You would turn with me in your
Bibles to Ephesians chapter four. After twenty five weeks, we have
finally breached the introduction of this letter. And moved into
the application of this introduction. That's nearly half a year. of being able to go through the
letter of Ephesians, I believe it will be about that much longer
to finish it. I'd like to read, if you don't
mind this morning, starting in chapter three. Verse 14, and I read through
the end of verse. Six of chapter four, follow with
me. Three, 14. For this reason, I bow my knees
before the father from whom every family in heaven and on earth
is named. But according to the riches of his glory, he may grant
you to be strengthened with power through his spirit, spirit in
your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through
faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love may have
strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth
and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ
that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the
fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do
far more abundantly than all we ask or think according to
the power at work within us, to Him be glory in the church
and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen. I, therefore, a prisoner
of the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling
to which you have been called with all humility and gentleness,
with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain
the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body
and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope that belongs
to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father
of all who is over all and through all and in all. I pray God would
bless the reading and the hearing of his word that through his
word, you might be made alive today and through his word, you
might be empowered to live. Church, in our world today, more
and more people are concerned with image than any other thing. It seems today everywhere you
look, whether it be the racks of the magazines or whether it
be the television commercials or the posters on the sides of
the road, image. It's all about image. It's about
what we look like in the eyes of other people. And we as a
church know we're not immune to such things. We see concerns
for body image. We see concerns for financial
status, social status, social image that comes in cars and
clothes and fitness. We see people of the world work
hard every day to place themselves in the right light, in the right
position, in the right power, for the right prestige. We see
that in the world of corporations. We see that in the homes of our
country. We see that in our churches.
Even in the church, people work to prepare and present an image
of themselves that fits their own ideals of what they believe
others are looking for in them. And in some sense, we become
liars to our own selves when we try to fit the image that
the world desires in us. This can be seen in one's words,
in our attitudes, in our affections, in our desires, in our clothing,
in our possessions, in our hobbies. And none of us in the room today
are able to say that we're not aware of a quote image that we're
trying to portray. All of us got up today and we
did something so that we would look somewhat presentable before
we came out of the house. Some of us just got out of bed
and we thought we looked good enough. Maybe we're a little
too prideful and some of us spent hours upon hours trying to make
ourselves look better. But whatever we did today, we
are trying to portray an image. And it can easily become an image
that is not called for in Scripture. Our church, Grace Truth Church,
our full name is Sovereign Grace Truth Baptist Church Incorporated. Grace Truth is so much easier. We exist, our mission statement
is read this way, Grace Truth Church exists to be a people
for God's glory as worshipers and in spirit and in truth who
live as though they have received grace upon grace and display
the power of God through the gospel in our lives together
while evangelizing the world with the fullness of joy that
is found in Jesus Christ alone. That is what we exist for. It took ten years to create that
mission statement. It took ten long, laborious years
of dying and dying and dying for God to show me that is what
the church should be. And thank God for His gracious
killing of my flesh and my tradition. See, the reality is that we're
all casting a vision. We're all casting an image to
the world so that the world might see us for who we are. And as
the reformers used to say, we're all casting a vision or an image
before God, Coram Deo, in the face of God. The question is,
what is it that others see? What is it that the world sees
in us? What is it that God sees deep within us? Confession, the word confession,
to break it down in some sense, if a criminal confesses to a
crime and then it's later discovered that that criminal did not commit
that crime, it was not a confession, it was a lie. So confession is
an expression of absolute truth. If I confess something, that
means that I'm telling the truth about it. We often hear the idea
that we should confess that Jesus is Lord. We do see that in Romans
chapter 10, where Paul is encouraging those Roman Christians who are
about to lose their head if they do not confess that Caesar is
Lord, that if they confess that Jesus is Lord and they believe
in their heart that God has raised them from the dead, they will
be saved. Though they die in their flesh and though their
head does fall to the ground, they will be saved for Christ
will make them alive. That's the context of Romans
10, 9 and 10, by the way, to the Romans. But if Christ
is Lord, then what reality would truly be reflected in our life?
What evidence would be reflective in our lives? What image would
be seen by the world, by the enemy, by the church and by God? The problem comes when we hear
things like I'm going to preach today in chapter 4, and we say,
oh yes, I can do this. Now we're moving forward to something
that I can grab and put my teeth into. I can become patient, and
I can become loving, and I can become humble. Yeah? Then do it. I know I can do it! Well, that's
proudly trying to be humble. We defeat ourselves at the very
turn. And sometimes when we hear preaching like this, we immediately
are overcome by this burden or this urge. And Paul even uses
that term in this text, urge. I urge you to do something. We need to do something. We need
to do something in order to make our image right before men, right
before God. However, we're not able to do
this in our power church. We're not able to be a people
for God's own glory, to live as worshipers. in spirit and
in truth, who live as though they have received grace upon
grace, while sharing our faith to bring others to the joy of
Christ in unity, one mind, one spirit, one body. We're not able
to do this stuff in our power. We know that. We've seen that.
But as we've seen thus far in the letter to the Ephesians,
it is by the power of God who is able to effect this reality
in our lives. Not perfection, but power. We powerfully fight against sin. We powerfully stand against the
enemy. We powerfully stand in unity and in love. We powerfully
lay our lives down for the sake of the gospel. And we do it with
the power of God, not with the power of man. Do we struggle with sin or do
we snuggle with sin? That sounds so very simplistic,
but that's a good way that the Lord has shown me to decide whether
or not I am sinning and fighting or sinning and enjoying. Am I
fighting the fight of faith by fighting against the flesh with
the power of God? Or am I just resting in the sin that, oh,
I'm forgiven? God understands. You know what
God understands about sin? Look at the cross. That's how
God feels about sin. He does not look at it and go,
oh, they can't help themselves. But we can. We are born into
sin. We are conceived as heirs of
the sin nature, which the nature in itself without any act of
sin is condemned. It's under the wrath and the
judgment of God. Do we endeavor to love and to follow Christ,
or are we just happy to have a ticket to heaven? See, these
questions hit at the core of our hearts. They reveal something
about who we really are inside. They reveal about what is true,
and they cause an internal confession in our own minds. That's not
me. Is it? Because we have two places. We are either in the church,
as the church now. We're in two places. We are either
A. trusting in ourselves to live for holiness, or B, trusting
in Christ and His holiness. If we trust in A, then we will
forever be a slave to the law, and thus we will be judged by
the law, and we will be found guilty of breaking the law, and
we will be condemned. If we trust in B, we are free
to know that what we are able to do for the sake of holiness
is but a reflection, an image of walking in the shadow of the
light of Christ. who is the image of God. Do you
see that? We are to live for the glory
of God in order that we worship Him. Let me read to you the mission
statement of Grace True Church once more, and then as we look
at this text here, you'll see. The power to become a church,
to be a people. It's not an institution. It's
not an organized thing, though we have organized. It's not an
organized institution that we operate in a corporate way. We
operate corporately as a body. And that's what Paul's about
to start here. One more. One more time. Grace
through church exists to be a people. and the verb there be, to be
a people for God's glory as worshipers in spirit and truth who live
as though they have received grace upon grace and display
the power of the gospel in our lives together while evangelizing
the world with the fullness of joy that is found in Jesus Christ
alone. Period. So let's look at God's
Word. Verse 1 of chapter 4. Let me
just read the first six verses again to get it fresh in our
mind, and then I'm going to only really deal with the first three
today. And then I'm going to have to
come back next week and the next week to verse 3 and 4. I therefore... Now see, that
therefore is a continuation of what we've already seen for three
chapters. Because of all that, I therefore,
Paul, a prisoner for the Lord, We've already seen that once
before. Urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which
you have been called with all humility. And that all there
continues with the others, all gentleness, with all patience,
always bearing with one another, always in love, always being
eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit, always in the bond
of peace. All right, we'll just stop there.
So this is what Paul, because of the power of God and His creating
force in us to make us His children and to declare us righteous through
the power of Jesus Christ and His life and His resurrection
from the dead and His willing sacrifice, not necessarily in
that order, because of all that, urge you to walk in a manner
worthy. And we just sing the prayer last week and the week
before. He says that if we pray, we will be filled with all the
fullness of God. And I pray, Paul says, that you
would be strengthened to understand. You remember this? The love of
God, the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. I pray that
you would know what is unknowable. I pray that you would be filled
with what is never fillable. And the word dwell, I pray that
the love of Christ would dwell richly in you through the Spirit
of God. The only other place that we
see that word is in Colossians 1 where the fullness of God dwelt
in Christ. He owns us. Jesus bought us. We weren't out there trying to
auction ourselves off. We weren't sitting in the window
hoping to be saved. We were running in the depths
of the darkness, hiding in the crevices of depravity. And God,
who is rich in love and rich in mercy, in this way, gave His
Son to save us while we ran. That's the gospel. Now, I pray,
because God is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask
or think, what's the result of what God can do? We worship.
To Him be the glory in the church and in Jesus Christ through all
generations forever and ever. Amen. The word here that I want you
to see is not listed here, but it's been brought in. What is
the outcome of God's power in the church? To the praise of
His glorious grace. The only reason God saves is
to the praise of His glorious grace. It is a lie. to put mankind on
a pedestal above God's worth. It is a lie to say that God was
so stricken with grief that He must save all men. That's not
a sovereign God. As a matter of fact, we see time
and time again, Isaiah 6, where God disallows belief in the nation
of Israel. He tells Isaiah, you go preach.
And you're going to preach, and you're going to preach, and you're
going to preach repentance. And I am going to seal their hearts
and make them cold, and they will not believe because I will
not let them believe. We see in Mark's Gospel, after
the rich young ruler came and he wanted eternal life, he knelt
down before God, before Jesus, and called Him divine, knew that
He was from God, said that He was good. Jesus rebukes him.
He stays in that position. He sought after Him. He ran after
Him. He knelt before Him and He says,
You are divine. I want eternal life. He wanted
eternal life. And Jesus says, Be holy. And
this man was blind. And he says, I am holy. I've
kept the commandments. Jesus tested him and said, Then
take everything that you have and go give it away. And come
back and follow me. You have treasures in heaven. And the man walked away dejected. He rejected what Christ had to
say, for he had much wealth. His passion and his love and
his adoration for the things of this world. And the disciples were astonished.
And Jesus said it is easier for a camel. In the Greek, a camel. What is a camel? It's a big animal.
I have heard higher criticism that said that that's a place
in the Middle East that camels had to kneel down to get under
the needle. No, Jesus literally was speaking
of a sewing needle. and a big animal sticking it
through the sewing needle. Jesus says that it is easier
for a camel to go through the thread of a sewing needle than
it is for a rich man to go to heaven. And the disciples asked
the question, then who can be saved? And Jesus says it is impossible
for men to be saved. But what is impossible with man
is possible with God. Do you see that? That's grace,
OK? So the way Paul is saying, I
urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which
you've been called. How has God called us? He's called
us by grace and through grace and he's called us for grace.
God's grace, God's power, God's love, God's mercy, all this intertwines. And the way it's seen and revealed
is a revelation of God's glory. So it's immeasurable. Grace, I want you to see that
Paul, the way I've entitled this message is therefore walk in,
excuse me, therefore walk worthy of grace. That's how we ought
to walk before the Lord, worthy of grace. And it's a it's a trick. Because we're not worthy to walk
in grace. It's the whole point. We're not worthy to walk in grace,
we're not worthy to receive grace, otherwise it wouldn't be grace,
it'd be payment. Grace is What we don't deserve and beyond that,
immeasurably rich. So we can't walk worthy, but
we're told to walk worthy. So let's look at that. And by
God's grace, I pray that you'll see that grace in the very definition
has a powerful, powerful and sufficient meaning. You can you
can say mercy. You can say favor. You can look
at it as this free favor that is not due. And because grace
is the means and the method of salvation, and because God, Jesus
Christ is God, is the author and perfecter of our salvation,
of our faith, Hebrews chapter 10 or 12, we know that God saves those.
And here's an identifier. We've already seen it. This is
just a re-preach of the first three chapters. Paul has already
said this. Paul said you were dead in your sins and trespasses
against God. You were without hope in the
world. You were lost. Do you remember all that? A month or so ago?
I'm just going to bullet that. God saves those who cannot save
themselves. God saves those who do not desire
to be saved. God saves those who do not know
Him and do not love Him. And God saves those who are dead
and not alive. That's who people are saved.
Jesus did not come to save the righteous. He condemned the righteous
and He saved the sinners. He saved the lost. He brings
to life what was dead. He does not accept that which
is alive. Grace means that man who is eternally
sinful by nature, not just actions or thoughts, is rightly due judgment. Divine judgment. Because judgment
against evil is good all the time. So grace is getting mercy. Grace is getting mercy instead
of judgment. And favor. Getting God's righteousness. Because it's not just we're not
going to give you judgment. He gives us something that could
never be ours. Righteousness. You see that?
For unless you be holy, you will perish. You cannot see God except
that you are holy. So, we not only get what we don't
deserve, I mean, we only not get what we do deserve. We don't.
We only get mercy. We get righteousness. So we seek
God's grace in a double way of avoiding judgment, which is deserved,
and getting holiness, which is not deserved. Why would I give
the essence of my glory and my worth to things that spit in
my face? Why? Because that's the love and the
mercy of God. You want to feel special? Understand
how God loves you. in spite of you. You see the
wickedness of the center core of your being, and you know just
how unworthy you are to walk in the love of God, and He loves
you anyway to the point that He becomes like us, takes on
sin, and crucifies Himself on the cross, that He might be free
and righteous to give us righteousness. That's love. So we don't put
our hand in the fist in the face of God and say, I'm not going
to love you. Why would you not love that? The reason you don't
love a God like that is because you've never seen a God like
that. And if you haven't seen a God like that, you've not been
born again, according to John 3. And Jesus says that if you
want to see the kingdom of heaven, you must be born again. That
which is born of flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit
is of the Spirit. So God's Spirit must give you rebirth. That's
a gift of grace. This is done by recreating the
heart. We become the righteousness of God. God in His power and
for His pleasure brings us to life. He brings to life a dead
sinner and makes him alive. This is possible because Christ
paid the debt of all who believe. So no man who believes is indebted
to God. No man who is a Christian is
indebted to God. You owe God nothing, but you
owe God everything. You owe God nothing in payment
for your sin, for it has been atoned for. But you owe God everything
in the salvation of your soul, for He has given you everything. But those who do not believe
are condemned already. Jesus says the wrath of God remains
on them because they fail to believe in the only Son or in
the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And so this grace,
as we've seen, is an action of God. And the evidence of God's
regenerative power is that We respond in faith, and we respond
in repentance, and it's not a point in history. Nowhere in the Word
of God is there ever salvation because of a time where you accepted
Jesus or a time where you had faith. It is a persevering, eternal,
everlasting, enduring faith that began at some time, but that
is every second of your life repenting and believing in Jesus.
Because it is not your mind or choice that saves you. It is
God's grace through His power that regenerates you to bring
you to faith in Jesus Christ. There is no other way under the
sun to be saved except through Christ alone. Now the problem
is that we sometimes think we are worthy because we have this
attitude of worthiness. We believe that we put our faith
in a decision And we think that that decision has made it certain
that we're saved. Well, friends, I had a decision
to get up this morning in a standard routine, but yesterday some things
changed, and it changed my entire day today. I had to change my
plans, then I had a decision to do something else, and that
changed, and then this changed, and I'm like, what in the world?
I just better go uptown and see what's going on. Maybe the world's
come to an end. I can't get anything together. Come up here, make
sure the air's on. Make sure things are good. I
find leaves all over the place. I don't know how that worked.
I think I had the air conditioning blowing this way and it blew leaves.
And so I'm like, well, God, what are you doing with my day? I
chose to do all sorts of things, but my day has been orchestrated
differently. And then lo and behold, I see
why. Because I went someplace that I've never gone or don't
ever go. And I met a brother in the Lord
who was hungry for the gospel. And he said, are you a pastor?
Could you sit with me? And for an hour and a half, we
sat and talked about the gospel. I'd much rather have slept a
little later or done what I normally do or gotten something to eat.
But no, that's not what. So no matter what I choose, God
is going to move in my life the way he wants me to move. So at
lunchtime, there I am sitting with a brother. That I never would have met had
everything gone the way I wanted it to go yesterday and today. But Paul. And the scripture teaches
us that God And His grace brings faith and repentance for
as long as a man lives on this earth. This faith is trusted
in Christ alone. It does not include the following.
Listen to this. This is a list I just sort of
threw out. Faith in Jesus Christ does not include the following.
It does not include facts about Jesus. It does not include doctrines
about Jesus. It does not include personal
decisions and personal faith and personal repentance. It does
not include individual alignment with a certain church. It does
not include church membership. It does not include baptism.
It does not include obedience. It does not include corporate
forgiveness and say, oh, we're all one body. We're all Jews.
We're all... It does not include anything of this nature. It does
not include morality. Morality is doing what is required
to meet a standard of righteousness. Believing in facts no more makes
one moral than believing in Superman makes one supernatural. You cannot
believe the facts about Jesus and say, well, I believe those
are true, so therefore I'm saved. That is a joke. That is nowhere. As a matter of fact, Jesus even
makes it very clear that the demons believe in Tremble. The
demons have more confidence that Jesus is who He says He is than
we do. They know Him. They worshipped
Him for eons of eternity past. God saves apart from morality.
Jesus came to save us from our morality. Jesus came to save
us from our religion. Jesus came. God saves because
man is conceived in sin. We are sinners. This is why Jesus
had to be born not of a human man, but of a virgin by the Holy
Spirit. Had He been born of an earthly
father, He'd be not worthy to be the sacrifice for the sins
of the church. He'd just be like us, and God
would have pat a sinful body on him. Wicked. We who are conceived as human
beings inherit the death sentence from our father Adam, the first
man. The first Adam, all die. All
who are in Christ are made alive. The second Adam. Those who are
made alive in Christ have been so made by God's power, which
is effected how? Graciously. Graciously. Then, we who are alive in Christ,
when commanded to walk in His image, we must go back to the
manner by which we desired Him at first, which is by His grace,
by His power, by His mercy. See, I love this language. I
love what is said to us here. This word means that because
of all we have learned thus far in this letter, we should now,
therefore, walk worthy of the call. Because
of all this, therefore, walk worthy of the call, which is
the call of walking in grace. That's what I see here. We are
made alive by grace and we live by grace. We mediate by grace
and we minister by grace. We do that through faith, trusting
in the grace of God. So we get grace and faith is
the response of grace. It is the power of grace. Faith
is a continual resting. Think about this. It's counterproductive. All these truths seem to be oxymoronic. They contradict each other in
the human wisdom. We rest by fighting to rest. As I say, I need to take a nap,
so I'm going to climb that mountain to sleep up top. That's what
we're doing. We're climbing a mountain that's
15,000 feet up and it's always cold and it's always snowing
and it's straight. And we're climbing that mountain with our
bare hands by faith to know that at the top it's God's grace.
But climbing that mountain and getting to the top doesn't save
us. We're already saved. And it's impossible for humans
to do, but through God's power, they're able to do supernatural
things. That's what Paul's telling us to urge you to walk in a manner
worthy of the calling to which you've been called. Well, how
is one worthy? How he says, I urge you, I urge
you, we are made alive and we live by grace. And that's it. There's nothing else. And so
Paul, as a prisoner of the Lord, urges. This is a calling or a
command to come close to one. I urge you. I draw you. I influence you. I want to direct
you and push. And Paul says, come to the light
of Jesus Christ with your life. Walk in the light of the life
of Christ. You have been transferred from
the domain of darkness to walk in this marvelous light. So we're
to walk in a manner worthy, but we're not worthy, are we? How
can a sinner become worthy? I've already asked this question,
but what type of act or decision can make this certain? What attitude
will prevail on such worthiness? What specific fact or information
needs to be held to make one worthy? None. God alone makes
one worthy. God alone makes one righteous.
God alone makes one available. And He has prepared us, Christ
has prepared us as children to be adopted before the foundations
of the world. We are worthy only because God makes us worthy.
His great love and His mercy of grace toward us that we can
never, ever test drive on our own. We can never try on the
grace of God. It's not possible. We can never
try on worthiness. Well, this didn't really fit.
I'm going to... You can't try Jesus. You can't test Him out.
You either trust in Him and believe and you've been reborn or you're
not and the wrath of God remains on you. So walking worthy, we
ought to suffer, we ought to turn from sin, we ought to believe,
we ought to love Him, we ought to love each other. These are
the things that the manner describes. Walking worthy of grace is walking
by faith as one who is saved without merit. Walking by faith
as one who is saved without movement. You've done nothing to receive
that salvation. Walking by faith is one who is
saved without means. It's not possible for you to
even come to approach that salvation. And walking by faith is one who
is saved without morals. That stuff just pops out like
that. Therefore, I urge you to welcome
them in a word which has been called with all humility and
gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager
to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace."
And so what we see here now is a direct transition into the
application, into the outcome of all the truth that God has
stored with us. We see a shift from the proclamation
of God's actions in creating the church to the presentation
of the church for the glory of God and by His power. In other
words, we see the church now displaying God's creative and
gracious power by being living examples of Christlike devotion,
Christlike humility, Christlike worship, Christlike gentleness,
Christlike patience, bearing with one another just as Christ
bared with us, and love maintaining the unity of the Spirit in the
bond of peace. All is a very operative word there, as I've
always already emphasized in the reading, all humility. And
we'll look at some of these all's and try to examine our lives
as God's children by this command. And also I call it a declaration
today. Church. The whole reality of
walking in a manner worthy is to know and trust in the worthy
manner of Jesus Christ, the worthy life of Jesus Christ, the worthy
person of Jesus Christ. That's how we walk worthy when
we're in Christ. Christ has walked worthy already.
He's gone before us, and there have been millions of Christians
who have gone before us. And so now, as it says in Hebrews,
we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses. We pivot
our eyes on Christ. who is the author and the perfecter
of our faith, and we trust in Him. He perfects our faith. He strengthens us by grace and
empowers us to be who He has called us to be. First, as one
who walks by faith. We have been called. I'm probably
going to have to revisit this next week, but understand what
we've been called to. We've been called to these specific
things, but there's so much more that we see. We've been called
to see Christ. We've been called to see His
beauty, to believe. We've been called to repent of
our sin. We've been called to adore Him as our only treasure.
We've been called to long for His glory. We've been called
to live for His glory. We've been called to to dig and
devour the Word of God as a teacher of grace. We've been called to
be filled with all the fullness of God. We've been called to
be joyful. We've been called to be loving. We've been called
to die to the flesh. We've been called to lay down
our lives. We've been called to display the wisdom of God,
the manifold wisdom of God, the power of God, the grace of God,
for the glory of God, not only to the world and to His own face,
but to the enemies of God in the spiritual realm. Now, let's
look at these all in closing. Humility, gentleness, patience,
bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of
the Spirit and the bond of peace. Verse three will be the crux
of our sermon next week. When it comes to texts like these,
as I've said, I want to warn you. Be very careful about there's
a list. I'm going to write it in the
back of my Bible and work on it. Please don't do that. Do
not fall into the trap of pragmatism. Dr. Mohler said in the last few
weeks, I saw it might not have been his quote, but it says the
only problem with pragmatism is that it only works in theory.
But not practice. Yeah, we think we're working
this out, we think we're working on humility, and I'm not to say
we're not to because Paul just says, I urge you then to walk
in this manner. So what are you trying to say? I'm trying to
say you can't, but you have to. So what is God called us to?
And walking in this manner is not what makes us right before
God. It is a reflection of God's work in us that he's already
made us right. You see, we're already worthy
to walk in this way, but walking in this way doesn't make us right
with him. It is it is a reflection of his
power. See that church. I don't know how much simply
I can put it. God says, I am that I am. The self-existing one, I am that
I am, who should I say sent me? Moses says and God says, say
that I am sent you. But I say, I am that I am by
God's grace. If it were not for the grace
of God, there go I, I'd be like the world. I still fight not
to be like the world, but God's grace empowers us not to be like
the world. And we know that accomplishing these in part, even if we could,
if we accomplish them in part, it's not fulfilling the command
at all. It's not fulfilling the command to be holy, to be worthy,
to be righteous. You can't do it. You've already
sinned by being conceived. You've already become a sinner.
You're a sinner. You're dead. And except God make you alive,
you are condemned. There is no such thing as someone
choosing to become a sinner. You have no choice in the matter,
it's done. And you might say, well, that's
not quite fair. Well, if God had put you in the garden, you'd
have eaten the fruit as well. Accomplishing these in part is
not fulfilling the command at all, but that we strive to see
these evident in our lives because of the great love of God given
to us, the cause of the great gift of peace through Jesus Christ
and because of the great gracious power of God already at work
within us, as Paul says. We can understand putting effort
to accomplish these things. We know that it does cause us
to move and to work and to strive and to stress. But Paul says here that we are
to be all humble and all gentle and all patient and all bearing
and all loving and all eager, always maintaining unity, living
always in peace. And so what Paul has said that
we must be perfectly without fail in these things always,
all the time, period. And so even if we do a pretty
good job, we're going to fail at the command, aren't we? So
what do we do? We walk in the light of the grace
of God. You don't have to turn here, but just remember chapter
two, verse one, where it says, And you were dead in your trespasses
and sins. And once you once walked following the course of this
world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit
that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we
all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the
desires of the body and of the mind, and were by nature children
of wrath like the rest of humankind. See, if we're not walking in
grace, then we're walking in death. We're walking in light
or we're walking in darkness. Period. It's not the walking
in these attributes that gives us life. It is life that reveals
such powerful good that God has prepared beforehand for us to
walk in. In Ephesians 2.10, for we are His workmanship, created
in Christ Jesus for good works, which God has prepared beforehand
that we should walk in them. This is the evidence of eternal
life. It's the evidence of salvation that we strive to walk in the
fullness of the light of the gospel. So let's look very quickly
at these and, I don't know, let's just look. Let's look at humility. Humility and gentleness as it's
compounded there. It's one and the same. It's one
that causes the outcome of others. The humility is the condition
of the mind and the heart. As Jesus and Paul says in Philippians
2, that have this mind among you, and I love what he says,
which is yours in Christ. In Christ, who being equal with
God, did not take equality with God, something to be grasped
and made himself nothing, an obedient slave. Unto death, even
death on a cross. That's what Paul says about Jesus.
Jesus became a slave. The word servant is actually
the Greek word diakonos or doulos, which means slave. Not servant,
not bondservant, slave. Translate it correctly when you
read it from now on. Because it has a jab to it. So Jesus
humbled Himself and He became like the sinner. He didn't have
sin, but He took flesh. He left His glorified self in
eternity and He created a woman named Mary and He created a womb
inside of her and through the Holy Spirit became a child and
was birthed as a human being. Still God. I love that. That Jesus created the very womb
from which He was born. Beautiful. Wrap your mind around that for
a couple of years. And so, I don't even know what
to say now. This humility of Jesus Christ.
Jesus Himself says, I am gentle and lowly in heart, Matthew 11. I remember back during some of
the really intense situations with racial issues in Oakland,
California, and we were having these open forum, these town
hall meetings to deal with the measurably situation of the shooting
of a black man by a white man who was a cop. And I'll never
forget one day at dinner after one of these meetings and a pastor
had been in ministry for about 50 years. He came and he's sitting
at the table and he's sharing with about five of us other younger
pastors. And he says that and one of them is talking about
how he's having trouble in his church and people are accusing him of
things that he hadn't done and calling him a liar and calling
him a control freak and all this kind of stuff. This fellow didn't
say much. Then all of a sudden he started to speak. He said, let
me tell you about this. He said, in all my years as a pastor,
he says, it's always made me angry when people accuse me of
doing things that I had not done. But now I realize, and God has
shown me, that they're not wrong, they're just... their timing
is off. He says, they said, I'm a liar.
I can't argue with them. I am. He says, I'm arrogant and
I'm prideful and I want to control things. I can't argue with them.
I am. But I'm not like that now, but I don't need to defend myself
because they agree with what God agrees with about who I am.
And dude, I was like, wow, that's... I need to go home. He said it like this, that man,
when he says I'm a liar, he's actually agreeing and confessing
to God the things that are true about me. So why get angry at
what God has already shown me about myself? When it comes to
the mouth of someone else, that's what humility is. But the difference
is that Jesus was not guilty. And if Jesus, who was not guilty,
can walk in humility, but entrust himself to the father, as it
says in first Peter, Why is it that we don't act in humility
and outwardly in gentleness with others who accuse us, who wrong
us? That's the specific issue here. We ought to gently deal
with people. It is not easy, is it? It's not
easy to deal gently with your spouse or with your children
or with your co-workers or with your sheep or with your pastor.
It's not easy to deal with people who just know how to push your
non-easy buttons. There's like an irritated button
on all of us, and we don't know where it is or we tape it up,
but people know it. They push it. Are we gentle?
How can we be gentle with people who continually rack us up of
the nerve through the power of God? If God's spirit indwells
us, then God's mind will be within us and we are trusting. So when
we feel that, how do we deal with it? How do we overcome it?
We don't stand firm and go, OK, I'm going to be strong. No, Christ
is strong and I rest in him. You have the power, God, to keep
me from temptation. Look at patience. What is patience
taking what comes? We often like to describe patient
when you think of impatience, you think of the driver services
place, the return store, the counter at Wal-Mart, the red
lights in Statesboro, the red lights in Savannah. 280. Whatever that is up there. We think of the people who like
to. Bring things to us that we don't really want. Like the 99-year-old
lady that brings us ham that she got from her neighbor, whose
mama brought it from last week. I thought y'all might be hungry.
Here's a piece of ham. I'm going to go, oh crud, what's
she bringing us today? I know there's going to be a
cat in that cake one day. We think that's patience. That's
not patience. Patience is when we are wronged. and when we're
hurt, and when we really, really deep in the flesh of our sin
don't want to deal with things. We can all be patient when we
wait in line, but when we're wronged and we're hurt, that's
when divine patience is proven. That's when spiritual, divine
power is at work in us. When our spiritual and specifically
here, when our spiritual siblings hurt us, when those people who
profess to be brothers and sisters. And it's not just it's not just
when they hurt us directly, but when they hurt us indirectly,
when their actions hurt us. We are to be patient, we're to
be humble, meek, gentle, loving and forgiving well before these
people think they need to be forgiven. And look at this last
thing. bearing with one another in love.
See, this is the outcome. We ought to be patient. We ought
to be humble in our mindset, which produces gentleness in
our relationships. We ought to be humble. We ought to be patient
in our mindset, which which produces a bearing with one another, with
love and a relationship. This is the outcome of patience.
We are patient. We joyful if we are patient.
Rather, we are joyfully giving our lives, we joyfully give our
minds, we joyfully give our hearts to the weaknesses of others so
that our joy will be full and our unity will be present. Now,
that does not mean that we tolerate sin, but we tolerate weakness.
You know what weakness is? Weakness is when some people
think that it's wrong to do something the Scripture hasn't explicitly
told us is wrong, and they want you to act just like them. Weakness
is when one brother says, I'm not going to eat meat, it was
sacrificed to idols, but the Bible says all things are good. Weakness is when some person
just cannot get their heart to be joyful and they want to just
share everything with us. And we know they ought to have
joy in Christ and they ought to learn, but we need to just be patient
with them. We need to bear with them in love. What this truly
means is that we do not let sin go by no means. Sin in the church
that's unrepentant has to be removed from the church. That
means that person has to be put out. It's what Paul says in 1
Corinthians chapter 5, is that you put them out of the church
for the destruction of their flesh so that they might be saved.
Unrepentant sin now. People that says, I'm not changing
that. But it means that we are to endure
by surrender, not putting up with. Not just being buried with
one another, it's not putting up with it, but surrendering
ourselves to them. We lay down our lives. We see this in the
gospel. Jesus, who is God, who is holy,
He became a man, He willingly died for men who willingly sinned
and rebelled against Him. And God gives thousands of years
to show man they could not uphold the law. And time and time again,
we as human beings defame Him and curse Him, so He becomes
one of us, dies in our place, defeats death, pays for sin,
suffers the judgment of the Father, and then calls us to Himself.
That's bearing with one another. Husbands, bear with your wives.
Wives, bear with your husbands. Parents, bear with your children. Church, bear with one another.
Not put it up, but lay down with joy. It's easier for me to change
my skin to leopard and fly away than for my flesh to bear with
one another. But what is impossible with man is possible with God. And friends, this is the call
of the church. We are to walk in the light, the reflection
of Jesus Christ and the power of the Gospel. We are to, as
Jesus bore the sins of the church, we ought to bear the fragility
and the weakness of our brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus.
Because we should, see this last phrase, be eager to maintain
the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. This will be my
message next week. We will reveal the nature of
this and what it means in the life of our church. God brought
us near to Him. Christ prepares us for His presence
in all grace, making peace with God through His flesh by taking
the hostility of our sin and nailing it to the cross. So what's
the outcome? What good does this do? What
am I to do with this? We rejoice in the grace of God
that these things are Yours, Church, by His power. And so
do not forget to test yourself. Test yourself to see if you are
in the faith. Test yourself to see if you are trusting and believing
in the gospel or you're trusting and believing in your ability
and in your flesh. Do not put trust in the flesh,
even the mind. For when we are faithless, Paul
tells Timothy, he remains faithful for he cannot deny himself. The
outcome is that we rejoice when we see that we pass the test.
We pass the test because we have faith in the finished work of
Jesus and the person of Jesus and all that He has done. When
we fail to pass the test, we repent and believe the gospel
each minute of our lives. So the outcome is saints, church,
if we are truly the children of God, we hold on. We keep fighting. We keep running. We never sit
down, but we run the race. We study. We worship. We love. And we long for the day when
what we live by faith in this world will be sight. Face to
face with Jesus. Shoulder to shoulder with our
brothers and sisters in Christ. Never more to have a battle,
but forever be at the top of that mountain with Jesus. It
is well with our soul in Christ. It is well. Let's pray. Father, we are amazed at your
power. We are amazed at your love for
us. We are amazed at all that you
do and have done and continue to promise to do in our lives.
Lord, keep us and hold us as You promised to do. We don't
even have to pray that. It is something that is done,
but we pray it because we want to be empowered by Your Gospel,
by Your grace. God, bring those who are dead
among us to life. Bring those who hear this message
today and in the future to life to know that Christ is their
eternal life. He is the resurrection and the
life, and He is the Kingdom. Father, we thank You that You
save those who do not desire to be saved. Father, those who
do desire to be saved, You have pulled their hearts to You and
saved them. They truly love You and are called
according to Your purpose. Father, prepare our hearts as
we leave not to get pragmatic and practical, but father, be
disciplined to look and evaluate and to function, knowing that
we are who we are by your grace. If we are to walk in this way.
Help us to walk, each of us to walk in a manner worthy of the
work that you've done in us and father that corporately we may
walk as a people who have received grace upon grace for your glory. And we pray it in Jesus' name,
Amen.