Ordinary Christian Obedience

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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Charles Haddon Spurgeon, a 19th century pastor and preacher who we know much about, shared these words on the topic of Christian obedience.

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He exclaimed, I'll repeat that again.

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And obedience to the will of God is the perpetual pathway or the pathway to perpetual honor and everlasting joy.

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One of the greatest opportunities that the Christian will ever enjoy in this life is the opportunity to know, to love, and to obey the living

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God according to his word. The Christian life is, first of all, a life of faith that is dependent on the finished work of Jesus Christ.

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And then, and only then, after this, it is a life that responds to Christ's substitutionary death and life -giving spirit with unreserved, unqualified, unrelenting obedience.

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When we survey the scriptures, we find verse after verse after verse that deals with this most important theme.

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In John chapter 14 and verse 15, we hear Christ's words where our

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Lord Jesus said, And if you love me, you will keep my commandments.

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The apostle John in 1 John chapter 2 and verse 4 said, Christ's own half -brother,

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James, in James chapter 1 and verse 22 says, Or in Psalm 119 and verse 1, where the psalmist says, and we'll read these words next week,

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When we survey our Bibles on this topic of Christian obedience, and that topic of Christian obedience being defined as walking according to God's righteous precepts and laws as revealed in the scripture, what we find is this.

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Characteristic of true Christian faith is true

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Christian obedience. And characteristic of true Christian obedience is true

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Christian joy. The man or woman who knows his

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God and Savior, and who loves his God and Savior, takes great pleasure in obeying his

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God and Savior. The undeceived Christian is not merely a hearer, but a doer of the

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Word of God. And what's more than that, the one who walks in the way of the

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Lord. He is the man who is blessed. She is the woman who possesses true joy.

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It is the Christian who is happiest when he or she is in the center of God's revealed will.

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In my experience as a Christian, and as an under -shepherd in Christ's church,

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I have observed this time and time and time again. That a forgiven Christian who is habitually disobedient is almost always a miserable

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Christian. You can count on it. And at the same time, while that disobedient

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Christian is living in his misery, a forgiven Christian who is walking on the path of imperfect, note that with an asterisk, imperfect but faithful obedience is often one of the most happy people you will ever meet.

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Holy men are happy men. And yet, many Christians today are robbed of this lasting honor and joy and happiness, because Christian obedience has become enshrouded in much confusion today.

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Oftentimes, the best summons to Christian obedience that we hear, and I confess that I have been guilty of this at various times, the best of summons are usually a summons to a vague and undefined obedience.

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A kind of righteousness that is left obscured by a lack of clarity and precision in the preached word.

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You hear preachers exclaim, be holy as he is holy. But this is never fully fleshed out.

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We never learn what this looks like practically, and so it is never achieved.

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The questions that the saints have about living holy and righteous lives are never answered.

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At least not fully satisfactorily. And in the worst case, sincere and well -meaning

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Christians, sheep in churches and so -called churches are robbed of the joy of true

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Christian obedience because they are served up a platter of greasy grace, a message that majors on Jesus' love for sinners, which is true, but then is without any call to repentance, any call to faith, or any call to living out a transformed life that accompanies true conversion.

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And both of these errors, imprecise preaching and imbalanced preaching, have led many Christians to grow confused about the importance and the necessity of Christian obedience.

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I recall as a young Christian, as I was seeking to live out my new faith in Christ, I was growing increasingly confused as I asked this question to myself.

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If I am justified by faith alone, am I wrong to try, to labor, to expend significant energy in order to obey

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God? After all, obedience is difficult and accompanied with frequent failures.

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And it seemed as I looked at the people around me, that any mention of pursuing obedience, to them at least, looked like a deep dive into a works righteousness.

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And so I'm confused. I know that I'm justified by faith alone, but am

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I to be sanctified by faith alone as well? To rest and to be still and to wait for that sanctification, and not to labor for it, to yearn for it, to seek it with all my heart.

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And I put this question to you. As Bible -believing Christians, are we justified by faith alone, and then also sanctified by faith alone?

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That sounds very Protestant, doesn't it? I am sanctified by faith alone in Jesus Christ.

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But is it true? This is a question that Christians have wrestled with for some time.

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On one side of the debate, we find a group called the Keswick Movement, or the

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Higher Life Movement. And they taught that true holiness was a result of faith alone that leads to some kind of second blessing experience.

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And then birthed out of that second blessing experience is a holiness that really is only for the truly spiritually elite.

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Those who have been allowed to break through into a new dimension of righteous living.

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And the best thing that one can do to receive that second blessing is to sit, to wait, to seek, and pretty much do nothing else.

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And on the other side of this debate, there was a group of Christians who were steadfastly committed to the five solas of the

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Reformation. They would shout amen at the preached word that we are justified by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.

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They fiercely defended the view of justification by grace, through faith, and Christ.

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And yet they argued that true holiness, and as a result of that true holiness, true joy came when a man or woman was saved by faith alone, was born again by the

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Holy Spirit, and then by the Spirit's enabling power, those Christians sought to faithfully obey

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God's word in the everyday things of life. The Spirit was to get all of the glory in the

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Christians' progressive sanctification, and yet it was still contingent on the

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Christians' willing obedience to God in all things. Now according to the

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Bible, let me ask you, who got that right? Is it the sanctification by faith alone camp?

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Sit, wait, and be sanctified? Or is it the sanctification by the enabling

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Spirit of God, who gets all the glory in cooperation with the

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Christians' willing obedience? This afternoon we find the Apostle Paul agreeing with the latter of these two groups.

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As we've read already in Ephesians, Paul was steadfastly committed to justification by faith as a gift from a sovereign

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God. It was life that came to helplessly dead sinners. He was a fierce defender of the imputed righteousness that was unmuddied by a works righteousness, so called.

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And yet in our passage we find him calling all Christians to take concrete, practical steps toward holiness.

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That God has spoken, and as Christians we are not antinomians, that is those who are without laws, but that God in his wise counsel has given us practical helps that we might be holy as he is holy.

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Paul shows us the way to lasting joy in the Christian life in this passage, something that many would consider radical by today's standards, and that is everyday, ordinary, and specific

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Christian obedience. So last week we heard Paul call us to true righteousness and holiness.

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If we look just for a moment at verse 24, we see that in the last couple of words.

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Created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. And here now

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Paul gives us the clothing, if I can say it that way, to put on that we might be holy as he is holy, as God is holy.

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So now that we've established our role in this process, it's important for me, I think, to flesh that out. It's a bit of a longer introduction, but it's important.

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Now let us see how Paul has commended us, or what Paul has commended us to today.

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And we'll begin by reading verses 25 through 32 in Ephesians chapter 4.

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Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor.

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For we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil.

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Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor doing honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

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Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.

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And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

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Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice.

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Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.

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Here is Paul commends everyday ordinary obedience. He offers us,

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I think, at least five practical ways that we can pursue righteousness and holiness.

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And while these are, just as we read them, they are far from groundbreaking, I would suggest that obedience in these five areas will set you apart from the world in such a way that it will be impossible for it not to be noticed.

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And obedience in these areas is certainly to expand to other areas in your life as well.

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And so let's jump in. These are going to be fast moving points to some extent, you know how

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I am. But we're going to look at these five points together. Paul begins in verse 25 by telling us to put away falsehood and to speak truth with our neighbor.

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In the pursuit of Christian obedience, I exhort you, brothers and sisters, first to put on Christian honesty.

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Christian honesty. Many scholars see this verse and they see that what

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Paul is doing here, he's actually looking back to the Old Testament to a reference that is in Zechariah chapter 8.

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And in Zechariah chapter 8, there we find words of comfort offered to the Jews that God would one day restore

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Jerusalem and bring a remnant back to his faithful city. It is a passage of great eschatological hope.

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Zechariah writes in chapter 8 and verse 8, he says, And I will bring them to dwell in the midst of Jerusalem, and they shall be my people, and I will be their

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God in faithfulness and in righteousness. And when the city is restored,

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Zechariah has these words for the nation in chapter 8 and verse 16. And he says,

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These are the things that you shall do. Speak the truth to one another.

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Render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace. What Paul is doing here is he is connecting the dots from Zechariah chapter 8 to Ephesians chapter 4.

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And in doing this, he is demonstrating how our salvation in Christ are uniting as the one true people of God.

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And the indwelling of the Spirit of God has created a new order of living that the

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Old Testament saints longed for. That they looked forward to. Once our lives were characterized by falsehoods of every kind.

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But now that we are in Christ, now that we have been joined together in one body and are members one with another, we are to speak the truth in love.

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And speak the truth to each other. The truth is to characterize all that we are, all that we do, and all that we say.

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And if we are to take this commandment to heart, Oh how different we will be from the world around us.

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I don't know about you, but I am often amazed. I marvel at the prevalence of lies and deceit in our world.

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When I go to work and have a brief conversation with someone on a Monday morning, I come to find that my unbelieving friends and co -workers don't just tell lies, but they love to boast about telling lies.

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They brag about getting out of an uncomfortable situation by lying to their clients. They speak about avoiding an awkward conversation by lying.

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They have somewhere to go. They have a call that they are receiving. They lie to their friends. They lie to their families.

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They boast even with almost perfect strangers that they lie to their spouses. Motivated by corporate greed and more impressive ratings, media outlets publish half -truths and whole untruths.

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In a world that's filled with lies, we should not be surprised by this. To get clicks and views, nations lie and spy and dupe their allies to get political and economic and military advantage.

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One observer writes that our society today, he says, is so dependent on lying that if it suddenly turned to telling the truth, our way of life would collapse.

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He said if the world leaders began speaking only the truth, World War III would certainly ensue.

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And where he's coming from is this, that economies, many of them, are based upon lies.

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And businesses and non -governmental organizations and allies and treaties, even arms agreements, we know, are based on lies.

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We say one thing, we do another. And years ago, well, I'll say this first, in this extreme dishonesty that we see in the world around us, lest we be looking down our nose at the world, at least at one time, if not now to some extent, characterized our own lives before Christ saved us.

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Years ago, I was entering into a career in law enforcement. And the aspect, one brother

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I'm sure can relate to me in this, the aspect of the application process that most terrified me and my peers was the dreaded polygraph examination.

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The lie detector test where they hook you up to the blood pressure monitor and the strap across your chest and a pad under your feet and all of these gadgets that you're hooked up to that they can discern if you are telling the truth or not.

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And I recall one of the interviewers during one of my interviews asked me to rate my level of honesty.

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He said, how honest of a person are you on a scale from one to ten? Ten being that you lie at every word that you speak and ten that you are perfectly honest.

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And I remember looking at the interviewer knowing that they are going to find me out, that they are going to get to the bottom of the truth.

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I thought I need to answer honestly. And so scrolling my mind thinking how honest am

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I actually, I rated myself at the very, very, very best. I am a four out of ten.

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This is before I was a believer and yet I knew that I failed the test at something so simple as speaking the truth.

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Just telling things as it is. I got a four out of ten and I'm telling you even then

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I might have been deceiving my interviewer and myself. Even then

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I knew that I was a filthy, wretched liar. And this should not at all surprise us because the world is under the control of the father of lies.

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John chapter 8 and verse 44 is Christ is interacting with the Pharisees. He says,

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You are of your father the devil and your will is to do your father's desires.

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He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character for he is a liar and the father of lies.

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When unbelievers lie, it's not a slip of the tongue, it's not a white lie, it is a spoken word out of their character as children of the father of lies.

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Scripture tells us that lying is characteristic of those outside of Christ. Revelation chapter 21 and verse 8 speaks about this.

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How the cowardly and the faithless, the detestable, the murderers, the sexually immoral. These are all bad things, don't they sound like that?

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The sorcerers, the idolaters and all liars. Their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur which is the second death.

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Dear friends, that is where we came from. That was the city of destruction that we once lived in.

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But dear saints, when Christ saved us, when he transferred us from the kingdom, from the domain of the father of lies to the domain of the father of all truth, what is to come out of our mouths?

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What is to come out of our hearts? God himself speaks out of his own character and he speaks only that which is true and trustworthy.

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Hebrews 6 .18 says that God tells us or that Scripture tells us that there are two unchangeable truths but one of them is this, that it is impossible for God to lie.

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And dear Christian, would that such a statement might be true of us, that we have, by God's grace, come to a place where it is impossible for us to lie, to put away all falsehoods.

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And this is not just about abstaining from bold -faced lies but it is abstaining from all forms of embellishment and exaggeration.

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PJ, you love to fish but don't tell us the fish was bigger than it was. It's about abstaining from sprinking some fabricated detail into true stories.

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It's abstaining. It's putting off deceit of all kinds, all telling of half -truths, and all forms of cheating.

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It's putting on a commitment to always speak the truth before God every time.

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It is being men and women of integrity, men and women of our word.

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Our Lord said in Matthew 5 .37, Let your yes be yes and your no be no.

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Anything more than this comes from evil. I recall memorizing this verse when our children were little pulling the wagon behind me.

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And you know how it is when you're memorizing Scripture. Let me commend that practice to you. You chew on it and you work it through your mind and I recall thinking,

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Let your yes be yes and your no be no. And in the NASB, that was the version

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I memorized, it says, And anything beyond that is of the evil one. That it is demonic.

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It is satanic. It is of the father of lies to do, to say anything other than that which is true.

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There's a story about Corrie Ten Boom and her sister Betsy. Maybe you've heard this story before. They were a family, a

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Christian family that sought to hide Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust and the Second World War.

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And one day, Nazis burst through the Ten Boom's door and demanded to know if the family was hiding any

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Jews in their home. And they were. They had a number of Jews hiding in their home. They had a little dining room table with a rug neatly placed underneath the dining room table and beneath that rug there was a cellar that was full of Jewish men and women who were seeking to survive the

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Holocaust. And as the Nazis came in and demanded this, Betsy Ten Boom, who was a faithful Christian and who had such a sensitive conscience that she could never, ever tell a lie.

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She felt it was impossible to lie. She said desperately and anxiously, they're under the table.

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And the Nazis peered into the dining room. They looked under the table seeing only a rug and they thought, this woman is mad, she's fooling us.

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They scoffed at it and they carried on. The Lord in that moment preserved those

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Jews. What would have happened if the Nazis had gone, torn the rug open or off, tore the cellar door open and peered inside and saw those

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Jews? Well, not only would those Jews be dead, but Betsy Ten Boom would be dead. Betsy was prepared to tell the truth even if it cost her her own life and it did in 1944.

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Would that we would be prepared to do the same, to have such a sensitive conscience that we would not even add one speck to the truth or take one speck away but that we would speak the truth.

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In verses 26 and 27, Paul next exhorts us to what I am cautiously calling

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Christian anger. We have Christian honesty, now

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Christian anger. Can those two words be combined? Paul writes in verse 26,

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Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil.

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Some have looked at this verse and they've supposed that it means that if we are angry, we should never sin.

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Is that what that means? That if we are angry, we should never sin. A renowned Greek scholar,

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Daniel Wallace, has pointed out that this is not a conditional statement if we are angry, but it actually comes, whether we can believe it or not, as a command for judicial anger.

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Perhaps even, he says, a shorthand expression for church discipline. Now, how can we know this?

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Can this be true? Paul is actually quoting again from another Old Testament passage in Psalm chapter 4 and verse 4.

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There the psalmist says, Be angry and do not sin. Ponder in your own hearts and on your beds and be silent.

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Now, some might immediately look at this text, listen to what I've just said, and then cross -reference that with Matthew chapter 5 and verse 22 and ask themselves, does

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Christ not condemn anger as a violation of the sixth commandment to not murder?

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Remember, to be angry is to commit murder in one's heart. To which we must clarify that Christ condemns all unrighteous anger, for we see that God himself is angry at times, and that Paul clarifies that when we are to be angry, it is to be without sin, therefore righteous anger.

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God himself is angry with sinners every day. It says that in Psalm chapter 7 and verse 11. God is a righteous judge and a

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God who feels indignation every day. So in adding that Christians should be angry and yet not to sin,

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Paul is saying that Christians, in like manner to God, are to appropriately feel righteous indignation when we are confronted with blatant sin and injustice.

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And that blatant sin and injustice that makes a mockery of God and his word. It is not the kind of anger that most of us feel and express when we are personally offended, when someone wrongs or mistreats us, me in particular.

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But it is the kind of self -controlled and tempered anger that is aroused when our fellow image bearers are mistreated, abused, or led astray.

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And it is the kind of holy anger that is jealous, but not for my glory, but for God's glory.

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John MacArthur defines it this way. He says, It is not a momentary boiling over of outward rage or an inward seething resentment, but it is a deep -seated, determined, and settled conviction.

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Now, some of you might be tempted to go home this week to stub your toe on the corner of the wall, to become angry, and to say, did the preacher not say that on Sunday, that I am to be angry?

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Brothers and sisters, what many Christians call righteous anger today is actually very carnal, uncontrolled, and godless anger in its nature.

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And for this reason, we must be very, very, very cautious in our expression of anger.

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Because our minds, not just your wills, but our minds, and then our emotions, are not yet fully freed from the effects of sin.

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Case in point, there was an English pastor, a man named Newman Hall, who wrote a book in the 1800s that was entitled

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Come to Jesus. It's a book title that we probably see published today.

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And the Lord, by His grace, was very pleased to bless that book so that many read

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Come to Jesus, and by God's grace, they came to Jesus. And thousands became

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Christians as a result of the ministry of Newman Hall and this book, Come to Jesus.

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Yet later in Newman Hall's life, he became embroiled in a theological controversy.

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You know how this happens, right? Someone says something that is utterly ridiculous and untrue, and we feel the need to come and to defend

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God's honor. And as he began to debate with those who were bringing forward this theological controversy, he was becoming more and more bitter.

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And finally, Hall wrote a theological treatise that he hoped would be a crushing and final reply.

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And in his closing arguments, he was so merciless. As he wrote, he was so angry with his opponent that every word he chose, he sought to grind his opponents into dust.

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And then, having become so pleased with his masterpiece, he invited one of his friends to read it and to offer his input.

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He said triumphantly to his friend after his friend read it, he said, How do you think

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I have handled him? And his friend said, Well, you have effectually disposed of him.

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Have you thought of the title for your paper? And Hall said, No, I have not. Do you have any to suggest?

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And his friend, And dear saints, be this kind of friend to me. Be this kind of friend to other

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Christians in your lives. He said, I propose you call it Go to the Devil by the author of Come to Jesus.

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Go to the Devil by the author of Come to Jesus. And Hall was so humbled by this rebuke that that paper was never published, never saw the light of day.

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The Puritan Bible commentator, Matthew Henry, once asked the question, he said, How can I be angry and sin not as the apostle tells us?

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And he says, Only in one way, and that is not to be angry with anything but sin.

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John Calvin digs even a little bit deeper. You know, people like to point to John Calvin as this austere, judgmental figure.

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John Calvin says this, If the objects of our anger are to be sought, Christian, you want to be angry and not to sin?

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Let us seek them not in others but in ourselves if we pour out our indignation against our own faults.

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And so looking inward and becoming angry with our own sins, let us tamper our outward directed anger by first directing it at the sins that we tolerate in ourselves and then only after we have been sufficiently humbled before God and men.

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Then, let us be angry with the evils of abortion and the destructiveness of murder and sex trafficking and soul killing lies of the false teachers in the world and the chance of blasphemers and heretics and every other thing that is an offense to our heavenly

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Father. And then so long as we do not let the sun go down on our anger, let us be angry and not sin.

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And to let our sun, the sun go down on our anger is to allow that righteous anger to sour and to grow bitter and then for us to become disillusioned and then come the feelings of vengeance and of revenge.

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In verse 28, Paul next commends us that the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor doing honest work with his hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

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Paul commends to us, and I struggled with the title. This title is not inspired, it is imperfect, but Christian Generosity.

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You could say Christian Unfever -y, I suppose.

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How do I word that? But Christian Generosity is what I arrived at. As Paul develops this practice of ordinary

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Christian obedience, he acknowledges that at least some who were in the church in Ephesus were themselves redeemed thieves.

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Now, what is a redeemed thief? As I consider my own life before Christ, I am inclined to put myself in Paul's band of redeemed thieves.

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And perhaps you might as well. As I consider my own life before Christ, I am inclined to see all the ways that I stole, that I took things that did not belong to me, even though I did not make my living by stealing from others.

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Prior to my conversion, I had a long track record of taking things that did not belong to me.

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My first memory of this is as a seven -year -old boy. I don't even remember what it was, but it was some kind of dinosaur exhibit.

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And there was a gift shop at the end of the exhibit. You know how it works. You make your way through. You see all of the different exhibits and then you get to the gift shop where all the kids beg for toys.

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And I was a little boy who amongst peers who had money from their parents to buy various things.

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I didn't have any money or enough money. And my eyes were caught by a little dinosaur eraser in a bin.

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Probably at that point a penny eraser or something like that. Something of almost no value at all.

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But wanting that dinosaur eraser, coveting that dinosaur eraser that was sure to make me happy,

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I reached my hand in the bin. I grabbed the dinosaur eraser and put it in my pocket. And going home with that dinosaur eraser in my pocket, it was like that dinosaur eraser was a thousand pounds.

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And it wasn't weighing in my pocket, but it was weighing on my conscience. And I remember getting home and being absolutely terror stricken that I had stolen this dinosaur eraser.

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And running out of my house in tears, I ran across the road. I lived on an acreage and in a cluster of trees, a small forest,

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I threw that dinosaur eraser as far as I could to cleanse my guilty conscience.

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And I remember because it was on the road in front of our house, every time my mom would drive us up and down the road or we would ride our bikes up and down the road,

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I knew that there in that bush was the dinosaur eraser that I stole from the dinosaur museum.

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Because it's made of rubber, we could probably go there today and find it if we had enough hands. And at what point does one become a thief?

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Does one become a thief after stealing five things? Or 10 things? Or 50 things?

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Or does one become a thief when he steals or she steals one thing? I'm inclined to align myself with Ray Comfort.

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Many of us know who Ray Comfort is. He'll ask you, have you ever told a lie? Well, yes,

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I have told a lie. Well, what do you call a person who tells lies? I'm a liar.

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Have you ever misused God's name and used it even as a swear word?

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Well, yes, I have. What do you call someone who misuses God's name? A blasphemer.

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What do you call someone who steals something from others? Even a dinosaur eraser when you're seven years old.

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A thief. Perhaps you are a redeemed thief like me. And how are we called now to live holy and righteous lives as members of the household of God?

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We are to put off all thieving and stealing and to put on sharing with those in need.

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And Paul seems to identify the root causes of stealing when he speaks about laboring and sharing.

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Most times, theft is a secondary sin that is motivated by the sins of something else.

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And I think here Paul is showing us the sins of laziness and of covetousness.

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Men and women are not prepared to work hard and to do the necessary work to accomplish something for themselves or earn the necessary resources to buy the thing that they desire.

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And so in their laziness, they steal. Matthew Henry writes,

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Idleness makes thieves. Those who will not work expose themselves to temptations to steal.

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Men ought to be industrious that they may do some good and that they may be kept from temptation, he writes.

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Similarly, others desire and do not have. They covet and they cannot obtain. So they fight and they quarrel and they steal.

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But as those who have been redeemed by Christ, and notice that when

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God saved us, He did not violate His own law and steal us back. But what does

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Scripture say? That we ourselves were bought with a price. When God Himself redeemed us at the cost of the blood of His own

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Son. Though we were once thieves, He has redeemed us from that thieving.

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That we would live holy and righteous lives in Christ. And I'm going to ruffle some feathers.

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Because we must not work with the narrow definition that the world loves to work with when it comes to thieving.

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We're told that really theft, it consists of petty theft and shoplifting and then after that, big frauds and other things that we would never ever, ever do.

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But theft is far more than shoplifting. These are things you need to ask yourself, am

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I engaging in? It is evading lawful taxes. It is falsifying invoices.

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It is not paying fair wages to your employees. It is taking work supplies for personal use.

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Students, it is taking ideas that are not your own, stealing the work of others without proper attribution and engaging in plagiarism.

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It is allowing the store clerk to undercharge you without clarifying the correct price.

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It is time theft, using your employer's time for personal business or for frivolous purposes.

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This might ruffle the most feathers. It is using your friend's video subscription passwords without paying for them yourself.

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And the reason why the world doesn't like to include these things in their definition of theft is because then they would all be condemned as thieves.

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But we must have a higher standard than the world. And when we begin to expand this definition beyond petty theft, we find that as Christians we must walk carefully and circumspectly in the world.

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We must be men and women of integrity, whoever live before a holy

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God who sees and knows all things, who is omnipresent, who is omniscient, who knows all the thoughts and intentions of your heart.

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Now for many of us this may serve as an opportunity for heartfelt repentance and renewed resolve to live uprightly in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation.

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We need, need, need to have sensitive consciences about these things.

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I'm reminded of a brother who before he was a believer had engaged in a long list of property crimes.

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He wasn't a career criminal but he had done some, some bad things. And then becoming a believer he became convicted about these things that he had engaged in prior to his conversion.

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And he went to his elders and he sought counsel from them. And that brother, from the council of the elders, repented and confessed his sins before God.

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He found forgiveness in Christ and then he went to the police station and he repented and confessed of his sins before the authorities.

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And he was arrested and he went through all of the processes and they were very lenient on him as a result.

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It will not always be that case. But may we have such tender hearts and sensitive consciences like this, my brothers and sisters.

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And then working hard with our own hands for that subscription if it's so important, for that item that is so necessary, let us share from the abundance of our resources with anyone who is in need following after the example of our

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God who as I've said paid for us in the blood of his own Son. In verse 29

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Paul next exhorts us to diligence in Christian speech, Christian speech.

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He says, let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths but only such as is good for building up as fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear.

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Paul warns us to put off all corrupting talk. A Greek word, a

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Greek word for corrupting was used to refer to rotten fruit and vegetables and other food items.

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Think about that, that crate of eggs that you left in the backseat of your car on Friday.

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You had a great weekend at home and you come on Monday morning to find that they have been baking in the sun at 35 degrees all day.

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Imagine taking one of those wretched eggs and cracking it over your head. How disgusting that would be.

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That is a corrupted egg by Paul's words here. Godly Christian speech is free of all such corrupting talk, disgusting, despicable talk and it is far more than merely abstaining from swear words.

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Many Christians feel that they can say almost anything as long as it doesn't start with an

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F or an S or some other letter in the alphabet. Now it certainly starts with, it includes the abstaining from swear words, but it includes so much more than that.

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Faithful Christian speech, obedient Christian speech sees off -color jokes as being off -limits, sees dirty stories, vulgarity, double entendre, all forms of speech that does not edify as speech that is off -limits.

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It is put off. Dear saints, we should think about the stakes here.

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In the Gospel of Matthew, our Lord says that we will be judged for every idle word that we speak.

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Proverbs 10 and verse 19 says, when words are many, I try to remind myself of this often, when words are many, transgression is not lacking.

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But whoever restrains his lips is prudent. At every opportunity, the

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Christian should look to have speech that is devoid of corrupting content, and Paul gives us here the alternative, but only such as is good for building up as fits the occasion.

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Every opportunity, every opportunity we have when we encounter believers in the assembly of the saints, friends on the street corner, those perverted minds at work or at some place of recreation, at every point, we should seek to be different in the way that we speak, always seeking to edify and build up.

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And we're not doing this that people would see our pure speech, but let me tell you, it will be a witness to the world.

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They will tell. They can tell when it's different. And you will know at various times because they will have a slip and they will look at you.

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Sometimes they'll even apologize because they know that you do not speak in that manner.

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And we should seek to build up everything, in everything that we say.

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A young woman once came to John Wesley and said, I think I know what my talent is.

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And Wesley being intrigued, he said, please tell me. Wouldn't you want to know if a sister came up to you and said,

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I finally discovered my talent, the gift that God has given me. And the woman said,

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I think my gift is that I am able to speak my mind.

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Wesley listened to this pensively and he said, I do not think that God wouldn't mind if you buried that talent.

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Some of us are far too talented at that. And we need to bury that talent so that we might take up edifying, beneficial, blessed, fruitful speech.

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Conversely, I'm reminded of a story, I think it was Ian Murray who told the story that when one came and spent time with Martyn Lloyd -Jones and spent a few hours in fellowship and speaking and the words that he would have and the counsel that he would have, he said that you would leave the company of Martyn Lloyd -Jones and you would feel that having been with Martyn Lloyd -Jones, the two of you were in the very presence of God.

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The manner in which he spoke, it encouraged God -wardness.

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It encouraged godly living. It strengthened its hearers so that they wanted to become more like Jesus Christ in their speech.

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Our speech is to be dignified, gentle, honorable, and gracious. And how could we not speak graciously as those who have received more grace through that one man,

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Jesus Christ, than we could ever dispense in an eternity of words?

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We have the pure and unadulterated example of Christ who even as he hung on that cross in our place, did he complain?

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Did he curse and revile? No, but he prayed to the Father, Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.

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Let us be like Christ, gracious in our speech as if seasoned with salt.

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And the secret to gracious speech is not in the tongue. Where is it?

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It's in the heart. That out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

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And we need to work first on our heart, filling our heart with good and perfect and blessed and honorable things.

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Filling our heart with the grace of God, of the story of our Savior. Filling our heart with edifying words.

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When was the last time you thought about the fact that maybe memorizing Scripture, writing it on your heart, isn't just for your good, but for the good of others?

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That in their moment of discouragement, in their moment of trial, in their moment of severe affliction, you might be able to retrieve a word from your heart written there in advance in the service of your brothers and sisters.

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As Christians, we should be the best communicators in the world. And I'm not talking about oozing with charm and charisma.

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But I mean that our speech should be so thoughtful, so biblical, so inclined to edification, so gracious that every person who hears us speak would be blessed and or challenged.

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And then lastly, Paul commends what I'm calling Christian spiritual sensitivity.

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He says in verse 30, And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed on the day of redemption.

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Sorry. Sealed for the day of redemption. Dear saints, if ever there was a motivation, if ever there was an inward power source, if ever there was a source of all strength for godly living, it is certainly, it is surely this.

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That God, He has redeemed us. He has given us

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His word. But now He has made our very bodies His temple in which

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He lives. That He has given us His spirit. John MacArthur writes about this.

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He says, God is grieved when His children refuse to change the old ways of sin for those righteous ways of the new life.

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It should be noted that such responses by the Holy Spirit to indicate that He is a person.

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You cannot grieve a force, but you can grieve a person. And when you sin against that person, you grieve

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Him. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6, verse 16, Or do you not know, speaking about another act, that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her?

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For as it is written, the two will become one. And he speaks about this. How can we join the very temple of God to a prostitute?

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Well, how then can we grieve the very

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Spirit of God within us who has sealed us for that day of redemption?

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Remember, we looked at this a while back. That security. That authenticity. That ownership.

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That authority. That mark of God that is in us. Oh, dear saints, every time we sin against God, we grieve that Holy Spirit.

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And we should be sensitive to the fact that we are temples of that Holy Spirit. In verses 30 and 31, they have been called the summary of the second half of Ephesians chapter 4.

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It encapsulates all of the instructions on true godliness of life. And here

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Paul lays the capstone of a life that is lived in daily pursuit of true godliness.

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Bitterness and wrath. Anger and clamor. Slander. Malice. All are put away.

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Kindness. Tenderheartedness. Forgiveness. Are put on.

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And the capstone at the end of verse 32. Forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.

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This is a Christian remembrance of the work of Christ as the ultimate motive for every act of godliness and righteousness.

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Dear saints, it is Christ on that cross that we look to every single day for our justification and then for the power, the strength for sanctification.

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It is that Christ who suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God and being put to death in the flesh,

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He was made alive in the Spirit. And it is looking to that Christ as sinners that we pursue godliness.

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We sang hymn number two in our hymnal. Come, O sinner, come and see.

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Come, O sinner, come and see. Christ the Lord upon a tree.

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See the crown of thorns adorn the King of our salvation who labors to breathe in agony.

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Come, O sinner, come and see what our God became to set us free.

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Free to what? Free to chase the world and all that is displeasing to God.

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Or free to take hold of Christ. I think of the blind men that were healed just before Christ entered into Jerusalem.

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Regaining their sight, they could have gone anywhere. And where did they go?

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But they followed Christ. Oh, the wonder of this awesome scene where our

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Savior bleeds. Oh, the power of the love of God.

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Come and stand in awe of our Christ.

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And then standing in awe of Him. Following after Him with all of our might.

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I started with Charles Spurgeon. I'll finish with him. I heard you joke about Charles Spurgeon earlier too, brother.

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I don't know if you heard me writing last night. Spurgeon says,

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I feel that if I could live a thousand lives, I would like to live them all for Christ.

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And I should even then feel that they were all too little a return for His great love to me.

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Let us live in that way, dear brothers and sisters. Let us pray. Thank you for listening to another sermon from Grace Fellowship Church.

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If you would like to keep up with us, you can find us at Facebook at Grace Fellowship Church or our

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Instagram at gracechurchyeg, all one word. Finally, you can visit us at our website, graceedmonton .ca.