Ephesians: Love and Truth; honoring God's work — Bruce Rodgers

Love That Honors God's Work

Now we're going to pick up a verse first of all in Romans chapter 12 and then go back to Ephesians 4 Romans chapter 12 and verse 10. Romans 12 and 10 says. Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love in honor preferring one another.

Now let's go to Ephesians chapter 4. Ephesians chapter 4 now there's a number of verses here probably way too many for me to cover properly but I want you just to remember the emphasis from last Sunday we were looking at expressions through Ephesians called in love and there was a series of expressions relating to that.

I'm going to pick up a couple of them here. In verse 15 it says. But speaking the truth in love may grow up into him in all things who is the head even Christ from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplies according to the effectual working in the measure of every part makes increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.

So there's two things associated together here we have speaking the truth in love and then growing developing building up one another in love. And so verse 17 then presents a challenge and you can look at this this last section especially as with an emphasis of what we would call transforming love.

And if you remember again from last Sunday I spoke a little bit about chapter one on the idea that we are accepted in the beloved and we are holy and without blame before him in love. So that's what we could call accepting love.

And if we can appreciate that God has dealt with us that way that becomes the incentive and the lever for us to treat one another that way. In other words and this is something that I I have come to appreciate more in the few years.

It's very very important for me to honor God's work not only in myself. I can't be careless about my life because it's not just my life it's a life that God is working in and so I need to honor the work of God in progress in my life.

But Ephesians 4 brings the emphasis that we need to honor the work of God that is in progress in everyone else's life as well. And so that's where our responsibilities towards one another emphasized. So we have this emphasis.

Transformation Through Truth and Holiness

And so there's a contrast made in verse 17 this I say therefore and testify in the Lord that you henceforth that is that you no longer walk as other Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind having the understanding darkened being alienated from the life of God and so on.

And so we are looking at the world around us with all its depravity with all its licentious living. It's very self-focused self-fulfilling living. Verse 20 says in contrast but you have not so learned Christ this isn't what you learn from him.

And then he says if so be that you have heard him and have been taught by him as truth is in Jesus that you put off concerning the former behavior the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts and be renewed in the spirit of your mind.

So all through here there's this repeated emphasis to change. This is a challenge to change. And so God's love to us on one hand is a wonderful accepting love but it's also a transforming love. He is going to change us into what pleases him and honors him be renewed in the spirit of your mind and that you put on the new man which after God or according to God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

And you could also translate that expression the holiness of truth. And so while there is a very strong emphasis on love there is also a very significant emphasis pulled in here about truth truth honesty.

And so verse 25 down begins the direct challenges to us. Wherefore wherefore putting away lying speak every man truth with his neighbor for we are members one of another be angry and sin not. Let not the Sun go down upon your wrath or your provocation.

Putting Away Lying and Practicing Forgiveness

Neither give place to the devil let him that stole steel steel no more but rather let him labor working with his hands the thing which is good that he may have to give to him that needeth let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth.

But that which is good to the use of edifying that it may minister grace unto the hearers and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice and the kind one to another tenderhearted forgiving one another even as God for Christ's sake or God in Christ has forgiven you.

Now let's read the first two verses of chapter 5. Because this is really the conclusion be ye therefore followers or imitators of God as dear children and walk in love as Christ also has loved us and has given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor.

Now every time we come together to break bread we focus on the work of Christ and we seek to honor his work on our behalf to bring us into salvation. But wouldn't it be a shame to try all through our lifetime to truly honor what he did for us to bring us into this salvation.

And then to be negligent or careless indifferent or even resistant to the work that he's trying to do in us right now. That would be very incompatible wouldn't it very inconsistent. And so I am trying to learn more and more to look at fellow Christians as a work in progress to try to look from God's perspective and to see every believer as someone in whom the Spirit of God rests dwells and is working to bring into the perfection the blessedness the completeness that belongs to someone who is now part of Christ Christ's body.

We have a tremendous tremendous future and we have that future together. And so we have to balance our awareness of what we see failing that may irritate us that may hurt us that may be destructive. In fellow believers we need to balance that awareness with the awareness that God is still at work and God is moving things to his ultimate purpose.

And so progress of God's work in each one. And I'm just gonna use an expression pursuit of honor. You see it's part of love's character to wish for the honor of someone that I love now. Sometimes it's good to just use it put it into another perspective.

Cultivating an Atmosphere of Honor

Parents love to see their children do. Well if a husband loves his wife he's going to be delighted when she's honored when she's well-spoken of. When someone speaks appreciatively of her he's going to be pleased.

If you don't there's something wrong in your love. It is the nature of love to want to glorify to honor the one that you love. This is part of the of the glory of the Godhead. The father loves the son has given everything to him.

The father wants to honor the son bring him into honor and approval and appreciation in the eyes of every other person the son wants to honor the father. And so love has this motivation this goal to bring into honor and praise and so on.

And so there's a number of verses but I don't want to be caught too long on just trying to emphasize that idea. But in our relationships with one another whether it's in our families or among fellow believers we need to cultivate an atmosphere of honor.

Each person should feel valued honored. Now I want to just touch on a few principles or ways in which we can cultivate honor for one another. Now the very first one I want to emphasize is just simply learning how to listen.

Do you know how to listen. One of the biggest frustrations in conflict often is you're not listening to me. You know as soon as I open my mouth you want to shut me down. You don't want to hear what I have to say.

Why. Because sometimes we think we already know what the other person is all about. And we sometimes surmise the worst about them. We already think we know. Now if you only listen in order to counter-attack you are conveying dishonor.

You are discrediting dishonoring that person. And so it's very very important for us to learn this. And I remember I think this was in a book called making love last forever by Gary Smalley where he talks about one of these principles.

I'm not sure if that was a book or not but there's a lot of excellent material in that book if it isn't in that book but the author at least suggests that we that we pick up on the what he calls drive-through listening.

Now we're all familiar with going through the drive-through and you come up there. And of course you obviously give some signal when you drive up there that they know you're there at that little wicket and and they would say you know how are you and what's what what's your order.

And so then you express what you want and then they repeat it to you. And so what are they actually doing. They want to make sure that when you get to the pickup wicket that you're going to get what you asked for everybody's going to be happy.

And so this concept basically is saying our first priority in listening is to make sure that I understand you. Instead of wanting to get my idea across my first priority is to understand what you are thinking what you're feeling now.

James told us this a long time ago before drive-through listening was fashionable and he said let every man be swift to hear slow to speak slow to wrath. When we're upset we tend not to want to hear.

We want to make them hear. And so this is an this is an aspect of honoring that other person going back to Romans 12 brotherly love be affectionately with kindness affectionate kindness with brotherly love in honor preferring one another in honor putting the other one first.

And so learning to listen is very very very very vital. And it has been said that that nothing conveys honor so well as attentive active listening where you accept equal responsibility with the person speaking to you to make sure understanding true understanding takes place.

And you give the person opportunity to express their feelings what they see happening and what they feel about it. Now of course if you're going to be mature you both have to do this. You both have to practice this willingness to hear willingness to listen the other person in what they are saying.

Honest Speech in Love

Now the emphasis we have here in the latter part of Ephesians 4 is the next principle of showing honor. And that is being honest being honest with one another. And so it says here in verse 15 speaking the truth in love.

Now some translations will put actually being truthful in love or being sincere in love. So it could have something to do with not only how we speak and what we speak but being sincere in our motivation.

Now there's a very important section here that is a bit more doctrinal from verse 20 down to verse 24. And it's important for us to understand that God in saving us has created within us a life that is holy a life that is righteous a life that is genuine and sincere.

Now he starts out by saying truth is in Jesus. Now I don't know if you've ever thought about this but if you had not been willing to become honest you never would have gotten saved. We began our our Christian life in that element of brokenness of honesty confession acknowledgement and simple honestly honesty.

We weren't trying to hide what we were. We simply honestly received the Word of God. Now that's also touched on in first Peter chapter 1 when it says that you obeyed the truth through the Spirit. Then it says unto unfeigned love of the brethren.

And so into that embryo of life in the element of honesty was born the love of God within our beings. And so love has this very nature and character in it. It's absolutely genuine and sincere in all its intentions in all its and all its purposes.

And so he says truth is in Jesus. And we are supposed to be learning from him. We're supposed to be gaining knowledge. We're supposed to be following what he is if so be you have heard him been taught by him.

And then he says that you put off. And this is actually something that took place at conversion as it's spoken in the Colossian epistle it's a little more clear. It's having put off and having put on.

This is what happened when we got saved. We put off the old man. We put on the new man. And the character of the old man which is the sinful person that we were in Adam was deceitfulness. Do you know that every sin has a lie in it.

Every sin has in it a distortion a corruption from reality from truth. And you know it's also very typical for people to lie when they have sinned because lying is the cover-up to protect from the repercussions of sinning.

And so honesty is a very fundamental thing and I'll just say this very very clearly that we will not mature and we will not build mature permanent relationships without love and truth. Love and honesty have to work together for relationships to endure and to progress.

And so he makes this expression you put on the new man which according to God has been created in righteousness and true holiness or holiness of truth now that has been done within you. And so you have this inner core of life that corresponds to what God is himself.

Why Lying Destroys Trust

So verse 25 down is where our responsibility comes in. Then he says wherefore putting away lying speak every man truth with his neighbor. For we are members one of another. Now again I'm just going to make a few quick comments about lying.

Why do we lie. Why do we fail to express ourselves honestly. Well you probably won't remember what I said in the first three verses of the chapter last week. But two of the important characteristics is meekness lowliness forbearance long-suffering.

And I mentioned that these involve an absence of self-promotion and an absence of self-protection. Now guess what lying does for us. Lying works for self-promotion. Do we exaggerate embellish our stories to make ourselves seem that much more noble that much more wonderful and so on and so on.

If you're the hero of all the stories you tell most people will recognize it after a while and they sort of cut whatever you say in half. And so we have the tendency in our self centeredness. This is one of the distortions that that sin has created that we are the center of everything.

And so we're either trying to promote ourselves or we're trying to protect ourselves because we do things that are unknowable we do things that are disgusting that are ungodly and so we disguise them.

We we make ourselves appear better than we really are and so on. And so lying basically serves these two purposes either promoting ourselves or protecting ourselves from consequences of our own problems.

Now when it comes to the marriage relationship a very common one is a husband hiding financial problems from his wife or a wife hiding her spending from her husband. And you know eventually unless unless you have your own credit cards and never see each other's credit card eventually the truth comes out right.

And so deceitfulness covering things up in any realm does not solve a problem. It actually multiplies the problems. Because as soon as another individual whether it's your partner in the marriage or whether it's in the fat and the family of God if you find out that another person is not dealing with you honestly trust is broken.

And when trust is broken it's very very difficult to maintain closeness because now you have to protect yourself from that person or you can't count on that person in being faithful and genuine with you.

And so honesty should be for every one of us a bottom-line absolutely necessary thing for us in our lives. And so he says putting away lying speak everyone truth with his neighbor for we are members one of another don't ever try to put one over on somebody else.

Anger, Conflict, and Righteous Self-Control

And then verse 26 is linked with this in a logical way because somebody says well if I'm going to start being really honest we're gonna have a lot more conflict now it is true that there are times when you might feel irritated by somebody and it's better for you just to swallow and to gain your own self-control and think it through yourself instead of just mouthing off immediately.

Because sometimes our initial reactions are faulty they're not based on adequate information. But here he's recognizing that if we are going to deal with one other honestly we're going to have to deal with problems.

We're going to have to deal with sins with things that are wrong that happen. But he puts a caution with it. He says be angry and sin not. Now further down the chapter he says let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and so on be put away from you.

So you might say that sounds kind of contradictory but I think we have to we should recognize there is a place for righteous anger. God is angry with wickedness. We ought to be angry with wickedness. We ought to feel the injustice of something that is done that is wrong.

And we we need to feel that anger. But we need to be very controlled in what we do in response. Now something that I learned that I probably wouldn't have thought of myself is that anger is a secondary emotion.

Now you might say I'm not so sure about that some people are so explosive and quick in their anger that it's hard to imagine there's any other emotion happens first. But let me just suggest this to you that anger is more of a response that we make that arises out of one of three things out of fear out of frustration or out of hurt.

Now I don't know if you understand how this works but if you've ever had children and watch them get into trouble doing something and their lives are in danger you ever wonder why you react so angrily.

At times they may have run out on the street or you know into the pathway of something or they've put themselves in danger and and you go and you and you bring them back and you're so angry. Well that anger is because you've been scared to death.

You're afraid that that child is going to get killed and you don't want them to ever do it again. And so your fear causes you to respond in anger because you want to prevent that from happening. The same thing happens in other aspects of relationship.

Sometimes it's our fear of what is going to happen that causes us to express anger to try to cause it to stop. And so anger can be very manipulative. I'm sure we've met people who use anger as a way of life to keep everybody around them in control.

Where use anger to control others to control consequences. And so it can be there because of fear. And it can be because of frustration when somebody hasn't done what you expected them to do and you react in anger.

Well it's because you've been frustrated by them not meeting an expectation. And then we have been hurt. And so now what should we do with angry feelings. That's what this passage is really saying. Be angry and sin not and let not the Sun go down upon your wrath or your provocation.

Discerning, Deferring, and Deciding in Anger

I'm just going to give you a few little suggestions here. The first thing we need to do with angry feelings is to number one discern the cause. Because I need to recognize whether my anger is righteous or unrighteous.

Now if I just feel a little bit slighted because I wasn't noticed as much as somebody else was noticed that's not something that I should lash out at somebody for that's something I should be ashamed of myself for.

And so we need to recognize whether our anger is right. Remember what the Lord said to Jonah do you have a right to be angry. Yes I do. He wasn't going to give up on his anger. But it's very important for us because that's the very first thing.

And then the second point after we discern the cause is to defer to God how important it is to relate yourself to the Lord as quickly as you can because it's vital for us to regain control so that whatever anger we may express may be done righteously honestly honorably and not destructively.

So defer to God by that I mean to bring it into God's presence acknowledge fully what you're feeling how upset you are how hurt you are and so on. But then appeal to God to help you to have grace to be able to handle yourself righteously and honorably.

And then decide the right course of action. Now some of us tend not to blow off steam all the time. We all we actually have the opposite problem is that we just stuff it inside and hold it and keep it within ourselves.

And sometimes we hold on to resentment hurt for a lot more than 24 hours. We hold on to it for weeks for months for years. And when we finally express it it has been so it has become so much a part of us that we are completely unreasonable in it.

And we can accuse somebody of something that they may never have even thought or intended or understood what harm they were doing to us. The longer we hold it the more opportunity we are giving to Satan.

And that's where the that last little part comes in. If you have any emotion within you unjudged not brought under proper perspective proper control you are giving to Satan a foothold in your life from which to begin his goal to destroy you with it and to destroy as many other people around you as is possible.

And I've lived along long enough in assembly life to know that this is one of the most crucial things for Christians to overcome because anger stored up ends up eventually in verse 31 it ends up in that realm of bitterness.

Bitterness is when you begin to hold another person responsible for your unhappiness for the disaster that's happened in your life or whatever has gone on. You hold them responsible and so you are bitter towards them.

And bitterness leads to malice. Malice is actually a desire to destroy that person to the point of a hatred that you would wish that person to be harmed or destroyed. And it speaks there about bitterness wrath anger clamor evil speaking now I found this within myself to my own shame that there are certain other Christians that for a number of years every time their name came up I had to say something negative about them.

It was just like I couldn't let them be spoken of honorably without somehow exposing them for what they really were in my at least in my estimation now I think I was justified in being angry with them.

It wasn't anything they did to me directly but the damage I saw them do to other Christians and I held them responsible for a number of believers leaving the assembly lives being damaged drastically spiritually and that's very that's a very real possibility.

But it didn't help me and it became something that was was destructive within within my own spirit. And so this can happen within our marriage it can happen in our families it can happen among the Saints.

And so how we deal with anger is one of the most important things for us to overcome. I think it's in that same book that I already referred to making love last forever that this author Gary Smalley identifies stored-up anger as being the number one enemy of love.

And he lists a whole a whole list of things that stored-up anger causes and good things that it prevents. And the unfortunate thing is it never stays in only the relationship in which the anger was first directed.

I don't know how they come to these calculations or estimations but I've read that possibly 80 of displayed anger is actually displaced anger where somebody has irritated you in one relationship you're frustrated you're resentful and so on but that has created a tension of frustration within you.

And then you end up carrying it with you maybe to your home to your family or to the assembly or you carry it from the assembly into your family and your friends and so on. And you you end up being this angry individual that is always hard to be around dangerous to be around and so on.

And it's a displaced anger. It's not being dealt with where it belongs and so it expresses itself in other relationships. And so these are very important things. And so the rule in verse 26 is don't let the Sun go down on your provocation.

Renewed Thinking and the Work of the Spirit

If something has provoked you someone has provoked this upset and anger resolve it before you go to bed now. I don't know if any of you have ever had this problem in your marriage but if you have ever gone to bed trying to sleep in the same bed besides somebody that you're holding hostage in your anger it doesn't work.

Does it. You won't get to sleep. And if they get to sleep then it makes you twice as angry because they shouldn't be able to sleep either. This is this is very wise sound counsel. Do you know that every time you rehash something in your mind you're actually making it stronger more of a fortress.

In fact I'm not going to get into this. But there's a there's a 21-day brain detox program available that recognizes scientifically that it takes about 21 days to break down something that has been formed very strongly in your mind about a certain situation it takes about 21 days to overcome that by replacing it by working through it and reaching out to a different kind of resolution that honors God.

And it's a bit so these things are stubborn. It's not just I have to try harder to forgive try harder to get over it and to not be angry with that person. Sometimes it's not renewed effort we need. We need to change our perception of it.

We need to have renewed thinking now. Obviously there's a lot more involved in that than what I can touch right at the moment. And so as he goes through this he is emphasizing that we need transformation.

We need to have the control of the Spirit of God to be able to take and control our thoughts our attitudes our motives so that they begin to produce the beautiful quality of his life within us. So I'll have to shut down for now because the time is gone.

But there's a lot here that is worth meditating in and taking before the Lord. If it takes 21 days that would be a miracle. Most of us have struggled with things for years that we haven't been able to overcome.

Prayer for Love, Forgiveness, and Spiritual Renewal

So may God be with us and enable us to truly love as he does. Let's pray our father. We thank thee that we are thine. We thank thee that you have sealed us with your spirit. We thank thee that the gracious Spirit of God dwells within us despite all the contradiction and conflict that we find within ourselves.

We pray that we might be submissive to the grace and love of your own Holy Spirit. And that we might be truly renewed in the spirit of our mind. And that we might be able to build that we might overcome what hinders we might be able to build these qualities and to build up one another and to be able to fulfill this exhortation to be kind tender-hearted forgiving one another even as thou in thy grace for his sake has forgiven us.

And so we bow in their presence and entrust ourselves to thee. We pray again that you would be with us in this ongoing effort to reach out to people in the community. And for the children of your people here how we would love to see them delivered and brought into the security the safety of your eternal love.

And we entrust this into your hands in our Savior's name.