BibleScribbler

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

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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)

 

The Holy Spirit – Imparted as a Whole

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I just started reading “The Holy Spirit in Action” by Sheed and some of it is already blowing my mind. Some of it is just pondering the implications of God having and being a spirit. I’ll post the quote from the book, which is kind of heady and out there, then my interpretation which might be clearer or might be even more out there.

In a spirit – God, our soul – there is no division of parts as in matter. Therefore there is no dispersion of powers, but total concentration of being and of powers in one single act of being. the body has parts, each with its own function, which only it can perform. But all the things the should does are done by the whole soul, for there is no element in the soul which is not the whole of it. It knows, loves, hates, wants, chooses, refuses to choose, decides, animates a body. And one single soul does each of these things with the whole of itself.

Two things emerge from spirit’s absence of parts – it does not occupy space; it is everlasting.

Space is emptiness. A being which has parts can spread them in it! Even the minutest material thing has parts – the top is not the bottom, one end is not the other. But this is not so of the soul, not so of God: They have no parts to spread. They are not in space.

What of permanence? A being with parts can be taken apart; therefore it can always become something else by union with parts taken from some other source. But a spirit having no parts can not be taken apart; it has no parts to be taken from it. It is the whole of itself.

 What he is saying here is that a spirit isn’t something that has distinct parts like a person. I have an arm and a nose, they are distinguishable parts that do different things. They also take up different spaces. If I reach for a hammer with my nose, it can’t do what my arm can do. If I dip my arm into a barrel of dandelions, it won’t sneeze. That part isn’t affected by pollen in the same way as my nose is.

That means that wherever the Holy Spirit is, there isn’t a part of it there that is different than another part. ALL OF GOD’S SPIRIT is there. God doesn’t put a little bit customized for Dan Sullivan into Dan Sullivan. All of God’s glorious self, is put, by the power of the Holy Spirit, into Dan Sullivan. The other wild part about this is that since the Holy Spirit can’t be cut up into parts, it can’t be combined with things and changed. Everything that exists in mass can be altered somehow like Lego blocks being switched out. The Holy Spirit isn’t and can’t. Therefore, the full and holy and complete spirit of God doesn’t get changed when He enters into someone. The person is what does the changing.

One more bit then we’ll give it a rest for the day. God’s unchanging, fully full and complete spirit is in all who believe in Him (Ephesians 1:13-14). Think about the implications of that. There is no training or urging or laboring as far as getting God to do something more because He has already filled you, Christian, with all the fullness of Himself. You have a lot more access to God than you realize, so pray today that we’d realize that!

Speaking the Truth in Love

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The other day a few of us were talking about “speaking the truth in love”. We, of course, were trying to correct a guy that was not doing that. It was a tough conversation because I think the guy was holding onto truth tighter than he was holding onto love. The challenge for me during that conversation was to hold on to truth AND love at the same time. It’s easy to hate a hateful person, but that would put me in league with the hateful person out of hate. I wanted to be in league with him because we are both in Christ.

Later in the day, I looked up that verse. We always quote “speak the truth in love” but what is its context? What else goes with that saying? It turns out a LOT.

The opening of Ephesians 4 is about unity. Paul urges the Ephesian church, from prison, to do whatever they can to maintain the unity of the Holy Spirit by being at peace with each other. It is by humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love that this happens.

That is probably the first red flag. We achieve unity through humility. The further we get away from humility, the further away we will be from unity. At the last supper, when Jesus was addressing the disciples who had spent part of the meal arguing who was the most important, He told them that “all men will know you are my disciples” by their love for one another. Love and unity go hand in hand because you can’t love each other and be fighting.

How about this part:

[11] And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, [12] to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,
(Ephesians 4:11–12 ESV)

I have heard ‘prophets’ and ‘teachers’ say before that they are ‘just telling the truth.’ I can agree with them. All too often, though, they are speaking the truth without love. Considering the high stakes of Christian unity and the Body of Christ, you would think that truth would not have so killed off love in the Church. 

Love is bearing with others. Love is considering that you don’t have to tell your brother where he is wrong, but you can instead teach by your own lifestyle and loving conversation instead of the truth grenade. Jesus did yell at the scribes and the Pharisees, but that was after a long series of loving face to face conversations. 

Prophets and evangelists (good news tellers) are given to build up the body of Christ. This building up doesn’t happen by chopping off the sick parts and denying friendship with the parts that don’t look like us. Think of how the human body works. If a part is sick or injured or just plain wrong, the body sends white blood cells, antibodies, extra blood and oxygen, platelets, etc until the wound is healed. What if that is how we responded with truth? 

What would happen if we held on to truth (which is Christ) and increased our love? What if we increased our love even more for those that we disagree with, or are even our enemies? That is one of Christ’s most compelling teachings and that fits right in line with these things from Paul and Christ’s words of forgiveness from the cross. 

[15] Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, [16] from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.  
(Ephesians 4:15–16 ESV)

God is Able to Carry You Sermon – 2 Thessalonians

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Download: 2 Thes 3 God is able to carry you until the end 2015-07-12

I don’t have any notes that I can find on this. That just means I saved the somewhere crazy, not that I spoke with no notes!

Here is the gist of this sermon on 2 Thessalonians 3:

  • God will sustain you through the end
  • Guy burned at the stake that raised his hands up (maybe Thomas Hawkes http://www.the-highway.com/Hawkes.html)
  • God will uphold you and sustain you through every awful thing
  • God’s goal isn’t to get the work done, but to work in us. He’s already prepared the work for us to do. I could do it Himself, but He wants to work in you as you do it.

OneLife West Sermon on Ephesians 6 and Parenting

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Bret Nicholson preached today on Ephesians 6 and parenting. It was a good day to do it, because it was also the first day that 6th graders are now in the main service with us. We have done the family pew thing for a long time, taking all of our kids in with us, but recently we realized our kids will get more out of their own classes and they go and enjoy them.

One thing not in these notes is where they described the Orange philosophy. My teens heard that and later in the day said it was cool how they do that. The red represents your home – where you live your life, and the yellow represents the church – the light of the world, and when they work together you get orange.

Christ as the Head and Spiritual Maturity

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“To the degree that you hold purpose and principles in common among you, you can dispense with command and control. People will know how to behave in accordance with them, and they’ll do it in thousands of unimaginable, creative ways. The organization will become a vital, living set of beliefs.”

from http://www.fastcompany.com/27677/dee-hock-organizations quoted by Alan Hirsch in Forgotten Ways.

The cool thing about this is how it points to all of us who are in Christ functioning as we are connected directly to Christ Himself. Not how we are connected to our visionary leader, or our such and such coordinator. Not how we are connected to our pastor, who can fail ethically and morally and shipwreck us all. We are connected to Christ. He joins us, He communicates with us, and He coordinates us.

Galatians 5:22-23

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

When we are lead by laws and shoulds, we are depending on command and control. Granted, the unspiritual man LOVES command and control, both to have it and to be lazy in it, but being led by the spirit is joy and peace, because IT IS REAL LIFE.

When my son is in my house, and I make decisions for him such as “It’s time to go to bed. It’s time now to do your homework.” I am controlling things that he is not mature enough to do himself. My goal in his life, however, is to be able to send him over to a friend’s house and let him be led himself to say “We should quit playing video games and get some sleep.”

That is maturity in life. That is how spiritual maturity looks too.

Ephesians 4:14-16

14As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; 15 but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, 16from whom 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.

Work It

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Ephesians 2 gives a great balance to some order that a lot of people have screwed up.

Ephesians 2:8-10 ESV

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Let’s take it bit by bit.

Ephesians 2:8-9 NET

For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so that no one can boast.

There was a time when people asked Jesus, “What is the work that God requires?” and Jesus’ answer was almost too simple: “Believe in the One that He sent.” Faith is the closest we come to salvation by works. Faith that God did what He said He did is all that is required of us to be saved. In Romans 10:9, Paul says “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” So there is no work on our part to get ourselves saved.

Ephesians 2:10 NET

For we are his workmanship, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand so we may do them.

If I make something beautiful–if I brew up for you the best cup of coffee you’ve ever tasted, who gets the credit? Does the coffee get the credit for tasting good? NO‽ I get the credit because A.) I made great coffee and B.) I gave you some.

It is the same way with Christians and God. He saved us by grace SO THAT we could work for Him and bring Him honor, glory, attention, fame, etc. Our works are a result of our salvation, not the road to salvation.

BUT our salvation isn’t just a happy face and a get out of Hell free card. Our salvation is a commissioning. Our salvation is an inauguration.

We are saved in order to do the works that God wants to do! Not that He needs us, but that He wants to share in the action with us.

That is the double extra grace of it all. Not only do we get be with God, but we join Him in His glorious work!