Now we're going to pick up a verse
first of all in Romans chapter 12 and
then go back to Ephesians 4, Romans chapter
12 and verse 10.
Romans 12 and 10 says be kindly affectioned
one to another with brotherly love in honor
preferring one another.
Now let's go to Ephesians chapter 4, Ephesians
chapter 4.
Now there's a number of verses here probably
way too many for me to cover properly
but I want you just to remember the
emphasis from last Sunday we were looking at
expressions through Ephesians called in love and there
was a series of expressions relating to that.
I'm going to pick up a couple of
them here in verse 15 it says but
speaking the truth in love may grow up
into him in all things who is the
head even Christ from whom the whole body
fitly joined together and compacted by that which
every joint supplies according to the effectual working
in the measure of every part makes increase
of the body unto the edifying of itself
in love.
So there's two things associated together here we
have speaking the truth in love and then
growing, developing, building up one another in love
and so verse 17 then presents a challenge
and you can look at this this last
section especially as with an emphasis of what
we would call transforming love and if you
remember again from last Sunday I spoke a
little bit about chapter 1 on the idea
that we are accepted in the beloved and
we are holy and without blame before him
in love so that's what we could call
accepting love and if we can appreciate that
God has dealt with us that way that
becomes the incentive and the lever for us
to treat one another that way.
In other words and this is something that
I have come to appreciate more in the
last few years it's very very important for
me to honor God's work not only in
myself I can't be careless about my life
because it's not just my life it's a
life that God is working in and so
I need to honor the work of God
in progress in my life but Ephesians 4
brings the emphasis that we need to honor
the work of God that is in progress
in everyone else's life as well and so
that's where our responsibilities towards one another emphasize
so we have this emphasis and so there's
a contrast made in verse 17 this I
say therefore and testify in the Lord that
you henceforth that is that you no longer
walk as other Gentiles walk in the vanity
of their mind having the understanding darkened being
alienated from the life of God and so
on and so we are looking at the
world around us with all its depravity with
all its licentious living it's very self-focused
self-fulfilling living verse 20 says in contrast
but you have not so learned Christ this
isn't what you learn from him and then
he says if so be that you have
heard him and have been taught by him
as truth is in Jesus that you put
off concerning the former behavior the old man
which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts
and be renewed in the spirit of your
mind so all through here there's this repeated
emphasis to change this is a challenge to
change and so God's love to us on
one hand is a wonderful accepting love but
it's also a transforming love he is going
to change us into what pleases him and
honors him be renewed in the spirit of
your mind and that you put on the
new man which after God or according to
God is created in righteousness and true holiness
and you could also translate that expression the
holiness of truth and so while there is
a very strong emphasis on love there's also
a very significant emphasis pulled in here about
truth truth honesty and so verse 25 down
begins the direct challenges to us wherefore wherefore
putting away lying speak every man truth with
his neighbor for we are members one of
another be angry and sin not let not
the Sun go down upon your wrath or
your provocation neither give place to the devil
let him that stole steal steal no more
but rather let him labor working with his
hands the thing which is good that he
may have to give to him that needeth
let no corrupt communication proceed out of your
mouth but that which is good to the
use of edifying that it may minister grace
unto the hearers and grieve not the Holy
Spirit of God whereby you are sealed unto
the day of redemption let all bitterness and
wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking
be put away from you with all malice
and be kind one to another tender-hearted
forgiving one another even as God for Christ's
sake or God in Christ has forgiven you
now let's read the first two verses of
chapter 5 because this is really the conclusion
be ye therefore followers or imitators of God
as dear children and walk in love as
Christ also has loved us and has given
himself for us an offering and a sacrifice
to God for a sweet smelling savor now
every time we come together to break bread
we focus on the work of Christ and
we seek to honor his work on our
behalf to bring us into salvation but wouldn't
it be a shame to try all through
our lifetime to truly honor what he did
for us to bring us into this salvation
and then to be negligent or careless indifferent
or even resistant to the work that he's
trying to do in us right now that
would be very incompatible wouldn't it very inconsistent
and so I am trying to learn more
and more to look at fellow Christians as
a work in progress to try to look
from God's perspective and to see every believer
as someone in whom the Spirit of God
rests dwells and is working to bring into
the perfection the blessedness the completeness that belongs
to someone who is now part of Christ
Christ's body we have a tremendous tremendous future
and we have that future together and so
we have to balance our awareness of what
we see failing that may irritate us that
may hurt us that may be destructive in
fellow believers we need to balance that awareness
with the awareness that God is still at
work and God is moving things to his
ultimate purpose and so progress of God's work
in each one and now I'm just going
to use an expression pursuit of honor you
see it's part of love's character to wish
for the honor of someone that I love
now sometimes it's good to just use it
put it into another perspective parents love to
see their children do well if a husband
loves his wife he's going to be delighted
when she's honored when she's well spoken of
when someone speaks appreciatively of her he's going
to be pleased if you don't there's something
wrong in your love it is the nature
of love to want to glorify to honor
the one that you love this is part
of the of the glory of the Godhead
the father loves the son has given everything
to him the father wants to honor the
son bring him into honor and appreciation in
the eyes of every other person the son
wants to honor the father and so love
has this motivation this goal to bring into
honor and praise and so on and so
there's a number of verses but I don't
want to be caught too long on just
trying to emphasize that idea but in our
relationships with one another whether it's in our
families or among fellow believers we need to
cultivate an atmosphere of honor each person should
feel valued honored now I want to just
touch on a few principles or ways in
which we can cultivate honor for one another
now the very first one I want to
emphasize is just simply learning how to listen
do you know how to listen one of
the biggest frustrations in conflict often is you're
not listening to me you know as soon
as I open my mouth you want to
shut me down you don't want to hear
what I have to say why because sometimes
we think we already know what the other
person is all about and we sometimes surmise
the worst about them we already think we
know now if you only listen in order
to counter-attack you are conveying dishonor you
are discrediting dishonoring that person and so it's
very very important for us to learn this
and I remember I think this was in
a book called making love last forever by
Gary Smalley where he talks about one of
these principles I'm not sure if that was
that book or not but there's a lot
of excellent material in that book if it
isn't in that book but the author at
least suggests that we that we pick up
on the what he calls drive-thru listening
now we're all familiar with going through the
drive-thru and you come up there and
of course you obviously give some signal when
you drive up there that they know you're
there at that little wicket and and they
would say you know how are you and
what's what what's your order and so then
you express what you want and then they
repeat it to you and so what are
they actually doing they want to make sure
that when you get to the pickup wicket
that you're going to get what you asked
for everybody's going to be happy and so
this concept basically is saying our first priority
in listening is to make sure that I
understand you instead of wanting to get my
idea across my first priority is to understand
what you are thinking what you're feeling now
James told us this a long time ago
before drive-thru listening was fashionable and he
said let every man be to hear slow
to speak slow to wrath when we're upset
we tend not to want to hear we
want to make them here and so this
is an this is an aspect of honoring
that other person going back to Romans 12
brotherly love be affectionately with kindness affectionate kindness
with brotherly love in honor preferring one another
in honor putting the other one first and
so learning to listen is very very very
very vital and it has been said that
that nothing conveys honor so well as attentive
active listening where you accept equal responsibility with
the person speaking to you to make sure
understanding true understanding takes place and you give
the person opportunity to express their feelings what
they see happening and what they feel about
it now of course if you're going to
be mature you both have to do this
you both have to practice this willingness to
hear willingness to listen the other person in
what they are saying now the emphasis we
have here in the latter part of Ephesians
4 is the next principle of showing honor
and that is being honest being honest with
one another and so it says here in
verse 15 speaking the truth in love now
some translations will put actually being truthful in
love or being sincere in love so it
could have something to do with not only
how we speak and what we speak but
being sincere in our motivation now there's a
very important section here that is a bit
more doctrinal from verse 20 down to verse
24 and it's important for us to understand
that God in saving us has created within
us a life that is holy a life
that is righteous a life that is genuine
and sincere now he starts out by saying
truth is in Jesus now I don't know
if you've ever thought about this but if
you had not been willing to become honest
you never would have gotten saved we began
our our Christian life in that element of
brokenness of honesty confession acknowledgement and simple honestly
honesty we weren't trying to hide what we
were we simply honestly received the Word of
God now that's also touched on in first
Peter chapter 1 when it says that you
obeyed the truth through the Spirit then it
says unto unfeigned love of the brethren and
so into that embryo of life in the
element of honesty was born the love of
God within our beings and so love has
this very nature and character in it it's
absolutely genuine and sincere in all its intentions
in all its and all its purposes and
so he says truth is in Jesus and
we are supposed to be learning from him
we're supposed to be gaining knowledge we're supposed
to be following what he is if so
be you have heard him been taught by
him and then he says that you put
off and this is actually something that took
place at conversion as it's spoken in the
Colossian Epistle it's a little more clear it's
having put off and having put on this
is what happened when we got saved we
put off the old man we put on
the new man and the character of the
old man which is the sinful person that
we were in Adam was deceitfulness do you
know that every sin has a lie in
it every sin has in it a distortion
a corruption from reality from truth and you
know it's also very typical for people to
lie when they have sinned because lying is
the cover-up to protect from the repercussions
of sinning and so honesty is a very
fundamental thing and I'll just say this very
very clearly that we will not mature and
we will not build mature permanent relationships without
love and truth love and honesty have to
work together for relationships to endure and to
progress and so he makes this expression you
put on the new man which according to
God has been created in righteousness and true
holiness or holiness of truth now that has
been done within you and so you have
this inner core of life that corresponds to
what God is himself so verse 25 down
is where our responsibility comes in then he
says wherefore putting away lying speak every man
truth with his neighbor for we are members
one of another now again I'm just going
to make a few quick comments about lying
why do we lie why do we fail
to express ourselves honestly well you probably won't
remember what I said in the first three
verses of the chapter last week but two
of the important characteristics is meekness lowliness forbearance
long-suffering and I mentioned that these involve
an absence of self-promotion and an absence
of self-protection now guess what lying does
for us lying works for self promotion do
we exaggerate embellish our stories to make ourselves
seem that much more noble that much more
wonderful and so on and so on if
you're the hero of all the stories you
tell most people will recognize it after a
while and they sort of cut whatever you
say in half and so we have the
tendency in our self-centeredness this is one
of the distortions that that sin has created
that we are the center of everything and
so we're either trying to promote ourselves or
we're trying to protect ourselves because we do
things that are unknowable we do things that
are disgusting that are ungodly and so we
disguise them we we make ourselves appear better
than we really are and so on and
so lying basically serves these two purposes either
promoting ourselves or protecting ourselves from consequences of
our own problems now when it comes to
the marriage relationship a very common one is
a husband hiding financial problems from his wife
or a wife hiding her spending from her
husband and you know eventually unless unless you
have your own credit cards and never see
each other's credit card eventually the truth comes
out right and so deceitfulness covering things up
in any realm does not solve a problem
it actually multiplies the problems because as soon
as another individual whether it's your partner in
the marriage or whether it's in the fact
in the family of God if you find
out that another person is not dealing with
you honestly trust is broken and when trust
is broken it's very very difficult to maintain
closeness because now you have to protect yourself
from that person or you can't count on
that person in being faithful and genuine with
you and so honesty should be for every
one of us a bottom-line absolutely necessary
thing for us in our lives and so
he says putting away lying speak everyone truth
with his neighbor for we are members one
of another don't ever try to put one
over on somebody else and then verse 26
is linked with this in a logical way
because somebody says well if I'm going to
start being really honest we're gonna have a
lot more conflict now it is true that
there are times when you might feel irritated
by somebody and it's better for you just
to swallow and to gain your own self
-control and think it through yourself instead of
just mouthing off immediately because sometimes our initial
reactions are faulty they're not based on adequate
information but here he's recognizing that if we
are going to deal with one other honestly
we're going to have to deal with problems
we're going to have to deal with sins
with things that are wrong that happen but
he puts a caution with it he says
be angry and sin not now further down
the chapter he says let all bitterness and
wrath and anger and clamor and so on
be put away from you so you might
say that sounds kind of contradictory but I
think we have to we should recognize there
is a place for righteous anger God is
angry with wickedness we ought to be angry
with wickedness we ought to feel the injustice
of something that is done that is wrong
and we we need to feel that anger
but we need to be very controlled in
what we do in response now something that
I learned that I probably wouldn't have thought
of myself is that anger is a secondary
emotion now you might say I'm not so
sure about that some people are so explosive
and quick in their anger that it's hard
to imagine there's any other emotion happens first
but let me just suggest this to you
that anger is more of a response that
we make that arises out of one of
three things out of fear out of frustration
or out of hurt now I don't know
if you understand how this works but if
you've ever had children and watch them get
into trouble doing something and their lives are
in danger you ever wonder why you react
so angrily at times they may have run
out on the street or you know into
the pathway of something or they've put themselves
in danger and and you go and you
and you bring them back and you're so
angry well that anger is because you've been
scared to death you're afraid that that child
is going to get killed and you don't
want them to ever do it again and
so your fear causes you to respond in
anger because you want to prevent that from
happening the same thing happens in other aspects
of relationship sometimes it's our fear of what
is going to happen that causes us to
express anger to try to cause it to
stop and so anger can be very manipulative
I'm sure we've met people who use anger
as a way of life to keep everybody
around them in control where use anger to
control others to control consequences and so it
can be there because of fear and it
can be because of frustration when somebody hasn't
done what you expected them to do and
you react in anger well it's because you've
been frustrated by them not meeting an expectation
and then we have been hurt and so
now what should we do with angry feelings
that's what this passage is really saying be
angry and sin not and let not the
Sun go down upon your wrath or your
provocation I'm just going to give you a
few little suggestions here the first thing we
need to do with angry feelings is to
number one discern the cause because I need
to recognize whether my anger is righteous or
unrighteous now if I just feel a little
bit slighted because I wasn't noticed as much
as somebody else was noticed that's not something
that I should lash out at somebody for
that's something I should be ashamed of myself
for and so we need to recognize whether
our anger is right remember what the Lord
said to Jonah do you have a right
to be angry yes I do he wasn't
going to give up on his anger but
it's very important for us because that's the
very first thing and then the second point
after we discern the cause is to defer
to God how important it is to relate
yourself to the Lord as quickly as you
can because it's vital for us to regain
control so that whatever anger we may express
may be done righteously honestly honorably and not
destructively so defer to God by that I
mean to bring it into God's presence acknowledge
fully what you're feeling how upset you are
how hurt you are and so on but
then appeal to God help you for to
have grace to be able to handle yourself
righteously and honorably and then decide the right
course of action now some of us tend
not to blow off steam all the time
we all we actually have the opposite problem
is that we just stuff it inside and
hold it and keep it within ourselves and
sometimes we hold on to resentment hurt for
a lot more than 24 hours we hold
on to it for weeks for months for
years and when we finally express it it
has been so it has become so much
a part of us that we are completely
unreasonable in it and we can accuse somebody
of something that they may never have even
thought or intended or understood what harm they
were doing to us the longer we hold
it the more opportunity we are giving to
Satan and that's where the that last little
part comes in if you have any emotion
within you unjudged not brought under proper perspective
proper control you are giving to Satan a
foothold in your life from which to begin
his goal to destroy you with it and
to destroy as many other people around you
as is possible and I've lived along long
enough in assembly life to know that this
is one of the most crucial things for
Christians to overcome because anger stored up ends
up eventually in verse 31 it ends up
in that realm of bitterness bitterness is when
you begin to hold another person responsible for
your unhappiness for the disaster that's happened in
your life or whatever has gone on you
hold them responsible and so you are bitter
towards them and bitterness leads to malice malice
is actually a desire to destroy that person
to the point of a hatred that you
would wish that person to be harmed or
destroyed and it speaks there about bitterness wrath
anger clamor evil speaking now I found this
within myself to my own shame that there
are certain other Christians that for a number
of years every time their name came up
I had to say something negative about them
it was just like I couldn't let them
be spoken of honorably without somehow exposing them
for what they really were in my at
least in my estimation now I think I
was justified in being angry with them it
wasn't anything they did to me directly but
the damage I saw them do to other
Christians and I held them responsible for a
number of believers leaving the assembly lives being
damaged drastically spiritually and that's very that's a
very real possibility but it didn't help me
and it became something that was was destructive
within within my own spirit and so this
can happen within our marriage it can happen
in our families it can happen among the
Saints and so how we deal with anger
is one of the most important things for
us to overcome I think it's in that
same book that I already referred to making
love last forever that this author Gary Smalley
identifies stored-up anger as being the number
one enemy of love and he lists a
whole a whole list of things that stored
-up anger causes and good things that it
prevents and the unfortunate thing is it never
stays in only the relationship in which the
anger was first directed I don't know how
they come to these calculations or estimations but
I've read that possibly 80% of displayed
anger is actually displaced anger where somebody has
irritated you in one relationship you're frustrated you're
resentful and so on but that has created
a tension of frustration within you and then
you end up carrying it with you maybe
to your home to your family or to
the assembly or you carry it from the
assembly into your family and your friends and
so on and you you end up being
this angry individual that is always hard to
be around dangerous to be around and so
on and it's a displaced anger it's not
being dealt with where it belongs and so
it expresses itself in other relationships and so
these are very important things and so the
rule in verse 26 is don't let the
Sun go down on your provocation if something
has provoked you someone has provoked this upset
and anger resolve it before you go to
bed now I don't know if any of
you have ever had this problem in your
marriage but if you have ever gone to
bed trying to sleep in the same bed
besides somebody that you're holding hostage in your
anger it doesn't work does it you won't
get to sleep and if they get to
sleep then it makes you twice as angry
because they shouldn't be either this is this
is very wise sound counsel do you know
that every time you rehash something in your
mind you're actually making it stronger more of
a fortress in fact I'm not going to
get into this but there's a there's a
21 day detox program available that recognizes scientifically
that it takes about 21 days to break
down something that has been formed very strongly
in your mind about a certain situation it
takes about 21 days to overcome that by
replacing it by working through it and reaching
out to a different kind of resolution that
honors God and it's a bit so these
things are stubborn it's not just I have
to try harder to forgive try harder to
get over it and to not be angry
with that person sometimes it's not renewed effort
we need we need to change our perception
of it we need to have renewed thinking
now obviously there's a lot more involved in
that than what I can touch right at
the moment and so as he goes through
this he is emphasizing that we need transformation
we need to have the control of the
Spirit of God to be able to take
and control our thoughts our attitudes our motives
so that they begin to produce the beautiful
quality of his life within us so I'll
have to shut down for now because the
time is gone but there's a lot here
that is worth meditating in and taking before
the Lord if it takes 21 days that
would be a miracle most of us have
struggled with things for years that we haven't
been able to overcome so may God be
with us and enable us to truly love
as he does let's pray our father we
thank thee that we are thine we thank
thee that you have sealed us with your
spirit we thank thee that the gracious Spirit
of God dwells within us despite all the
contradiction and conflict that we find within ourselves
we pray that we might be submissive to
the grace and love of your own Holy
Spirit that we might be truly renewed in
the spirit of our mind and that we
might be able to build that we might
overcome what hinders we might be able to
build these qualities and to build up one
another and to be able to fulfill this
exhortation to be kind tender-hearted forgiving one
another even as thou in thy grace for
his sake has forgiven us and so we
bow in their presence and entrust ourselves to
thee we pray again that you would be
with us in this ongoing effort to reach
out to people in the community and for
the children of your people here how we
would love to see them delivered and brought
into the security the safety of your eternal
love and we entrust this into your hands
in our Savior's name