Ephesians 4:17-32
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You know this past week was a a rough week.
Two days in a row, we saw a tragedy caught on tape.
You know I think we live in an unprecedented time.
Not that these things haven’t happen before.
These things have happened ever since the fall of man.
One of the very first sins in the Bible is the murder of a brother with Cain and Abel.
But we live in a time where its on video, its plastered everywhere where we are literally seeing people made in the image of God murdered and then you are just left to deal with the emotions of it.
Just this week alone, we saw a woman literally minding her own business just riding the subway—be killed by a man, for no reason.
Just senseless hate filled violence.
And then not 24 hours after that news broke you have more news breaking more violence.
Charlie Kirk well known Christian and conservative, who would go around the college campuses and do question and answer with college students.
He really did a good job with it.
He was very influential with what is known as Generation Z.
And let me just say while I am on the subject, that Generation Z, is very encouraging to me.
I think my generation affectionately called the millennials. And I find myself right smack dab in the middle of that.
And there has been somewhat of a revival among us in recent years.
But Generation Z- and just to define that, Generation Z is considered those born between 1997 and 2012.
There has most certainly been a revival in Christian values.
This generation GenZ is more committed than my generation has been. They are more religious.
Surprisingly, they are even more traditional.
If you read about that particular generation what you find is, they are more analytical and skeptical.
Growth in liturgical worship.
They have grown up in the world where everybody has questioned and distrusted the news.
And so they are more concerned than ever with exercising their mind and getting to the bottom of what is true.
And where my generation was almost naive and was really excited about everything new…
Generation Z is not so much concerned with everything new but they are actually more concerned with what is his historically rooted.
Charlie Kirk has been a big part of that.
I know many of us may have not have listened to him daily, but I have spoken with some 25-26-year olds this week who Charlie Kirk was a part of their every day.
They appreciated how he was both brilliant and able to respond in a way that was simply matter of fact and not just yelling.
And this week he was killed on a college campus doing what he loved.
That same day there was a school shooting.
Church, Those are just three of the things that happened this week.
I’m certain that there are more horrific things that have happened.
And the question that I want us to wrestle with tonight is, what do we do as Christians in moments like that?
How should we live?
How would God have us to respond in moments like that?
Notice I didn’t ask the question: how did you respond?
The question is, how would God have us to respond in the situation and moments we faced this week?
Pastor Will preached to us this morning from 2 Timothy 2 where Paul calls Timothy to be a holy vessel.
To flee from youthful passions.
In other words, to put it simply, he calls him to be different. Holy and useful unto God.
And from that text from our text tonight, we see that there is an expectation that God has of his people to be and do a certain way.
There is a way in which God is called us to live and act so as to be useful to him for his mission and for his purpose and for his glory.
I but if there is a right way, there is also a wrong way to act that would leave us unuseful for his mission for his work and for his glory.
I bring all this up because this week as I scroll through social media, there’s a lot of anger.
There’s a lot of righteous anger.
In addition to those who were being righteously, angry, there were those who were celebrating and taking a victory lap over the fact that a man had been murdered. Saying he got what he deserved.
Her people say things like the world is a better place.
Just godless people.
Now I’ll be fair here— there’s a lot of good things too
Lots of prayers.
Lots of scripture..
So tonight, I want to look at passage of Scripture that I believe helps us not only in situations like this, but in our everyday lives of how are we to live in this world.
And I don’t mean to be simplistic, but There is to be a difference.
As followers of Christ, we do not respond the same way the world does.
You know there are many passages in the New Testament that speak of being sober minded. This moments like this whenever you see what that looks like.
We are no longer slaves to our flesh. We are slaves to a new master Jesus Christ who calls us to live and away that is different than the world.
Look with me beginning verse 17.
Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
These first few verses established for us the fact that there’s something different expected in the life of the believer.
And the expectation is different because there is something that is fundamentally true about us that is not fundamentally true about the unbeliever.
In verse 17 where it says, we are not to walk as the Gentiles do, bear in mind that Ephesians is written to the church of Ephesus.
And Ephesus was a Gentile city.
So don’t miss this here.
Paul is saying to this Gentile church — those who would have rightly been called Gentiles you are not to live like Gentiles… you are not to live like those around you.
There’s to be a difference.
You are not the same.
You have a new nature.
You have been born again, you have been made new.
So there is to be a difference.
Because there is a difference in nature.
And the way he describes the Gentiles here is the way we see scripture consistently defined the natural man.
The person without Christ.
Listen to how he describes the Gentiles.
He says—
They walk in the futility of their mind.
They are darkened in their understanding.
They are alienated from the life of God.
They are ignorant.
And their hearts are hard.
They are calloused over.
Not only that it’s not just something that is of the heart and of the mind… it flows out into their actions as well.
Paul says here that they have given themselves over to every kind of impurity.
It goes from their mind to their heart to their hands, everything is in pure.
And so just looking at that, think about all the differences that should distinguish the believer from the unbeliever just in a nature standpoint.
Unbelievers walk in the futility of their mind. The believer walks with a purpose for God’s glory. As believers a fundamental difference about us and the natural person is that we have a different pursuit in life. One that is eternal and not earthly and temporary.
Hear another difference—
The unbeliever is darkened in their understanding. In other words, they don’t know God. They don’t know right from wrong. And church family if there’s ever been a time where that is evident it’s now.
But!!! The believer is enlightened by God himself.
We have knowledge of God in his ways.
God has shown the light of the gospel into our heart.
Keep going—
The unbeliever is alienated from the life of God. In other words, there’s no life.
They’re dead in their trespasses and sins
This idea of alienated is the idea of being cut off from the life of God.
This is where the unbeliever sits.
However, The believer is regenerated by the Holy Spirit. God has breathed life into us.
His spirit has made us alive together with Christ.
Even the sign that we bare in baptism is a testament to what God has done in our lives. We were dead, but we have been raised. There’s life in us now.
Not in the unbeliever.
Very quickly, let me run through the rest of these differences—
The unbeliever is ignorant. The believer knows God.
The unbeliever has a hard heart. Scripture calls it a heart of stone.
The believer has a new heart. A heart of flesh.
The unbeliever gives themselves over to every kind of impurity.
There is this sort of carelessness that they continue in their sin.
They don’t care.
This is not the case for the believer. Paul goes on to say this.
In fact, this is what Paul says beginning in verse 20.
All of these things may be true about unbelievers, then he draws a massive line and says this is not who you are.
Look continuing in verses 20–
But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Paul here reinforces the idea that the way the Gentiles act. The way the world acts.
The way the unbeliever acts is not the way of Christ.
Lust and passions and anger and envy, hateful ungodly speech, and all those things associated with the world it’s not the way of Christ.
That maybe way that USED to describe us.
That is the accurate way of describing all of us prior to salvation.
But there has been a change.
The Scripture teaches that we are to put off the old way
We are to put on the new way. We are a new creation in Christ. We have learned the truth in Christ.
We are no longer ignorant of Christ
We No longer have our minds or hearts darkened and hardened.
We’ve been given a new heart.
We’ve been given the spirit of God that renews our minds and helps us to walk according to his way.
So there’s got to be a difference in the way, we respond.
Verse 24 mentions true righteousness, and true holiness
and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
But What does that look like practically? Paul is going to answer that question—
Listen to what he says in the verses following.
Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
And Paul here is going to walk through specific worldly things that need to be put away for the godly things that must be put on.
And so just in summary, Paul just walked us through what it looks like to put off the old self to walk in this new way of life.
This is all practical it’s application.
It’s not theoretical. It’s not even motivational.
These are commands and these are actions that now should be a part of the way we do things.
And the first worldly thing he says to put away is falsehood.
So you put away that
And you Speak the truth.
You know we live in a time where people think that the most loving thing that we can do for people is just to allow them to believe whatever they desire to believe regardless of whether or not it’s true.
Church family That’s not loving.
It’s not loving for us to allow people to believe lies.
It would not be loving for me to have one of my little girls come up to me and tell me daddy I think that I’m a little boy, and for me to affirm her in that.
That’s not loving.
Call it whatever you want, but that’s not loving.
That’s not nurturing. That’s not what a good father would do.
A good father would tell her the truth and lead her in truth and to help her understand what is true and what is false.
That God made her in in his image, and he made her a female to flourish as a female.
God is the God of truth, and he expects us to tell the truth.
Part of being a Christian is to be a believer in the truth.
Not whenever it makes us feel good. Not whenever it fits our narrative.
Not whenever it keeps us in the good graces of our family or our friends.
We are to be people of truth.
To be people of the truth, regardless of what the truth is.
If it is true, that is what we are to say. We are not to speak falsely.
Now, you can be truthful and right in what you say and be wrong in the way in which you communicate the truth.
There’s a balance that we must strike here.
We do not candy coat the message, we also don’t poison/vinegar coat the message either
We are to speak the truth in love.
The most important thing that we can tell people is the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
We have to in this world stand up and tell them the truth that sin separates us from a holy God, but God has came to us through His Son Jesus Christ.
It’s not loving to allow someone to continue in their lifestyle of sin just because we don’t want to offend them.
People spend their lives, offending God with their sin. Maybe it’s time they are offended for a moment.
Tell the truth.
But continue—
Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,
You know when we think think about the events of this week— It is not wrong to be angry that this happened
I think there is such a thing in scripture that is righteous anger.
I think it is right to to be angry when someone does something evil.
It’s wrong to celebrate something evil, regardless of what your views are.
If your views have you saying that evil is good. And that good is evil.
Then your political views are wrong in God’s eyes.
Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter!
And so it is right to be angry when something evil happens.
But this passage says—
Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.
What does this mean?
There’s the reason why this is written.
Anger is a natural human tendency.
We all know we’ve made bad decisions when angry.
And so he says be angry, but do not sin.
Don’t let the sun go down on your anger. In other words, don’t let it fester.
Anger that is unaddressed ultimately blow up eventually.
And then he says, give no opportunity to the devil.
Satan can use a response like anger and even righteous anger to tempt you towards doing something unrighteous.
And I think this verse is super important for us because it establishes for us how we are to deal with this anger we may be feeling even over the event of the past week.
At times, it feels good in our anger to clap back to say something to shut someone up.
To be able to say that we got them.
But I don’t think that’s what Paul has in mind whenever he says
Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.
Speak the truth. Speak it in love.
Look at verse 28
Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.
In verse 28 there is an admonition to the one who was once a thief, to no longer be a thief.
He’s no longer who he was.
He is now a new creation in Christ.
So he is to work honestly.
So that he may be able to instead of stealing from people— now because he works honestly and makes a living for himself doing honest work he is able to share with people who are in need.
Do you see the complete overhaul and change of life here that Paul is getting at?
Our identity is no longer tied to what we were in the past. And this is something that we need to retrieve today because somehow it’s been lost.
We are new creations in Christ.
We have a new identity in him.
This is why I would push back on people that would identify with their sin while simultaneously identifying with Christ.
We no longer identify with that which previously characterized our life. We have a new life in Jesus.
Before I was saved, I think the most challenging sin in my life was the sin of pride.
And to be honest, this is still a struggle for me.
I didn’t get saved and then immediately this Pride just go away.
The difference is now I hate it.
But Thanks be to God what used to define me no longer defines me. There may be times where I sink back or stumble into that old familiar sin, but that is not who I am anymore.
No through and by the spirit of God and the word of God and his ever sanctifying promise and presence, I’m trying to put those things to death.
My attitude and my posture towards that sin has changed.
My point though is to say I should not walk around identifying with that thing anymore that’s not who I am.
If I walk around saying I’m a prideful, Christian, then I’m just giving in to that identity that that’s no longer mine in Christ.
Christ save me that I would no longer be a slave to but a child of God fundamentally.
So take that with any identifying sin.
We wouldn’t walk around calling ourselves a lying Christian.
A thieving Chritsian
A murderer Christian
A sexually promiscuous Christian.
A homosexual Christian
No, we don’t identify with our sin.
Freddie Freeman…lifelong Brave. Made me want to gag when he switched to the Dodgers. When I saw him with that jersey on I wanted to throw up.
But he couldn’t wear that teams jersey anymore. He changed teams.
We’ve changed teams… We used to be on the side of sin. Now, we are on the side against sin.
We put to death our sin through our new identity in Jesus Christ.
So I think that verse talking about the thief capture this for us.
There is a complete change of life.
And with that there is a change in the way that we speak.
Look in verse 29
Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.
Oh, that’s different from the world isn’t it?
Speech that builds up ?
That’s a foreign concept.
We would use our mouths for the building up and the edification of each other.
Back when Paul wrote this, there was no Internet and social media or even typing.
And so let me just say that you speak with your fingers and hands as well and what you say and share and post on social media.
That falls under the larger category of speech.
So as Christians as followers of Jesus Christ, we are to be different the things we say, and the things we post the things we share.
Where to speak words that fit the occasion that dispense Grace to the hearer according to this verse.
Listen to how Paul ends this chapter.
And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
In summary what we do in this body, we have to remember we are doing so as those who the spirit of God indwells.
And I believe that whenever we do things against God and against his law, and we do things sinfully , we grieve the Holy Spirit within us.
Now if the Holy Spirit is within us, he is within us and it doesn’t change our status with God , but grieving him certainly affects our ability to live and worship how we ought.
So again to be clear— grieving the Spirit does not mean the Spirit abandons a true believer in saving union.
Rather, in our sin we may fail to feel His comforting presence (assurance, joy, peace).
Example— Psalm 51…
David asking to get his joy back. He doesn’t ask for his salvation. He asks to restore the joy of His salvation back.
When we grieve the Spirit, we miss His influence in prayer, worship, holiness.
Husbands You know whenever you make your wife mad.
There’s no fellowship or joy divine.
There’s a barrier in the communion and fellowship whenever we give our selves unto that which displeases God.
Don’t grieve the spirit.
Finally, he ends with all the attributes that come to us by God’s grace.
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
In summary, everything that we do is changed by our new nature in Christ Jesus.
The way we treat others.
The things we harbor in our heart are let go.
Bitterness wrath, anger, clamor, slander malice .
Rather replacing those things are kindness, tenderheartedness, and forgiveness - which we all find in Jesus Christ.
Going back to what Will said this morning if we’re going to be useful for the kingdom of God .
If we are going to be vessels used for the King’s glory , then we have to put away the sand and walk in the spirit of Christ.
