Helping Our Fellow Members Enjoy the New Self

Psalm 4 and Matthew 7: The Word Read Before the Sermon

Please stand for the reading of God's Word spoken to us. The Old Testament passage for today will be Psalm 4, which can be found on page 448 in the Pew Bible. To the choir master with stringed instruments, a psalm of David.

Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness. You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer. O men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame? How long will you love vain words and seek after lies?

But know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself. The Lord hears when I call to him. Be angry and do not sin. Ponder in your hearts on your beds and be silent. Offer right sacrifices and put your trust in the Lord.

There are many who say, who will show us some good? Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord. You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and their wine abound. In peace, I will both lie down and sleep.

For you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.

Matthew 7:1-5 and the Call to Self-Judgment

The New Testament reading is Matthew chapter 7, verses 1 through 5, and that is on page 812 of the Pew Bible. Judge not that you be not judged, for with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged.

And with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when there is the log in your own eye?

You hypocrite. First, take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.

Tasting and Seeing That the Lord Is Good

Well, thank you for your singing. That was delightful. I ask that you turn in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 4, please. Ephesians chapter 4, read verse 25. Start at verse 25. Ephesians 4, verse 25. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one of another.

So be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. Let's pray. Oh God in heaven, we do praise you and thank you for this new life that we can have in the spirit.

A life of rejecting the old man, the old woman, the old self, and finding delight in the new self created after the image of Jesus Christ, our Lord. God, what a delightful life we have before us as Christians.

And I pray, God, that you would help us in your word to live accordingly and to help one another out as brothers and sisters in Christ to enjoy this life as well. Surely, Lord, sin is still hanging on the old man.

The old self holds on for dear life, even as it received its death blow. And so, Lord, we need help, the means that you've given to us, Lord, to put to death this old man, this old self every day of our lives.

And we know, Lord, as we see in the text today, that help comes forth from the other members of the body of.

Christ.

So, Lord, would you teach us a few things here and would you help us in our own way, in our own different lives, to grab hold of this and reflect it of our own specific circumstances and let it be our joy to apply it.

I pray that you'd be with my words. I pray that you would help me to be clear. And I pray, God, that you would be with the listeners. Be glorified, Lord, for we know that this is your will and it is our desire to do so.

So let the spirit help us and strengthen us for this task at hand. Thank you, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen. He's fairer than lilies of rarest bloom. He's sweeter than honey from out of the comb. He's all that my hungering spirit needs.

I'd rather have Jesus than let him lead. This is the cry of the Christian deep within his soul and his heart. The one who has what I like, Psalm 34, verse 8, tasted and seen that the Lord is good. That's probably one of my favorite verses because it's an experience of I have believed upon the promises and what God has said.

And I've followed him and I've tasted and I've seen that he is as good as he says he is.

He is great.

And I think this is exactly where we're at here in Ephesians. As we talk about the ditching of the old man and living in light of the new man, what we experience in our Christian life is he truly is good.

He truly tastes wonderful.

He's sweet. He's beautiful.

And as we experience that, as we reject the old man and as we grab hold of the new, that experience grows and grows and grows in our life. I remember as a young Christian and very young Christian and first experiencing that God is good as he says he is.

I remember being in my living room with my sister, older sister, two years older, and we would fight all the time. And you know, you always get the same rumblings, you know, when it's coming on, the rumblings, you know, when it's coming on.

And I remember it was just about to happen, you know, the back and forth. But then all of a sudden, something within me and I know now it's the new man crying out, you don't have to do that. You don't have to live like that.

You don't have to fight.

You don't have to argue. It's cancer. It's old man stuff. It is sinful stuff. Now, I didn't know that in my simple mind, but that's exactly what the Spirit was working in me. I just remember telling my sister, listen, we don't need to fight.

Why should we fight here? It was just a realization. Oh, yeah, you know, we don't have to fight. And we didn't fight. And it was delightful. And I remember that being like one of the first experiences of, wow, like the Lord is really good.

The denying of the fleshly desires that come up within my heart and grabbing hold of the promises of God in Christ instead. He is delightful. He is truly good. And I think this is where we're at in Ephesians of he's saying, therefore, having put away falsehood, where we're at in Ephesians 4 .25.

I don't think he means one and done. I think what Paul is saying here is he's grabbing hold of what we just went through with the old man and the new man in Christ, grabbing hold of the new man, being changed by him, enjoying him.

I think what he's saying is, is that having tasted and seen that the Lord is good. Having start the lifestyle of rejecting your desires of the flesh and grabbing hold of the new man within you. Experience that growing in that, wanting that consistently.

Having tasted and seen that the Lord is good and consistently living, denying the flesh and grabbing hold of the new man. I think this is what he means in verse 25 as he says, therefore, having put away falsehood.

Falsehood is the overall general, as we talked about two weeks ago, system of the flesh. The desires, the sinful flesh within you that says you will be happy if you do this sin against the Lord. You will be fulfilled if you do that.

And here Paul says that is old man activity. Get rid of it. Grab hold of the new man in Christ, the forgiveness of sins, grabbing hold of him and the life therein. And Paul says, and now with that established, living like this, that the Lord is good.

He says, let each one of you speak the truth with one another. And so there is a direct then application that as I'm enjoying the Lord, tasting and seeing that he's good, as I'm denying falsehood, grabbing hold of truth in Jesus.

There's a direct application to my brothers and sisters in Christ. That then I will then respond or act differently to my neighbor. I will speak truth to them. As you enjoy the Lord yourself, then you speak truth to your neighbor.

There's a direct kind of application there that will happen in your life as you're denying the flesh, grabbing hold of a new man. You will then, each one of you, speak the truth with his neighbor. Now, again, I think it's important for us to see.

He's not simply just saying, don't lie to your neighbor and tell the truth to your neighbor. Although he is obviously saying that. He's saying that those who are in Christ, they like the truth and they hate falsehood and they will therefore stop lying to one another.

There's certainly what he's saying there. But there's a bigger thing going on here. The truth that he's telling you to speak to your neighbor has to do with the new man in general, the new principle of the new man.

For instance, look at chapter 4, the same chapter, and look at verse 15. Notice, remember what he says there. He says, rather speaking the truth in love. Now, we look at the Greek there is like doing the truth, whereas in the verses that we're in now, it actually is speak the truth.

There is a difference in the Greek there. But nevertheless, look at the word truth. They're speaking the truth. They're doing the truth in love. We are to grow up in every way and to him who is the head that is Christ.

So the truth speaking here is certainly telling the truth, but it is a everything that denotes helping people out grow after the image of Jesus. All the whole value system of truth is thought of here.

In fact, look at verse again, chapter 4, verse 20, when he says, but that is not the way you learn Christ. What does he mean? You remember the old man, the old practices, the deceitfulness of the flesh, all that?

He says, you don't learn Christ that way. But he says, verse 21, assuming that you have heard about Jesus and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus to put off the old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires and to be renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new self.

And so that truth there, speaking the truth, is that whole system of putting on the new man. It's the whole system of truth that is putting on the new man of Christ and rejecting the deceitful desires of the old man.

Whenever we are tasting and seeing that the Lord is good, the truth is good. It is wonderful to be in the truth, in Christ, practicing righteousness. We then speak the same system of truth of new man-ness to our neighbor.

That is the cornerstone of our conversation, is that we speak newness of life with one another. I think it's a great hope. It's a great delight for especially the struggling Christian, the struggling Christian who barely feels like he's hanging on.

And there might be some of you out there. It's like, man, I'm just I'm barely hanging on here to truth. I'm barely hanging on here to the new man. I feel like the old man winning. He's winning constantly.

I just I just want to survive. I want you to know that it is the will of God for you and your salvation to not only survive, but thrive and share that with others. You see what I'm saying here in Ephesians 4, verse 25.

Paul assumes that you who are experiencing Jesus Christ will not only just simply survive in this sinful world, trying to pursue righteousness in Christ. But it is God's will for you to actually thrive, to then share that truth with others.

Now, you might tell me right now, well, I'm still barely surviving. But that is for you to look to the one who says, and it is my will for you to thrive. That if you ask, I will give. That if you continue to in faith to come to me, repenting of your sins, knowing that God, it is your will for me not simply just survive, but actually thrive enough to where I'm sharing life and truth, the system to others.

This is God's will. He's not going to say, nah, when you come to him in faith and trust, he will work this out in your life through sanctification. That is God's will for you. And so let that be those who are struggling right now.

You're considering your sin. You're considering your weakness throughout the week, your hardship. Know that it is your God, your father's good pleasure that you would not just simply survive, but actually thrive and share truth with one another.

Believe upon him, trust in him each day, giving him your sins, knowing that this is what he wants and he will do in you because he has said it. This is what he has promised to do. This is the Christian.

Not only have we tasted and seen that the Lord is good, but then we speak this truthness, this new personness, this new life into others, into our neighbor, as we see in verse 25. This is what Jesus has promised.

This is what the scriptures have promised. Look at John chapter 7. Look at John chapter 7. Remember, Jesus is at the Feast of Booths. And at the very last day, there's a ceremony of the water. Well, every day of the feast, there is a ceremony of water being poured out on the altar.

This signifies the giving of the Holy Spirit that will bring new life. The last day of the feast, there is no pouring of the water. And so, Jesus stands up, utilizes that opportunity to cry out in verse 37.

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, If anyone thirsts, because there's no ceremony of the water on this night. If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scriptures have said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.

He's referring to the Spirit. He's referring to the righteous living. He's referring to the living like the new man, which is a good drink, which is good and wonderful. And look at the purpose of this salvation.

It's that it would go forth from you unto others. This has always been the purpose of God. That not only would you enjoy the drink, but then flowing forth from your heart, the water or the Spirit would go forth to others.

And I think this is the same kind of principle Paul is laying out here, right? That now that you have put away falsehood, now let each of you then speak this truth, the living water, the righteousness, the new man, the Christ, the Spirit, and to his neighbor.

This is what God would have for us in our salvation. But notice what Paul goes on to say, though, for we are members one of another. And I think there's a lot we can pull from that. But he's saying, speak this kind of truth, not falsehood, but truth to one another and do it like, because it's true, that you are members of one another.

And when you do it like you're members of one another, you're going to be gentle. Right? You're going to be kind. You're going to be careful. I get slivers in my hands constantly because when I work, I refuse to wear gloves.

I don't know why. My wife always tells me wear gloves and I don't do it. And I'll get things like slivers in my hands or they'll get cut and everything. And every time I have a sliver, the same thing happens.

My wife says, let me take care of it. And I say, no, no, you're not. Why? Because she's not in my body. She doesn't know the pain and she doesn't have the sensory. So she's digging at it. She doesn't know that it hurts.

And I'm too scared. I'll do it because it's my own body, my own member. I can be careful enough and ginger. She'd probably do it better than me, but I'm still too scared. And so what I'm getting at here is that we are members of one another.

Their pain is our pain. Right? We can share in that. We can be sensitive to that as we are sharing truth with one another. We need to act because it is true that when we're helping each other, speaking truth to one another, we're doing it as one who's in the body of Christ as well.

Their pain is our pain. Their concerns are concerned. We want to do it nice and gentle and careful. It reminded me, if you look at Ephesians chapter five, that the scriptures on marriage, look at verse 29 of Ephesians five.

For no one has ever hated his own flesh, his own member, his own flesh, but rather nourishes it and cherishes it just as Christ does the church because we are members of his body. So Christ cherishes and nourishes and shepherds us well.

He doesn't needlessly hurt us or hit us over the head with a mallet. But he's very careful and sensitive as he takes care of us. What's for our best. He doesn't just rudely or forcefully do things. Because we are his body.

We're his members. We're his body himself. And then likewise, the way that we take care of each other, we're in that same body. We're that same members, right, of one another. We then, as we give truth to one another, we do it carefully.

We do it with so much love and compassion and desire for them to enjoy the life of the new man, too. We do it carefully because I don't know if you ever notice this, but have you ever been wrong and you knew you were wrong, but you could not admit it?

You know you're wrong. You know it. But it's just so hard to then say, yep, I'm wrong. It's just so much pride is there. And so it's a very common thing that whenever you are perhaps thinking falsely, living falsely, for someone to come and speak truth to you, it is terribly difficult to receive it.

And so if you're on the other side of that and you're speaking truth to your neighbor, we must do it with compassion and care and kindness, humility, with tenderness, knowing that it is a terribly difficult thing to get rid of that false man and put on the new, especially when that person isn't quite seeing it.

So I think as we as we look at verse 25, the end of it, I think this is what he's getting at. He says, speak the truth with his neighbor, speak it in love and carefulness, because we are members of one another.

We care for one another. We want what's best for each other because we're all one unit. So it can be easy then if we are to be so careful. We do not want to hurt feelings. We don't want to needlessly hurt and cause damage.

We want them to experience the new man as we've experienced the new man. And so it can be very easy for us to say, well, then I just won't say anything. Or, you know, I really I can just look the other way.

Right. You see your brother and sister believe in a certain thing, talk in a certain thing, living kind of like the old man. You can kind of smell it and see it. But, you know, just I don't want to hurt him or, you know, I just want to be extra careful and so not say anything.

But, beloved, we can't do that either. We shouldn't hit him with a sledgehammer. But we also can't just look the other way. Why? Because the new man in Christ is beautiful. It tastes too good to not help someone with that.

We are compelled by the love of Christ, living in him, enjoying him forever to then share that with our neighbor. We can't just simply say, you know, I'm going to look the other way with our brother or sister when we see falsehood.

We'd be careful as they are a fellow member. But we can never just look away because we have tasted and saw and seen and experienced that the Lord is too good not to share him, especially in the environment where someone needs it the most.

And so we can't simply, because we want to be careful, ignore it. But we must because we love Christ so much in the experience of knowing him. We must share that with our fellow member, even if it's difficult.

But we do it with care. In fact, there's one statement further as we go into verse 26, I think Paul labels that says that we surely cannot ignore the falsehood in our neighbor, that we truly have to speak the truth to our neighbor because he tells us there is an emotion that God has given us to ensure activity, to work out falsehood in our neighbor.

And that emotion or passion or desire, whatever you want to call it, is verse 26, be angry, be angry. Now, it could be kind of a weird thing for the Bible to tell us to be angry. Right? I mean, it's one of those, such a potent, raw and strong desire and emotion, right, to anger, that it can be so easy for us, because it can be so easily abused, to just throw the whole thing out and say, you know what?

No anger. Right? Another example of that would be sexual desire. Right? Sexual desire is so strong, so easily abused, that a Christian can simply just say, ah, just get rid of it, just ignore it, just act like it's not there and look the other way.

But God would not have us fight our sin that way. Whenever you're fighting your sin, and I don't want to get too lost into sexual desire here, because it's not the purpose of the text, but it's the same principle.

If you're struggling with sexual desire, it's not simply just throw it off and just hope for the best. You certainly put off the bad sexual desires, the unlawful sexual desires, but you put on Thanksgiving that God has placed that desire in you, and it's for a particular purpose that you ought to then pursue.

So a young man, you have sexual desire, you ought to then use that to pursue a wife. That's probably God telling you that, hey, you don't have the gift of singleness. You're going to be married. Pursue a wife, but don't let it get out of bounds.

Right? God has given us these emotions, these desires, for us to enjoy Him forever in and to have proper pursuits. And so here we see anger is like that. It's an emotion. It's a thing that God has given us for a good end, though it can be easily abused.

What is the good end that anger should be used for, that we cannot just simply say, don't do it? Well, the good end is the purpose of anger, is to drive a motivation to act against falsehood. That's what anger is for.

It drives action in us to put an end to the falsehood that we see, that we have influence over. So a father ought to get angry when he sees sin in his home, but he cannot then act in anger as he takes care of that sin in his home, because then, what does Paul say?

Do not sin in your anger. See, many times anger can arouse an action in us, but then we don't allow it to be pure anger, and we just kind of sin in our anger as we deal with it, right? We see a falsehood.

We see something that's not right. We see unrighteousness. And so it arouses an action in us. We want to act, but then in our action, we sin, and we actually join in the folly. What Paul is saying here is that there is a God-giving, good emotion of, I love righteousness.

I love Jesus. He tastes sweet to me. And then you see your brother or sister in sin, not enjoying the delectable hills of Christ Jesus, and it arouses an action in you. Oh, I must go to my brother and sister and help them with their sin.

I think it's very important, though, for our anger to be used rightly. It must be directed to ourself first. We cannot have righteous anger against other sin if it hasn't began in our sin and ourself first.

It is hypocrisy. It will always lead into an unrighteous outburst of anger or even suppression. It'll be a wicked anger. And so I think as we're looking at this text of be angry and do not sin, right?

This motivation to act and to speak truth in our neighbor and to speak against falsehood in our neighbor, it motivates us to act. Our anger over their sin needs to begin with anger over our own sin first.

We see this in Matthew 7. Michael, I believe, read this for us. I think it's worth looking at. Again, Matthew 7, Jesus shares the same principle, only it's about judging others. It's about the way we judge other people, right?

The way we act against their sin, right? It's similar things going on here. And notice, Jesus doesn't say, stop judging. The context is within the covenant community of God's people. And if you read that and you think, well, Jesus is telling us not to judge there, you have believed the lie of the world.

Jesus is telling us to judge. Judgment is good, but we are to do it properly. And how are we to do it properly? But it must begin with our own selves before we can clearly do it in others. Look at Matthew 7, verse 1.

Judge not that you not be not judged. For with the judgment, and then that's it. You know, there's no more after that. That's what the world wants you to believe. But there is more. Jesus says, for with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged.

And with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. He gets to what he's saying in verse 3. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that's in your own eye?

Or how can you say to your brother, hey, let me help you with the speck in your eye, when there's a huge log in your own eye? You hypocrite. First, take care of yourself. Take care of the log in your own eye before you can then help your brother with the speck that is in his eye.

In other words, what's the purpose? So then you will see clearly to help your brother out. If you're not dealing with your own stuff first, you will not then be able to do the good pleasure of helping your brother or sister out with their problem.

So that's the thrust of that text. And the text that we're in now is that we want to be working wickedness and sin out of our own self, judging our own sin rightly. The anger God has given us over unrighteousness to say, no, I need to deal with my sin today, today, right now, not tomorrow, not waiting.

I need to deal with it now because I hate unrighteousness, because I love Christ. It needs to start within you. And then you're able to then have good and righteous anger with your brother or sister in Christ.

In fact, if your anger has first been pointed at yourself, as we talked about your own member, your own self, you typically, hopefully, are, you know, you're gentle with yourself. You know, you don't just bash yourself over the hammer with God's law and say, I'm the worst, right?

You need to be doing the good work of gospel surgery upon yourself, right? Taking care of your own sin. And then doing that, then you'll be able to have nice and have soft hands to do surgery on your brother or sister.

But if you're not first doing it on yourself, I guarantee you, your anger is going to turn into a big sledgehammer upon your brother or sister's head. So we see that if we are going to be angry, if we're going to have a legitimate, God-given emotional response to wickedness as we see it, because it's bad for our neighbor, we must be angry over our own sin first.

And we must then not let that anger carry over to our own sin. We don't want to join the folly that we're trying to help our brother or sister out of. We want to be angry, yet we want to not sin. And in verse 26 too, if we look at that verse just kind of from a higher vantage point, I think what Paul is getting at, I think we can pull out of that two major aspects of anger's misuse that we can experience as humans.

Look at verse 26. Be angry, do not sin. And then here's another aspect. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. There's like two major ways that we can abuse the good, God-given emotion of anger. And we can do it in which we act, right?

There's unrighteousness, we act, but then we explode in anger, right? We sin in our anger, we explode, and now it's all ruined. But there's also another way that we can have anger. And this is more hidden, but it's just as destructive.

That is when we feel angry and we just bottle inside. You know, you feel terribly angry, but you're one of those people that you don't explode, you just kind of bottle inside and you hold it in there until you grow in so much bitterness and this quiet kind of cancer between you and your brother who you're angry with.

And I think that's what Paul gets at there. Do not let the sun go down on your anger, he says. Do not hold anger inside and just let it be there. And just, well, I'm just going to deal with it. I'm just going to put it on a blanket and put it there.

That's never going to work out. What Paul is saying is that anger, the emotion of anger is always meant to cause you to act as soon as possible to make the situation right. That's what anger is supposed to do.

It's supposed to drive action now, not holding on to that discomfort you have over what's happening so you can act in it right now. And I think we can see in that verse, there's that two different kinds of bad anger, you know, bad use of anger.

That is whenever the anger draws you to sin, you act, but it's in a sinful way. And also whenever you try to bottle inside, you let the sun go down on it, you let too much time elapse before you do anything, I'll just look the other way.

I think we need to see in verse 26, God has given us very good emotions and things that we need in order to handle and deal with the sin, the falsehood that we see in our brothers.

And sisters.

We cannot look away from it. He's given us a mechanism to handle it right away. Just like whenever you get sick, you know, if you're sick, your body is automatically at work against the illness. It's a remarkable thing to how our body within us just right away goes to work against the thing that is making your body feel weak, sick, and everything.

Well, it's the same thing that should be happening in the Christian community and the Christian personal and also in the community, is that when we see the cancer of sin, the thing that makes the body sick, both ourselves and the unit as a whole, there is a mechanism God has given us to naturally go to war against it in a very helpful way.

That mechanism is anger. That mechanism is, I don't like that. We shouldn't like that. Let's do something about it. Let's act in a way that God has ordained. So again, Paul tells us, be angry over sin.

Do not let sin fester and just be there and be okay with it. Act against it, but don't join in the folly as you act against the sin. And by the way, that's very difficult. It takes a lot of practice. It takes a lot of practice to be able to do that, to have a natural response against wickedness and not join in it as you act against it.

But this is what Paul is calling us to do. Be angry, do not sin, and do not let the sun go down on your anger. And then verse 27, and where we'll finish, he says, and do not give opportunity to the.

Devil.

Do not give opportunity to the devil. You know, if you lift a rock up, especially right now with it being hot and wet, you lift a rock up, you're going to see certain creatures under there, and you're not going to see other creatures under there.

Right?

If you lift a rock that's been there, a heavy rock up, you're going to see typical creatures that like dark, damp things, right? That's the environment they like, worms, you'll see roly polies, you'll see maybe termites, although hopefully not if it's near your house.

You'll see certain things going on there. You're not going to see like a butterfly come up and just, oh, that was great. You know, you're not going to see other creatures. You're going to see certain creatures that is according with the environment or with the opportunity they have under the rock.

Or you know, you look at your house, your house where the sun doesn't really shine on it and it's kind of more damp. What are you going to see? Girl, moss, right? That's what you'll see on your house.

There's certain environment things that happen in which certain creatures like, and you'll see them there. And the devil acts in you or in the community based off of the opportunities that we give them to act, okay?

So if we are diligent and love for one another to deal with each other's falsehood because we're dealing with our own first and we're able to then love deal with it with others and we have this sort of relationship going on, the devil finds no opportunity or environment for his activity.