Walk As A New Creation (c)

Good morning. It's always encouraging to hear you sing, even though small in number this morning from the weather. Sometimes, believe it or not, I come in distracted, tired, maybe grumpy. But gathering and singing praise with you and hearing you sing stirs the heart. So thank you for your faithfulness. Those who lead and you, the church singing. As you heard, I wanted Patty to go back all the way to really get the context. Because Paul is talking to us about this very important principle for how we now live in Christ. The verse 22, put off your old self. Verse 24 put on the the new self It reminded me of St. Louis and the Great Divorce If you haven't read it, it's one of the the Lewis books you should read At the end it tells of a story of a young man, and he's approaching as an angel and the young man has a red lizard on his shoulder and And the red lizard is constantly whispering in the boy's ear, and he's frustrated by what he's hearing, and it's keeping him up at night, it gives him nightmares, it's constantly just talking and talking and talking, and the boy's even embarrassed by it as he approaches this angel. So this angel, bright and glorious, says, would you like me to silence that red lizard? And the boy says, oh, if only you could silence this nagging temptation and this nagging bickering that I hear in my ear all the time. So the angel stretches out his bright, hot hand to grab the lizard to kill it. And as he gets close, the boy and the lizard shriek, feeling the heat. And the boy says, oh, no, no, don't kill it. I just want you to silence it. You see, it's part of me. If you kill it, you'll kill me. And then the lizard chimes in. And he says to the boy, be careful. He can do what he says. He can kill me. One fatal word from you and he will. Then you'll be without me forever and ever. It's not natural. How could you live? You'd be only sort of a ghost, not a real man as you are now. He doesn't understand. He's only a cold, bloodless, abstract thing. It may be natural for him, but it isn't for us. Yes, yes, I know there are no pleasures now, but only dreams, but aren't they better than nothing? And I'll be so good. I admit I've sometimes gone too far in the past, but I promise I won't do it again. I'll give you nothing but really nice dreams, all sweet and fresh and almost innocent. You might say quite innocent. That's the allurement of sin. I think if you're not a Christian here this morning, I think you can probably identify with what's going on here. We all have something that's rightly nagging at us. Some vice, some habits. Some desire that that we want to have control over enough to silence But we don't want it dead because somehow it feels like it's necessary for us Somehow it's become such a pattern it it goes on and on as part of our life And what the Bible is very clear is we have to see sin for what it is It's dangerous It's deadly We cannot simply silence it. It must be put to death before it kills us. If you're not a Christian this morning, the words we're going to be studying, specifically here verses 29 to 5.2, 4.29 to 5.2, These are exhortations for Christians after they've come to Christ, to start putting off their sinful practice to put on. And I just wanna be very clear, if you're not a Christian, you don't have to clean yourself up to come to Christ. You don't have to look at all these commands and say, I need to get myself ready so that when I believe in Christ, he'll accept me. No, as you're gonna hear, I pray you'll see, Christ forgives us while we're sinners. He forgives us before we're all cleaned up, and quite frankly, we can't clean ourselves up if we try, then we just become more self-righteous, and that's a whole nother kind of problem. So as you look at our text, my prayer for you is that you would actually see there's real sin and real problems in your life that you can't control, you can't silence. But God can save you from them, He can kill them. And as Christians, we just need to see these are simple, basic commands for how to live now that Christ has saved us. These are things we're supposed to be pursuing and maturing in and growing. And yeah, it's a daunting list. But God's grace, he empowers us. So as we look at this I want us to see there's a all of these commands they are about Christ and his church We need to be careful not to individualize this too much We need to realize that he's speaking to a body and as a body we're supposed to be thinking about how we do this together And so the words that come out of our mouths are meant for one another for building up The forgiveness, that means we're in a community, we're with one another, if we sin against one another, we're quick to forgive and confess. And so as you look at this, I want us to see there's a promoting of unity. I believe that's still the big overarching theme. Remember back in chapter four, early on, he mentions eager to maintain the unity of the spirit, verse three. And here, especially because our words can grieve the spirit, I believe here we're looking at how to maintain the Spirit. So our first point is this. We are called to promote unity with our words. We're called to promote unity with our words. Let's look at verse 29. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as it 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 no words that are corrupting come out of your mouths. Another way we could translate this, don't let the rotten words come out. The corrupting words, the rotten words that rot away other people. So let's just think of the word rotten We've all had a rotten vegetable or a fruit. And if you tried to see if you could eat it, when you brought it close, what was the experience? The smell. First of all, it usually kind of turns you off, right? The smell makes it repugnant. And then if you're brave enough to say, no, I'm going to try it anyway. I'm going to peel it. I'm going to bite into it. The harsh, bitter taste of a rotten piece of fruit The sweetness all gone, now it's just bitter? If we look at this, Paul is saying, let the words of your mouth not be corrupting, let them not be rotten. Are our words easily digestible to others? Are they easily received and taken in? There's a great philosopher who may say something very similar to this. A wise sage once said, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. Especially if you say something hard, seasoning it in a way that it's not rotten, it's not difficult to consume, it's not difficult to digest. So here we want to see that these words, they're put off. I think I probably use more words than the average male. And my method is often times trial and error in all of life. And so I feel like I'm often times in the matrix when I'm talking, I'm thinking out loud, and then all of a sudden a word comes out. And what I hate about conversation is there's no delete button, like when you're typing. It's like you're in the Matrix, like the words are going out, you can see them flying, you then realize, when I thought that it sounded a lot better than when I said it, how is that gonna land? It's terrifying. When a word goes out, a bitter word, a rotten word, and then you watch it land on someone you love and you see the effect, it's painful. It should be painful. This is why it's important if we're going to have difficult conversations, we do them in person. And make sure that as we speak to others, we're valuing the person more than the message we think that needs to be heard. So here we see there's something that's out of bounds. There's a definite negative. Do not let your rotten words out. Do not let the words that are so easily corrupting, don't let them out. You need a filter here. But then of course as God's Word does in this specific section, there's a negative and then there's an assertion. But only, so he's told us what's out of bounds, the rotten words. Now he's telling us what the target is and what the limitation is. But only those words. that are for building up, that fit the occasion. Only say things that are building up one another. Our goal is to care for another, to build up one another. You know, there's something important we have to realize is we've been purchased by the blood of Christ. My life is not my own, my hands are not my own, my words are not my own. Our words are powerful and now they belong to Christ because he's purchased us, he's cleansed us, he calls us now to use our words for his purposes. Building up, we oftentimes can easily think of constructive criticism here. I believe that's an umbrella that goes over a lot of abusive language. When we build up, we need to be very careful. Don't assume you already know what the person needs to hear when you go into a conversation. I praise God for how many times I've gone in thinking, all right, this is what I need to say, but as I've asked questions, as I've actually studied the person, as I've actually gone through the conversation, I realized I was completely wrong in what I was going to say and how devastating it would have been. I believe that's here what fits the occasion. Think about the person you're speaking to more than the thing you're saying. Give grace to those who hear. That it may give grace. Are our words gracious? Or again, are they seasoned in a way that encourages? Now, why? Why are our words so important? Paul could have gone where James goes. If you wanna look at how powerful our words are, go to James. They're the most powerful instrument we have, they can change lives. He warns us, it's difficult to bridle the tongue, and if you don't bridle the tongue, you're self-deceived, your religion is worthless. He says, how is it that we curse man and bless God, that that should not be so? So Paul could warn us here how powerful our words are and what they do to other people, but no, he gives us a different kind of motivation. Verse 30 is connected to verse 29. Do not let the corrupting words out of your mouth, but build up. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. If you go back to chapter four, verse three, we're supposed to be eager to maintain the unity. We're supposed to be eager to maintain the spirit, the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. You see, the one Holy Spirit that was sent by the one Savior resides in all of our hearts. And the Spirit knows that when our words go out and they land on someone and they're corrupting, what it does to them, and I believe what Paul's saying here is that it grieves the Spirit. When we bite away at one another, when we fight against one another, when we're quarreling, when we're divisive, when we're difficult, we have to think about this. Our words have an effect on God, which dwells in our hearts. As we go ahead in Ephesians, we'll see that one of our desires is to be filled with the Spirit, which is an empowering that comes from faithfulness. Here, I believe this has to be the opposite of being filled with the Spirit. We're grieving the Spirit because of our lack of faithfulness. So as we go to the next section, I want to just ask some challenging questions that you can discuss afterwards over lunch. Who has been hindered by our words? Who do we tend to be the most impatient with or harsh? With whom are we most impatient or harsh? Second, Are we regularly prioritizing the person or the problem we're trying to address? Third, I want us to see this. Somebody is supposed to be built up by your words. Who's growing because of your regular encouragement, exhortation, edification? Who's growing because of the way you're using your words? Children who are present with us, Your parents care a whole lot about what you say, because your patterns of what you say are going to affect who you become, and they greatly affect your parents and your siblings. The classic discipline, I don't know if your parents do this, they're not really effective on me, but putting soap in the mouth, it actually doesn't cleanse it, it's a metaphor. The mouth is dirty when it comes out and it's arguing and fighting. The principle there that the mouth needs to be clean. Children, guard your words. Parents, even more so, be careful. We must be careful with our words, studying how they affect our children. So the first thing is promoting unity with our words. Second, it's promoting unity with our posture. And while words, I want to say that those are difficult as to how we affect other with our words, we're getting into more heart issues here with our posture. So the first thing is promote unity with your words. Second, promote unity with your posture. Let's look at verses 31 to 32. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor slander be put away from you along with all malice." Now most folks would see this as some kind of a progression from bitterness to wrath and anger to to clamor and slander and then kind of that big umbrella all malice. And that's just the general Greek word for all things bad. Put all things bad away from you. I believe it goes from a disposition that the bitterness, to the emotions of wrath and anger, to the fruit of our disposition, our heart, to the words. Clamor and slander. Remember what Jesus said, it's not what goes into your mouth that corrupts you, it's what comes out of your mouth from your heart. So let's look at these. Bitterness. The best description I've heard of bitterness is the practice of retelling other people's faults against me to myself. I learned that from Pastor Sam. I don't know if that's original to him, but I think that's fantastic. Bitterness is the regular retelling other people's faults against me talking to myself. That's in contrast to what? Talking to God. Thanking God. Talking to others about what's happened. It's putting the whole court, the judge and the jury, in our hands, in our hearts, as we retell others' faults against ourselves. And the arena for bitterness is just a simple sense. That wasn't fair. That's all it takes. That wasn't fair. I'm not being treated the way I ought to be treated, or they're treating me the way I don't deserve. It's not fair. And it's a scary place to be. Because I believe that bitterness leads to the emotions and the passions of wrath and anger. And I do believe these two go together. And if you heard last week, it says, be angry and sin not. Given the context of the word anger here, which is the same exact word, I believe he's speaking of sinful anger, given that it's coming from bitterness and wrath. Again, anger. Something's not right. We like to sulk, we like to dive into how bad it is. Something we need to realize here is wrath and anger, they come from within. How often have you had to correct a child or yourself or anyone else? When somebody says, you make me angry. No, nobody can make you angry. Nobody should be able to make you angry. You should not let anybody have that power over you. You respond with anger or with forgiveness and grace. This is important because one of the most dangerous things we can have in our church is bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and slander rather than the kindness, tender-heartedness, and forgiveness. When someone's angry, we're on eggshells. We're worried. We're scared. It hinders the unity rather than maintains it. Clamor and slander. The outward fruit of it. The words that come out of our mouths. Clamor is someone who's just rattling about, right? One thing comes up and it's like the spigot just overflows. Slander, the word is actually from blaspheme. It's irreverent words. Again, going back to James, we curse our brothers and bless God in the same mouth. Words of anger come out. And as we think about what our words are doing, we're getting back to that first command, our words. But Paul's going that step further. He's peeling the onion back one more here to talk about the disposition of anger, wrath, and bitterness that lead to those words. Anger can destroy a community, a family, a church. Let's just make it very personal. I warned you of being too individualistic earlier, but I wanna think about this. Anger in our own hearts, it chokes out the fruit of the spirit. So gardening season is about to come, praise God. We're gonna be planting and tilling and then planting. One of the things you really have to make sure you do is make sure your garden is ready to not have all the weeds in it, like mine had last year. There were definitely more weeds than fruit bearing plants. And the most frustrating weeds are the ones that re-root. Because they just take over so fast. That's anger. It's that re-rooting vine. It constantly just re-roots and re-roots. And then if it becomes a vine, it's choking out any and everything good. It takes over the whole piece of garden. It requires regular pruning. It requires uprooting. Anger's dangerous. That's why Paul warns us, do not sin when angry. Now here's the real hard part. Everybody in this room has some right to be angry. Everybody could say, this was wrong, I have the right to be angry. But here's your option. You either get to choose, I have the right to be angry, or you can choose, I will be reconciled. You can't be angry and be reconciled. Everyone can think of something, I know I can be angry about that with this person, but you have to make the choice. You can hold on to the anger, you have that right. Or you can be reconciled. Brothers and sisters, the table in front of where I'm speaking right now calls us to see being reconciled as a higher good. To put off anger so that we can be reconciled in Christ and rejoice in his good work together. We see that basic principle, verse 31, at the end. Put away from among you all these things, along with anything bad. Put it off. Don't pretend you can silence it. Don't pretend you're in charge of it. Put it off. Put it to death. Get rid of it. So there's the negatives again. These are the things that are unbecoming of a Christian. Bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, malice. And then he gives us the positive. This is the posture we're supposed to have. Be kind. What's missing in the command to be kind to one another? Anyone? There's no qualifier. It doesn't say be kind when or if. It's just a straight command. Be kind to one another. It's a declaration of generosity. Assuming the best. Treating with dignity. Treat others as more important as yourself. Treat others with their interests more important than your own. That's Philippians 2. That's a great way of thinking about what it means to be kind. Tenderhearted. This is a compound word in the Greek that really focuses on that internal passion and desire for others. And something that's unique to this word is that it declares there's a stability about the person who's constantly for the other. That there's a constant bending towards the other in steadiness and in love. And then we come to the last command. but then again gives us a very divine motivation. Forgiving one another as God and Christ forgave you. We see there's two very important parts. First, our Christian identity. I am forgiven. Then the Christian call, I will forgive. that those two things have to go together. I am forgiven, therefore I will forgive. Forgiveness is so weighty. It's more than weighty, it's terrifying. You can go to the Sermon on the Mount. If you do not forgive others, your Heavenly Father will not forgive you. I'm not sure there's a more terrifying verse in the Bible. Christian And the Sermon on the Mount after after teaching us how to pray Jesus warns us if we do not forgive others our Heavenly Father will not forgive us Or Matthew 18 what what Roger read earlier? No, it's not just forgiving seven times 70 times seven and then he gives illustration of a man who who was forgiven for for a fortune So that he could go shake down the fellow servant We need to pay attention here because of the high calling. Let's start with what's easy. As God in Christ, Jesus forgave you. That's usually the easier one, if you're a Christian. If you're not a Christian, that's usually the harder one. You have to ask, well, what do I need forgiveness for? And if you're a Christian, this is easier because we see this phrase, and if you've been with us, I hope you're recognizing this phrase, and it's become one of the most important phrases in all of Scripture. In Christ. Right, when we go to Ephesians 1, if you're not familiar with that phrase, and just look at all the different ways that God blesses us in Christ, with Christ, through Christ. This speaks to an identity. This speaks to who we are because of what God has said about us. In Christ, we're forgiven. We are, in actuality, sinners who deserve wrath and condemnation. But, in Christ, we're forgiven. Now, there's so much we could say about forgiveness. I want to keep it pretty limited, and so here's what I'm going to say about forgiveness. Forgiveness is a promise not to seek revenge, but to pursue reconciliation. Okay, that's the profound definition. There's so much more we could say, but I'm gonna have to limit myself to just those things. Forgiveness is a promise not to seek revenge, But to pursue reconciliation. First, let's look at what it means that forgiveness is a promise. As God in Christ forgave you, God has spoken. You're not guilty. It's a promise. God has made a word. He's given a word. He's given an authoritative declaration from the King and Creator of the heavens and the earth. He has spoken. And He's given us a promise that because we believed in Christ, because of Christ's death, where He took the penalty for our sin, suffering in our place, God Almighty promises you there is now no condemnation. You're forgiven. There's no fear. You're forgiven. You see, it's a promise because God is never going to punish us, punish us for anything we've said or done. In a sense of a wrath and condemnation because Christ has paid that penalty. So just as God gives his word to forgive, we're supposed to give our word to others. So I want to challenge you this morning, as you think about forgiveness, I want you to first see, when you say, I forgive you, what you're doing is giving a pledge, a promise. You're not talking about the way you feel. You're avoiding the sentiment of it. You're making a promise. You're saying, I'm going to not consider this sin against you anymore, and I promise to keep doing that. So when we promise forgiveness, peacemakers, they have these four things we're promising, and I think they're helpful. First, we promise not to dwell on the incident. If we're forgiving someone for something, we are promising, I'm not going to dwell on it, I'm not going to meditate upon it. So the first promise, I will not dwell on this incident. Second, I will not bring up this incident again and use it against you. We've all experienced that, right? Somebody said I forgive you in the next fight, that thing comes out as just heated ammunition. All right, that's breaking a promise. When we say we're going to forgive you, we're saying I'm not going to dwell upon it, I'm not gonna bring it up against you again. Third, I will not talk to others about this incident. So not only am I gonna use it as ammunition in a fight, I'm not gonna use it as ammunition to slander or to gossip. And fourth, I will not let this incident stand between us or hinder our personal relationship. See, forgiveness is a, these are significant promises. It's saying what I'm going to not do. I'm not going to dwell upon it. I'm not going to talk about it. I'm not going to make this change our relationship. And we're going to flesh this out a little bit more as we look at these others. So forgiveness promises to reject revenge. Okay, so how does God promise to reject revenge? How does God promise to not have revenge on our sin? It's because the penalty for our sin has been paid in full. We were saying that earlier. Jesus paid it all. There's no more wrath to be poured out upon our sin because Christ has paid the full penalty. Something I wanna say about God and forgiveness, I don't think he actually forgets sin. Forgiveness does not involve forgetting. I don't believe Jesus is confused as to why he has nails, holes in his hands and his feet. I don't believe the Spirit is confused as to why he's grieving. God is fully aware of the sin, the beauty of it. He does not let that sin hinder our relationship. He thinks more of us than what Christ has done. He died for us. He washed us. He purchased us. He's delivered us into his new kingdom. Christian, just as God does not have vengeance on us because of our sin because we're in Christ, we're to reject revenge ourselves. One of the key passages to think about this is Romans 12. Do not avenge yourselves. One of the key ways we have to practice this part of forgiveness is learning that we can trust God who is the great, just judge. One of the hardest things to do when somebody says, I'm sorry, is to not make sure they know how sorry they should be. That's what I'm talking about. We will never know the full weight of our sin. That's God's grace to us. That's God forgiving us, apart from us ever fully understand the full gravity and the full weight of our sin. We know it's great because of what Christ went through, but we'll never know the full weight of it. In the same way, the person who's asking for forgiveness does not need to know the full hurt that they've caused. That's hard. When we forgive, we're promising we're not going to keep this thing in the front of our mind in relationship. So thirdly, forgiveness, it's a promise to not seek revenge, it's a promise to seek reconciliation. This is the goal of forgiveness. Forgiveness and reconciliation are two different things, but they're necessarily related. The goal of forgiveness is a renewed relationship. God sent his son to die for us so that he could know us once again, so that we could know him once again. The forgiveness of the cross precedes once again being brought to the presence of God so that we can delight in Him, so that we can know Him and His love. In the same way, when we forgive, the goal is reconciliation. The goal is to not keep the person from a distance, but to be renewed, to be postured towards, to pursue, and there's no better way to think about this other than the Lord's Supper. When we forgive one another, we can rejoice in how we take the Lord's Supper together, being purchased by the same Savior, rejoicing in the same forgiveness. As we've thought about many sins, our words, our bitterness, I want to be very clear, one of the most precious practices that we have is confession and forgiveness. It's essential to who we are and what we do. If you're a Christian, if you're a member of Jefferson Park, we're coming together and we're saying we are wicked sinners who deserve wrath, but God, but God forgave us and gave us new life. And one of the things we get to do now is continue to confess sin without qualification and forgive sin without qualification. It's a it's a wonderful opportunity to experience the gospel with one another Confessing sin, even if it's not sin against someone to come and confess to somebody. I've had this practice I've I've been doing this and I want to come and talk to you about it And then one of the great things you get to say is you're confessing your sin in Christ. You are forgiven What a way to experience the gospel Our last section, in chapter 5, 1-2, and we're gonna start here next week. We're not gonna say everything. But I believe it's important to end here because Paul connects it very strongly with a therefore. Be imitators of God as beloved children. This is how you knew children in this day and age? They acted like their parents? You typically had the same vocation? A child acts like their parents, so as our heavenly father is good and gracious and has kind words and forgives, we are to be like him, we are to imitate him. Because we're his children. Walk in love. This again speaks of how we act, how we live. As Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Think about where he started. Rotten words coming out of our mouths. It's very different than being a fragrant sacrifice to God. Walking in the love of Christ, obeying Him, trusting His grace, looking to Him, that's very different than what he described in verse 29, verse 25, verse 31. As we conclude, we need to realize it's so easy to be deceived that this sin that we're hanging on to, whatever it is, whatever vice it is, whatever it may be, our anger, our addiction, our habit, whatever it is that we think we've got to have, and as a close friend, I just need it to be silenced a little bit. No, it has to die. And by God's grace, he wants it to die. It's not like the red lizard in his lie, who said the angel, he's just abstract, he's impersonal, he doesn't get it. No, God is the most personal. God is the most loving. And he looks at us as his children, and he sees that we're tormented, and he says, son, I wanna help you. Let me silence that sinful temptation. Let me untangle that knot. Let me put away the sin that so easily hinders you and entangles you. Let me do it once and for all. Now one of the things that the ghost did was make it very clear. Today is the day, young man, that you have to decide to put that sin to death. And today is the same day every day. Today is the day you decide it's to death. Today is the day you decide it's to death. It's a constant putting sin to death. Saying I don't wanna just be silenced. I don't want to just protect it and let it just stop hindering me a little bit. I want to truly grow up in the measure of Christ. Look at these last words again. The imitators of God walk in love as Christ loved us. One of the high callings is in verse 13 and 15 of chapter four. Attaining unity in the measure of the mature manhood of Christ. Growing up into the fullness of Christ. Christian, we do this by putting away sin and putting on the obedience of Christ. Will you pray with me? Father, we come before you, we thank you that you are a great God who loves us. Lord, as we look at these commands and we think about the kind of words we've said, Lord, we confess, we've not used the words you've purchased us to use. So we come to you for forgiveness. We look at our bitterness and our wrath and our anger and our clamor and our slander and all our malice, and Lord, we confess this and we pray that you'll forgive us so much more that you would help us to put these things away so that we can be kind, tenderhearted, and forgiving one another as you've forgiven us. will help us to meditate upon Christ and the great work he's done in us so that we can see the great work we can do among one another. In his name we pray. Amen.