February 25, 2024 Elder Mike Levenhagen If you want to open your Bibles to Ephesians, chapter four, verse 22. And while you're doing that, why don't we pray? Father, we thank you that we have the opportunity to gather together, explore your word, encourage each other, and glorify you. And just pray for this. message that your word would be clearly heard and we'd have open hearts and eyes to see your message today in Jesus name. Amen.
All right, Ephesians chapter four verse starting in verse 22 and it reads that you put off concerning the former conversation the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lust and be renewed in the spirit of your mind. and that you put on the new man, which after God is created in the righteousness and true holiness. Wherefore, put away lying speak every man the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another." Now, a minister was walking down the street when he came upon a group of about a dozen boys, all of them between the ages of 10 and 12. And he was, the group was surrounding a dog. And the pastor was concerned that they were abusing the dog. And so he went up and asked, well, what are you doing with the dog? And one of the boys responded that, hey, this dog is just an old neighborhood stray. We all want him, but only one of us can take him home. So we decided, whoever can tell the biggest lie will get the dog. So we're having a competition. Well, Of course, the pastor was taken back and he said, you boys shouldn't be lying like that and having a contest to tell lies. Then he launched into a 10 minute sermon on why lying's wrong, beginning with, you know boys, it's a sin to lie. And ending with, when I was your age, I never told a lie. Well, there was dead silence for about a minute. Then the boys sort of mumbled amongst themselves. nodded their heads, came up to the pastor and said, you win, you take the dog. So, the apostle Paul, in the first, Ephesians is a really amazing book, and in the first three chapters, apostle Paul laid down his great doctrine of salvation and clearly spells out the gospel of grace. And having done that, he follows on his appeal, urging us to realize that we're members of the body of Christ. And in chapters 4, verses 1 through 16, he talks about us being one body and the unity of the body, that Christ is the head of the body. And our first consideration should try to keep unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. He reminds us in. verses of the doctrine of the nature of church. And that the Lord Jesus himself is the head of the church. Then if you go to Ephesians chapter 4 verses 8 and 11, It reads, therefore he says, when he ascended on high, he led the captives captive and gave gifts to men. And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors, and some teachers. So he explains the structure of the body of church. And in Ephesians 3:10, we have not merely been saved that we can escape hell. But we've been saved in order that God may present a people which will astonish powers and principalities and astonish the world. Ephesians 3:10 reads, For as many as are the works of the law under the curse, for it is written, cursed as anyone. I jumped back too far, I was reading Galatians. I knew that wasn't right. Ephesians 3:10 says, to the intent that now, that the manifold wisdom of God may be known by the church. to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places. And so God is using the church to demonstrate the whole wisdom, the knowledge, the power of God to the powers and principalities of the world to the world itself. So again, we haven't been saved that we can just escape hell but we're here to glorify God and establish a presence in the whole world, to be Christ's ambassadors. But it's more than just individual. It's the church itself, the entire body of Christ. So we can't see ourselves as lone ranger Christians. We need to understand that we're parts of the body of Christ. Our ultimate ambition should always be to grow up into Him in all things. He's the head. And that together, we may achieve growing into near perfect image of God. reflecting the fullness of Christ, not only in our lives, but within the church body itself. Our concern as Christian people shouldn't be just a desire to be good, not even a desire to be better than we've been. It should not be merely a desire to get rid of certain sin and to stop at that, or to have happiness or victory. All that is really self-centered when that's our goal, isn't it? Some, I remember a pastor friend ran a little thing on Facebook and he said, should the church be a hospital? Should the church be a clinic? Where hurting people come and, you know, and sort of the point is, what he was saying is, are you failing at any point? Come and you can put it right. Are you in trouble? Come, come to the clinic. That's not the purpose of the church. In fact, what is the focus? The focus is on the individual. The purpose of the focus is on you. So Paul says that our top concern should be Christ. And the other things will follow. If we have sin issues, if we have things, Jesus is the answer. But you find that answer in the church. through Christ, not coming to the church to heal or to be, to get all those wounds. You seek Jesus and then put those things in order and he will be the one in his time, in his method to restore and heal. What you're worrying me isn't so much that I fail or that I've got a problem in my life, but I'm failing Christ himself as a believer. I'm failing the church when I fail. I'm failing God and his great and wonderful purpose is not being achieved. Our concern should be that we're letting God down, as it were, and his glorious purpose. The church is being let down, Christ is being let down. See, he died to make his people perfect and the entire world whole. And here we are, missing the mark and failing and not pushing that purpose forward. If only we'd look at our sin like that. So often people are concerned about themselves and their particular sins. We run Reclamation Resource Center. It's for people who are sexually broken, a lot of them dealing with same-sex attractions, some of them dealing with addiction to pornography. They come because they want God to deliver them from their sin. Like I said before, really what we need to do is, it's a bait and switch. They're coming for this. But we need to have them see what the real problem is. And you don't know how many times people have come thinking that God has let them down because they pray that God removes these temptations and removes them, frees them from their sin and they keep falling. One, the problem is two things. One, they're looking to solve their problems and it's about them. And the second is they don't have sound doctrine to lead them to Christ. So, and a lot of times when it comes to sin, we take a negative approach. I can't do this. I shouldn't be doing this. Rather than the positive approach of, I'm growing closer to Lord, praising God and letting him work in my life and submitting to him. A positive approach instead of a negative approach. And a lot of times churches focus on the negative approach. Don't do this. This is sin. It's wrong. Don't do it. And they don't realize the doctrine that, yes, this is wrong, God frowns on it. And he's given us the tools and here's who you are and start living out the doctrine and the teaching. So, Matthew 5:16. Matthew 5:16 says, Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and say that you're a wonderful person. Is that what your Bible says? What does it say? Let your cell lights so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven. Chief, I remember in catechism, the church I went to use the Westminster catechism. The first question was, what is the chief purpose of man? The answer to that was, the chief purpose of man is to glorify God. They got that. That's right. Our purpose is to glorify God. And the salvation and living out our salvation is about him. It's glorifying God. We're supposed to live our way. And that people coming into contact with us, they're not going to understand us. They're going to be puzzled by us. You know, there's some sort of enigma, weirdness about us. You know, we're gonna be a peculiar people in this culture. And, but the thing is, they're gonna say there's something different. There's something, I wanna know what that's about. Or they'll just blow us off and avoid us. Either way, we're making a difference. When somebody's confronted by the love of God, When we're truly reflecting God's character and we're his ambassadors, when somebody's confronted by that love, they cannot stay the same. People are either gonna soften their hearts or they're gonna harden their hearts, but they'll not be the same after that encounter. So the life of the head of Jesus Christ is flowing through us so as men and women, they look at us and should be compelled to think of who? Christ, not us, right? We're followers of Jesus. We're imitators of Jesus. We're to be like him. We are in this world as he is, as he was. We're to live our lives accordingly. Now Ephesians is really broken up into sections and in chapters one, two, and three, Paul lays out the great doctrine of salvation. And in chapters four, one through 16, we find the doctrine of the body of Christ. And all that brings us into the body. Following that, the third section, we have the outworking of those doctrines in our daily lives and behavior and experience. This is a great plan. And this is how Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, works each section out in detail so that there's no room for mistakes. lays it out. And when you read through Ephesians, it's like the wherefore, therefore, henceforth. And it's all tied back to the doctrine that he's established. And because of the doctrine, this is how we should live. And the final section of Epi, Epistles in chapter 6 verses 10 through 20, Paul says in effect, I've laid out the program, I've laid out the doctrine, I've laid out how to live our daily lives, and that's the sort of life you need to live. And it's easy, right? No. And he goes on to say, whatever you think, it's not easy. You need strength infinitely greater than our own resources. There's a powerful adversary. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities and rulers of the dark world, against spiritual wickedness in high places, right? So there's a mighty enemy that we're fighting. And who will do anything and everything he can to keep us from living out our purpose and glorifying God. So why do you think that's Satan's plan? He's already lost us. But he has another thing, he wants to ridicule the work of God and the grace of our Lord Jesus. If Satan can make any Christian, even the whole church, fall into sin, he rejoices. And so you'll attack, as Paul says, at every particular point. And if you do not realize that, you're already defeated. If the attacks are gonna come, he's gonna win because you aren't putting on the defense, you aren't putting on the armor of God. You've gotta constantly be aware that we're in a war. There's only one way to act, and Paul explains, put on the full armor of God. God has made a provision. God does not call us to fulfill a plan and then leave us helpless, leave us on our own. He's given us everything we need. So, the Paul in his writings, inspired by the Holy Spirit, never leaves anything to chance. He's a careful teacher. And he never is content with the mere declaration of principles. He always does that first, but he never stops at doctrine. he invariably applies the teaching. Now there's a school of Bible teaching which makes no attempt at all to apply teaching. They just focus on the doctrine and the principles of Christianity. And this is a contradiction to scripture. One has no right to simply divide up the God's word and leave it as it is. It's a travesty of the use of the word of God. It's not just doctrine. its doctrine and how the effects of that doctrine in our lives and how we should live in light of those doctrines. Paul always requires us to apply the doctrine that he's established. We have no right to look at the application simply as a heading in our Bible and say, oh, this is application. I want to go on to the next doctrine. He means for us to face up to every single detail, and he compels us to do so by detailed application. And when I was in college, I was pre-pharmacy at one time, and I took a couple chemistry classes. One was qualitative analysis, and the other was quantitative analysis. So in qualitative analysis, you have a solution, and you just are looking for what's in the solution. But then, there's quantitative analysis. Now you have a solution, and you wanna know. how much and the quantity of each of those items that you find in the solution. God's word is sort of like that. Not only does he give us those principles and those doctrines, but he gets into the details of how to apply those doctrines and all the implications those doctrines have for us. And doctrine, I'm not minimizing doctrine, because doctrine really needs to always be, direct us and be in control of our behavior. But the thing is, Christianity isn't a code of conduct, which is forced on us, that we don't understand why we shouldn't be doing things. When you read Paul, it's always, don't do this, do this, here's why. And some people say, I don't need to get bogged down in doctrine. I'm not that sort of person. I don't need to do the deep dive. I just want to know the basics, what I need to do. Give me the list, and I'll comply. But when they try to follow the code, they don't understand why they're trying to follow it. They're often miserable and unhappy. There was a guy that came through our ministry and he could not see the grace of God and he could not see, you know, he got caught up in doing. And he got gravitated to a church. where it was very, you know, he was told, this is sin, don't do it. And they didn't rightly divide. He had to confess every sin he had, that he was, and he had to confess every sin. If it was unconfessed sin, he couldn't be in relationship with God. And unfortunately, he had a mental breakdown. He couldn't handle the stress. We've gotta be careful that we clearly. not just extend grace and say, live your life however you want, but here's the principles, here's the purpose of our life, and here's how to apply them. And why God has provided the churches, we're together encouraging each other, loving on each other, and going through the battle. Failure in the living of Christian life is ultimately a result or a failure somewhere to understand the doctrine and the truth. If I understand who I am, if I understand who God is, and I understand the tools that God has given me and I start living them, with the power of the Holy Spirit, which is a tool he's given, I will have a successful Christian walk. See, and that's where I can remember when I was... dealing with things before I was a Christian. And just, I grew up in an alcoholic family, so I went to a program for adult children of alcoholics. And I was going to that. And one of the things they said is, well, just put little dots around the house, and whenever you see that dot, give yourself a positive affirmation about who you are and how good you are. How would you think that worked for me? It's like because there was no power there. And there's a whole branch of psychology today called cognitive behavioral therapy. Mind over mood. If you tell yourself this and you analyze why you're feeling this way, you change your thinking, you'll change your emotions. It works but it doesn't change you. Again, tried that, been there. It drives you nuts trying to write down every emotion you had and what you were thinking at the time you got to remember back. It's works, it's driving, and it's ineffective. Now the Bible teaches sanctification. The apostle is teaching it here in Ephesians from the 17th chapter of verse 4 to the end of the epistle, and that's his method. He's exhorting us to work it out in detail, logically, what we claim to believe and realize why we must inevitably do what we must ever do if we really understand and grasp the gospel, the doctrines, and who we are and who God is. So Paul begins the application of doctrines of salvation and that, and then he starts in verse 17 talking about a detailed list of directives. And he moves on. So starting then in verse 22 of chapter four. Well, let's actually, he starts laying the groundwork in 21, indeed, if you, and we talked about this before, putting on the new man taking off the old, all right? And again, his pattern is don't do this, put off the old, do this, put on the new, and here's why, because the new man was created holy and in truth, right? So now he goes on to a list. In verse 25 he goes, Therefore, putting away lying, each one speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. So here's the first thing that he's talking about. And again, what is it? Negative, positive, the reason why. Put off lying, speak the truth with his neighbor, and the reason is we're members of one another. First thing that Paul includes in his list of what is this lying or falsehood. Falsehood in general, for as we know, a lie can be disguised as not telling the truth, lying by omission. We know the truth but we don't tell it. It can be without even saying a word. You're angry at somebody. You have ought against love. You walk into the room, you give him a Christmas smile and greeting, right? That's lying, because you're not being honest about what's really. Another one is. I heard an example of a guy who had an ought with his dad and unresolved issues with his father. He'd go and visit his father now, he's an adult, and his dad would, when he was visiting, it's like, hey, son, would you take out the garbage? Well, yes, dad, I aim to please with a smile. The whole time he's like, er. That's lying. It's not being truthful, it's not being honest about what's going on. Or how about this, somebody's lying, you know the truth, and you don't say anything to correct the lie. So the term lying really covers falsehood in general. Did you ever wonder why Paul would start out the list with lying? So look at the previous verse. And if you translate it correctly, it says that you put on the new man, which after God has created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. This is the thing that makes Christian life such a complete contrast to the life out in the world. It's also describing the old man. The apostle's been speaking about corruption and the lusts of deceit, which are the characteristic of the sinful life. Nothing is so characteristic of the Christian life as the fact that it belongs to a whole new realm of truth, absolute truth. We describe what's happened to a man who's become a Christian by saying he's seen the truth. Or he's seen the light. 1 Timothy chapter 2 verse 4 Again, Paul writing to Timothy says, God our Savior, for this is the good and acceptable in the sight of a God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to what? The knowledge of the truth. Clearly, therefore, everything about us should be indicative of the fact that we've arrived at the knowledge of the truth. And it's not a truth, it's the truth. We're now living in the truth and seeing the whole world of life in a true manner. So naturally, having ended the word with the word truth, Paul takes it up again. And this is therefore the thing that comes forth. therefore putting away lying. It's utterly incompatible with Is there anything that is ultimately so vital and so essential, a part of the character of God as the truth? How could we, I mean, that's the whole foundation. Our faith needs to be based on God's faithfulness, on Christ's faithfulness, on his being the truth. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And again, the apostle makes at the beginning of his letter to Titus, Titus chapter 1, verse 1. He says what? God who cannot lie. God cannot lie. I think that's one of the things that we have at our farmer's market display, right? What are the three things that God can't do? And one of them is, God can't lie. It's a distinctive, he can't lie. That's God, he's the father of lights with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. There's one thing that God can never do and he can never lie, it would be an essential contradiction of his character, right? God is light and in him there's no darkness at all. So he can't be tempted with sin, neither can he tempt anyone with sin. God is the essential, everlasting and eternal truth. And to be a Christian means that we have been brought into fellowship with the God of truth. When the apostle says that we must put away lying, he's not interested in it as the moralists and humanists are. Right? He does not merely say that lying's a terrible thing. We shouldn't do it. But he expounds and explains why. It can do a lot of harm. Of course it's a terrible thing. But as Christians, we have better reasons for putting it off this than to avoid the terrible things that it is. We've been reconciled with God, and we say we know God, we say that we are in fellowship with him and in communion with him, and we need to bring that forth. Psalm 51. Psalm 51. Now. David? was troubled after his most terrible sin. And this was, David had the lesser light of the old dispensation. And yet, in this old dispensation, his heart was troubled because of the deception that he had perpetrated. So it wasn't just the adultery. but it was the lying and the murder and the cover-up that he did and the deceitfulness of his heart. In that, in Psalm 51 he says, Behold, thou desire'st truth in the inner parts. He knew that no pretense or sham or lie can ever avail in the presence of God. He's coming to God and saying, it's no use pretending. It's no use trying to hide anything. Thou desire's truth in the inward part. And if I'm not open here, he seems to say, in absolutely earlier truth roll. Now it's true to say there's nothing that so represents God as truth and truthfulness. It's equally true to say the opposite. That the devil and his very essence and his nature is being a liar. Go to John 8:44. He's talking to the scribes and Pharisees that were trying to harass him and he explains to them, you are your father the devil and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources for he is a liar and the father of it. So speaking the truth and refraining from lying requires us to see what it really means and what it involves, not merely for the sake of being gentlemen and gentle ladies and being proper and being moral, but looking at really seeing what lying is all about. So Paul is saying basically as a new man and woman, put on the new man that is in you. And in this respect, first and foremost, Stop lying. Stop being deceitful. So when you tell a man in the Christian church to stop lying, you're doing something altogether different than you are telling a non-Christian to stop lying. All right? So. Again, when you do it in a Christian way, you support it with doctrine. Here's why you shouldn't lie. You can't do that to a non-believer, right? Another consideration is we have to stop lying because it's the very first sin of man was a result of a lie, wasn't it? The world is as it is today because of a lie. The cause of that first sin was the lie that the devil whispered to Eve. That lie was a whole cause of the trouble. It was the same thing that led to the fall that began, the process that has led to the whole of human history. That is the thing that accounts for the state of the world today. And you look at it, our world today, and you can't, I mean, it's like who can you believe nowadays? And nations between nations, and politicians, and state leaders, and then you look at even our communities, and you know, it's like, who can you trust anymore? It's just the nature. Another thing to consider is the most prominent and most common characteristic, and that's the life of sin. So, let's say you commit a sin. You don't want to be found out. You're ashamed, right? So, what do you do? You don't want anybody to find out? They lie about it. Either lie by omission, minimize it, which is a lie, or they got into a little trouble. And because you told that first lie, now you have to tell another lie to cover up the first. I've been told that liars need to have an amazing memory to remember all the lies they've done. And is there anything more common? of the non-Christian sinful life than the element of lying. It's just part and parcel. Deceit, lying, sham, pretense are more obvious in the life of the world. You know, you look at a party, a get-together, in the secular, in the world, and they get together for, to celebrate a birthday or something, or somebody's retirement. Everybody's jovial and all of that, but then you listen to some of the murmurings and conversations, that person that was just smiling and handshaking too. Right? And we all know it's true, but the pretense of shaman play acting goes on. You don't think that the people in that party know that they're doing that, but they don't care. So lying and pretense, they cause a lot of unhappiness. What's the real essence of sin? What's behind it all? Bernie brought it up last week, he, myself, and I. It's about us. When we lie, we're stealing and promoting ourselves. And we're breaking relationships. So again, it's about self-centeredness. And one of the things that differentiates man from animals is our speech, the ability to take and formulate ideas and concepts into speech. The animal can expect its nature and its behavior. You can have a quiet dog, a nippy dog, a barking dog, a mean dog. You can tell when a dog is afraid, but it doesn't speak. It doesn't formulate. The gift of speech and communication really is part of how God created us in His image. And however the fall affected man. And so our self-regard, our self-worth, how we view ourselves outside of God, the only thing we can do is worship ourselves and promote ourselves. Or manipulate people to promote ourselves. How do we do that? By lying. Because we know the truth about ourselves. We know. And they run. So the anatomy of sin really is about lying. A lie is a thing that comes out of the depths of man's being, and it's a hateful thing, a foul thing. And the one thing that the apostle picks out here, namely, there is nothing which is opposed to the doctrine of the church as lying. Look at the flow of what he's done. He's just explained how the church is and the unity that we have to strive for, and as Christ is ahead. As we see, so is there anything so destructive of the truth of one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one body, one spirit were called into one hope of the calling? The church is like a body fitly joined together and compacted together, all members joined to the head, receiving the same blood supply or one body. Is there anything more destructive to that than lying? Lie not to one another but speak the truth. Every man speak the truth with his neighbor for remembers one of another. That's how he explains it. I believe he was thinking particularly here about the church. Paul's dealing with the whole thing of lying in contrast of the life of the church. We are all members of one another. We can't, if you tell a lie to a member, really you need to consider you're damaging yourself for one body. If you cut your finger, can you just, oh, I'm not hurt? And just, when you cut, it affects your whole body. You feel the pain, you do something. If you pound your hand with, you miss the nail and hit your finger, what's the first thing you do? You know, it's like, oh, and your whole body responds to the pain. So that to lie to another member of the same body of Christ is to be lying to yourself. You're doing harm to yourself because you're doing harm to the body that you're part of. How can there be fellowship if there's lying? It's the exact opposite of true fellowship, isn't it? What makes fellowship possible is what? Trust. Mutual trust. Mutual reliance. A feeling that you can trust one another. And therefore you can speak and speak freely and openly one to another. But the moment the element of lying comes in, fellowship is destroyed. You are no longer free. You do not know how much you can believe or what you can believe about the other person. And that spreads. And if the fellowship is broken, you're in a kind of police state. Everybody's spying on each other and making sure that they're telling, being truthful and it becomes a cancer within the body. You say, I wonder if so and so really means that. I wonder whether they are really true. And what happens to us as Christians is not so much, and not only that we're saved individually, but we're saved as a body. And so, lying makes unity impossible. Our chief devotion then needs to be to the realm of the church and the redeemed. When we say we were once under the power of darkness, but have been delivered and translated into the kingdom of God, dear son, by the washing and regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, what course is open to us but to put away lying? And speaking every man the truth to his neighbor. We need to be known. and obvious to everybody that we're no longer children of the devil. We're no longer children of darkness and of night. Among Christian people, such conduct as lying should not be, should be unthinkable. We're children of God. Thank God that we still have the resources of forgiving one another. One lies. We need to, but the process is, I need to own the lie. I need to own the damage I've done. I need to seek forgiveness. We're told to forgive as Christ forgives, right? How did Christ forgive? When he died on the cross, every person was reconciled to God. His, right? But we don't acquire that fellowship with God until We ask for forgiveness, acknowledge our need, and then put our trust in the completed work of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus for the forgiveness of sins. And so there needs to be that acknowledgement of I have been wrong. A quick forgiveness is not biblical. We can forgive with a small F and give the opportunity for the person to reconcile. That's small of forgiveness. That's what Jesus did on the cross. But true restoration of relationship and true restoration of fellowship isn't accomplished until the offending party acknowledges their need for forgiveness, acknowledges their wrong, and then we can extend that out of the grace of God that's been given to us. So we do so by putting away lying, speaking the truth to one another, proving that we are indeed one body. And speaking the truth when we've committed a sin, like lying, is part of the package. So Paul has given us not only don't do this, do this, and here's why. So Father, we thank you that you've not only given us wonderful, just the blessings you've poured on us and you've revealed through your word the truths of these doctrines, but you've also given us. applications and how to live out these doctrines. And you've given us resources when we failed to come back and restore relationships with both you and our brothers. So thank you Lord and we just thank you again for your wonderful provisions in Jesus' name, amen.
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