Seven Signs of a Seasoned Christian Part 2

Seven Signs of a Seasoned Christian-Part 2 Spring Valley Church; May 23, 2021; Ephesians 4:25-32 The glorious book of Ephesians easily divides into two sections, chapters 1-3 and chapters 4-6. The first section tells us who we are in Christ. The second, how those who are in Christ are, through the enablement of the Holy Spirit are to live. Like a change of clothes, we are to be constantly laying aside the attitudes and actions of our old life and to be "putting on" this resplendent new life. As we grow in Christ, certain characteristics will become increasingly evident in our life. We are continuing our study regarding the "Seven Signs of a Seasoned Christian" found in Ephesians 4:25-32. Last Sunday we covered the first four of these signs, "Honesty, Intolerance toward Sin (in which we learned that we should be angry at the things God is angry about, but to express such anger in small doses), generosity, and gracious and encouraging speech. The fifth sign of maturity is: I. KEEPING SHORT ACCOUNTS WITH GOD V. 30: "And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption." Growing up on a small farm in Missouri, we had a small dairy herd-around 7-10 cows. We sold our "Grade C" milk to Kraft; our milkman picked up the full milk cans every other day and delivered it to the plant who made it into cheese. Once a month we received the milk check from Kraft. As soon as it came, my dad and I would drive over to the neighborhood feed store and pay off our feed bill. Dairy feed and a few groceries would take the whole milk check, but we were glad to be able to pay off our account that had been accumulating for the last month. My dad tried to keep a "short account" with the store. A mature believer keeps short accounts with God, dealing with any sin quickly. The Bible makes it clear that "if we say that we have no sin, we lie, and the truth is not in us." Only Jesus lived here on earth without sinning. If we breathe, we will do something wrong or choose not to do something we know we should do, sins of commission or sins of omission. The issue is not whether we sin; the issue is what do we do when we sin? Keeping short accounts with God means that we respond to the Holy Spirit when He convicts us of sin and confess it quickly. I've told this story before, but it illustrates this truth so well. As a child, I grew up in a church that had summer revivals. At some point in the revival, I felt compelled to "walk the aisle" and confess to God all the sin accumulated since the last revival. It was like I kept a bucket into which I put all my sins and once a year I would "dump my bucket" out. Afterwards, I would feel so good and clean! But soon the bucket began to fill up, and by the next summer, I could barely carry that bucket full of sin, which I would dump out at revival time. That concept was never taught in my church, but it was a lie of the enemy to keep me from growing as a Christian. I did not keep a short account with God. The refusal to deal with our sin grieves the Holy Spirit. We are given clear instructions in 1 John 1:9 on how to deal with sin. This verse has been called "the Christian's bar of soap": it is written to and for believers. "If we confess our sins He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Confession is to agree with God that something we have done is wrong. The word for confession is "homolegeo" Homo=one; legeo=to speak. Confession is to agree and say the same thing God is saying about our sin. What does He say? He says to turn from it; to forsake it; to purpose in our heart that we will not repeat it, with God's enablement. Confession for the believer is to be as common as breathing. Sin will come; quickly confess it, put it behind you and go on walking with God. It is an awesome thought to me that God the Holy Spirit loves me so much that when I ignore His leading, He experiences the emotion of grief, personal pain, and sorrow! But be encouraged by the fact that although He may GRIEVE, He will never LEAVE. My old selfish nature, prompted no doubt by Satan, suggests a question: if the Holy Spirit will never leave me, and I am assured a home in heaven, why should I bother to keep short accounts with God? (Remember this is the old nature asking...) Why should I bother trying to live a holy life? What do I forfeit by refusing to deal with my sin? The first thing I lose is power. The Spirit is the source of power to live the abundant life. Without His controlling influence, His filling, there is no abundant life. We are left unprotected and powerless against the onslaughts of the world, the flesh, and the devil. When I refuse to deal with sin, I am in deep trouble, up a creek without a paddle. Our prayers go unanswered, for Psalm 66:18 states, "If I regard wickedness in my heart the Lord will not hear." My life begins to fall apart, nothing seems to go right. I Thessalonians 5:19 warns us: "Do not quench the Holy Spirit." Like water on a fire, the Spirit's influence in our lives is extinguished. The fruit of the Spirit-the love, joy, peace, etc. disappear. And without the power of the Holy Spirit, the flesh takes over. I can become negative, critical, bitter, angry, --all the negative attitudes you can think of: I become miserable and am miserable to be around. And-Holy Scripture is very clear on this-because God loves us so much, He will not allow us to continue living in sin without lovingly disciplining us. Hebrews 12:6: "Whom the Lord loves, He disciplines." God takes no pleasure in causing pain to His children, but so many of us are so hard-headed and hard-hearted that we will respond only to pain. If it sounds like I am speaking from experience, I am! It is no fun to be taken to the woodshed by God! In Psalm 32, King David describes what happened when he tried to hide his sin: "When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long; For day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer." The growing and seasoned believer keeps short accounts with God and does not grieve the Holy Spirit. The sixth sign of a seasoned believer is what I choose to call: II. EMOTIONAL STABILITY Verse 31: "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Spiritual transformation goes far beyond our actions but extends to our attitudes also. Earlier in Ephesians 4, I spoke of the importance of right thinking as we explored verse 23 "And that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind." This characteristic, emotional stability, seen in seasoned believers, like keeping short accounts with God, is an inner attitude that leads to change of actions. There is a child's prayer that goes, "Lord, make the bad people good, and the good people nice." We all know people who seem to live upright, moral, honest lives but are thoroughly unpleasant to be with. Such a person's experience as a Christian is certainly incomplete, and possibly counterfeit. There is to be inner transformation, not merely outward conformity to a set of rules. Frankly speaking, it is very possible to look spiritual on the outside but be wretched on the inside. We can cover these sinful attitudes over with a smile, or hide them temporarily, but sooner or later, they will surface. Remember the Pharisees whose actions looked good on the outside, but were filled with corruption on the inside, and Jesus described them as "whitewashed sepulchers?" A believer who has emotional stability has a calm steadiness which is a sign of the Holy Spirit's control. The spiritual fruits of kindness, gentleness and self-control are evident. Consider the list of inner attitudes we are to put aside: bitterness-this is a hard, cynical attitude that soon contaminates others; wrath-hotheaded fury or rage that makes us lose control; anger: here we have "thumas", an inward boiling resulting in a desire to punish someone, to strike back or seek revenge; this is the wrong and sinful kind of anger. The word clamor means the desire to scream, shout, rail, or bawl someone out; slander is speech that injures someone, like spreading gossip or passing along rumors. Malice is the desire to harm someone or to see them suffer. What a terrible list of sins this is! These sins are deadly because often they are buried so deep within. Because it is so common, I will mention that some people have carried grudges against another Christian brother or sister for years. Such thoughts may be in your heart right now. It is possible to be boiling in rage at someone while covering it over with a smile of pretense. The Spirit is telling you this morning to put it away. That means to repent of these attitudes, change your mind about them, stop justifying them to yourself, stop saying you have a right to think this way, stop defending these attitudes. Once you let them go through confession, them immediately God can open you up to love them. And once those attitudes are put aside, we can demonstrate the seventh sign of a seasoned Christian, that of: III. TENDERLY FORGIVING WHEN WRONGED Verse 32: And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. Notice the contrast with the attitudes of the previous verse. Forgiveness is the second step after we deal with those attitudes of anger, rage, wrath, bitterness and slander. My dear friends, such negative attitudes are like acid that eats away your inner peace and joy. Unforgiveness is one of the main ways Satan makes us miserable. There is absolutely nothing so freeing as forgiveness! I am talking of someone who has done something wrong to you, and it doesn't matter whether they have asked forgiveness for the offense or not. Forgiveness is choosing that I will not hold that offense against them. For, sadly, they may never ask forgiveness. If you wait for them, holding onto the offense, it will invariably lead to the attitudes of verse 31. Look at the standard God makes possible: being kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another JUST AS GOD IN CHRIST HAS FORGIVEN YOU! In 1993, a mother lost her only son when Oshea Israel shot him during an argument at a party. Her initial reaction was that she wanted justice. She wanted him to pay for his crime, which he did. After serving 17 years of a 25- year sentence, he was released from jail and returned back to his old neighborhood-right next door to Mary. This was not by accident, but by a remarkable act of mercy. A few years prior to his release, Mary was overcome by the conviction to forgive him, so she set out to do just so through the course of several meetings. After some time, she was able to not only forgive him, but she resolved to help him upon his departure from prison. In fact, they don't just live close to each other-they are close in spirit. Mary gives God the glory with her ability to forgive such a tragedy, (saying) "Unforgiveness is like cancer. It will eat you from the inside out. It's not about the other person, me forgiving him does not diminish what he's done. Yes, he murdered my son - but the forgiveness is for me. It's just for me." The Lord Jesus forgave us our sins even before we asked for forgiveness. Yes, we personally repented and changed our minds, but that was a response to what Christ had already done on the cross. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. When we finally responded to His love, we found His forgiveness was already waiting for us. He forgave us despite the pain our sins caused Him. That is our problem with forgiveness; we say, "I know I should forgive, but he doesn't know how much he has hurt me, and I can't forgive that hurt." Well, God did. God held no desire for revenge or getting even with us. He doesn't pay us back for what we did to Him, and what we continue to do when we grieve Him. Are you harboring a spirit of unforgiveness toward someone who has done you wrong? It has been said that "unforgiveness is more caustic in the vessel in which it is stored than upon the one on which it is poured." Seven signs of maturity: Honesty, a growing intolerance for sin, generosity, graceful and encouraging speech, keeping short accounts with God, emotional stability, and tender forgiveness when wronged. We all fall short of God's standards, but if you were listening to God this morning, He spoke to you about at least one of these areas. In these closing moments, follow His leading; purpose in your heart to begin today to walk closer with Him, so that His light will shine even brighter in our confused and dying world. 2