Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Roots of Faith, where we journey deep into the foundational truths of Scripture to grow together in maturity as followers of Christ. Here, we don't shy away from the challenging realities of faith. Today's message takes us to the underground church in China where believers travel 13 hours and risk being put in prison simply to study the Word of God. It's a powerful reminder of the devotion God desires and what it truly means to be people of the Book.
In this episode, we'll look at the practical outworkings of putting on the new self as we dive into Ephesians chapter 4. From Paul's powerful call to renounce hypocrisy and embrace true fellowship to the necessity of dealing with anger, you'll discover how the everyday choices we make shape our lives in Christ. Let's move beyond being Christians on Sunday only and become fully surrendered to his transforming work. Get ready to be challenged, encouraged and equipped as we root ourselves deeper into the truth. This is the Roots of Faith.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Excited to share with you today.
Nothing new, but I am. I want to start with something that came across on Facebook the other day and it was I'm trying to think of the title of the organization, but it's a pastor who speaks Chinese and is an American pastors a church out in the west coast and he was sharing that he went to China and he went there specifically to teach house church leaders.
And these house church leaders, there was 22 of them that rode 13 hours by train to come to the place where he was going to meet with them.
Now of course they are banned, so they even had to enter the place, the hotel where he was staying, two by two so they didn't attract attention, I'll remind you, 22 people, 13 hours on the train to come and secretly meet to be fed the word of God and to be taught.
And they met in a little apartment.
I think he said it was like 720 square feet stuffed, 22 people plus a speaker in the room. Three days.
And of course the accommodations were wonderful. They all sat on the wooden floor and when he was talking to them, he says, what would happen if we get discovered?
They said, well, we'd all be in trouble. You would be deported.
He said, well, what happened to you?
He says, oh, we'll go to prison for a while.
He said, well, how many of you have ever gone to prison?
18 of the 22 raised their hands. He had brought with him 17 Bibles.
So he handed the Bibles out to the people that he could hand it out to and he apologized that he didn't have any more, but that's all he could get into the country.
And he says, now turn to. And it was a passage in First Peter.
And when they were doing it, he saw one of the ladies handed it off to the person next to them.
And he said, why did you do that? And she says, well, I've memorized all of that.
You memorized it? She said, yes.
He says, well, when did you memorize it? She said, oh, in prison.
He said, well, how did you get a Bible into prison? She said, oh, no, no, no, we didn't get the Bible into prison.
People would give us scraps of paper and write down portions, and so we would immediately memorize what we had so we could destroy the paper.
Here's a lady who had memorized large sections of the Bible so that when asked to turn to a. You know, we all have to sit there and turn. And if you're like me, I need my little green tab, my little yellow tab, and my orange tab to tell me where I'm turning, because no longer does my thumbed area work well for my fumbling fingers.
And then he said, how can I pray for you?
And they said, oh, if we could only be like you in America.
He thought about that for a few minutes. He says, I'll never pray that for you.
He said, you traveled 13 hours to come here under threat of death and imprisonment.
He says, but back home, I can't get people to even come an hour.
And if they sit for more than 40 minutes, they want to get up and leave.
I'll never pray that for you.
I pray for America to be like you.
How often do we want to be the people of the Book?
The way we should look at the word of God and incorporate it in our lives.
Today we come to the last section of verses in chapter four in the book of Ephesians, and I've entitled the sermon Christian Hoof and Mouth Disease.
Now, in case you don't know what hoof and mouth disease is, it's particularly with cattle and farm animals, and it creates sores.
The animal gets very sick, and it spreads very quickly as a virus.
And I think so many times we are like the people in America that can't travel more than an hour and can't sit for more than 40 minutes. Now, I admit padded pews sure help.
You're not having to sit on the floor.
But you see, it almost multiplies like a virus in us, that we have small compartmentalized places for the Lord.
And that's it.
And then I take my compartmentalized place and I put it over here, because Monday comes around and I have to do something else.
And it is like a virus that infects us because we don't look at the practical application of the Lord every day in our lives.
I want to look together with you beginning at verse 25. Now remember verses 23 through 24, we're saying that we were to put on and put off what should be active in our lives. So that it says in verse 24, and put on the new self created to be like God, in true righteousness and holiness.
That's what we're called to be.
We're called to be. And don't get scared of that word holiness.
That means to be separated unto the Lord.
And do we really live our lives separated to the Lord?
And what you have from verse 25 to the end in verse 32 are the very practical outworkings of what should be in our lives, of our putting on and putting off it's renouncing and renewing.
In this passage, when I looked at it, one of the first things that jumped out at me is that there are actually 11 imperatives in eight verses, 11 things that come into the area. We think of commands when we say an imperative, but it's a command that draws you in.
You don't have to do it.
But this is what the Spirit of God was placing on Paul's heart to say, this is what's important in the practical outworking of your life.
This is what we need to be renouncing and renewing.
And I'm very surprised. I was very surprised.
I do sit there and count words. I'm a word counter.
And I was surprised that in one verse alone, there were three commands.
And do you know what it was about?
Anger.
Verse 26 has three commands in it.
As I was sitting there working through this passage, I remembered an old Hebraism.
It's particularly something in Hebrew poetry, whereby you take verse 25, and when I looked at it, the thought mirrored verse 32.
I said, hmm, that's interesting.
So then I looked at verse 26, and when I looked at verse 26, it mirrored verse 31.
So I went through that, and I came up with four things that are the focus of every believer as we mature in our faith.
So I'm going to ask you to use your jumping eyeballs as you're looking at your Bible or as you think through this passage.
But the first One is verses 25 to 32, 25 and 32.
Which is you're to renounce and what you're to renew in your relationship to the church, to the fellowship of believers.
Please dispel from your mind any steeples, any buildings, and realize we're talking about the body of believers, the people who fellowship together and how we are to fellowship with one another.
And verse 25 says, Therefore, so what's it there for? Therefore, it goes back to verses 23 and 24, 22, 23 and 24, how we're to be new creations in Christ Jesus, in righteousness and holiness, being set apart.
And it says, therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truth to your neighbor, because or for we are all members of one body, we are part of the body of Christ. Throughout this whole study of Ephesians, we've seen the oneness that is in Christ.
And what he says here is, you're to put off falsehood.
Well, did you ever hear of a pseudonym? Do you know what a pseudonym is? That's a false name.
Writers will very often write under a pseudonym.
This was especially true in the Victorian period because women weren't supposed to be writers.
And so many of the women who were writing during that time would choose a male pseudonym and would submit their work under a male pseudonym.
It's still a practice because if you get very well known as a person in writing books, you don't want everybody showing up at your back door, so you publish under a pseudonym.
The reason I bring that up is because the word pseudo means false, fake.
It's a mask.
And so he says, put off the mask of your speaking.
Now, I found that very interesting because when I thought about what it was saying, it says, therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truth to your neighbor or to the ones that are around you and speak that truth to them, for we're all members of one body.
I went back and it triggered my mind, the word hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is defined as the behavior that contradicts what one claims to believe or feel, especially the false assumption and appearance of virtue in religion.
It's not lying to others in the church.
That's the very essence of hypocrisy. If we lie, what we have here is a challenge that says, I've got to be real in my Christian life if I'm putting on a pseudo personality so that when I come to church, I look like a great Christian. But you know, something that triggered in my mind also, I went back and looked at John, chapter 8, verses 43 to 45. In the King James, it says, when Christ was speaking to the Pharisees and he was rebuking the Pharisees, he said, why do you not understand my speech even? Because you cannot hear my word.
You are of your father, the devil, and the lusts of your father you do.
He was a murderer from the beginning, and he did not abide in truth because there is no truth in him.
When we speak a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, you don't believe in me.
And when I went and took that. In reference to this verse that we read in Ephesians, it says that we better be careful about living in hypocrisy as a fellowship of believers and start speaking the truth to one another so that we may grow in Christ, because otherwise we're in danger of not hearing the truth.
It is very clear that in the New Testament, where it says, beware of others who interfere, who sneak in unawares where there is falsehood.
So it says, as a Christian, I need to be in the truth of God's word.
Oh, that we would be like going 13 hours and sitting in a room on the floor for three days with Bibles that are snuck in so that we would hear the word of God and be taught the word of God.
Now, this passage, the imperative there is the word speak.
And when it says speak, it means continuing to speak. You are to be continuing to speak the truth.
And by the way, that doesn't just mean that the preacher preaches out of the Bible and what's true, because you and I are to be building up one another in the Lord.
And if we're not speaking the truth to one another, then we have a problem.
Now jump down to verse 32.
And I love this, because it took me a while to have it dawn on me what was going on.
Because the imperative that's here is the word be you be.
It translates this way, be kind and compassionate to one another.
Notice this. Here's the conditions that hang on to that.
Forgiving each other, just as Christ, God forgave you.
You see, in the first verse, it talks about our talking, how we're to speak. In this verse, it is how we're to be as Christians.
And I stand here, I'm being here.
As long as I have breath, I am being.
And here it says that we, as a fellowship of believers, in this place, at this time, we're to be kind and compassionate. It's the inward Nature of you and I as a Christian, we're to be.
Now it says, I want to point out that there are three things that hang on in this verse.
The first one is be kind. The second one is be compassionate. And the third one is be forgiving.
There was a recent study that was done and it said that young people are away from church because they think that church is a good thing, but it doesn't always tell the truth.
What a condemnation.
Satan has been very effective in disinfecting the church and making it something that people stay away from.
So what does it mean that we should be kind?
Literally, it means to furnish what is needed.
It's also translated in other places as profitable, good for any use, useful towards others, good, gentle, kind.
That's how we're to be treating other individuals in the church.
Secondly, it's compassionate.
It is translated elsewhere as being tender hearted.
What's compassion?
It's that inner movement in a person that when they see a situation where there's need, their heart is moved to do something about it.
And it begins with, are we compassionate on those who are outside, who do not know the Lord, who have not put their trust in Jesus Christ, and knowing that Scripture says for a fact that the day of judgment, if their name is not found written in the Lamb's book of life, they will be assigned to eternal punishment.
What does your compassion say?
In 1 Peter 3, 8? It reads, finally, all of you be like minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble.
And finally it says, forgiving. We're to be forgiving, and that's to forgive someone, to be gracious to them.
And it means to pardon.
If somebody's done you wrong, I forgive them. I put it away even though it hurt me and hurt me deeply.
I put it away in 2nd Corinthians 2, 5, 8.
If anyone has caused grief, he has not so much grieved me as he has grieved all of you.
To some extent. Not to put it too severely, the punishment inflicted on him by the majority is sufficient. Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him so that you will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. That he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. I urge you therefore, to reaffirm your love for him. Now put yourself in Paul's position. In first Corinthians, Paul is sending a scathing letter to the church at Corinth.
He says, you've got homosexuality in there. You have sexual impurity. You have a man living with his father's wife.
You have people who are unforgiving and he says, and worst of all, you sit there and you see this and you accept this and you say, oh, that's good.
Now, I'm going to be very careful here, but I want you to understand what I'm saying.
This came up on Friday night when several of us were talking, and one of the things that has divided the United Methodist congregations is the acceptance of homosexuality.
And so they're glad to fly their rainbow flag.
There are things that I as a Christian can sit there and overlook, but when it goes directly contrary to Scripture, and I can very well sit down with any one of you and show you the scriptures that talk about both men and women and what they do, exchanging what God has designed for male and female, and exchanged it for something that is contrary to God's design, then I can't go there.
I have to stop.
I can lovingly say to someone, sir, ma'am, I love you in the Lord, but you are contrary to God's word. And when we are contrary to God's word, then God has to deal with us.
And you can take that on the micro side of individual to individual, or you can take it to the macro side. And what is God going to do with churches that depart from the word of God?
The Corinthians evidently felt so rebuked that they turned the exact other way and they went and punished everybody.
We're going to haul everybody before the church. We're no, no, it says, yes, you are supposed to rebuke. You are supposed to bring them to the congregation, but you're to lovingly restore such a one. That's what Paul said in Galatians.
You're to restore such a one in a spirit of meekness.
I'm loving them, but I also have to take my stand against what is sin that separates me and separates them from God.
Galatians 6:1 says, Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you live by the Spirit. You who live by the Spirit should restore such a one.
You should restore that person gently, but watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted.
In 1 Peter 2, verses 3 to 5, it says, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good as you come to him. The living stone, rejected by humans, but chosen by God and precious to him.
You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
That's what we're to be in our serving the Lord.
You know, I thought I was really proud of myself. I was down to three pages.
I think I said to Andy this morning, I said, well, you know, today should be my last sermon in the book of Ephesians for a while because we've got to prepare and look at Christ in the Old Testament.
But I have a strange feeling this is going to go to another sermon.
It's because I want to share with you what I see in the word of God, because it's what has to happen in our lives.
And the next verses that we come to are the verses on anger.
In verses 26 and 31, verse 26 reads, and you're all very familiar with this verse. It says, in your anger, do not sin. That's the first imperative, do not sin.
Second imperative comes right after it. And verse 26 says, do not let the Son or no in your anger, do not sin.
So sin is the second imperative.
You can be angry, but do not sin.
The first one is called a permissive command, but it says, be very careful. Anger can be justified when it is against God's word.
But do not sin in that anger.
That's number two. And the third is, do not let the sun go down on your wrath.
And when it says that, what you're looking at, it says, do not let the sun go down while you're still angry.
Now, I will tell you, I've heard it many times, that verse is applied to marriage.
There was a young couple who were very proud of their marriage.
And the fellow said, well, we promised never to go to bed angry, so we haven't slept for four days.
That is not what that verse is teaching.
But what it's saying is, first of all, when I said there is anger permitted, you are allowed to be provoked.
I can tell you that. There are times when people talk to me and tell me their view of Christian, I get very provoked because I know it's not what scripture says.
And there is an appropriate place for that provocation.
It's an irritant.
But I cannot get into sin which is lashing out.
I can remember growing up in the 60s, and at that time there was a number of churches who would speak against long hair because the Beatles had long hair.
Horrible.
And they would pull out verses. And today, the same fundamentalist mentality.
And by the way, that's a very misused term. I like the original term fundamentalist because there was a series presented on the fundamentals of faith along with Dr. Aritori.
But what has become applied to that is a very negative stereotype of rebuking sin calls back in my mind one particular preacher From Tennessee Temple University.
And he was the chancellor. He was the president at the time, became chancellor. And I remember his one sermon that he preached. And that sermon said, I'm going to go knock holes in the darkness.
I never saw any holes anywhere, but it was all invictive and statements of why, you sinners, you got to do this. You got to be my way or the highway type of idea.
That is not what Scripture teaches.
Scripture says we're allowed to be provoked, but we don't sin and we don't let our anger just sit there and ruminate.
You don't let the sun go down on your wrath.
You take that anger and you change it. And that's why I looked at verse 31, because in verse 31 it gives a long list. But I want to just read it to you. Verse 31 of Ephesians 4 says, get rid of. That's the imperative.
You're to put it away. You're to get rid of.
And that's the imperative.
I said that I'm going to make it, you know, big letters.
The imperative is get rid of.
Because then it lists a number of things.
It says, get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander.
Along with every form of malice, there has to be a dramatic change you are to put on the new man.
So everything you think about it, bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, slander and malice, they're all terms that I would associate with being angry.
This was the other thing that convinced me that I wanted to put verses together.
Because it seemed like Paul was just coming back around here, circling back and saying, hey, so when I am putting off those things, how do you put off something?
When I am looking at my life and if I become provoked and I want to lovingly confront someone, what if I'm bitter?
What if I'm bitter against a child in my home or the older ones, you can't change the locks. They still get in after they grow up.
But you see, there's a lot of times I could become very bitter.
And you come down through these verses and bitterness, you understand rage, you understand it's a violent motion or passion of the mind.
Anger, it's a state of mind.
Brawling, the word means to clamor or cry, to bring a group of people together. And war.
Slander.
I like that word because there is a very decent English word. If you're speaking Greek, when you talk to somebody and you say blasphemy, you're speaking Greek.
Bet you didn't know that. You now become great Greek speakers, because that is the word that's translated slander. If you blaspheme against God.
And along with that, every form of malice, the wickedness as an evil habit of the mind, these are all things that are in your thinking.
And to put off means I've got to change the way I think and submit to the Holy Spirit that the Lord would deal with me. That when a root of bitterness comes up in me, stop.
As a matter of fact, the negative commands that are in this passage, by and large the largest percent of them means to stop immediately.
We're to change our minds.
Next week. I want to come back to verses 27 and 30, because Harry Ironside said verse 30 is probably the most important part of this entire section.
Verse 30 says, Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.
And I want to spend an entire time with you to talk about the grieving of the Holy Spirit, because if you don't recognize it, that is what is in you and me.
The Spirit, from the moment of our salvation on is ours, and we are sealed in the Spirit.
So I'm going to pause right here and I'm going to skip down to verses 28 and 29. Verses 28 and 29 says, Anyone who's been stealing must steal no longer. That's the imperative. Don't steal anymore.
Second imperative, but must labor.
It actually says, not only is there a putting off, but there's a putting on.
And I want to challenge you to think about what does it mean to steal.
The word actually in Greek is where we get our term kleptomania.
That's that furtive somebody just going through the store and picking something up and putting it in their pocket.
Are we kleptomaniacs when we talk about other Christians?
That's a hard one to wrap your mind around.
It takes some thinking.
You're to steal no longer, but must labor.
And I want you to notice that that second imperative has a reason.
Because when you labor, it says that they may have something to share with those in need.
You're to be equipped to serve.
In verse 29 says, and do not let go forth any corrupt word out of your mouth.
The imperative there is what comes out of your mouth.
Don't let it come out of your mouth. And it says corrupt. And actually, in the original, the term for corrupt carries with it the idea of bad, putrid smelling.
And so when I thought about that, and it relates very directly to food, my mind went and thought, well, we've got the fruits of the Spirit.
What if we're producing putrid fruits of the spirit. They're not really spiritual. Then he says, don't let anything corrupt come out of your mouth.
And there is a statement as to why.
Because it says, but only speak what is helpful to building up others according to their needs.
That they may benefit those who listen.
What are you speaking?
A long time. I rebelled against that phrase. I hear it coming up a lot in Christian talk. And people say, well, I'm going to speak the word of into you. No, what I'm saying here is it's our responsibility to build up one another. And how are we going to build up one another if we don't stay in the Word?
How are we going to make sure that it's not putrid if we're not knowing what God's word says for us to do?
Dear friend, I want you to know what it means to put off and put on, to renounce and renew.
And Lord willing, next week I'm going to concentrate just on those two verses.
In verse 27 and verse 30, it says, do not give the devil a foothold.
And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.
And I want you to know very clearly what that means in my life and in your life.
Because the only lifeline you have in your life as a believer is the spirit of God who dwells in you.
And if we put something in between.
All right. I don't care who's selecting music for next week, but I'm going to ask for one song.
That song is Nothing Between My Soul and My Savior.
Got that, Donna?
You never heard of it. Oh, I'm going to teach you a song this week. Next week.
It's a very.
You didn't hear that one either? Never heard. Oh, boy. I'm going to have fun teaching it. Well, I have to. I don't care if I have to sing it solo so nobody can hear me. But I'll sing it solo if I have to. Because it was written by a man by the name of Tindley. And I need to tell you the story when we get there. So now you have something to look forward to next week. A new song with a new story.
Take the word of God with you this week.
Take what we've studied and think about what it means for us in our lives, in our daily living, that Christ might be seen in you and in me.
[00:50:48] Speaker A: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Roots of Faith, a ministry of Lawn Evangelical Congregational Church in Lawn, Pennsylvania. We hope today's message has uplifted you and deepened your relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember, whether you're new in the faith or have walked with him for years, God's Word is always fresh and powerful to transform. If you were blessed by this episode, share it with a friend. And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an update. Until next time, stay rooted in the Word, stand firm in faith, and keep growing in Christ.
