Dearly loved children

Intro

Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky. Imagine all the people, living for today.

How would you live in John Lennon’s dream world?

If you look at the Amazon top 50 best sellers, minus the children’s books like the very hungry caterpillar, almost half are trying to answer this question: how do you live a good life in a lonely world? Is there a way of living that fits with reality, that leads to some kind of joy, that makes sense? If we are all alone, that there is nothing beyond this life - what then?

I’ve not read all of the top 50, but I’ve read enough to know that none of them say that the way to live well in the world is to sacrifice yourself for people who hate you. Dale Carnegie’s method of winning friends and influencing people does not involve turning the other cheek. I know for a fact that the Barefoot Investor’s method of financial management does not involve radical generosity even to those who dislike you. Because that’s not a good life, that’s just a recipe for being ripped off, it’s a gullible fools way to live.

Pause

What we see in this second half of Ephesians 4 is a description of life that can really be summed up as self-sacrifice. Not just for those who love you, but also for those who don’t. It’s a way of life that puts others first, that is so open and generous and giving that it is almost guaranteed that someone will exploit you. Why would anyone live like this?

Living for today is wise, if we are alone, orphans in this world, if there is no hell below us, above us only sky. Following your heart makes perfect sense, if your heart is all you have. Just don’t hurt anyone, you do you, speak your truth, live your life for today, be authentic, that’s as good a life as you can hope for.

If we are alone, sure. That’s wisdom.

But if there is a deeper wisdom to this world, if there is someone who loves us, who has come to us, who has adopted us into his family and is determined to share his abundant life with us, living as if you’re alone, like you’re an orphan, is pointless.

You’re not an orphan, stop acting like one

State

What kind of life makes sense to orphans?

Show

The kind of life Paul describes in verse 19

Ephesians 4:19 NRSV

They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

Licentiousness is not a word we use everyday. But it’s just the kind of life we’re told king Solomon chased, Ecclesiastes 2:10 “Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them; I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil.”

Build houses, plant gardens, put in some water features, get on first name terms with the staff at Bunnings. If that floats your boat.

Or, put in the hard yards at work, climb the corporate ladder, make some investments, increase your wealth so that you can enjoy the finer things, maybe the arts, music - if thats your thing. Or flesh if that’s your thing - Solomon afterall is famous for his 300 wives and 700 porcupines.

Illustration

I recently heard about someone who has two weeks to live. They’ve got cancer and have decided to end their life. This person asked the internet what they should do with their final days. What wisdom did people offer? What did the honesty of anonymity reveal? How could you live well knowing the end is near? The most popular answer was: liquidate all your assets and use the money on prostitutes, ice and heroin.

That’s another way to live well, if human beings are orphans - alone in this cold world. Chase the suburban dream, chase the corporate dream, chase the dragon. If you’re an orphan, it’s all good.

But if, as we’ve spent the last two months hearing, you and I are not orphans, that God has come to us and adopted us into his family, raised us up into a new life of perfect love and acceptance and peace and fulfilment, then continuing to live like none of that has happened makes no sense.

Ephesians 4:17 (NRSV)

you must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds.

It no longer makes any sense to just follow your heart, you do you, whatever works. Because that is a fend-for-yourself way of living. That is a hack through the jungle of life because no one is coming for you way of living. Following every desire.

Illustration

If you’ve had any experience with a newborn baby, you know they are completely controlled by desire. They are desiring machines. They get hungry, they cry out and they will not stop until they are fed, or they are so exhausted that their little bodies can’t muster the strength to cry any more and they conk out. And as they grow up, they continue to be desiring machines. If you’ve spent any time with a toddler you’ll know that they follow their hearts. But you’ll also know that sometimes what the heart wants, is not beneficial for the rest of the body. There are whole websites dedicated to images of toddlers in full meltdown because they weren’t allowed to stick a knife in the toaster, or drink some of the drain cleaner, or jump off the roof.

What newborns, what toddlers haven’t learnt is that desires are good servants, but terrible masters. And what newborns and toddlers do learn, if they grow up in a family with parents who love them, is that their desires best lead them to life when they are controlled by love.

It’s what Paul means when he talks about learning Christ. Learning here is a word related to the word translated disciple. Learning Christ, learning how to live as a dearly loved child, is a practice, in the way that one learns the piano or tennis. It’s something that takes repetition, reinforcement.

It involves ironing out bad habits, resisting certain desires because they are ultimately limiting.

Apply

And Paul says, if you and I have been adopted into God’s family - we have some learning to do. We have some growing to do. We have an old way of life, controlled by whims and desires and the desperate grasping for whatever we can get, it’s time to put that off. It’s time to let it go.

Those desires to numb out, live in constant distraction,

It’s time to stop acting like an orphan.

Transition

You are not alone, you are not an orphan, you are a dearly loved child.

You’re not an orphan, start acting like you belong

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Ephesians 4:24 NRSV

and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Illustrate

When I learned the trumpet I remember spending months just re-learning how to breathe - yes breathe. It turns out the way I and apparently most people after the age of about 5 doesn’t really work and what you need to do is breath with your diaphragm, down into your stomach, supporting the out-breath with your abs.

You and I, when we are joined to Christ, have things to unlearn, and new things to learn. Things that fit with this new humanity, the person God is making.

Paul speaks of ‘learning’ Christ in verse 20. It’s a form of the word we translate disciple.

We often don’t think of it this way, but you and I have been discipled in the way of the world. Every movie we’ve ever watched, every TV show we’ve slogged through, almost every book we’ve read, all the advertising we’ve seen, the art and music we’ve encountered. They’re pretty much all saying this: you do you, follow your heart, live for today - just don’t hurt anyone. They’ve taught us that this life makes sense. It’s so constant, like the air we breathe that Tim Keller calls it a moral ecology.

But it’s based on a lie - the lie that you and I are alone, orphaned in this world.

Explain

It’s interesting, everything in verses 25-32 that we’re called to let go of is some kind of behaviour associated with the devil. Look there, in verse 25 - put off falsehood and speak the truth. Who is the father of lies? Satan. Verse 28 - thieves must no longer steal. What is stealing but reaching out and taking something that isn’t yours. What does Satan encourage the first humans to do in Genesis 3 but to take what isn’t theirs. Evil talk, bitterness, wrath, slander, anger. All things that destroy community, that drive a wedge between friends, that pull apart families, that ruin lives and reputations. Paul says all of this is how Satan works - he tries to gain a foothold, to drive us apart.

Now, anger is effective. Wrangling and running roughshod over people will get you ahead in this world. The personality trait most prized in CEOs is sociopathy. But all of that is orphan behaviour.

And you are not an orphan, you are a dearly loved child of God. It’s time to start acting like it.

Illustration

Zacchaeus was an orphan. At least he acted like one. He was a tax collector. Someone who sold out his community, and his country to the enemy, and got rich doing it. Tax collectors were scum. We know that. But to chose tax collecting was wise - if there’s no heaven, above us only sky. Jesus even says this in another parable - he talks about the servant of a rich man who fudged his bosses books, stole his bosses money to bribe people and Jesus calls him shrewd. Short changing people, cutting corners, skimming off the top, and being tight fisted is wise it will get you ahead in life. And we’re naive if we think the billionaires, the successful, the rich of the world don’t do this. They all do it. But Jesus famously turns Zaccheus’ life around and remember how the passage ends? Jesus says ‘this man too is a child of Abraham’.

This man Zaccheus, discovered that he was not an orphan. And when he learned that, began to act like he had a family, someone who loves him like as a Father - and yes, the bible says like a mother too. Zacchaeus, when he learned he belonged, he gave half of everything he had to the poor. And if that wasn’t enough he paid back the people he stole from 4 times over.

Zacchaeus realised that he had been walking around in the filthy, stinking clothes of a street urchin, and accepted the warm clean clothes Jesus shared with him. He didn’t just stop stealing, he started giving. He started acting like his creator loved him.

Apply

It’s hard to unlearn what you’ve learned. If Tim Keller is right, and we’re constantly swimming in a sea that tells us we’re all alone, then no wonder it’s hard to live as if we belong.

If you turn up to church every Sunday, it equates to about 1.5% of your waking hours each week. I make it my aim in preaching to teach Christ, to tell you a better story than ‘you do you’. I pray each week that what we do in church will teach us, disciple us, entice us to hope in the better story of the gospel.

But it’s only 1.5% of your waking hours. The rest of the time we are bombarded by the cruel message that we are all alone. If we’re to have a hope of learning a better story, we need more than 1.5%. We need much more. Imagine if your parents only told you they loved you once a week when you were a kid - I realise for some of us, that would’ve been a massive increase - if that’s you, I’m so sorry you had to go through that. But imagine! We need to hear this story waaaay more. We need to be here in church yes, but we need more than that. We need to encounter God’s love in the bible every day, but we need more than that.

We need art, and music, and literature that tells us this better story. So yes, listen to Handel’s Messiah if that floats your boat, or listen to contemporary worship music if that’s more your thing. Read books that tell this story - fiction like Jane Eyre and Jane Austen, and non-fiction like Corrie Ten Boom or Martin Luther King Jr.

We need people who will affirm this story. So yes, be in a small group - our overview of the bible group is almost done but we’re starting a new group soon - I’ll tell you about it soon. Yes, be deliberate about meeting with your brothers and sisters - not just to be friendly, but so that you can tell each other this story - it could be as simple as, hey let’s grab a coffee and read a bit of Mark’s gospel. It’s could be as simple as that.

Transition

You are not alone, you are not an orphan, you are a dearly loved child.

You’re not an orphan, no matter what people say

Show

Ephesians 5:1–2 NRSV

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Explain

Maybe this all seems like a nice idea, but it’s not realistic. Isn’t this all just naive, idealistic stuff. I mean yes, I can see how sharing with needy people, only ever saying kind words, controlling your anger, making sacrifices for your neighbours, it sounds beautiful, in the way a 3 year olds painting of a rainbow is beautiful. But this is the real world. People will rip you off. People will walk all over you. People will take your charity money and buy grog. People will presume on your forgiveness and trample your boundaries all day.

Pause

It’s true, if you adopt Jesus way of life, chances are you will experience Jesus way of life! And it hardly looks #blessed.

His family think he is out of his mind. He has no money, or home. He seems constantly exhausted - the guy is napping in a boat at 4.30 pm in the afternoon. He ends up on a cross!

How does he tolerate it? Not just that, how does he respond with love, generosity, kindness to those who hate him? Is this just a thing where ‘he’s God, of course he can do it, no way I can’.

Twice in his life, Jesus heard God the Father say, ‘this is my Son’. Twice we are told that the Father declared his love for his Son.

It’s because he knows he’s no orphan, no matter what people say.

He knows that he is no orphan, no matter what Satan might say.

He knows that he is no orphan, no matter what death itself might say.

Conclusion

Some of us know it. We’ve learned enough of Christ to know we are loved. We don’t have anything to prove. We can speak honestly with our brothers and sisters because we know that our place in this family doesn’t depend on us being perfect, or looking impressive, or being strong. We know we’re not orphans.

But for some of us, maybe we’re not so sure. Maybe some of us have never experienced a love that is not conditional on our performance. Maybe some of us have learned that if we want love, we need to measure up! Maybe some of us have never experienced anything other than the love of Santa - presents if your good, coal if your bad. And when we’re called to let go of wrangling for position and instead to be kind to our competitors in life, it’s too much. We find we just don’t know how. We can’t bring ourselves to be vulnerable like that .Some of us have don’t know that we are dearly loved children, don’t realise that we don’t need a PR department with our heavenly Father, we don’t need to curate our image with our brothers and sisters.

If that’s you, listen: you. are. a. beloved. child.