BibleScribbler

Ephesians 5:1-21 Ways to Show Our New Thinking

· ·

Sermon on Ephesians 5:1-21 from Westminster Church in Evansville, Indiana. Here are the notes I used.

Ephesians 5:1–21

[1] Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. [2] And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

This is a response to the last verse of chapter 4: Ephesians 4:32

[32] Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (ESV)

Again, just like last week, this stuff isn’t a law, but a response to what God has already done. This list is here because we do better when we have a guide instead of just trying to figure stuff out.

It’s like bending your elbows when you give someone CPR. You might know you are supposed to give chest compressions, but in the training they tell you not to bend your elbows. You need that weight and those shoulder/back muscles to do it because your little arms will wear out too fast. I don’t want you to figure that out for yourself!  That’s why this stuff is in here. We can gain wisdom from it and grow in the Lord from these insights. This is our head-start on living a life that is pleasing to God.

[3] But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. [4] Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.

Again, this isn’t a law saying that we should talk about it. We should be so blameless in this that nobody can talk about us doing it! We all have to be examples of this because we are all affecting the world’s perception of Christ.

  • Filthiness – ranges according to the culture, and we need to be sensitive to that.
  • Crude jokes
  • Covetousness – “greedy desire to have more”
  • Impurity – Out of control living, reckless, amoral, wasteful

Amish people have a reputation in the world.

Galatians 6:7–8

[7] Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. [8] For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. (ESV)

Then back to Ephesians

[5] For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. [6] Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.

Note the difference here between people that own this sin as a lifestyle and people that stumble into sin and fall.

[7] Therefore do not become partners with them; [8] for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light [9] (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), [10] and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.

We have to be completely deliberate with these things. Holiness will not be executed on accident or by passively doing whatever.

“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness — they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means — the only complete realist. – CS Lewis

Ephesians 5:11-14

[11] Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. [12] For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. [13] But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, [14] for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,

“Awake, O sleeper,

and arise from the dead,

and Christ will shine on you.”

Darkness is not exposed by our elaborate and excellent definition of darkness. Darkness is exposed by light!

[15] Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, [16] making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.

[17] Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

[18] And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, [19] addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, [20] giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, [21] submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. (ESV)

 

Doing Life in Groups and Teams

· ·

at onelife we do life in groups and teams

Ecclesiology is as much about what you don’t say as what you say. This is something they say a lot at One Life:

At One Life we do life in groups and teams.

Not to speak for One Life, but I want to offer my own commentary on this. This is one 2017 paradigm of

Acts 2:42-47

[42] And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. [43] And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. [44] And all who believed were together and had all things in common. [45] And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. [46] And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, [47] praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. (ESV)

When they say that life happens on groups and teams, they are saying that it isn’t dependent on the Sunday morning church service. The Sunday morning thing is a thing, and many of the teams are teams because of the Sunday morning thing, but if you talk to the people in the best of teams you’ll find out that they grow up into something much bigger than volunteer group.

The job or activity is just a framework to be together. Where the real Acts 2:42-46 part happens is when the group breaks out of just serving coffee on Sunday and turns into people playing volleyball together on a Tuesday night. When we structure our lives around time spent with people instead of things, our life is enhanced. That’s when our family life is the happiest and the most balanced: when we are spending time in the community of The Church.

I need to disclose here, that my family is part of the People of Praise, so we do community bigger and badder than a lot of people, but that is just part of our way of life.

In the Sunday morning church service, you are going to get some singing and some teaching, but if that is the full Christian Community experience for you, you are missing out. Joining with other people, changing your schedule and prioritizing deliberate time with Christian people, will change your life.

I used to have people over and they’d ask “Is this a Bible study?” my answer was that it was whatever we made it. If our hearts overflowed with YouTube videos and complaints about work, that’s what it would be. If our hearts overflowed with cool stuff we read in the Bible this week, then it would be that. Both are OK. We are free in Christ to talk about whatever. But there are some things that are going to grow us more than others.

best thing you can give your team: honest transparency

The more we share together, the more we live life. Life in abundance is an overflow of everything that life is. Pain, suffering, joy, victory, you name it. If you want to up your game and have a richer, fuller life, do it. Adjust your schedule, cancel and quit the shallow stuff. Spend time with the people you want to be more like, and watch God show off and add to your number daily those that are also being saved.

Notes from One Life Church just before Christmas 2016

· ·

Name Him Jesus, because He will save His People from their sins.”
Jesus would be so with us that we’d be called “His people.”

It’s God’s story to tell and He tells it His way.

God spoke to Joseph after Mary told him about Jesus – DANG!

Righteousness was a part of the operating system of Joseph’s soul.

He was a righteous man, not about do-gooder, but right about seeking God.

Righteousness motivated him to NOT disgrace Mary. (So often we use righteousness as an excuse to shame others, but that is not the right way.)

Righteousness is a real thing and it’s good.

Sin is the lack of righteousness.

Which brings us to redemption by redefinition.
That’s what our culture does.

 

Redemption by redefinition was in the Garden of Eden too.

Jesus came to SAVE us from our SINS.
Don’t re-define it! We NEED those words to really mean what they mean.

Sin makes an ungodly mess.
It messed up everything we use to clean it up.

That last note was from this video below. It was pretty moving.

Unifying spread out communities

· ·

Unity within a spread out group like a multi-site church. that was one of the main topics last week at One Life Core. These are my notes on the night and some of my own commentary.

shared life unites a spread out church

A shared language and shared ideals help people that aren’t together all the time keep unity with one another. If I’m working at the same goal as my brothers in the east side and in Henderson and Mt.Vernon, I don’t have to see them every single day to share my life with them. Using the same language helps us put emphasis on the same things.

connecting to one another builds the church

Have you ever seen a movie that was awful but you enjoyed being with your friends so much that you remember it being a good movie? It’s like that with church programs. The connection to the people you are with is what makes it good or bad.

Like Bret said, let us focus on connecting and befriending and meeting instead of making up a slew of events and programs. The trick is that we are so stuck in a program paradigm that we’d make a program to make more connections, but we’re getting there.

David and His Armor, the Church and Her Buildings

· ·

I’ve been supplementing my Bible reading with readings from the Christian Community Bible lately. It’s a different translation, but the footnotes are the key. Here is what it said about 1 Samuel 17

David’s fight can easily be compared to that of the Church. She leaves behind Saul’s armor when she looks for less structure, less worry over financing her works and buildings; when she frees herself from political support. In abandoning all these securities, she makes herself freer and younger. Like David, she goes to battle trusting “in the name of Yahweh, God of Israel’s armies.” – the Christian Community Bible (Footnote)

In any ministry situation the greatest temptation is to do whatever you do for the glory of the organization. It’s really hard to not be a little jealous when that other church has 5,000 people or that person’s prayers are always being answered with miracles. All of those feelings come from looking at the wrong things.

In Luke 9:62 Jesus said whoever puts his hand to the plow and looks back isn’t fit for service in the Kingdom of Heaven. The point of the Kingdom, the point of following Jesus, is Jesus. If we spend our time looking for an audience, and a building to put them in, we may very well get that audience, but not the Kingdom of Heaven.

The trick, of course, lies all in the motives. It may look exactly the same to a critic that sees us building a building, but God looks at the heart. If God calls us to build a big building, let’s build it, always focusing on the kingdom. If God calls us to leave behind the building so that we can follow Him, let us give it away and run. If God calls us to be a part of the political machine, then let’s do it in the most Holy humble way that has ever been done, and never make that work our security.

The funny thing about this quote is that you can turn the quest away from structure and financing into it’s own legalism that is as awful as the structure and the financing.

In all of this, Jesus, the Kingdom of Heaven, is the right way. Focusing on methods, politics, music, etc. are all cultural preferences that will be different in 5 years. Focusing on Jesus turns our lives into a single scenic journey instead of multiple personality disorder with some religion thrown in.

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Luke 9:57-62 ESV

Church, Part of a Complete Breakfast

· ·

I have not gone to church on a Sunday morning the same way ever since I moved back to the United States. Granted, there were days in 1996-1999 that I bounced around from church to church, but that was for different reasons.

When I was in college, and then after I graduated, I spent a lot of time around people that lived the Christian life together on a day to day basis. Church, if attended, was only about 25% of the complete Christian life. The other 75% was daily prayer and Bible reading, evangelism out on the streets, and discussion discussion discussion with others about what we read, what we did, and what God was teaching us.

My wife and I now refer to those days at the “Cherry Court Days” as do many of the other people we were doing life with. I have heard pastors describe those days as “better than seminary” and others refer to it as a revival. Several of the people involved in that experience now work in the professional ministry 15 years later.

It permanently ruined many of us for any substitutes.

Fast forward to the present time, and my grumblings. My wife used to hate Sunday afternoons because we would go to church on Sunday mornings and I would gripe and complain all the way home. Eventually we quit going to church altogether and we began to try to exalt the Lord and seek Him in our day to day life. Some people worried about us, like we had fallen away. Others didn’t bring it up, because my criticisms were so visceral that I didn’t know how to explain them with grace. Some of my bros stuck by me even when I said some pretty negative stuff about the people they loved.

In that time, we grew in the Lord by leaps and bounds. We took responsibility for our children’s discipleship like youth pastors want people to do. We reached out to our neighbors, contacts, and our sphere of influence because we loved our Lord and we loved others beyond a scheduled event organized by someone we didn’t know at a location far far away from our front porch (where real life happens for us).

It was very very good. I should say it has been very very good, because we’ve only recently changed our act.

For the last year we have fallen in with a group of people doing that same thing in the neighborhood next door. The People of Praise is a covenanted Christian Community that shares life, time, possessions, and Jesus together on a daily basis. A little over a month ago we decided to join them and we began the 3-6 year process of discerning if joining the People of Praise will help us in our walk with Jesus.

One requirement to join the People of Praise: go to church.

Now the POP isn’t a church–it’s an ecumenical community. Everyone in the POP goes to their own church and is a part of their own church. In Evansville there are AOG folks, Catholic, Protestant, and Baptist folks. So here we are, my wife and I, what I would call disenfranchised program church folks. (A program church is what people used to call a megachurch, but now churches of all sizes follow the megachurch model whether they have 50-50,000 members.)

As were were “not going to church” we had visited a few places where our friends went on Sundays, and so we didn’t have to shop around.

We went, and we loved it. After I got home I realized why. You know how on the commercial for fruit loops, after the cartoon adventure and the toucan saving the day, they show a breakfast table of awesomeness and say “Fruit Loops is part of a complete breakfast” and they show eggs, orange juice, some toast, a glass of milk, and an apple? That is what Sunday morning church was to me. Part of a complete breakfast. It was sweet and awesome and I wanted 2 bowls but I wasn’t expecting it to be my complete breakfast. Where the Sunday morning church, even with it’s structured activities and programs, fell short, the para-church Christian Community filled in the gaps. And now I go to that church in a whole new way.

Links of interest:

People of Praise

OneLife church

Magicians Believe In What They Can't Copy

· ·

The magicians tried with their secret arts to bring forth gnats, but they could not; so there were gnats on man and beast. Then the magicians said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.” But Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he did not listen to them, as the Lord had said. (Exodus 8:18, 19 NASB)

It was when the Egyptian magicians could not imitate God that they surrendered and believed. This has a message for us too. If followers of Christ can only do the things that the magicians (people) of this world can do and nothing more there is no reason for people to surrender to our God. If we are worldly, divisive, mortal, selfish, etc. then we aren’t showing the power we have from God to live life to the fullest. There is no reason for people to believe we are any different with or without God.