; But the Lord will rise upon you And His glory will appear upon you.’” (Isa. 60:1-2)
 
“And many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt.” (Dan. 12:2)
 
Here is a passage on how the redeemed should respond to God as a Father who loving disciplines His children:
“Do not rejoice over me, enemy of mine. Though I fall I will rise; Though I live in darkness, the Lord is a light for me. I will endure the rage of the Lord Because I have sinned against Him, Until He pleads my case and executes justice for me. He will bring me out to the light, And I will look at His righteousness.” (Mic. 7:8-9)
 
There is a fourth scripture passage I believe is tied to Ephesians 5:14, and it is found in Jonah 1:6.  Before we look at that verse, you need to consider the story of Jonah and how he got into trouble after being commanded by God to go to Ninevah (the capital of Assyria) to preach about the coming wrath of God upon Ninevah; Jonah got on a boat to go the opposite direction from where God told Him to go.  While in disobedience, we are told, “the Lord hurled a great wind on the sea...” (Jon. 1:4) which made life very difficult for everyone on the boat.  While everyone on the boat desperately threw stuff off the boat to lighten it in hopes of surviving the storm, Jonah was sound asleep in the stern of the ship.  Put another way: The prophet Jonah was asleep in his sin of rebellion.  Finally the captain of the ship found Jonah sleeping and had some words for Jonah: “How is it that you are sleeping? Get up, call on your god! Perhaps your god will be concerned about us so that we will not perish” (Jonah 1:6).
 
In summary, it became obvious to the sailors that Jonah was running from His God (1:7-14).  When they asked what they needed to do to get Jonah’s God to calm the storm, the prophet told them that they needed to throw him overboard (vv. 15-16).  They tried to avoid throwing Jonah overboard, but it became clear that it was their only option, so they threw him into the sea, and while in the sea, “the Lord designated a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the stomach of the fish for three days and three nights” (1:17).  While in the belly of the “great fish” Jonah endured the rage and discipline of his heavenly Father because he sinned against Him.  Jonah called out to the Lord for help (Jon. 2:1-9), and God delivered His prophet by commanding the fish to vomit Jonah up onto the dry land (v. 10).  Awakened from his proverbial slumber from the stern of the ship to the belly of the great fish, Jonah obeyed God’s will upon his life by going to Nineveh to preach the word of God to a people walking in the darkness of their sins and idols (3:1-9).  
 
The whole reason why Jonah fled for Tarshish when God told him to go to Nineveh is because of what Nineveh represented.  Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian empire whose army has been credited with some of the earliest forms of psychological warfare.  Nineveh was filled with violent people who were guilty of some of the most horrible things against humanity.  After Jonah preached his very brief message about God’s coming wrath, the entire city repented (see Jonah 3:5-10).  Jonah’s response was resentment and anger; this is what he prayed after God spared Nineveh from His wrath: “Please Lord, was this not what I said when I was still in my own country? Therefore in anticipation of this I fled to Tarshish, since I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in mercy, and One who relents of disaster” (4:1-2).
 
Against the backdrop of God’s promise of redemption for His people because of the shed blood of Jesus (Isa. 60:1-2; Dan. 12:2), how His redeemed people ought to respond to His loving discipline (Mic. 7:8-9), and Jonah’s story of his rebellion and repentance, consider Ephesians 5:14 again: “Awake, sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” 
 
Conclusion
Maybe you are like Jonah, while in your sin, you are asleep in it.  Maybe you have slipped back into certain sins due to your spiritual apathy.  Maybe your apathy has become spiritual atrophy.   If you are truly a Christian, this 2 Corinthians 4:6 describes how it is you have been made alive with Christ: “For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”  You are here today, not by accident, but because it is time to wake up!  The enemy of your soul wants nothing more for you than to remain in your spiritual apathy and atrophy, but today your heavenly Father summons you from the stern of your rebellious slumber: “Awake, sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
 
So, how do you get up from your slumber?  You must repent by calling your sin for what it is and by turning from it to Jesus.  Listen to what the Bible says about your sin:
“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous, so that He will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)
 
“My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:1-2)
 
The Devil is a liar and the great accuser, but Jesus is a great savior and our all-sufficient advocate!  We can run to Him in the spirit of Micah 7:8-9 and we can respond to our sins, failures, and even the devil himself: “Do not rejoice over me, enemy of mine. Though I fall I will rise; Though I live in darkness, the Lord is a light for me. I will endure the rage of the Lord Because I have sinned against Him, Until He pleads my case and executes justice for me. He will bring me out to the light, And I will look at His righteousness” (Mic. 7:8-9).
 
One more thing I would like to point out that I find ironic about Jonah’s story and ours.  It is possible that the “great fish” that swallowed Jonah was some other creature rather than a whale, but in my opinion that is doubtful.  I do believe that the “great fish” that swallowed Jonah was most likely a whale.  A species of whale that is large enough to swallow a human and swam in the same waters where Jonah most likely would have been tossed overboard is the sperm whale which can grow up to 60 feet long.  Do you want to know what else the sperm whale is known for?  It is known for both being one of the few whales that vomit, and it is also known for what it vomits!  The sperm whale’s vomit is called Ambergris (aka liquid gold).  In the water, it is a dung-like smelly substance, but once exposed to the sunlight and saltwater, it develops a muskier (perfumed) odor. 
 
After Jonah was vomited up onto the shore, covered in Ambergris and saltwater under the Arabic sun, it was not the stench of death and dung that Jonah was covered in, but a fragrant aroma that was the result of the forgiveness of his heavenly Father that he did not deserve that resulted in his redemption! 
 
Oh dear Christian!  Can you see the parallels of Jonah’s story and ours?  Jesus said, “...for just as Jonah was in the stomach of the sea monster for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights” (Matt. 12:40).  Jesus died a death we deserved for our sins, was buried in the belly of the earth, and three days later... He came out of the tomb for our redemption!  Unlike Jonah, we are not covered by Ambergris and salt water under the hot sun!  No, we are covered in something infinitely better!  If you are a Christian, it is in Jesus, that you have redemption; listen again to Ephesians 1:7-8, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our wrongdoings, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us.” If you are a Christian, you are covered in the precious blood of Jesus Christ, and according to the apostle Peter: “...you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.” 
 
My appeal to you is the appeal of Ephesians 5:14; do not slumber in your sin and do not stay there!  Do not be apathetic towards those sins that the wrath of God is coming for and those sins for which Jesus endured that wrath you deserved.  You are covered under the blood of Jesus and because that is the case, “There is now no condemnation at all for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1).  So turn, “Awake, sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
 
[1] Keith Rose, How Porn Affects Church Attendance (Covenant Eyes; 2023)

Risen With Jesus

From the Pulpit of Keith Miller
Meadowbrooke Church
August 11, 2024
 
In 2012, D.A. Carson published his book, The Intolerance of Tolerance.  Around the time his book released, he spoke on the subject at a conference I attended; I remember thinking that his book was timely and potentially prophetic, but none of us could have fully appreciated the gravity of what was coming.  The following quote from Carson’s book illustrates exactly what I mean:
Neither the old tolerance nor the new is an intellectual position; rather, each is a social response. The old tolerance is the willingness to put up with, allow, or endure people and ideas with whom we disagree; in its purest form, the new tolerance is the social commitment to treat all ideas and people as equally right, save for those people who disagree with this view of tolerance.  Advocates of the new tolerance sacrifice wisdom and principle in support of just one supreme good: upholding their view of tolerance. So those who uphold and practice the older tolerance, enmeshed as they inevitably are in some value system, are written off as intolerant. Thus banished, they no longer deserve a place at the table.[1] 
 
I would suggest that the “older” tolerance allowed space to disagree charitably with those who did not share your point of view.  Not only are those of the “older tolerance” banished from a place at the “table.” Today, we find ourselves in a very interesting state of affairs in that if your ideology does not line up with that of the loudest and most vocal of ideological voices regarding sex, identity, what it means to be human, and what must be tolerated, you will be diagnosed with a certain phobia and placed into the category of “mental illness.”
 
So, before we get into Ephesians this morning, I thought it would be fun it first define the word Phobia and then consider some phobias that do actually exist to better appreciate Ephesians 5:11-14. 
 
So, what is a phobia?  According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIH), a phobia is a “intense, irrational fear of something that poses little or no actual danger.”  Furthermore, NIH affirms that, “Although adults with phobias may realize that these fears are irrational, even thinking about facing the feared object or situation brings on severe anxiety symptoms.”  According to Wikipedia, a phobia is, “an anxiety disorder, defined by an irrational, unrealistic, persistent and excessive fear of an object or situation.”  The definition that Merriam-Webster still provides for “phobia” is, “an exaggerated usually inexplicable and illogical fear of a particular object, class of objects, or situation.” 
So, permit me to list a few common phobias and then share with you some other phobias that are not as common. 
Acrophobia: An intense fear of heights.
Claustrophobia: An intense fear of confined spaces.
Arachnophobia: An intense fear of spiders.
Entomophobia: An intense fear of insects.
 
Here is a list of phobias that you may not have heard of before:
Arachibutyrophobia: An intense fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth.
Nomophobia: An intense fear of being without your mobile phone.
Plutophobia: An intense fear of money.
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia (a 36-letter word): An intense fear of long words.
 
Taking a stance against something is not necessarily due to a phobia but possibly a moral conviction.  A legitimate question that must be answered is from what standard does your moral conviction come?  Does it come from culture, or does it come from something that transcends culture?  For the Christian, our moral standard is not culture but the apostles and prophets, with Jesus Christ as our cornerstone.  Here is how the apostle Paul explained what standard we use to judge what is good or evil, it is Ephesians 2:19-22, “So then you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.”
 
Jesus, who is the King of kings and Lord of lords and serves as the cornerstone of His Church, gave those who make up His Church this command, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to follow all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:19-20).  The prophets and the apostles are the foundation of Jesus’ Church, and it is the prophets and the apostles whose teachings make up the Bible as the Word of God.  The Bible is, “...inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man or woman of God may be fully capable, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17).  If we are going follow Jesus and live as though the Bible is the Word of God, we will be labeled by those still in darkness as “phobic” and “intolerant.”
 
As a people who, “were once darkness, but now... light in the Lord” we live for what God loves and we stand against what God hates.  Listen, if we are going to try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord (v. 10), we will be compelled to live counter-cultural in a world that calls evil good, and good evil.  As “children of light” we belong to the God who condemns any culture that calls evil good, and good evil: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight” (Isa. 5:20)!
We Expose the Darkness by Not Participating in It
Now we come to Ephesians 5:11 where we are commanded to avoid all participation “in the useless deeds of darkness.”  What does that mean?  The NIV translates verse 11 this way: “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.”  The NKJV gets closer to the heart of what Paul is communicating: “And have no fellowshipwith the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.” The word used for “participate” (synkoinōneō) does not mean “fellowship” in the Greek, but it does mean “share.” It is a Greek word that is also used in Philippians 4:14, “Nevertheless, you have done well to share [synkoinōneō] with me in my difficulty.”  To share in something is to have fellowship with it.  
 
What are the useless deeds of darkness?  Well, they include but are not limited to sexual immorality, impurity, greed, filthiness, foolish talk, and vulgar joking.  The useless deeds of darkness is what we were once slaves to before we were made alive with Christ when we, “lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3).  The useless deeds of darkness is what the apostle John described in 1 John 2:16, “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.” 
 
You may recall how the holiness of God is used to the third degree unlike any other attribute of God mentioned in the Bible.  Day and night the seraphim do not cease to call out to one another, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come” (Rev. 4:8).  I pointed out how this is a literary devise used in the ancient languages to emphasis a very important point.  There is another literary devise I told you about when we began this series in Ephesians, which comes in the form of repeated words or phrases; one such phrase that is repeated over and over again in Ephesians are the phrases “in Christ”, “in the Lord”, “in Christ Jesus”, and “in Him”; collectively they are used about 33 times. 
 
If you are a Christian, your identity and life is in Christ.  Paul’s description of the Christian as being “in Christ” is a phrase that is equivalent to “remaining” in Jesus; here is what Jesus said about remaining in Him: “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Remain in Me, and I in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself but must remain in the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in Me” (John 15:1-4).  Sinclair Ferguson said this about what it means to be “in the Lord”:
To be in the Lord is to belong to a new world, to inhabit a new kingdom in which we become new men and women.  In this new kingdom, new powers are at work in us – the powers of the Spirit of the crucified, risen, ascended, reigning and returning Christ.  Once we were in the darkness.  Worse, the darkness was in us – we were darkness.  Now we have been drawn into the light, illuminated by Christ the Light of the world.  More, we have been invaded and transformed by Christ the Light.  In the Lord we are light![2]  
 
So, if we are now “children of light” because of our redemption and union with Jesus, why in the world would we want to have fellowship with or share in the useless deeds of darkness?
 
Not only are we not to participate in the “useless deeds of darkness” but we are to “expose them.”  What does Paul mean that we are to “expose” the useless deeds of darkness?  Well, it is clear Paul is not telling us to avoid the world, for that would go against the way he lived his life and much of what is written in the both the Old Testament and New Testament.  The design and plan for God’s people was always to be on mission by entering into the darkness as His instrument to light up the darkness.  Israel was saved from Egypt to be God’s kingdom of priests to be His light in a dark world: “Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exod. 19:5-6). 
 
Israel’s great failure was that they repeatedly and continually and habitually as a nation, “participated in the fruitless deeds of darkness” when by their mere existence should have exposed the emptiness and uselessness of sin. Israel’s problem was a heart problem only Jesus is able to fix.  Jesus is God’s “Yes” to the promise of Deuteronomy 30:6, “The Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the hearts of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul, so that you may live.”  Jesus is God’s answer to Ezekiel 36:26, “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”  You, Christian, are the recipient of such promises through and in Jesus, so why would you even want to have fellowship, share, and remain in the fruitless deeds of darkness that rob you of the kind of life you were designed to have in God?  Not only are the “deeds of darkness” fruitless, but the wrath of a holy God is set against such deeds!  This is why Paul wrote concerning those who continue to practice sexual immorality, impurity, and greed (5:3), “for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret” (v. 12).
 
Our Life in Christ Exposes the Uselessness of the Deeds of Darkness
The only hope for lost humanity is Jesus!  He is the only solution for our sin problem.  Only through the life of Jesus and the death that He died for sinners can the spiritually dead be raised to new life. Sinclair Ferguson is spot on in his description of what happened when the Christian was saved from the wrath of God: “We have been invaded and transformed by Christ the Light.”  Now as those who are alive with Christ, we carry the light of Jesus into the darkness of the world, this is why Jesus said, “You are the light of the world.... Your light must shine before people in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:14, 16).  So what happens when light invades a dark room?  It exposes what is in the room. 
 
One of two things will happen when light exposes what is in the darkness, it will anger those who love the darkness, or it will reveal a better way to those tired and wearied by the darkness.  To expose the darkness in the context of Ephesians is to contrast the living against the dead.  It is not picket signs on the corner, bumper stickers, or hats that protest the darkness.  It is what happens when light pierces the darkness of sin’s domain.  The light of Christ displayed in and through His people reveals to those in the darkness that there is a better way because Jesus is the only way to experience the kind of redemption of our souls and the forgiveness of all our sins that will grant us true salvation and freedom (1:7). Many will reject Christ as the only remedy for our salvation as intolerant and they will run to the darkness, but there will be some whose sin will be exposed by the light of Christ, and they will run to Him for the life only He can give.  This is the point Paul makes in verse 13, “But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light, for everything that becomes visible is light.” I think the New Living Translation translates this verse in less confusing way: “But their evil intentions will be exposed when the light shines on them, for the light makes everything visible.”
 
Legislation and laws are good only in that it helps to suppress the evil we humans are capable of, but it can never fix the evil we are capable of.  If you are darkness, you will yield the “useless” fruits of darkness to one degree or another.  Only the gospel of Jesus Christ can remedy the dark heart of humanity! The gospel of Jesus Christ alone, “is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16).  Christian, you are living proof that the same power that raised Jesus from the grave is still possible today!  You serve as a reminder everywhere you go that either the wrath of God can be avoided through Jesus, or the wrath of God is coming upon those who reject Him (see 2 Cor. 2:14-16).
 
We who were asleep and dead in our sins, are only alive because the light of Christ has shown upon us.  It is here in verse 14 that Paul quotes what was most likely an early church hymn composed on the basis of Isaiah 60:1-2 and Christ as the fulfillment of its promise:
“Awake, sleeper,
And arise from the dead,
And Christ will shine on you.”
 
Here is what Isaiah 60:1-2 promises: “Arise, shine; for your light has come, And the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. ‘For behold, darkness will cover the earth And deep darkness the peoples; But the Lord will rise upon you And His glory will appear upon you.’”  Here is another one for those who reject Jesus as God!  Only Yahweh has the power to redeem and raise the dead, yet Jesus has done in your life what only God is capable of doing.  We who were once dead, heard the voice of Christ, and we arose to follow Him and now we live! We who once enjoyed the darkness, delight in walking in light as those who now belong to the One who said, “I am the Light of the world; the one who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life” (John 8:12).  Pursing Jesus is the only way to fight against our own sin and the temptation to participate in the useless deeds of darkness. 
 
Amen.
 
[1] D.A. Carson, The Intolerance of Tolerance (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; 2012), 98.
[2] Sinclair B. Ferguson, Let’s Study: Ephesians (East Peoria, IL: The Banner of Truth Trust; 2021), 132.

Live The Jesus Way

From the Pulpit of Keith Miller
Meadowbrooke Church
August 4, 2024
 
My sermon today is meant to be both helpful and hopeful.  What we read in verses 7-10 is encouraging to you if your faith and trust is in Jesus Christ as the only One qualified to atone for all of your sins as the Lion and the Lamb.  These verses are encouraging if you believe that Jesus while fully divine was also fully human for the purpose of living the life you could not live to die upon the cross for your sins while He was perfectly sinless, and that all the wrath of a Holy God fell upon Him in your place. 
 
If you are a Christian, you are no longer in darkness, but because of nothing you have done and everything He has done... you are “light in the Lord” and now able to “walk as children of light.”  Because you are a Christian, you know Him and long for His appearing in the same manner the apostle Peter described: “...and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory” (1 Pet. 3:8).  It is because you are a Christian that there is coming a day when you also will be able to face death with the same confidence the apostle Paul did while facing death: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing” (2 Tim. 4:7-8).  This is why we can sing songs like “He Who is to Come” with hope and confidence:
There is a day coming
When the old will pass away
Every wrong will be made right
No darkness no night
The Son will light the way
 
There is a king coming
The one who conquered death and grave
No more pain and no more sorrow
This hope for tomorrow
Is our hope for today
 
He who is to come
Christ the Son of man
Riding on the clouds with a crown upon His head
Every eye will see Him
With the nail scars in His hands[1]
If you are a Christian, you belong to God as His beloved child (5:1) because He chose you before the foundation of the earth (1:4), He forgave and redeemed you through the shed blood of His Son, Jesus (1:7), and have been adopted as a child of God according to the good pleasure of His will (1:5).  If you are a Christian, you are now alive with Jesus (2:4-5), and because you are alive with Christ, you are God’s, “workmanship [poiēma], created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). 
 
You Were Saved from the Wrath of God
If you are a Christian, you have been saved from the wrath of an infinitely holy God!  You who were once dead in your offenses and sins, walked according to the course of this world, lived in the lusts and desires of your flesh and mind, and were by nature a child of the wrath of God, stand before God as one who has been fully pardoned, forgiven, and loved because the wrath you deserved, Jesus willingly endured.  This is why Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:6-7, “See that no one deceives you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.
 
When I preached on verses 1-6, I spent a considerable amount of time explaining that “these things” in verse 6 include sexual immorality, impurity, and greed.  Sexual immorality is any perversion of sex that has not been sanctioned to be enjoyed between a husband and a wife within the bounds of the covenant of marriage. Impurity includes any sexual sin but is not limited to sexual sins. Greed is any form of covetousness which also includes the taking of a person for sexual pleasure who does not belong to you because you are not married to that person, and this can be done physically as well as mentally.  It is because of sexual immorality, impurity, and greed that the wrath of God comes. 
 
However, it is not only because of sexual immorality, impurity, and greed that the wrath of God is coming; the wrath of God comes also because of filthiness, foolish talk, and vulgar joking.  Jesus said of that what comes out of your mouth is a symptom of what is in your heart: “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil person out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart” (Luke 6:45).  In short, the wrath of God comes because of sin.  In Revelation 1:18 we are told: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.”  
 
What is “wrath?”  Well, according to the dictionary, it is “strong, stern, or fierce anger.”  God’s strong, stern, and fierce anger is provoked over sin, and we are warned about His fierce anger over sin both in the Old Testament and New Testament.  For you to understand and appreciate the mercy, love, and grace of God, you must understand that sin is serious and God’s anger over sin is white hot against those guilty of it! 
 
We do not have the time for me to get exhaustive regarding the wrath of God over sin but permit me to offer you some glimpse into the explanation God’s word gives us for why He takes sin so seriously.  For starters, there is only one attribute that is repeated not twice, but three times, and that attribute is the holiness of God.  In Isaiah 6:3 and Revelation 4:8 we encounter the holiness of God expressed in a way that no other attribute of God is expressed:
“And one called out to another and said, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of armies. The whole earth is full of His glory.’” (Isa. 6:3)
 
“And the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within; and day and night they do not cease to say, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come.’” (Rev. 4:8)
 
Regarding the holiness of God, the sinless Seraphim – a specific type of angel commissioned and designed for the throne room of God – attribute the Almighty with a literary device by repeating three words to emphasize the holiness of God, in Scripture it is called the three-times-holy.  Even the Seraphim, before the presence of God, must cover their eyes and their feet (Isa. 6:2), and Isaiah’s response before the presence of the Holy One was one of cursing upon himself: “Woe to me, for I am ruined!  Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of armies” (Isa. 6:5).  It is of this God that the prophet Habakkuk said: “Are You not from time everlasting, Lord, my God, my Holy One? Your eyes are too pure to look at evil...” (Hab. 1:12a, 13a).  In Nahum we are told that God is a “jealous and avenging God is the Lord; The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries, And He reserves wrath for His enemies” (Nah. 1:2).  And when it comes to the sinfulness of the nations, we are told that all of the wicked must drink the cup of His wrath: “For a cup is in the hand of the Lord, and the wine foams; it is well mixed, and He pours out of this; certainly all the wicked of the earth must drain and drink its dregs” (Ps. 75:8). 
 
The cup of God’s wrath reserved for the wicked is the cup Jesus drank.  The Son of God, the perfect sinless lamb, the Groom of the Church drank the cup of God’s wrath!  “The only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God.... Who, for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man”[2] was born to die for sinful man!  In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed about the cup reserved for the wicked: “And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.’ He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, ‘My Father, if this cup cannot pass away unless I drink from it, Your will be done.’” (Matt. 26:39, 42).  Jesus drank the cup of God’s wrath for our redemption, and He drank every last drop on the cross by becoming curse in our place: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a Tree’” (Gal. 3:13).  This is why Jesus said of Himself: “The Father loves the Son and has entrusted all things to His hand.  The one who believes in the Son has eternal life; but the one who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:35-36).  Hell is how the wrath of God will be carried out, and Jesus described it as a place, “where their worm does not die, and the fire is not extinguished” (Mark 9:48).
 
 
 
You Are Redeemed to Live as Children of Light
However, if you are a Christian, you who were once a child of wrath are now a child of mercy, and thereby an adopted child of the Living God through the price Jesus paid by His blood.  R.C. Sproul wrote of the salvation of sinners, “The glory of the gospel is this: The one from whom we need to be saved is the one who has saved us.”  In his magnum opus, The Cross of Christ, John Stott described Christ’s sacrifice for our salvation this way: “Divine love triumphed over divine wrath by divine self-sacrifice.”[3] 
 
If you are confused as to how seriously God takes sin or how offended by your sin He was, you need not look beyond the cross on which Jesus died! The cross is the place where our redeemer bore a holy and justified wrath on our behalf where He received the ax of God’s justice in our place! Upon the cross, where Jesus was cursed in our place, He was pierced for our offenses and was crushed for our wrongdoings (Isa. 53:5).  
 
We who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ are no longer children of wrath, and because we are no longer children of wrath, we are not to become partners with those who continue to practice the very thing that the wrath of God is reserved for.  Christian, you who were once darkness are a child of light.  As children of light, we are to live out our new life in Christ in the following four ways:
We are to walk as children of light by not partnering with the sons of disobedience (v. 7). The Greek word for “partner” is symmetochos which can also be translated “sharer” or “partaker.”  Paul uses the same word in Ephesians 3:6 to describe how we, Gentiles, share, partake, and participate in the promise of Christ as the body of Christ.  We who once were satisfied by the broken cisterns of this world, now find our satisfaction in Jesus as the Living Water (John 7:37-39).
 
We are to walk as children of light by displaying the light of Christ (v. 8). If you are a Christian, you are no longer darkness, but sons and daughters, Light of Life (John 12:36). Jesus said of all who belong to Him: “You are the light of the world.... Your light must shine before people in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:14, 16).
 
We are to walk as children of light by displaying the fruit of our identity and union in Christ (v. 9). By walking with Christ, we will display the goodness, righteousness, and truth of Jesus for the glory of God and the good of those around us.  Our life is in Jesus, and the evidence that we belong to Him is that His life will shine through our lives. Tony Merida, in his commentary on Ephesians, said it this way: “Those who walk in light do “good works” (2:10), they live righteously (4:24), and they speak truthfully (4:15).”[4]
 
We are to walk as children of light by living lives that are pleasing to the Lord (v. 10). Our lives are not set apart to please people, but to please the One who purchased us with His blood. This is why the apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 6:18-20, “Flee sexual immorality. Every other sin that a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought for a price: therefore glorify God in your body.”
 
So, what’s the point?  The point is simply this: You, Christian, are a child of a Holy God who poured out His wrath upon His Son so that you would not be consumed by His justice but be overwhelmed by His kindness, grace, love, and mercy through Jesus!  Because you are no longer dead in your offenses and sins (2:1), you walk as one who is alive in Christ.  Walk as one who has been called, “out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9).  Walk as the forgiven because, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21).  Walk in light of your new identity because God has declared by the authority of His word: “if anyone is in Christ, this person is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17).  You who was once dead in your sins and once walked in darkness, are awake and alive not because of anything you have done but because of everything Christ has accomplished!  This is why we sing,
O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be
Let Thy grace Lord like a fetter
Bind my wand'ring heart to Thee
Prone to wander Lord I feel it
Prone to leave the God I love
Here's my heart Lord take and seal it
Seal it for Thy courts above.[5]
 
[1] [Passion] by Cody Carnes, Kristian Stanfill, and Sean Curran
[2] From the Nicene Creed
[3] John Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 15.
[4] Tony Merida, Exalting Jesus in Ephesians (Nashville, TN: Holman Reference, 2014), 126.
[5] Come Thou Fount, [Shane and Shane] by Robert Robinson and John Wyeth

Contender (Summary Of Jude)

Guest Speaker, John Byrne, preaches on the book of Jude.

The Jesus Way

From the Pulpit of Keith Miller
Meadowbrooke Church
July 14, 2024
 
I know many of you know my story and how God saved me. Every year at this time I am more mindful of the miracle of God’s mercy, love, and grace upon my life! When God found me, I was so lost!  I was not looking for Him, yet He found me!  God got my attention on July 12, 1991, after I stepped in front of a big old car in the middle of Business Rt. 1 (aka West Lincoln Hwy.).  My graduating class in 1993 was just under 600, the population where I grew up is currently over 70,000, and the hospital I was taken to after I was hit by that big white car currently has 371 beds. 
 
So, the fact that a woman from my father’s church who did not know me decided to pull over to pray for me could be viewed as a coincidence, but then to have the wife of the youth director of that same church assigned to my care is too much to ignore!  Not to mention that eight months before my accident, my father had his accident that God used to get his attention by having his hand just about cut off, and shortly after receiving major surgery on his hand and recovering at home, two guys from a little church located not far from where I was hit by that big white car visited our little house to tell him about Jesus! At the same time my friend’s mom at whose home I ate almost all of my meals and spent almost all of my weekends sleeping in their home because my stepmother was so horrible to me while I was growing up, picked up a Bible and started reading it.  So regardless of if I was at home or at my friend’s house, I was unable to escape from hearing about the God of the Bible and how He sent His Son to die for sinners like me! God orchestrated all of that so that on July 14th while confined to my bed with a major concussion in St. Mary’s Hospital, I was forced to listen to Darrell Adair, the youth director of my father’s little church, tell me about Jesus while my father sat on one side of my bed and Jackie on the other as they prayed for my soul… 33 years ago to the day!  Four days after Darrell’s visit, I finally caved and surrendered my life to Jesus as my Lord and Savior!  
 
So, to say that I am a bit overwhelmed by God’s grace is a bit of an understatement.  God knows how my brain works, and it seems to me that ever year there is something new that I have not thought about since God saved my soul.  I did not sit down to write my sermon manuscript until this past Friday which was the anniversary of the day I was hit by that big white car!  That on the anniversary of one of the most important days of my life, I would be writing my sermon manuscript on Ephesians 5:1-2 is staggering to me!  What is even more staggering is that the God I was running from not only chose me before the foundation of the world (1:3-4), but did so out of a great love for this lost sinner: “In love He predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace… (vv. 5-6).  This same God made me alive with Jesus on July 18th in the middle of my living room 33 years ago as a result of His rich mercy, great love, and sufficient grace (2:4-5), it is staggering to me! 
 
From everything that you have read, studied, and heard from Ephesians so far, can you blame me for being overwhelmed by God’s undeserved goodness upon my life?  Think about it, 33 years ago while Darrell shared the gospel with my younger 16-year-old rebellious self, that He already determined that He would so mold and shape that teenage kid laying in that hospital bed that 33 years later he would stand before his church family finally ready to preach on Ephesians 5:1-2 after 20 years of pastoral ministry!
 
Here is what I want to say very briefly before we get into these two verses so you can fully appreciate them.  Ephesians 5:1-2 is inserted to make the point of how you can keep from grieving the Holy Spirit (4:30) and why you ought to reject, “the useless deeds of the darkness…”. You, Christian, are beloved by God and you must never forget that!
 
Imitate God Because He Loves You (v. 1)
Tim Keller described this verse in this way: “It’s like putting a radioactive isotope in the middle of your being, and the rays it sends out will shrink your tumors.”[1]  Another way to state this verse is this way: “Because God cherishes you as His dear child, imitate Him instead of the sinful world.” 
 
The word for “imitate” is the Greek word “mimētēs” from which we get the word mimic.  Remember what Paul stated in 4:25-32?  Get rid of falsehood, get rid of ungodly anger, get rid of coveting and taking what does not belong to you, and get rid of unwholesome talk.  Kill it! Make war with it!  Get rid of all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and slander!  Kill it!  Make war with it!  Be killing sin or it will be killing you!  How you get radical about your sin and how you guard yourself against grieving the Holy Spirit is by remembering who you are, a child of a holy God. 
 
When you were dead in your sins, you imitated the life of the prince of the power of the air as the spiritually dead (2:1-3), but now you are alive with Christ and have been adopted as a son and as a daughter of the God you stood against.  Now you are a “beloved” child of God.  What does it mean to be a child of God?  It means that you who were once dead are now alive with Christ (2:4-5), but that is not all that it means!  It means that you who were once an enemy of God are now a friend of God, but it means so, so much more according to Romans 5, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life” (vv. 8-10).  But wait, we are not just reconciled to God and saved by the Life of Christ, we are heirs with Christ:
So then, brothers and sisters, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—for if you are living in accord with the flesh, you are going to die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons and daughters of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons and daughters by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” (Rom. 8:12-15)
 
To go from death to life is a miracle!  To go from an enemy of God to friendship with God is amazing!  But to be reconciled to God through the blood of Jesus and now stand before Him as a full-fledged and a legitimate child of a holy God is staggering!  I am not the only one who thinks this way; the apostle John felt this way and wrote in his epistle: “See how great a love the Father has given us, that we would be called children of God; and in fact we are. For this reason the world does not know us: because it did not know Him” (1 John 3:1).  Or as it is written in Ephesians 1:11-12, “In Him we also have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things in accordance with the plan of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in the Christ would be to the praise of His glory.”
 
Listen, we were the lost sheep that Jesus left the 99 to find (Luke 15:1-7)!  We were the lost coin, that Jesus turns the house upside down to save and all of heaven rejoices over when you were found (Luke 15:8-10)!  Christian, you were the prodigal son Jesus described in his parable who wallowed in the sloop and sludge who the Father compassionately runs to embrace and throws a party for and commands all of heaven: “Quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet; and bring the fattened calf, slaughter it, and let’s eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found” (Luke 15:22-24).
 
So, as “beloved children” we are commanded to mimic our heavenly Father.  What does that mean?  Well, let me tell you what it does not mean: It does not mean to become what God is, for that is impossible.  He alone is God and there is none like Him.  God is eternal and has always existed; we are creatures made in His image.  God is infinitely sovereign and self-sufficient; we are His image-bearing humans who are designed to find our satisfaction in Him.  God is all-powerful (Omnipotent), while we are fragile.  God is everywhere at once (Omnipresent), while we are finite and limited.  God is all-knowing (Omniscient), while we are always learning. God is perfectly holy and is set apart from creation and alone is to be worshiped as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; He is the center of all things while we exist to worship Him.  These characteristics that we cannot share with God are known as His incommunicable attributes.
 
God also has characteristics that we can demonstrate in a limited way; these are known as His communicable attributes.  God’s communicable attributes include His justice, wisdom, faithfulness, mercy, goodness, compassion, forgiveness, and love.  There is not one aspect of His character that He needs to improve upon.  While we are called to exercise justice, wisdom, faithfulness, mercy, goodness, compassion, forgiveness, and love we are forever needing to get better at being just, exercising wisdom, practicing faithfulness, demonstrating mercy, being good, compassionate, forgiving, and loving. 
 
God’s justice, wisdom, faithfulness, mercy, goodness, compassion, forgiveness, and love are all character traits we are commanded to imitate in a way that sets apart from the rest of the world.   for this is what it means to, “walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called” (4:1).  It also includes the, “good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (2:10).  This is what Peter meant when he wrote, “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written: ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’” (1 Pet. 1:14-16).
 
More specifically though, it is the love of God that resulted in our forgiveness that we are to mimic as God’s “beloved children.” 
 
Walk in Love Because Jesus Redeemed You (v. 2)
Why mimic God in the way that He loves?  Well it is the reason why you, Christian, are “beloved” by God.  Your sins cost God the life of His Son on a cross as an, “offering and a sacrifice…”.  The bruised and bleeding Christ, His torn flesh, His pierced hands and feet, His brow piercing crown of thorns, and his agonizing screams upon the cross as our curse is a testament to the horror and seriousness of our sin.  As James Boice once said, “God’s forgiveness is not a mere overlooking of sin, as though he said, ‘Well, boys will be boys (or girls will be girls). We’ll overlook it for now; just don’t let it happen again.’ God takes sin with such seriousness that he deals with it fully at the cross, and it is on that basis—the death of Jesus—that we can know we are forgiven.”[2]  I saw a quote from another pastor the other day that said, “On the cross, God looked at Christ and saw you. Now, He looks at you and sees Christ.”[3] This is why we are able to sing:
Come Thou fount of ev'ry blessing
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace
Streams of mercy never ceasing
Call for songs of loudest praise
Teach me some melodious sonnet
Sung by flaming tongues above
Praise the mount I'm fixed upon it
Mount of Thy redeeming love[4]
 
What does the love of God look like that we experienced?  It is kindness, it is compassion, it is the type of forgiveness that keeps no record of wrongs!  Think about what the love of God has done for you! You who were once cursed and condemned, Jesus was condemned by being cursed: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a Tree.’” (Gal. 3:13).  The apostle John defined it for us this way: “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).
 
Christ’s death upon the cross for our sins was motivated by His love for us, and when He gave Himself up for us, He did so as an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma that pleased Him.  As one commentator said, Jesus’ sacrifice upon the cross, “gave the perfume of grace and glory, the most pleasing aroma of sacrifice ever.”[5]
 
To “Walk in love, just as Christ also loved…” is one way to live a life that is pleasing to the One who called us to Himself through His Son.  Love is the fuel and fire of worship; it is a love for God and a love for others.  It is a love that makes Romans 12:1 possible: “Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.” Amy Carmichael, the famous missionary who spent a lifetime in India and was influential in the outlawing of temple prostitution of children, said of love: “One can give without loving, but one cannot love without giving.”[6]  A young woman who was considering the life of a missionary wrote a letter asking Carmaichael what missionary life was like, Carmaichael answered: “Missionary life is simply a chance to die.” 
 
To love, “as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us…” is not to atone for the sins of others but to “walk in love” in a way that you die to yourself for glory of God and the good of others.  It is the kind of love that flows out of the crucified life Paul talked about in Galatians 2:19-20, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” To love as Christ loved us is to give ourselves to others so that Christ may be formed in them (see Gal. 4:19). 
 
To love as Christ loved is to walk in a way that serves to give to the One who gave Himself for you.  To walk in love is to be devoted to one another (Rom. 12:10), to build up one another (Rom. 14:19; 1 Thes. 5:11), to serve one another (Gal. 5:13), to bear one another’s burdens (Gal. 6:2), to seek the good for one another (1 Thess. 5:15), to live in peace with one another (1 Thes. 5:13), to encourage one another to love and good deeds (Heb. 10:24), to confess our sins to one another (Jas. 5:16), to act in humility towards one another (1 Pet. 5:13), to walk in truth together (1 John 3:18), and so many other “one another’s”! 
 
This is why we read in our Bible: “We love, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19)”.  We love because we are “beloved children.”  We love because, “Christ also loved you…” Now, my dear brothers and sisters, we not only can love God and others, but love is also the evidence we are our indeed the children of God.  Amen.
 
[1] Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).
[2] James Montgomery Boice, Ephesians: An Expositional Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Ministry Resources Library, 1988), 174.
[3] John MacArthur
[4] Come Thou Fount
[5] Tony Merida, Christ-Centered Exposition: Ephesians (Nashville, TN: Holman; 2014), p. 121.
[6] Ibid.

Living in Light of the Way

I want to begin our time together this morning by reading four different verses from the Bible followed by a story and then ask a question that I hope to answer in a way that is helpful. So here are the four different verses which are from four different books in the Bible, and from four different authors:
Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in this same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matt. 5:1112)
It is through many tribulations that we must enter the kingdom of God. (Acts 14:22)
Indeed, all who want to live in a godly way in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. (2 Tim. 3:12)
Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though something strange were happening to you; (1 Pet. 4:12)
Jesus said of anyone who might be thinking about becoming a Christian: If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it (Matt. 16:2425). Some of you are hanging by a thread emotionally, perhaps spiritually, and maybe even physically and you are wondering: Is it worth it?
It is my hope that by the end of this sermon, you will be able to answer that question yourself.
Remember that Chasing After the World was a Dead End (vv. 17-19)
The point of verses 17-19 is not to point the proverbial finger at the gentiles as if to say: Yuck look at those gross Gentile sinners! The point is to remind the Ephesian Christians of what they were once, contrasted with who they are now. Within verse 17 is a command to, no longer walk just as the Gentiles also walk. Why? Because it makes no sense! What we read in this verse is not all that different than what Paul wrote in Romans 6:1-4,
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? Far from it! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life. (Rom. 6:14)
The Bible never separates belief from action. If you believe something to be true, your behavior will be affected by that belief. What we believe in our minds will inevitably affect how we conduct our lives. Is this not the point that Jesus made in His sermon on the mount? Listen to what Jesus said: Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is narrow and the way is constricted that leads to life, and there are few who find it (Matt. 7:1314).
So, Paul commands his readers: you are to no longer walk just as the Gentiles also walk. He then explains what it was that compelled them to walk the way they walked: It was (1) the futility of their minds, (2) being darkened in their understanding, and (3) excluded from the life of God. Notice that the way the unbeliever thinks results in the way that unbeliever acts.
The word for futility literally means empty in the Greek. What this means is that the mind of a person without God is a person without a true understanding of what their purpose is, and how can a person have any real sense of purpose if they reject the Creator who created us to know Him? To be without purpose because you are without God, is to have a mind that is darkened; A person without purpose is a person who stumbles through life like the person who stumbles in a pitch-black room without any real sense of direction for how to get out but does an excellent job at running into wall after wall. The person excluded from the life of God is a person who chases after the idols of the world and the heart thinking it might satisfy when all that it does is prove to be empty.
According to Paul, people act the way they think, and what a person thinks is always connected to their heart. James Boice put it this way: People act as they think, and the reason they are constantly messing up is that they are vain in their thinking and darkened in their understanding as a consequence of being separated from God.[1]
The person who is spiritually dead does not only have a problem with a mind that does not know God, but also has a problem of the heart. If you are excluded from the life of God, then you are spiritually dead. If you are spiritually dead before God, then your heart is hard towards God to the point of stone. The Greek word used for hardness is pōrōsiswhich is also used for marble. To have a stone heart is to have a heart unable to feel or love God because it has grown calloused towards God and what matters to God. In our home in Colorado, we had a granite island. I had the bright idea to do a box jump onto the granite countertop, and against the wisdom and sage advice from my wife to not try it, I ignored her and did it anyway. When I jumped, my toes caught the edge of the granite countertop just enough so that my shins could feel the full force of my weight has I came down; needless to say, it hurt a lot.
The heart of the unbeliever is a heart that is unreceptive to the Word of God in the same way the granite countertop was unreceptive to my shins! Our hearts were not only hard towards God but calloused in the sense that instead of running towards God, we chased after anything but God, namely the idols of our hearts. According to verse 19, before Jesus redeemed us, we were like the Gentile pagans in Ephesus who gave, themselves up to indecent behavior for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.
But what was true of you Christian, is not true of you today! This is the point Paul is making, and he is encouraging you to not only celebrate your life in Christ, but to live in the reality of who you are in Jesus.
Chasing After Jesus is Life (vv. 20-24)
Ephesians 4:10 is the equivalent of Ephesians 2:4-5! And you were dead in your offenses and sins. But, God being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ (2:1, 4-5). In the passage before us today, we whose minds were darkened, without purpose, and had marble like stone hearts have received Jesus Christ and we have never been the same since! We who were dead in our sins, are now alive in Jesus. We whose minds were darkened, have been enlightened by the light of the Gospel! We who were once without purpose because we did not know God, now have found our purpose in Christ!
How did this happen? You heard the truth of the gospel and at the same time God supernaturally and miraculously changed your heart. What you experienced is the thing we read about in 2 Corinthians 4:3-6,
And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they will not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond-servants on account of Jesus. For God, who said, Light shall shine out of darkness, is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. (2 Cor. 4:36)
Christian, you who were once dead in your sins, are now alive in Jesus! You who chased after the idols of your heart thinking that they would satisfy have been found by the One who said: If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. The one who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water (John 7:37-38); you have received Him because you heard Him and have been taught in Him (v. 21)!
There are three verbs used to describe how it is that you went from being dead in your sins to being alive with Christ in Ephesians 4:20-21. The first verb is learned which comes from the Greek word emathete; literally this verse should read: you learned Christ. So, how do you learn somebody? Well you dont do it by simply collecting some historic facts about that person! In Philippians we get an idea for how we have learned Christ and how we are learning Christ: that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; if somehow I may attain to the resurrection from the dead (Phil. 3:10-11).
The second verb that is used to describe how we have gone from death to life is the word heard which comes from the Greek word ēkousate and it is translated in the NASB the way it should be: you have heard Him. How have you heard Christ? You heard Him through His word; you heard His voice through the good news that He lived the life you could not live and died a death for your sins that you deserved in your place, and on the third day, He conquered the grave through His resurrection. You heard His voice in the way Jesus Himself said you would: My sheep listen to My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give them eternal life, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of the Fathers hand (John 10:27-28).
The third verb that is used to describe how we have gone from death to life is the word edidachthēte and is translated you have been taught in Him. You were not taught by Him, but in Him. James Boice wrote of this word that it most likely means that, Jesus is the atmosphere within which the teaching takes place. We might say that Jesus is the school, as well as the teacher and the subject of instruction.[2]
Whats the point? The point is that you who were once lost are now found, and even though you may have been a great sinner, Jesus is a great savior. No longer are you futile in your thinking. No longer are you chasing after idols in the dark. The life you once lived is now your former way of life according to Ephesians 4:22, so why would you even want to go back to your old self? Of course you do not want to go back to your old way of life because it is futile, it was purposeless, it was empty of God, it was a drinking from one toilet after the other only to discover that not only were you thirstier than before, but sick too!
But now now you have Jesus, and because you have Jesus you have life! You have been made alive by Jesus and He who is, the Way, and the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6) has given you purpose. And so now we find ourselves before Ephesians 4:22-24! In regard to your former way of life, you are to rid yourselves of the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you are to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. Listen, it is here in these verses that being made alive in Jesus intersects with the relationship we were created for.
Listen, there are some Christians from whom all you hear out of their mouths is how you must rid yourself of this and rid yourself of that for the purpose of looking and behaving a certain way, and much of it has to do with how you look and behave on the outside, which is no different than the legalism of the Pharisees Jesus spoke against. There are others from whom all you hear that comes out of their mouths is, Grace this and grace that it doesnt matter how you live because it is all grace. This is also known as antinomianism which is the belief that the Christians is free from having to obey Gods moral law. Neither legalism nor antinomianism is the point of these verses!
Conclusion
What is the point of Ephesians 4:22-24 then? The point is that we who were once dead in our sins, have experienced the power of God for salvation through the gospel of Jesus Christ (Rom. 1:16)! The point is that we were once dead and now we are alive in Jesus (2:1-5). The point is that we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them (2:10). The point is that while we were dead in our sins, the closest thing we could come to discovering our purpose and finding true satisfaction is by drinking from the toilet bowl of the world only to grow sicker! Now that we are alive in Christ, we have purpose in God, and have the ability to delight in the God who made us for Himself!
The point of Ephesians 4:22-24 is delight! The point is that we rid ourselves of the old self by chasing after the Jesus who is the light of the world (John 8:12). We rid ourselves of the old self by feasting on Jesus who is the bread of life (John 6:35). We rid ourselves of the old self by discovering in Him our true north as, the Way, and the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6). We rid ourselves of the old self and put on the new self by hungering and thirsting after the only One who can satisfy, for it is Jesus who said: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied (Matt. 5:6).
The author of Life and our Redeemer said: If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it (Matt. 16:2425). These are the words that inspired Jim Elliot to pen his famous words: He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. Little did he know that sometime later his life would become the catalyst to reach a violent unreached tribe, the Waodani tribe in South America, with the gospel; his death being the catalyst.
So, is it worth it? Yes, He is worth it! He is worth it because even if it seems that we have lost it all, in Jesus we have not lost a thing. When all is said and done, all we have is Christ!
[1] James Montgomery Boice, Ephesians: An Expositional Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Ministry Resources Library, 1988), 154.
[2] James Montgomery Boice, Ephesians: An Expositional Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Ministry Resources Library, 1988), 161.

Living the Right Way

There have been men in my life whose influence had such a profound effect upon my life that had they not been a part of it, I would not be the man that I am today. These men include men whose lives continue to shape my life, men like Ralph Robinson and Ed HardestyRalph is home with Jesus and Ed is still faithfully teaching the Bible at a Bible college and faithfully preaches and shepherds at the church he planted years ago. There are others who I will leave unnamed who started out in ministry so well, but were derailed from ministry due to sexual immorality, some are out of the pastorate due to their own arrogance, and others have walked away from the faith all together.
There are multiple examples of the way men and women of faith made a mess of their lives throughout the Bible, of all that have done so, none are more notable than King Solomon who turned his heart from God by chasing after the idols of his heart. As an old man, Solomon reflected upon his sins and his reflections are recorded for us in Ecclesiastes, a book that begins with these words: And I set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom about everything that has been done under heaven. It is a sorry task with which God has given the sons of mankind to be troubled. I have seen all the works which have been done under the sun, and behold, all is futility and striving after wind. What is crooked cannot be straightened, and what is lacking cannot be counted (Eccl. 1:1315). Here is how Solomon concluded in Ecclesiastes:
Remember your Creator before the silver cord is broken and the golden bowl is crushed, the pitcher by the spring is shattered and the wheel at the cistern is crushed; then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it. The conclusion, when everything has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil. (Eccl. 12:6-7, 1314)
You, dear Christian, have something that Solomon did not have. You have Christ! You have been chosen before the foundation of the world by God the Father for Jesus the Son to be holy and blameless (1:4-6). You have been redeemed through the blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins (1:7-12). You have been sealed by the Holy Spirit through Christ as a child of God (1:13-14). You who were once dead in your sins, are now alive with Jesus and have been raised up with Him and seated with Him in the heavenly places all because of Christ! You are, His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them (2:10). Therefore, you are to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called (4:1).
How do you walk in a manner worthy of your calling? You do it within community as a member of the body of Christ who has been gifted to, encourage one another in love and good deeds, not abandoning our own meeting together, as is the habit of some people, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near (Heb. 10:24-25). By doing this, we are better prepared to engage Gods mission to redeem the nations with the Gospel as His Church.
We Live Rightly Under the Guiding Light of the Word of God
How do we guard against the kinds of dangers we are warned about in the Bible such as apostatizing, which is a turning away from the one faith that unifies us that is the one faith in Jesus the Christ. In Christians circles the word apostasy has been sanitized and rebranded with a new word known as deconstructing. This is the very thing the apostle John warned about in his epistle: They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be evident that they all are not of us (1 John 2:19).[1]
So, how do we guard against falling away? How do we protect ourselves from the dangers of apostasy? The answer is before us in Ephesians 4:11-16. We already looked at verses 11-13 but let me briefly remind you why these verses are so helpful.
Last week, I pointed out to you that the list in verse 11 is a list of five offices that Christ gifts to His Church, these offices are filled by those who are spiritually gifted persons, whose sole purpose has to do with the administration and distribution of the Word of God to the people of God. I explained why I believe the offices of Apostle and Prophet are offices no longer being filled today for they ceased with the death of the apostles. I showed you that based on what Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:19-22, the offices of apostles and prophets are gifts we still benefit from through the foundation of the Word of God in the Old Testament (prophets) and New Testament (apostles and prophets). The offices of evangelists, pastors, and teachers are still being filled by Jesus with spiritually gifted people, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ (v. 12).
For how long are those called to administer the Word of God to the People of God? The answer is in verse 13: until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. The goal is that the people of God would become full of the true and incomparable Jesus, and it is done through the faithful teaching and preaching of the Word of God! On this point, Sinclair Ferguson said of the ministry of the Word of God: Its goal is not merely educational but transformational; it informs the mind in order to touch the conscience, mold the will, cleanse the affections and sanctify the whole life. The Word is thus allowed to do its own sanctifying work, as our Lord himself prayed: Sanctify them in the truth; your Word is truth (John 17:17). This requires intensive treatment.[2]
We Live Rightly When We Grow into Maturity in Christ
I believe what I am going to say next may be the most important thing you will hear today regarding your life as a Christian. The reason why Jesus has gifted His Church with Apostles (New Testament), prophets (Old Testament), evangelists, pastors, and teachers is so that you will not remain, children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of people, by craftiness in deceitful scheming (v. 14).
The apostle Paul warns of the great danger we all face related to your growth and maturity as a Christian. The Greek word that Paul uses for children is nēpios, which is used to describe a nursing infant. When you become a Christian, you are what Jesus described as born again (see John 3:1-21). In Hebrews 5:13, the same Greek word Paul used in Ephesians 4:14 is used,
For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the actual words of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unacquainted with the word of righteousness, for he is an infant (nēpios). But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to distinguish between good and evil. (Heb. 5:1214)
When you were made alive with Christ (2:5), you were born again. Like any newborn child, the only food that can be digested at first is milk, but if you never mature and move on to other types of food you will become sick and weak.According to Hebrews 5, the elementary principles of the actual words of God are the fundamentals of the Christian faith, necessary for a person to receive the good news of the gospel such as: The belief in Jesus Christ, as Gods only Son as our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty. From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.[3]
However, if you do not grow up as a Christian and you continue to remain an infant that cannot handle anything other than spiritual milk you will be at severe risk of: 1) being carried about by every wind of doctrine, 2) the trickery of people, and 3) the craftiness in deceitful scheming.
Infant Christians are gullible and unstable on their own feet. They can be easily knocked over, easily distracted, and are easily deceived because they lack discernment. Cults and false teachers will prey on the immature and will waste little time on the Christian who understands and knows the word of God. The Christian who remains an infant in his/her faith is usually unable to see through the deception of false teachers who pride themselves on things they claim have never been seen before or things in the Bible that have been long covered due to some crazy conspiracy. Behind every false teaching is the great deceiver of whom Jesus said, was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him because he is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44).
To the Corinthian church, Paul warned the immature Christians: But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his trickery, your minds will be led astray from sincere and pure devotion to Christ (2 Cor. 11:3). Now listen to 2 Corinthians 11:3-4 in the New Living Translation, it does not comparatively do the best job with translating these verses, but it does really help us understand the danger that faces Christians who never grow beyond infancy: But I fear that somehow your pure and undivided devotion to Christ will be corrupted, just as Eve was deceived by the cunning ways of the serpent. You happily put up with whatever anyone tells you, even if they preach a different Jesus than the one we preach, or a different kind of Spirit than the one you received, or a different kind of gospel than the one you believed (2 Cor. 11:34, NLT). Later in Ephesians Paul tells the Ephesian Christians to put on the full armor of God to stand against the same scheming that threatens Christians still in their infancy: Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places (Eph. 6:1012).
The focus of the enemy is deceive you into believing in a different Jesus and to isolate you from those within Jesus Church who can help you grow in the hope of your calling, which is, one body, one Spirit, one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all (4:4-6). The only way you will be able to stand on your own two spiritual feet is through a maturity that can only come by understanding the truth of Gods word within the community of Gods people. The goal in verse 13 is that we all attain the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. This is why Jesus gifts through the Holy Spirit apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers to the body of Christ so that we will grow as His body:
The unity of the faith: That you, Christian will continue to grow in your knowledge and understanding that Jesus is both redeemer and Lord of His Church.
The knowledge of the Son of God: That you, Christian will continue to grow in your knowledge and understanding that Jesus is all that He is as the Son of God, and any other Jesus presented outside of the scriptures is a Jesus who cannot save.
Maturity as a follower of Jesus: That you, Christian will grow into a mature follower of the King of kings and Lord of lords and see Him for who He really is: The Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end (Rev. 22:13). The head of the Church has declared: I am the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades (Rev. 1:18).
To become full of Christ: That you, Christian, will grow in such a way that you will become full of Christ, so that you are able to say with John the Baptist: He must increase, but I must decrease (John 3:30).
So how do we grow up in one faith? You do it by truthing in love together. Let me explain what I mean. Notice what Paul writes in verses 15-16: but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, that is Christ, from who the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.
If we are going to grow up as Christians, we must be people of the truth of Gods word! You will not grow as a Christian apart from the truth of His word as it is read, studied, and received from the foundation of the apostles and prophets (the Bible) and administered through the faithful preaching and teaching of Gods word by evangelists, pastors, and teachers (4:11). However, the goal is not to fill your head with knowledge, but for the knowledge of Gods word to shape the way you live your life! There is one Greek word used for speaking the truth (alētheuō), and it literally means, be truthful. A better way to translate is, but truthing in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head. What is the point? The point is that the goal of understanding the Word of God is not only to grow in your understanding of the Bible but to live out that truth through your life as a follower of Jesus within the community of the body of Christ. According to verse 16, this is the ONLY way to grow as a Christian!
Every person in the body of Christ has been called by God, redeemed by Jesus, and empowered by the Holy Spirit for the purpose of living within the community of those God has called, those whom Christ has redeemed, and those whom God has sealed with His Holy Spirit, and we live within the community of the redeemed while truthing in love.
Listen, there is coming a day when the Church will be gathered in glory when every tribe and every tongue who experienced redemption through the precious blood of Jesus as the Lamb of God will celebrate Him not only as the Head of the Church, but the triumphant Lion of Judah, and we will celebrate His song that all of heaven will sing:
And they sang a new song, saying, Worthy are You to take the scroll and to break its seals; for You were slaughtered, and You purchased people for God with Your blood from every tribe, language, people, and nation. You have made them into a kingdom and priests to our God, and they will reign upon the earth.
Then I looked, and I heard the voices of many angels around the throne and the living creatures and the elders; and the number of them was myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power, wealth, wisdom, might, honor, glory, and blessing. And I heard every created thing which is in heaven, or on the earth, or under the earth, or on the sea, and all the things in them, saying, To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be the blessing, the honor, the glory, and the dominion forever and ever. (Rev. 5:9-13)
What other way is there to live in light of the reality of that truth but to do it by truthing in love together as His people and as the body of Christ?
[1] See also 1 Tim. 1:18-20; Hebrews 6:1-8; 10:26-31; Matt. 7:21-23.
[2] Sinclair B. Ferguson, Lets Study: Ephesians (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust; 2021), p. 110-11.
[3] Adapted from The Apostles Creed.

Living for the Right Thing

Some time ago I read a quote from Charles Misner about Albert Einstein regarding what he thought about church and religion. Listen carefully to what Misner said about one of the smartest men who lived:
The design of the universe is very magnificent and shouldnt be taken for granted. In fact, I believe that is why Einstein had so little use for organized religion, although he strikes me as a basically very religious man. He must have looked at what the preachers said about God and felt that they were blaspheming. He had seen much more majesty than they had ever imagined, and they were just not talking about the real thing. My guess is that he simply felt that religions hed run across did not have proper respect for the author of the universe.[1]
It was in John Pipers book, Let the Nations Be Glad that I read that quote over 20 years ago, and I have never forgotten it. We were made to know God and it is the reason Christ gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers to equip the body of Christ by showing them the real thing. It is hard to show the body of Christ the real thing if you are not looking at the real thing.
Last week, we spent our time together in Ephesians 4:7-10. My goal was to show you that one way to be, diligent to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (v. 3), is to use spiritual gifts, your talents, and your time to, encourage one another in love and good deeds (Heb. 10:19-25). Hopefully, I was able to show you that you cannot do that if you are not physically present and active with fellow Christians who gather regularly as the local expression of the body of Christ.
Some of you are unsure of what spiritual gifts Jesus has given through His Holy Spirit. You may be unaware of the supernatural gifts given by the Holy Spirit that are listed in the Bible. Two places in the Bible list spiritual gifts that are still given today; all that I want to do today is to list them for you just so that you are aware of what they are:
Romans 12:6-8
1 Corinthians 12:7-10, 28
Prophesy
Word of Wisdom
Service
Word of Knowledge
Teaching
Faith
Exhortation
Healing
Giving (Generosity)
Miracles
Leadership
Prophesy
Mercy
Discernment (distinguishing of spirits)
Tongues
Interpretation of Tongues
Administration
All of these spiritual gifts are supernatural in nature and given through the Holy Spirit for the edification of Christs body and to participate in His mission. This is the point of Ephesians 4:7, But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christs gift. Of all the gifts given by Christ through the Holy Spirit to His people, they can be categorized into two groups: Gifts of speaking and gifts of helping; I believe this is what the apostle Peter described in his epistle: Whoever speaks is to do so as one who is speaking actual words of God; whoever serves is to do so as one who is serving by the strength which God supplies; so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen (1 Pet. 4:11).
You Have Been Gifted to Live for Jesus in Partnership with His People
If you are a Christian, you are the recipient of Gods rich mercy, great love, and all-sufficient grace that has been lavished upon you when you were dead in your offenses and sins and stood as before the God who is holy as a child of His infinite wrath. Christian, we have been forgiven much! Not only have we been forgiven much, but we were chosen and redeemed for, good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them (2:10)!
Your redemption was not meant only for your benefit, but the benefit of every person in your worldespecially those who belong to the body of Christ. Your spiritual gifts, your talents, your stuff, and your time are all blood-bought gifts from the God who created everything and owns it all: Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. In the exercise of His will He gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures (Jas. 1:1718).
Do you know how to, walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called (4:1)? Do you want to know how it is you can bear with your brothers and sisters in Christ with, all humility and gentleness, with patience, and in love (v. 2)? Do you understand the part you play in keeping, the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (v. 3)? You do it by the power God has provided through His Holy Spirit, which is, the boundless greatness of His power toward us who believe (1:19) that enables you to use your God-given spiritual gifts, your God-given talents, your God-given skills, your God-given time, and everything else God has provided out of the abundance of His goodness toward you, to encourage one another in love and good deeds (Heb. 10:24). This is how Jesus has built His Church, this is how Jesus is building His Church, this is how Jesus will continue to build His Church, and the gates of will not overpower it (Matt. 16:17-19).
Listen, Jesus loves His bride too much to leave her the way He found her! We will eventually get to Ephesians 5:25-27 where husbands are told how we are to love our wives, but for now, I only want you to see the way Christ loves His Bride: Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless (Eph. 5:2527). How is Jesus loving His bride? He gave Himself up for her, He is sanctifying her, and He is cleansing her through His Spirit and His Word. All of this He is doing for the purpose of presenting her for Himself in all her potential glory with no more blemishes or defects that she would be holy and blameless! Do you know the way that He is doing it? Through the ministry of His Word, the Power of His Spirit, and the community of His People. Do not buy into the lie that you do not need the Church!
Jesus Gifts His Body with Spiritually Gifted People to Equip His Church
Now I want to turn your attention to verse 11, which is not spiritual gifts, but spiritually gifted people called to at least four offices in Jesus Church. These are people called by Jesus and gifted to His people to do two things: (1) Equip the saints for the work of ministry, and (2) for the building up of the body of Christ.
Some propose that in every church there should be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Those who propose the view, rightly point out that the word apostle can mean messenger or anyone who is sent as a witness. In the same way, prophet does not always refer to a person who receives a special inspired word from God but can also refer to a person who speaks forth God's word. My problem with this view is with the way the office of apostle and prophet is used elsewhere in Ephesians. This is why understanding the context of a book in the Bible is so important for interpreting and understanding a passage like the one before us. Notice the way apostles and prophets are referred to in Ephesians 2:19-22,
So then you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of Gods household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit. (Eph. 2:1922)
For this reason, I believe that the office of apostle and prophet that Paul is referring to in Ephesians 4:11 are the gifted people God used (past tense) in both the Old Testament and New Testament. Both were gifts given to Gods people to provide the Church with the Word of God (the Bible) and form the foundation for the people of God. The prophets were mostly men through whom God spoke to provide the people of God with the word of God and the apostles were the 12 men Jesus chose to be the foundation of the Church. Both the office of prophet and apostle ceased after the Apostles all died, but the gift that they were and continue to be to the Church are gifts we enjoy and benefit from still today, for every time you read your Bible, hear it faithfully preached and taught, or sing songs shaped by the Word of God, you reap the benefits of the good gifts to the Church that were the prophets and Apostles.
The other three offices in the Church are evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Now everyone is called to evangelize, but some are uniquely gifted to be evangelists who tend to be those sent to plant churches or sent to people groups who have not yet heard the gospel of Jesus Christ such as Adoniram Judson who brought the gospel to the unreached people group known as the Burmese. Before arriving upon the shores of what is still called, The Land of the Golden Pagodas, at the age of 21, Judsons eyes fell upon Ephesians 3:17-19 which compelled Adoniram and his wife (Ann) to make Burma (Myanmar) their home on July 13, 1813. I would submit to you the fire that burns in all those truly called by Christ to the office of evangelists, pastor, and teacher can be heard in Ephesians 3:17-19, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to all the fullness of God.
It would take six years for Judson to learn Burmese and eventually see his first Burmese convert come to Christ on May 9, 1819. Three years later, he finished translating the New Testament into Burmese. Although it took him 24 years to do so, he was able to translate the entire Bible into Burmese in the early months of 1834. Before his death on Abril 12, 1850, the gift that Adoniram Judson gave to the body of Christ resulted in 63 churches and 7,000 converts, 800 of those converts were from a tribe in Burma known as the Karen. Judsons role was to fill the office of an evangelist in Burma. What Judson did not know was that there was an ancient prophecy known by the Karen concerning the great God they called Ywa who created the earth and a man and a woman who were our first parents and that He had a book that was lost, but a white man would come to bring them the lost book about Ywa. Adoniram Judson was that man.
Some think that the offices of pastor and teacher are one and the same. Others believe they are separate offices. What I do know is that one of the qualifications of pastors is their ability to teach, but not all teachers are called to be pastors. Both, however, like the evangelist, are called by Christ and gifted to His Church to, equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ (v. 12). But what is the goal of verse 12? The goal is verse 13, which could not be any more clear: until we all attain the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. In other words, the goal and purpose of the gifting of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers to the body of Christ is four-fold:
The unity of the faith: Those Jesus gifts to His Church are sent to proclaim the Lordship of Jesus as the only redeemer and savior of our souls.
The knowledge of the Son of God: Those Jesus gifts to His Church are sent to proclaim Him as the Son of God. Any other Jesus than the One presented in the Bible who is fully God and fully man as the second person of the Trinity is a Jesus who cannot save.
Maturity as a follower of Jesus: Those Jesus gifts to His Church are sent to proclaim the full counsel of Gods word for the full health of Gods people.
To become full of Christ: The purpose of the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers is the proclamation of the Word of God to the people of God, before the people of God, and over the people of God who make of the Church of Jesus Christ!
To a young pastor-teacher, by the name of Timothy, Paul gave these solemn instructions that are not only for me as the pastor of Meadowbrooke Church, but for us all:
I solemnly exhort you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not tolerate sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires, and they will turn their ears away from the truth and will turn aside to myths. But as for you, use self-restraint in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. (2 Tim. 4:15)
So, I come back to my original question: How are you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called (4:1)? Use your God-given gifts, talents, time, and resources to, encourage one another in love and good deed, not abandoning our own meeting together, as is the habit of some people, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near (Heb. 10:24-25). The way you do that is by giving them Jesus in the same way the apostles and prophets were sent to do, and in the same way the evangelists, pastors, and teachers are called to do!
I have one more thing to say, and I want to say it to the fathers and the single mothers of Meadowbrooke Church. The Church is a macrocosm of the way God structured the family, and in a very real sense, you are called and sent to be a gift to your family! Like the apostles, you are called to show your wife and children the beauty and splendor of the incomparable Christ! Like the prophets of old, you are called to give your wife and children the Word of God because it is honey to the lips (Ps. 119:103), and it is living and active (Heb. 4:12). Like the evangelist, you are sent to show your wife and children why and how Jesus satisfies.
Finally, just like pastors and teachers who serve Christs Church, you are to serve your wife and children to help them know and understand that there is none like our God (Isa. 46:9-10), and to know Him is to know His Son who is on all levels, the way, and the truth, and the life (John 14:6). As a husband and father, you show your family that Jesus is the bread of life that satisfies (John 6:35); He is the true door that leads to salvation (10:7), He is the good shepherd even in the valley of the shadow of death (10:11,14); He is the resurrection and the life who keeps His sheep (11:25); He is the true vine in whom the purpose of life and true thriving is to be experienced (15:1).
Dear fathers of Meadowbrooke, you are not called to lead your children to their idols but to the all-satisfying and all-sufficient Redeemer who is the only One who can give what their idols will never be able to give namely, LIFE. Give them the God of the Book! Give them the real thing!
[1] John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad! The Supremacy of God in Missions, 30th Anniversary (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2022), 4.

Oh Captain! Our Captain!

With no real way of knowing how the American civil war would end, President Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863; the most important part of his proclamation stated the following: That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.
The war began with shots fired at 4:30 a.m. in South Carolina at Fort Sumter, on April 12, 1881. The war ended 4 years, 1 month, and 2 weeks later on April 9, 1865, at the great cost of at least 620,000 American lives. Five days later, on April 14th, President Abraham Lincoln was shot in the back of the head by John Wilkes Booth while watching a play at Fords Theater; Lincoln was pronounced dead the morning of April 15th. In his eulogy of Lincoln, Senator Charles Sumner said, Mourn not the dead, but rejoice in his life and example. Rejoice that through him Emancipation was proclaimed.
Walt Whitman admired Lincoln, and although he never had the opportunity to meet Lincoln, he said of the president: Lincoln gets almost nearer me than anybody else. Whitman shared the same views on slavery that Abraham Lincoln had; after the president was assassinated, Whitman penned what would later be considered a masterpiece of a poem titled: O Captain! My Captain!, which served as a metaphor about the death of the president he dearly admired and loved.Whitmans poem was first published on November 4, 1865; consider Whitmans first verse:
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weatherd every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
As great as Abraham Lincoln was, he was only mortal, and a flawed one at that. But dear Christian, we have a Captain who is no mere mortal. A captain of a boat or ship is the person with the highest rank; as the Head of the Church, there is no authority greater than Jesus! Think about it, all things have been placed in subjection under the feet of Jesus; He is head over all things to the to the church (Eph. 1:22-23).
Our Captain, Jesus, is the fully divine Christ who descended in humility by also becoming fully human. Our Captain is the Lord of Life, who is the only begotten Son of God the Father Almighty. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead, and buried; descended into the grave; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from there he shall come to judge the living and the dead.[1]
When I read Ephesians 4:7-10 and sat at my desk in front of my Bible staring at verses 8-10, I could not help but rejoice over what these verses mean. After reading Walt Whitmans poem, I wrote two verses of my own poem in response:
Our Captain and Great Redeemer,
His divine arms spread great and wide!
Upon the Cross, He bleed for sinners,
For our freedom, the Lamb of God died.
From earthen wood to the stone carved tomb,
Redemptions Prince laid cold and dead!
Three Days Later, Christ had risen,
Death and sin: swallowed up by the Living!
So, I have spent much of our time this morning setting up Ephesians 4:7-10, but I believe it was time well spent for reasons I hope will become clear.
The Church is Equipped by Christ for Her Mission (v. 7)
If I can get you to see how encouraging verse 7 is, I believe you will gain a healthier and deeper understanding of how you can, walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called (4:1). I also believe you will discover the secret sauce for how you can urgently, keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (v. 3). To do this however, you have got to see the relationship between Ephesians 4:4-6 with verse 7; for this reason look carefully at these verses: There is one body and one Spirit, just as you also were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all (Eph. 4:46).
Now we come to verse 7, But to each of us grace was given according to the measure of Christs gift. Wait a second Paul, what happened to all this talk about us being one? We, who make up the body of Christ under His Lordship because we have been sealed by His Holy Spirit have each received, grace according to the measure of Christs gift. The grace and the gift mentioned in this verse is not referring to the gift of salvation in the same way Ephesians 2:8-9 is referring to the gift of salvation. The grace and the gift that is given by Jesus to those He has redeemed is given so that those who have been saved are able to function as one body for the purpose of serving one another in the Church and to engage Christs mission in the world as the Church.
The word used for grace is charis from which we get the word charismatic from, and the way it is used here in verse 7 is not saving grace but equipping grace. The gift that belongs to Christ is His to give and He does so freely to whomever He chooses who make up His Church for good of the one body. Listen, Christs gift are spiritual gifts that He distributes among His people diversly through the power of the Holy Spirit to build up those who make up His Church. The gift is what Jesus promised His disciples hours before His crucifixion: But I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I am leaving; for if I do not leave, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you (John 16:7). The gift is given not by some force, but by the One Jesus promised in Acts 1:8, You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and Samaria, and as far as the remotest part of the earth (Acts 1:8).
If you are still confused what verse 7 is describing, there are two scripture passages that I believe will help you make sense of this verse. In 1 Corinthians 12:4-7, we learn a little more about what each true Christian has been given according to the measure of Christs gift: Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. What this means for you Christian, is that Jesus has uniquely and supernaturally gifted you through the Holy Spirit (the Helper) to live out Ephesians 2:10 for the good of His people and mission He has called us to, and in case you forgot what Ephesians 2:10 says, here it is: For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
I will come back to how our gifting through the Holy Spirit works diversly for the purpose of unity in my next sermon, but what I want you to know for now is that Jesus gave His Church a greater mission than what drove the North and the South into war on April 12, 1861, for we live in a world where all people are born under the tyranny of sin and are bound to a nature to sin, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind and stand condemned before a Holy God as, children of wrath (Eph. 2:1-3). We who have been set free from the tyranny of sin and redeemed by the blood of the Lamb have been given our marching orders: Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to follow all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age (Matt. 28:1920). The good news about our orders is that our Captain has not only uniquely gifted each of His people to accomplish His mission, but He promises to go with us!
The Mission of the Church Guaranteed by Christs Victory (vv. 8-10)
What confidence do we have that the Church (the community of called-out-ones) will be able to finish the mission Jesus has given Her? It is right here in verses 8-10! Paul begins with the word Therefore to indicate how it is we can have any confidence to remain unified as one body, under one Lord, sealed and empowered by one Spirit, and he does so by quoting from Psalm 68! What is so remarkable about Psalm 68 is that it is in the category of Psalms known as the enthronement psalms that celebrate the kingly reign of God Almighty! Psalm 68 celebrates Gods triumph in leading His people from Mount Sinai in the desert to Mount Zion in Jerusalem as God and King over His people! Permit me to highlight some of the verses in Psalm 68 before we look specifically at the verse Paul quotes from so that you can appreciate the significance of what Paul does in Ephesians from this Psalm:
May God arise, may His enemies be scattered, and may those who hate Him flee from His presence. As smoke is driven away, so drive them away; as wax melts before a fire, so the wicked will perish before God. But the righteous will be joyful; they will rejoice before God; yes, they will rejoice with gladness. (Psalm 68:13)
Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears our burden, the God who is our salvation. God is to us a God of salvation; and to God the Lord belong ways of escape from death. (Psalm 68:1920)
Tucked into the middle of Psalm 68 is verse 18, and it is this verse that Paul quotes from, and does so with a twist. But before I show you why He did this, you need to see Psalm 68:15-18 together:
The mountain of Bashan is a mountain of God; the mountain of Bashan is a mountain of many peaks. 16Why do you look with envy, you mountains of many peaks, at the mountain God has desired as His dwelling? Indeed, the Lord will dwell there forever. 17The chariots of God are myriads, thousands upon thousands; The Lord is among them as at Sinai, in holiness. 18You have ascended on high, You have led captive Your captives; You have received gifts among people, Even among the rebellious as well, that the Lord God may dwell there.
Here is what you need to know to appreciate why Paul quotes Psalm 68:18 with a twist: The mountain of Bashan represented the gateway to the evil underworld in Israelite and Canaanite thought.[2] What is being celebrated in Psalm 68:15-18 is that God defeated the evil that threatened His people at Mount Bashan and not only defeated them handedly, but led captive the captives by putting His triumph over the enemies of His people on full display for all to see. When the Psalmist wrote of God: You have led captive Your captives he was describing the victory procession of a returning king that was common in the ancient Near East; in his commentary on the Psalms, Gerald Wilson said of the victory procession, Captives were paraded as a visible representation of the kings far-flung conquests. As the victorious army returned home through various subject nations, the parade of captives drove home to any who might entertain notions of rebellion the power of the king and how he had defeated those who had resisted his authority.[3] Those conquered were quick to offer gifts to prove their loyalty to the conquering victorious king.
Okay, now we are ready to appreciate what Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote in Ephesians 4:8-10, and it will not take long to do so! So here is what Paul wrote: Therefore it says, When He ascended on high, he led captive THE captives, And He gave gifts to people. 9(Now this expression, He ascended, what does it mean except that He also had descended into the lower parts of the earth? 10He who descended is Himself also He who ascended far above all the heavens, so that He might fill all things.)
What the apostle does with Psalm 68:18 is that he summarizes all of Psalm 68 by drawing our attention to verse 18 to show us how every enemy has been defeated through the way Jesus descended into the lower parts of the earth which He did by humbling Himself, by taking the form of a bond-servant and being born in the likeness of men. And being found in the appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross (Phil. 2:5-8). Jesus was buried and three days later rose from the grave! After He rose from the grave, He ascended to heaven, but before doing so, promised his followers: You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and Samaria, and as far as the remotest part of the earth (Acts 1:8). What does it mean that Jesus, ascended far above all the heavens? After Jesus descended, we read in Philippians 2:9-11, For this reason also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Do you see what Paul is saying here? Oh, dear Christian, Jesus died to liberate us from the bondage and curse of sin, and He was then buried in the tomb. However, because death had no power over Him, he defeated sin and death by rising from the grave, and we rightly hail Him as the Risen Lord of Life! But wait that is not all! Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father, which means that He is enthroned as the ascended King of kings and Lord of lords! Now, against the backdrop of Psalm 68 and Ephesians 4:7-10, consider Colossians 2:13-15,
And when you were dead in your wrongdoings and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our wrongdoings, having canceled the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.
As the victorious and ascended King, Jesus triumphed over sin, death, the demonic powers, the devil, and itself!Jesus is the fulfillment of Psalm 68, and the gifts He gives is through the pouring out of the Holy Spirit that both He and the Father have sent to seal His redeemed and ransomed Bride (the Church) for the purpose of dispensing gifts upon those who make up His one body! Martyn Lloyd-Jones said of these verses that they serve as, a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ leading in His triumphal train the devil and and sin and deaththe great enemies that were against man and which had held mankind in captivity for so long a time. The princes which had controlled that captivity are now being led captive themselves. He concludes by driving home the apostles point that we dare not forget: He is the great heavenly Captain and we are His people. Having routed His enemies, He dispenses and showers His gifts upon us. But all the gifts, ever, always, come from Him.[4]
You, who have been ransomed, redeemed, and forgiven through the triumphant victory of Jesus Christ upon the cross and over the gravenow that you who have received the promised Holy Spirit and are empowered by Himhow are you walking in, a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called?
[1] Adapted from the Apostles Creed.
[2] John D. Barry et al., Faithlife Study Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012, 2016), Eph 4:8.
[3] Gerald H. Wilson, Psalms, vol. 1, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), 939940.
[4] David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Christian Unity: An Exposition of Ephesians 4:116 (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1972), 153154.

Walking in Unity

Although the word church is not used in these verses, it is used throughout Ephesians. The Greek word for church is ekklesia and means, assembly, gathering, community, congregation, or as you know it church. That is its meaning on the surface but dive a little deeper into the meaning of ekklesia and you will discover that the word is made up of a prefix and a root. The prefix is ek and means out of, and the root is kaleō, which means, call or summon. All I want you to know and appreciate is that the word for church (ekklesia) literally means, the community of called out ones.
If you are a Christian, then you belong to the ekklesia of Jesus Christ; you have been called out of the world: But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a Holy nation, a people for Gods own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Pet. 2:9). If you are a Christian, your identity is now in Jesus and is the reason why He prayed this for you: I am not asking on behalf of these alone, but also for those who believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one; just as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me (John 17:20-21). If you are a Christian, you belong to Him as His Church.
Nine times the word ekklesia is used in Ephesians, but the Church is also referred to as the body (sōma) in Ephesians 4:4 and six more times throughout the epistle (see 1:23; 2:16; 4:12, 16; 5:23, 30). To be the body of Christ is to belong to Christ and to be in Christ. In and through Jesus we now belong as the ekklesia and our identity will forever be linked to Him as His Bride. So, dear Christian, is it any wonder that it is Jesus who assures His Church who is His Bride, who is His body: Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and Hades (Rev. 1:17b-18).
We do not have the time to get into the significance of numbers this morning, but I do want to point out three significant numbers in these verses that are easy to miss if someone doesnt point them out to you. First, the number one signifies unity in the Bible. The number seven signifies perfection or completion in the Bible. Finally, the number three, for reasons that will soon become clear.
Paul is emphasizing the need for unity in the opening verses of Ephesians 4, and urges the Church to be zealous, to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. This is why he emphasized that there is one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God that we, as the Church of Jesus Christ, share. Now, notice how many ones the apostle lists in these verses; he lists seven ones symbolizing that what binds us together as the Bride of Christ is complete and perfectly as God intended it. Finally, and the neatest part of these verses in my opinion is the number three, and you can see it with each of these verses:
We are, one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling this is due to the work of the Holy Spirit, as God the Spirit.
We have one Lord, one faith, and one baptism because of the redeeming work of Jesus Christ, as God the Son.
We worship, one Father of all who is over all and through all and in all who is God the Father.
The significance of the number three is that it is symbolic of the God who we worship who is Three-in-One as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
There are two ways I can break down these verses in this sermon. I was tempted to create seven points for each of the reasons why we must, urgently keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (v. 3). I have chosen the second way I can break down these verses and it the outline Paul intentionally provided for us based on God as a Trinity. Notice that in Ephesians 1:3-14, Paul begins with the Father who has chosen us, then the Son who has Redeemed us, and then the Holy Spirit who has sealed us. Here in Ephesians 4:4-6, Paul begins from the ground up with the Holy Spirit who keeps us in power, the Son of God who walks with us in love, and the Father who is sovereignly for us. In light of all of the craziness in our nation and world, I cannot think of a more appropriate or more comforting passage in the Bible for this Sunday.
The Holy Spirit Keeps His Church Powerfully (v. 4)
There is only one body that is the Church, and that one body is defined by the Spirit of God: keeps all who have been redeemed through the blood of the Jesus (1:7) by sealing them as Gods inheritance that He promises to never lose (1:13-14). Listen, just as your physical body cannot live apart from your soul, it is equally true the Church is not really the Church apart from the Spirit of God in Her.
If you are a Christian, it is because you heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and believed it. In the moment you believed the gospel, you were baptized by the Holy Spirit (Matt. 3:11; Luke 3:16; Rom. 6:1-7). When you were baptized by the Holy, you experienced what was promised in Ezekiel 36:26-27, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you and bring it about that you walk in My statutes, and are careful and follow My ordinances. This is the promise Jesus said all who belong to Him would receive: I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, so that He may be with you forever; the Helper is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him; but you know Him because He remains with you and will be in you (John 14:15-17).
If you are a Christian, then you who were once dead in your sins are now alive in Jesus and the evidence that you are alive in Jesus is the inward and outward work of the Holy Spirit who you were baptized in, sealed by, and are now experiencing His regenerative power in your life. What you experienced is the same thing that every other true born-again Christian has experienced; that miracle is described for us in 2 Corinthians 4:6, For God, who said, Light shall shine out of darkness, is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
The true body of Christ is sealed by the lifegiving Spirit of God, and the one hope that is shared by every true Christian who makes up the Church of Christ is a single and unified hope that is rooted in a Jesus who not only died for sinners and rose from the grave, but is coming again to make all things new and to reverse the curse of sin! The hope of the true Christian is the hope of the true Church: We long for the return of Jesus who is, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come (Eph. 1:20-21), and as the body of Christ, we echo the same desire the apostle John shared in his concluding prayer in the book of Revelation: Come, Lord Jesus (Rev. 22:20). If you are a Christian, you belong to one body because of one Spirit, evidenced by one hope of your calling.
The Son of God Walks with His Church Lovingly (v. 5)
Another reason why we ought to be zealous, to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace is because, as the body of Christ, we share one Lord, one faith, and one baptism. The one Lord is Jesus, the one faith is His gospel, and the one baptism is the public confession that He is both savior and Lord over our lives through the waters of baptism. So, lets briefly look at each of these three statements individually.
Jesus is Lord. There can be no other lord or lords if you are a Christian! What this means is that the body of Christ and those who truly belong to His body accept, embrace, and follow the Jesus revealed in the Bible. Who is the Jesus revealed in the Bible? He is the One who claimed: I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me (John 14:6). He is the One who asserts Himself with the proclamation: I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and Hades (Rev. 1:17b-18). It is this Christ that every true believer celebrates as the One who is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He who is the head of the body, the church; and He who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything (Col. 1:17-18). It is to Him all authority belongs and it is before Him that every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:11). Jesus is Lord, and because He is Lord, those who truly belong to Him follow where He goes (Luke 14:26-27), and go where He sends (Matthew 28:19-20). Jesus is Lord because He is, the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end (Rev. 22:13). Jesus is He, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty (Rev. 1:8). Jesus is Lord and it is the recognition of and submission to His lordship that marks every true Christian who makes up His Church.
The one faith we share as His Church is a confidence in Jesus as Lord. The Greek word for faith is pistis which is confidence in the thing that you believe is indeed true! The faith Paul is speaking of is so much more than the acknowledgment of certain facts about Jesus such as His life, death for sin, and resurrection. No, the faith that marks the true body of Christ is a confidence that He is all that He claimed to be and all that He did and all that He is is enough for our life, salvation, and our complete redemption. It is our one faith in Him that compels us to follow Him! Oh, dear friends, in light of His Lordship and the faith you claim to have in Him, consider the words of our dear Savior: Now why do you call Me, Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say (Luke 6:46)?
It is because of Christs Lordship and our confidence in all that He did and all that He is that we share in one baptism. Now the baptism Paul is referring is in reference to water baptism, but it is so much more than water baptism, for it is the underlining reason why water baptism is not a way to complete your salvation but the next step of obedience to Jesus as a result of your salvation. One of the passages in the Bible I like to use during our baptism services is Romans 6:3-4, Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life.
Water Baptism is the outward sign of a new identity that is rooted in Jesus death and resurrection which is the reason for the new life as His redeemed people. This is also the reason Jesus commanded His Church: Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to follow all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age (Matt. 28:19-20). If you are a Christian, it is because of One Lord, one faith, and one baptism!
God the Father is Sovereignly for His Church Eternally (v. 6)
If you are a Christian, God is your Father! This ought to compel in us an urgency and zeal to, keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (v. 3). Surely it is because we share, one hope, one Holy Spirit, one Lord, one faith, and one baptism. However all of this is because of the sovereign will of God the Father who, according to Ephesians 5-6, In love predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.
What unifies us across denominational lines as brothers and sisters who make up the body of Christ is the Holy Spirit who seals us as His own, the hope of the saving work of Jesus, the allegiance to the Lordship of Christ, a confidence that He is enough, and the evidence that we have gone from darkness to light and death to life. Because of this, we who were once sons of disobedience and children of wrath, now have been reconciled to God as his children; what unifies us now is that God is our Father! What unifies us is that we can celebrate with confidence the assurance of 1 John 3:1, See how great a love the Father has given us, that we would be called children of God; and in fact we are. For this reason the world does not know us: because it did not know Him. But dear brothers and sisters, we now know the God who we used to run from, and now we can call him Father!
This is why the all Paul is referring to in verse 6 are all true Christians regardless of the secondary issues we disagree on. This final and important point serves as the climax of Ephesians 4:1-6, Our God and Father is, over all and through all and in all. Dont miss this! The three alls here are referring to the one body of Christ who is sealed by one Spirit, because we share one hope, have one Lord, share one faith, who are identified by one baptism, and belong to one God is now our Father. Because of this our Father is over all believers, through all believers, and in all believers. Let me say it another way: Our God and Father is lovingly and sovereignly over all His redeemed children. Our God and Father is lovingly working through all His redeemed children. Our God and Father is lovingly residing in all His redeemed children.
So what are the hills we ought to be dying on? There are seven of them listed for us in these verses: There is one body and one Spirit, just as you also were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all (vv. 4-6). The question I leave you with is this: In light of what unifies us, how are you doing with Ephesians 4:1-3? How are you, walking in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, being zealous to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace?
Amen.