Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayerful attention to the passage that we read,
Ephesians chapter four, and reading for our text part of verse 32,
the last verse. God for Christ's sake hath forgiven
you. Let us read from verse 31 and
32. Let all bitterness and wrath
and anger and clamour 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, have forgiven
you. Our text then is an example,
it is a reason why we should walk in a way toward our fellow
men, letting not there be bitterness or wrath, anger, clamour, all
of those evil things. that there be not those, and
that we be kind one to another, forgiving one another. Why? Even as God, for Christ's sake,
hath forgiven you. In other words, before God, we
have walked in a contrary way. We have done those things to
provoke Him to anger, We have been unholy, ungodly sinners. We have walked contrary. We have
given every reason for God to be against us, to not forgive
us, to pour out his wrath upon us, to banish us from his presence,
but he hasn't done that. Why? Was it something in us? No. Was it some of our good works,
good deeds? No. Why was it? It was for the sake of another,
for Christ's sake, because of the Lord Jesus Christ. God has
forgiven us, and therefore we ought to forgive others. Our Lord spoke of a parable one
time, and a man owed his master a great
amount of money. And because he couldn't pay,
the master ordered that he should be sold and his family and all
brought into bondage. And that man, he fell at his
master's feet and he pleaded for mercy. And the master forgave him all
of that debt. He showed him great mercy and
let him go free. But then that same man, he went
out and found one of his fellow labourers who owed him but only
a little amount, and that he took him by the throat and said,
pay me what thou owest. And he sought mercy from him,
but that man would not show him mercy. And so when his master
heard of that, he called him to account and he said, look,
you owed me a tremendous amount of money, and I forgave you that
debt because you asked mercy of me. Why then have you not
shown mercy to your fellow labourer? And he commanded that one that
he should pay all his debt, laid it back on him again. And our
Lord teaches this and through Paul, the Holy Spirit, teaches
this same thing, that in whatever one may rightly owe us or be
indebted to us here, or even call forth our wrath, our anger,
we should remember what the Lord has forgiven us, what he has
buried in forgetfulness, and the reason why that it is because
of Christ's sake. Why for Christ's sake? Because
all of God's people that are saved have been given to the
Lord Jesus Christ to redeem. And He has come to this world,
taken bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. He has dwelt among
us, beholding the wickedness enduring the contradiction of
sinners against himself. And then he went to the cross
and suffered that most agonizing death and the hiding of his father's
face as a sacrifice in our place, as an offering unto God, enduring
the wrath of God instead of us. And his will is that where he
has paid the debt, then those for whom he's paid that debt
go free. They be shown mercy. They be let free. And so for Christ's sake, God has forgiven us. You know, if we had paid for
something, if we had paid for something in a shop, Then one of our friends, one
of our relatives, went to take that article from the shop. And
someone accosted them and said, well, how can you have that article? And you brought forth evidence
and said, well, this has already been paid for. The debt has been
paid for it. They would let you go. Why? For
your sake? But you hadn't paid for it. No.
For the sake of the person that had paid for it. And how would
that person feel if the shopkeeper said, no, I'm not letting that
go? You would hold that shopkeeper to
account and say, look, I've paid for that. That is mine. I can
send whoever I like for that article, that they should have
it freely. because I paid for it. So as
Christ has paid the full debt of his people's sin, so God,
for his sake, lets them go. It is for the glory of Christ. His name shall be called Jesus,
for he shall save his people from their sins. is, I preach thee prayer in John
17. Father, I will that they whom
thou hast given me be with me where I am that they may behold
my glory. And he may ask that, and God
may justly agree to do so, although nothing
unclean Nothing unholy can ever come to heaven, but through the
Lord Jesus Christ he has made his people, his believers, righteous,
acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. And so it is because
of what Christ has done and is doing, because he has ascended
up into heaven as our advocate with the Father. He makes intercession
for us in the presence of God. He appears in the presence of
God for us. He said when he ascended up on
high, I will pray the Father and he will give you another
comforter which shall abide with you forever. Tarry at Jerusalem
until you be endued with power from on high. And the day of
Pentecost, that power was sent forth, and the evidence of it
was the speaking in other languages miraculously. It was the sound
of wind and the vision of clothes of fire sitting on each one of
them. And especially, it was with the
boldness that Peter preached and the blessing upon his preaching
that brought those there to be convinced of their guilt in crucifying
the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the blessing of Christ rising
from the dead, and they are exhorted to believe and repent, that they
might then also be baptised and continue with the apostles as
believers believing that Christ is the Lord Jesus Christ, the
Emmanuel God with us, the Christ, the long expected saviour, was
Jesus of Nazareth, and that he had come and he had offered himself
a sacrifice acceptable unto God. And this then is in our text
that those who No, the Lord Jesus Christ has been the means and
is the reason why God has forgiven them, then they are to act accordingly
to those who trespass against them. Right through this chapter,
it is an exhortation to holiness and to love to walking in a different
way than when we were unbelievers, and a different way to the heathens
that do not know God at all. Of course, the Ephesians were
a people that were, before the gospel, greatly given to idolatry,
especially what they termed the great goddess Diana. For the time of two hours they
cried out when the apostle was trying to preach to them the
gospel. They tried to drown out his voice
and saying, great is the God of the Ephesians, Diana of the
Ephesians. And all of the silversmiths and
the makers of idols, they rose up against Paul because he was
destroying their craft. What a solemn thing that we,
who are so wonderfully and fearfully made, should think that we should
have a God that's made by ourselves, a God of silver, idols of men's
hands. The thing with an idol, you can
make it say what you want it to say. You can put it where
you want it to be. It is your slave. But when we serve the true and
the living God, then we are accountable to him before whom we must stand,
everyone must stand at the last day and give an account, and
it is the true and living God that has revealed to us in his
word how we can truly be saved and face death without fear,
in fact with joy and expectation of being, as the Apostle Paul
said, absent from the body and present with the Lord. The beautiful
words in John 14 often, solemnly really, read at funerals or to
those even that don't believe. In my father's house are many
mansions. If it were not so, I would have
told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place
for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself. that
where I am, there ye may be also. They are beautiful words, but
all the time they are speaking of us being brought to be where
Christ is. And if we have lived in our lives
with no desire for Christ, and we have said, in effect, depart
from us, we desire not the knowledge of thy ways, then we must surely expect to
hear at the last day, depart from me, I never knew you, all
ye that work iniquity. And so may it be that we know,
and in these practical ways, as set before us here in this
epistle, know the reality of forgiveness ourselves, and that
affects how we deal with others. Truly at this time of this pandemic,
I don't think there's ever been a time in our churches or in
the community at large that there's been such a variance of opinions,
strong opinions in different ways. And many of us, we struggle,
struggle with hard feelings against those that we view are walking
so contrary either to the law or it may be they feel it is
to common sense, or a host of different things. And how needful
it is, we think of the beginning of this chapter, the beseeching
of the apostle that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye
are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering,
forbearing one another in love, endeavouring to keep the unity
of the spirit in the bond of peace. It's very easy to get
stirred up, to get cross, to get angry with one another, and
yet we're to endeavour or try very much to keep the unity of
the spirit in the bond of peace. Never been a day, really, that
we don't so much need the exhortation and the incentive of this chapter
in our dealing one with another and how we walk toward those
that differ in what they believe is right and how they walk. But what is upon my spirit especially
tonight is these words really, because of another. Our text
says, God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. He is forgiving
us for the sake of another. And this theme, this teaching,
runs right through the Word of God. And I wanted to look, there
are seven occasions through the Word of God, where we find that
the actions of one has profoundly affected another, and that what
is brought upon one person is because of another's actions. Now I want to begin, and this
is in both ways, in you might say a negative way and a positive
way, And I want to begin with Adam and Adam's sin. The Apostle Paul, when he writes
to the Romans, in the fifth chapter in Romans, he says in verse 12,
Wherefore, as by one man's sin entered into the world and death
by sin, And so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. And so what he is saying is,
Adam and Eve were given the law of God. They were told that they
were not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil. If they did, then in the day
that they ate thereof, they would surely die. and they being representative
of the human race, the father of us all. If they died, then
all of their descendants would also die. And they did eat of
that fruit, they did rebel, they did believe Satan and not God. They died spiritually immediately
and lost the communion, fellowship, and joy they had with the Lord,
and they died in time, as all of us must die. And every graveyard
testifies of that, and the experience of every one of us who have seen
parents pass away, and those who have gone before us pass
away. We know that death is in the
world, and the word of God tells us why. It tells us because Adam
sinned, but not only because of Adam's sin, but all have sinned. And there's two points here. First, we are sinners in Adam,
that is by nature we are sinners. We don't come into this world
as a baby with a clean slate and all of what we do wrong is
learnt from our parents. No, we come in as sinners and
those seeds of Sin and rebellion and evil are in us. They don't need to be taught
us, they are in us. And any parent will know as they
see their children and the things that come out in them at a very
young age, that that is so. And this is a very scriptural
doctrine, that we are sinners by nature. We need that sin forgiven
and pardoned and blotted down, but then We sin personally. And so right through our lives,
we are adding sin to sin. And we read further on, for until
the law, sin was in the world. But sin is not imputed when there
is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from
Adam to Moses. That is, it wasn't until Moses'
time that the Ten Commandments were actually written. right
the way from Adam's day, the law was still there. Whether
the law is given in writing or whether it is given verbally,
it is still given from the Lord. But what is set before us here
is that when there is the law written, then it can be really
shown that we have transgressed and sinned against that law. And the law is given for that
purpose, not to save us, not to cause us to obey it, to be
saved that way, but to convince us that we are sinners. And it
is good for us to read through the Ten Commandments and to compare
our lives with that if we think that we are spotless and sinless
and that we can stand before God in our own good works, then
compare them with the holy law of God. And whoso offendeth in
one point is guilty of all, and our Lord, in his Sermon on the
Mount, clearly sets forth it is in the thought, not just the
deed. Whoso hateth his brother without
a cause hath committed murder. and whosoever looketh on a woman
to lust after in his heart hath committed adultery already. It is the very thought of foolishness
is sin, and every thought is to be brought as to the bar of
God's righteous judgment. And so for our first point, it
is Adam has sinned, and so because of Adam, then we also are sinners,
we are also under the sentence of death, and our very lives
bear witness to the truth of that, and our death and the death
of all those that we've seen died bears witness to that as
well. So our thought then, because
of another, because of Adam's sin, sin entered into the world. Adam was representative, but
then Paul goes on in this fifth chapter of Romans that also the
Lord Jesus Christ is a representative head over his people as well. And that's summed up in verse
19 of chapter five in Romans, For as by one man's disobedience
many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one, that is
the Lord Jesus Christ, shall many be made righteous. And this chapter beautifully
teaches this truth. Because of another, because of
Adam all sin, because of Christ, all that believe are saved. The second I bring before you
is the case of Abraham. In Genesis and chapter 26, we
read of a blessing upon Isaac. In verse five of Genesis 26,
verse five, We read the Lord saying to Isaac,
or verse four, he says, that I'll make thy seed to multiply
as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these
countries, and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth
be blessed. The apostle Paul later on says
that seed is Christ. It's not as seeds of many, but
it is pointing to Christ. and Christ came as a descendant
of Isaac, a descendant of Abraham. And he says in verse five, because
that Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments,
my statutes, and my laws. And there is God saying he will
bless Isaac, and he's going to bless him because of what Abraham
had done. Abraham by faith had walked in
the fear of God, he'd done what the Lord had commanded him, and
the faith that Abraham had was the faith in a coming Messiah,
in Christ. That was where his faith was,
and that was what caused him to obey God in all that he did. And the point I want to make in one
sense is very humbling for Isaac. Imagine if we were told by someone
that they were going to bless us. We would like to hear them
say, because of something we've done. But if they don't say anything
about what we've done and say, well, I'm going to give you favours
and blessings because of what your parents done. In one sense it's very humbling
that this is not for our sake at all but for another's sake.
And God gave to Abraham the promises and because of that he blessed
Isaac, he blessed Jacob after him and he blessed each that
followed. and brought forth at last our
Lord Jesus Christ. If we go back from Genesis 26
and we go back to Genesis 19, we read of the destruction of
Sodom and Gomorrah, that very wicked city. But Lot, Abraham's
relative, was dwelling in that city. When God said he would
destroy it, then Abraham, he pleaded with God that if there
were ten righteous in that city, that he would spare that city.
And he said that surely it was not with the character of God
to destroy the righteous with the wicked. And Yet there were
not ten in that city, but God brought Lot out of it before
he destroyed it. And so we read in Genesis chapter
19 and verse 29 of what happened when it was destroyed. We read this word, and it came
to pass when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that is
Sodom and Gomorrah and other cities there, that God remembered
Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he
overthrew the cities in the which God dwelt. Now it doesn't say
God remembered Lot, but God remembered Abraham. So because of another,
because of Abraham, Lot was brought out and didn't perish with all
of the others in that city. We have another case, and this
is in the second book of Kings, regarding the Israelitist king
who was a wicked king, King Jehoram. In 2 Kings chapter 3 we read of the king of Israel and the
king of Judah going against Moab. And they went through the wilderness,
a roundabout way to get behind them, and they had no water. and they feared that they would
then perish through thirst before they even got to the enemy at
all. And so we have in 2 Kings chapter
3, the king of Israel, and he immediately
blames the true God. He says in verse 10, The King
of Israel said, Alas, that the Lord hath called these three
kings together to deliver them into the hand of Moab. Immediately,
when things go wrong, he blames God. And that's very much with
our nature. When things go wrong, then we
blame God for it. Even though in our lives, we
don't serve God. Many are like that. They have
no thought of God. They don't serve him. They don't
acknowledge him, they don't thank him for every blessing that they
have. But when things go wrong, it's always God's fault. And
the king of Israel was like that. But Jehoshaphat, who was the
king of Judah, and he was a godly king, he said, is there not here
a prophet of the Lord that we may inquire of the Lord by him? And one of the kings of Israel's
servants answered and said, Here is Elisha, the son of Shaphan,
which poured water on the hands of Elijah. And Jehoshaphat said,
The word of the Lord is with him. So the king of Israel and
Jehoshaphat and the king of Eden went down to him. And now this
is what Elisha said. Elisha said unto the king of
Israel, that's Jehoram, What have I to do with thee? Get thee
to the prophets of thy father, and to the prophets of thy mother.'
And the king of Israel said unto him, Nay, but the Lord hath called
these three kings together to deliver them into the hand of
Moab." And he's very right. What Elisha had said, he was
the king of Israel, and the king of Israel had the prophets of
Baal, and his mother's prophets as well. And Elisha right there
is saying, now it's a time of trouble. You go to your gods.
You go to your prophets. But Jehoram, he still maintains
his thing. No, it's the Lord's fault. That's why we're coming to you.
It's the Lord's fault. But this is what Elisha said.
As the Lord of hosts liveth, this in verse 14, before whom
I stand, surely were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat,
the king of Judah, I would not look toward thee, nor see thee. So if Jehoram was on his own,
the king of Israel, Elisha would not have looked at him, he would
not have come to him at all. The benefit and blessing to that
wicked king was the fact that he had a godly king there. The
fact that Jehoshaphat was there. And so Elisha would look toward
him and help all of that company because of that one that was
good. And in one sense we have a beautiful
type of this with us as sinners like the king of Israel. Why
would God look toward us? The Word of God says that we
are full of wounds and bruises and putrefying sins, that God
cannot look upon sin without utter abhorrence, that our hearts
are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. But because
of the Lord Jesus Christ, God will look toward us. The Scripture
speaks of it as being accepted in the Beloved. And dear friends,
if you and I feel how wicked, ungodly we are, how easy we blame
God, then may this case be an encouragement for us to think
on this, that God, for Christ's sake, would forgive us, that
He, like with Elisha, would look toward us, those so undeserving
and so much full of sin, because of the Lord Jesus Christ, to
be accepted in Him, to be found in Him, not having our own righteousness
which is of the law, but that which is through faith. In other
words, trusting in what Christ has done, His perfect life, His
obedience, and not our sin-stained life. And so, we have in this
illustration here, because of another, because of Jehoshaphat,
then Elisha would look toward those three kings and he would
help them and bless them and they were delivered, they were
saved. And the Lord both gave them water
and also delivered them from their enemies. You can read that
in the second book of Kings and chapter three. The next one I'll bring before
you, the fifth one, is that which we find in the book of the Acts
of the Apostles. And it is when Paul is being
brought to Rome in a sailing ship and they are caught in what
appears to be almost like a hurricane and for many days they're tossed
up and down in the Mediterranean and eventually the ship is wrecked
but all of them are saved. And we have it in Acts chapter
27 and if we Read the account from verse 22,
because this is after all hope that they should be saved was
taken away. Paul, he stands in the middle,
he said in verse 21, he should have hearkened unto me, he should
have not loosed from Crete, and to have gained this harm and
loss. Then he says in verse 22, Now
I exhort you to be of good cheer, for there shall be no loss of
any man's life among you but of the ship. For there stood
by me this night the angel of God, whose I am and whom I serve,
saying, Fear not, Paul, thou must be brought before Caesar,
And lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee. Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer,
for I believe God, that it shall be even as it was told me." And
so here is Paul, and there are a lot of people in this ship,
just under 300, and they were all saved. because there was one in that
ship that feared God, one that was precious in the sight of
God, and that had prayed to him and sought unto the Lord. And
the Lord had heard him and was to save not just him, but all
those that were in the ship. And later on we have another
illustration of because of another When they actually then came
to be wrecked and the ship, we read in verse 41, falling into
a place where two seas met, they ran the ship aground and the
fore part stuck fast and remained unmovable, it's on an island,
but the hinder part was broken with the violence of the waves.
Then we read this, The soldiers' council was to kill the prisoners. Paul was a prisoner, amongst
many other prisoners, being brought to Rome. And the reason why the soldiers'
council was to kill them, lest any of them should swim out and
escape. But then we read this, but the
centurion, willing to save Paul, kept them from their purpose.
and commanded that they which could swim should cast themselves
first into the sea and get to land. And the rest, some on boards,
some on broken pieces of the ship, and so it came to pass
that they escaped all safe to land. If it hadn't have been
Paul, because of Paul, then these soldiers would have killed all
of those prisoners. And so for the sake of another,
others had their lives spared and blessed. The next that I read before you
is how that we are to walk, here below. And this is in Paul's
letter to the Corinthians, the second epistle. And chapter 12,
and Paul endured many things, suffered many, many things. And
he says in verse 10, therefore I take pleasure in infirmities,
in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses
for Christ's sake. for Christ's sake. For when I
am weak, then am I strong. Why was this? Paul had had a
thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet him, some
affliction, some think it was cataracts, very poor eyesight,
affliction that he had. We're not told. But we are told,
for this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that he might depart
from me. And he said unto me, My grace
is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, will
I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may
rest upon me. So what the apostle had, he had
this thing in his life, that he so prayed the Lord, Lord,
take it away. And the Lord said, no, it's still
going to stay there. Whatever illness it was, whether
infirmity, difficulty, I'm not going to cure it, it's going
to stay there, but I'll give you grace to bear it. I'll give
you that strength in the inner man, in your character, in the
grace that I give you to be able to bear that trial, he says,
my grace is sufficient, it's enough. You don't need anything
more than that. My strength, the strength that
I will give you to bear that is made perfect in weakness. Now if you had someone carrying
a heavy load and they looked at someone looking on and they
said, look, please take this load off me. The person said,
no, no, I'm not going to take it off you. but I'm going to
give you something to give you extra strength and extra help
to be able to endure it and to encourage you in it. We are told, cast thy burden
upon the Lord and he shall sustain thee, not cast thy burden upon
the Lord and you won't feel the burden anymore. No, you still
have the burden, but you will be sustained under it. You might be really tried, the
Lord has not answered your prayers, hasn't taken away what you so
feared, haven't stopped happening, what you feared would happen
and it has happened and you've had to walk this path and the
burden is on you. But the Lord says, I'll give
you grace, I'll give you help, I'll be with you in this trial,
I'll uphold you, I'll strengthen you, I'll bring you safely through
it, and you'll glorify me." And you know the apostle, he said
then, he would glory in those very things that he so wanted
to be taken away. He says, when I am weak, then
am I strong. But it's especially this. Why
does he even take pleasure in them? For Christ's sake. And may the Lord help us to bear
the things that we go through, to act rightly with those of
our fellow travellers to eternity. For Christ's sake. Because this
is the path he has appointed for us. chosen out, directed. So then we come in the last point
back to the Lord. God for Christ's sake hath forgiven
you. The Lord Jesus Christ dying in
the place of his people and because the Lord Jesus Christ has done
that, has settled the debt, paid the debt, and the empty tomb
proves it, then God forgives his dear people. May we plead the name of the
Lord. The Lord Jesus is exalted to
give repentance and remission of sins unto Israel. unto the
Israel of God, both Jews and Gentiles. And we are to seek
that mercy in him, and for his sake we are to plead his name,
what Christ has done, his sacrifice alone and not our own. It is
because of another, not ourselves, because of Christ. because of
his sufferings, because of his obedience. His way was much rougher
and darker than mine. Shall my Lord suffer and shall
I repine? Shall we see the wrath of God
fall upon the Lord for us, for our sins? And then we murmur,
at the path that we are to walk, may be at the hands of sinners,
may be at the hands, like our Lord suffered, of his own disciples
that all forsook him and fled. May this word then remain with
us, be a help and comfort for us, even as God, for Christ's
sake, hath forgiven you. May be the Lord's word to you,
God, for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.