Truth Applied

Ephesians 4: 25-28

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Thank you for listening to the Sermon Audio Podcast from Crossroads Reformed Baptist Church in Rockdale, Texas. Crossroads Reformed Baptist Church is a reformed confessional Baptist church that meets every Lord's Day at 10 a.m. for Bible study and 11 a.m. for corporate worship. For more information about our church or for directions, you can visit us online at www.crbcrockdale.org. Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

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Good morning again. We have much to cover this morning, so please open to the book of Ephesians. Chapter 4, we're going to cover three or four verses, four verses, chapter verses 25 through 28. From Ephesians 4. We left off last week with that gospel call. If you remember to put off the old self, and to put on the new self or to put on Christ. The emphasis that I really made last week is that this call to put on the new self, right? To put on Christ is fully and only possible by the grace of God. If it be not by the Spirit in faith that we seek to be transformed and we seek this transformed life, then we will never find any real or lasting success. Such efforts in our own power and our own wisdom can certainly, for a season and for a time, put on the appearance of religion, put on the appearance of obedience, but since this transformation that we seek is far more than just a simple behavioral change, this must be a continual outpouring of the spirit of grace. That is grace from above. You must be born again. And that birth comes from above. You must also be sanctified and transformed into the likeness of Christ from above. That is all true. And we say yes and amen, but it would be stopping short of the whole counsel of God if we didn't press that even further. Because inevitably we always ask the follow-up question. We need the follow-up question. How do I do that then? How does this transformation actually look? What does it look like to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord? What does it look like to be transformed by his grace? If I petition the Lord for his grace to transform me, what does this transformation entail? And for the next number of weeks and really the rest of this epistle, oh, we're going to look at the how. And the how does that look? How does this transformation look? How do we walk worthy? And doing that, though, by God's grace, we will always ground it in the gospel, certainly in his sovereign grace. The general theme, then, as we move through the verses this morning and really through the rest of our time here, is that we we're going to plead and partition the Lord for his grace. And then with every ounce of spiritual strength we have, we shall put off everything that connects us with the old man, our former self, that which was tied to our former self, and we are to put on everything that ties us with the new, with Christ. And to do that, we have to be steeped in the truth. We have to be steeped in the truth of God's word and the truth of what he says through Paul. Yet as a Christian, under the grace of God, what does that look like? And then when we hear that truth from God's word, we must apply it to ourselves and we must conform ourselves to that truth. It's not enough just to hear the truth. It's not enough even just to know the truth. The truth must be applied. It must change us. Knowledge without action, knowledge without application is hypocrisy. This is why we all stand condemned before God. Romans 1 makes that very clear. That all do indeed have some knowledge of God. They don't do anything with that truth. They don't apply it to themselves. They do the opposite. They suppress that truth, an unrighteousness, so that they can continue to do what they want instead of what God wants for them. We all really love the truth, don't we? We love truth. We say we do. We champion the truth until that truth forces us to do something with it. I was reminded this week as I was thinking about this topic of that very famous Paul Washer sermon. Perhaps you've heard it, where he is exhorting a young group of people on some very difficult truths, and they all, in reply to the truths that he is expounding and bearing upon them, they give him applause. They start clapping. To which he replies, I don't know why y'all are clapping, I'm talking about you. That is to say, we applaud the truth until it comes home to roost in our own hearts. And until we realize that the Word of God is indeed speaking to us. Our Lord says to his disciples, just after he washes their feet in the upper room, he says this, quote, if you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. So, church, let us know these things. And then by God's grace, let us do these things. So that's where we're going then, as we're applying the truth or the truth applied to our hearts. Let's stand once more as we read our text this morning. Ephesians 4, starting in verse 25. Therefore, having been put away, or having put away all falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. This is the word of the Lord. We pray and ask, Lord, by your spirit, would you apply these truths and change us and shape them by them? We ask all these things in the name of Jesus. Amen. We begin then back in verse 25, with no more lies. No more lies. Therefore, having put away all falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Paul starts this section with another important therefore. I won't belabor the idea of therefore, we've done that, but this is of course proof that we are to apply the word, we are to apply the truth to us as he gives us the word therefore, to inform us that because of the truths previously given, now do these things. Therefore. And since we are then discussing lies, it is perhaps important that we define the truth. What is truth? And certainly the gospel is truth, right? That by God's grace, through Christ and through the cross, he has saved and is saving his own through faith. The truth, though, is also everything in God's word. Everything in this book is truth. Everything in here, in his word, that we have is truth because it is his revelation of himself to man. Is the revelation of God to man. John 17, 17, Jesus prays in that high priestly prayer. He says, This sanctify them in the truth. What does he say next? Your word is truth. It's almost certainly why Paul starts here. There can be no transformation without truth. There can be no sanctification without truth. Unless we are sanctified in truth. The truth of God's holy word. And we certainly see here in society today how far off the rails we get when we deny the truth of God's word, right? When we deny any sort of objective truth at all. And this is really what separates Christians from everyone else. We have the light. We have the truth. We love the light, don't we? We love the truth. The world loves darkness. The world runs from the truth. So anything then that is false or doesn't accord with God's truth or the truth of God's word, this is utterly incompatible with our lives. Why, though, is objective and immovable truth so important? Maybe I've already demonstrated that to some degree because it is grounded in God. But it is because our faith, right? Our salvation is grounded in truth. It has to be. Without it, we cannot know God. We cannot believe in Him. Without truth, we are lost. It stands to reason then that that which comes from God, namely truth, that which is revealed to us about God, and that which brought us into faith, into salvation, would also be the same thing that keeps us, the same thing that carries us. That is truth. It carries us because our lives are called to be a testimony of truth. And that is truth through the obedience to God. 1 John 2, verse 4. Whoever says, I know him, but does not keep his commandments is a liar. And the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. The first thing that we must consider when we look to this command for no more lies, put off falsehood, is to see that we must first live truthful lives. That is the essence of putting off all falsehood by living lives in obedience to the truth of God's word. That is to say, we must first be honest with God. If we say we know him, if we say we love him, if we say we follow him, yet our lives are in disobedience to his word, we are lying to him. We're lying to ourselves. We don't want to lie to ourselves. We certainly don't want to lie to God. Ananias and Sapphira lied to God about something as trivial as the amount of money they sold a piece of land for. I think we all know that story. They paid for that lie with their lives. God is serious about lying. Because lying, being the opposite of his nature, is from the devil. John 8, verse 44, the words of our Lord to the Pharisees, you are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. God hates lies. Because lies come from the father of lies, from Satan himself. So to entertain and to practice lies and to live falsely and to live by a way that is disobedient to the truth, the truth that we claim, this is to entertain the devil. That must not be us, church. We must kill falsehood that remains. We must. We must stop lying to ourselves. We must stop lying to God. And as the text follows, we must stop lying to one another. Why does our text tell us to put away all falsehood and to not lie to one another? Or we are members of one another. We're members of one another. Remember, one body, right? Many members. How can we as members of the same body lie to one another? We can't. Again, not because not only because lying is bad and it hurts people's feelings, which is true. But remember, why are we being transformed, or that we are being transformed? We are trying to be transformed, how? By grace. And the grace that comes from above. The grace that comes from our good, our gracious God is a grace that is true. From a God that is true, to a love that is true. This is why we put away falsehood. And do you want that grace to change you? Do you want his grace to make you true, truthful, like God? Or do we want to keep our falsehoods connected to our former father, the devil? I hope you then see it clearly why we must speak truth. God is truth. We must live truthfully. And so this is the first and most important thing that we must do in this transformation. Stop lying in every way. Confess your lies, church. And ask for grace to come to your aid in putting away all falsehood as we live obedient to the truth of God's word that we confess. Our next verse, verse 26, be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity for the devil. Our next command then is first, be angry, and do not sin. Martin Lloyd Jones noted here that it seems that Paul has chosen these two things to begin with when we're talking about our transformation, as these two things are perhaps the most commonly abused sins, lying and anger. The thing we see here, though, is that there's two commands given on this one: one positive and one negative. And we'll take them in the order that Paul gives. The first is be angry, he says. It's a positive command. Be angry. Some of us have no problem fulfilling that command because we're angry all the time, right? None of y'all. Be angry, Paul says. The anger that Paul is approving and even commanding, as odd as that sounds, it's a very specific kind of anger, though. Might be better to call this indignation. This is a positive command to be angry against sin, to be angry against injustice, angry against blasphemy, angry against dishonor of God. I give you some biblical examples to support that. John chapter 2, verse 13. The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem in the temple. He found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the money changers sitting there and making a whip of cords. He drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and the oxen, and he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables, and he told those who had sold the pigeons, Take these things away. Do not make my father's house a house of trade. That's certainly a display of anger, isn't it? Righteous indignation against those who would make a mockery and a prophet over the house of God. Mark 3, verse 5, this is recorded of Jesus and his reaction to the Pharisees. It says he looked around at them with anger. He grieved at the hardness of heart. Certainly, anyone who spent any time in the Old Testament can see full-on display God's anger towards sin, his anger towards rebellion. There's no other way to put it. God is violently angry against sin. He despises it. He punishes it so severely at times that it is shocking. And so we are, in considering this truth applied, this transformation, we must begin to try to be as angry about sin as God is. Us, church. What the church needs. Even more, what our country needs, what our world needs, is men who will start in their own lives and in their own hearts and be angry about sin. To be angry about the sin that they find there. To hate it. To be repulsed by it. To take out a sword and kill it. We then must do the same for our families, our churches, our communities, Lord willing, our nation. Be angry, church. Be angry about sin. This is the exhortation of Paul in his second letter to the church in Corinth. So this is 2 Corinthians. After having thoroughly chided the Corinthians for their sins, they went through, if you've read both of those letters, they went through a period of godly grief over their sin. Having been so thoroughly and publicly condemned by Paul. And Paul says this again, chapter 7 of 2 Corinthians, this is chapter 7. Yeah, this is verse, I think, one. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret. Whereas worldly grief produces death. For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you. But also what earnestness or eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment. At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter. I want you to see that. This godly grief that Paul produced in them by being angry with sin and being angry with them over their sins, the godly grief that Paul produced in them by telling them the truth, it produced in them an eagerness to clear themselves. It produced in them fear, zeal, longing, and indignation, anger towards their sin. They probably got angry with Paul at first for exposing their sins and for calling it out. But that turned to the righteous ignition against their sin, and they indeed did do something about it. Paul says later in that letter that he is comforted by the reports that he is hearing from them. They did something about their sins. So again, we must be angry with sin. We must let that anger compel us to kill the sin, to prove ourselves innocent, having been filled with indignation and zeal to crush that which is wicked in the sight of God. Secondly, then we have the negative command: be angry, and do not sin. It's a very specific hedge that Paul puts around anger. It must never go beyond the bounds of righteous indignation and become sinful anger. Nor are any other kinds of anger permitted in the Bible. The Bible speaks very clearly about people who are quick-tempered, who are grumpy, who are easily provoked. Those with a short fuse will often hide behind that short fuse, claiming it's just the way I've been, you know, just always had a bad temper. Short temper. Just the way I've been. That's a sorry excuse, church. Especially in light of our passage last week and what I have reiterated this week, we're putting off our old self, which belongs to your former manner of life, which is corrupt through deceitful desires, and we're putting on our new self that's created in the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Does God have a short fuse? Does he? Are you being transformed after the likeness of God? Then stop being quick-tempered. We must put that off. Again, our call is to be different than who we have always been. Frankly, we don't care. I don't care who you have always been. We must kill those tendencies of the old man. These are not in line with God's word. We must not shrug at them and act like that is who we are. It's not. But it is one that we must fight. This also includes, though, anger that is not dealt with, anger that is not released. Our text says, do not let the sun go down on your anger. Be angry and do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your anger. I would argue that this is perhaps a bit of an illustration, not to be taken completely and fully literally, in that all anger must be resolved before you go to bed at night. That's sometimes not possible. And certainly we can often say that sleeping on things does give us a fresh perspective in the morning. I think the command here is that anger is sinful anger when we allow it to fester. When we allow it to stay with us, when we don't deal with it. When we harbor it, when we hold on to it, this is the opportunity for the devil. As that anger becomes bitterness, as it becomes vengeance, the more that anger sits, the more that root of bitterness grows, and we find ourselves wishing revenge, we desire ill. We want that person who we're angry with to be shown a lesson. These are sinful reactions. Undealt with anger. A sinful anger, church. We must not allow ourselves to get to that point because such anger, this is totally opposed to the gospel of grace. Just thinking about this week how often I cry out to God, as we all do, in times of need. What betrayal is this? What justification our God has to be angry with me? Would he at all be in the wrong if he grew bitter at my unfaithfulness? Would he be unjust to smoke me in his wrath and vengeance? Not in the slightest. But in his grace, he has not done that. He is patient, isn't he? He is long-suffering. He is forgiving, not seven times, not seventy-seven times, not seven times, seventy-seven times, but a million times. Continuing to love us and care for us and support us despite our repeated offenses. His anger towards us, because of Christ, is not wrath. It's not vengeance, but it's a refining anger that leads us to repentance. And it is very quick to forgive. This is godly anger. The gospel message is then that because of Christ, the Son, the Son, never goes down on God's anger towards us. Towards those who are his. Those who have repented and trusted in Christ for the forgiveness of our sins. Oh, that we would know that truth today. That we would seek to be transformed into that likeness, the likeness of Christ. And so serious about sin to the point of anger against it, but never sinning. Not quick tempered, but slow to anger, quick to forgive, and abounding in steadfast love. This is our God. This is who we should desire to be. We finally then come to our last section we're going to cover this morning. This is the command to work to serve. Verse 28, let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor doing honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. This is the great and awesome transformative power of the gospel that takes everything in our lives and it turns them right side up. The one who steals. The one who takes advantage of others for their own personal gain after having been transformed by the power of grace does just the opposite of that. Bless you. Instead of stealing from others for their own benefit, the call is now to work hard for yourself for the benefit of others. The man who once took advantage of others is now called to work for the advantage of others. Reminded of that story Brother Dave taught a number of weeks ago now, he preached on, of the story of Zacchaeus. What happened when the grace of God penetrated the heart of Zacchaeus? A man who had stolen and defrauded countless people. His world was turned right side up. Half of everything he had he gave to the poor. And everyone whom he defrauded he paid back fourfold. How hard must he have had to work to payback fourfold everyone whom he defrauded? But the man without the grace of God, without eyes to see the truth, considers his vocation, that is his calling, as a means to increase himself, however he can. The man who has been changed by the gospel sees his vocation as a blessing from God and the means by which he increases others. It's a radical change of heart and mind. This is so counter to our culture in so many ways. We've been talking a lot about avoiding those ditches, right? What has happened is that we haven't obeyed this command. And this command has been corrupted in many ways by wicked men in the thing, for instance. Things like forced wealth redistribution through taxation. I'm not getting to politics, right? We're going to render to Caesar what is Caesar's. We don't work and labor for ourselves anymore. We labor for one another. We don't exploit one another, we help one another. We don't take advantage of one another, we are the advantage to one another. This is the guiding principle behind let the thief steal no longer. Let our work mean something. Let it mean something for others. Let us labor for one another. This is the principle. I say we're getting into the real stuff, right? The real. In summary, then, as we consider the grace of God that has come to us from the sovereign God, that he has awakened us to new life through faith. He's caused us to be born again. May we allow this amazing grace to change us. Cause us to walk in newness of life. By this grace, then, church, may we put off all falsehood, all lies. May we be a truthful people. May we be grounded in his truth, speaking his truth, obeying his truth, standing on his truth. May we be characterized as truthful people. May we be angry over our sin and the sin of others. May we possess a righteous indignation over sin. May we call it to count account in our own heart. In our own home, in the lives of others. May we take it seriously. May we kill all that sin that is contrary to the goodness of God, contrary to the nature of God. May we not harbor anger, though. May we be angry but not sin. May we not be short-tempered. May we not be quickly agitated. May we not act in haste. May we be slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. May we look to others more highly than ourselves. May we consider our work as the means to bless others, not take advantage of others. And that we would see our lives as the grace of God to others, that we may be the hands and the feet of our Lord. To bless, to show grace and mercy to his body, to his people. This is who we desire to be, right, Church? This is who the word says we will be if we trust in Christ by faith and give ourselves to him. We are all here today, I trust. And are indeed in Christ. But have you fallen short of this mark? I think we can say yes. And may today be the day we start walking in a manner worthy of the Lord. Though our debts are many, and they are. We thank you again, Lord, for the convicting truth, Lord, that the truth that calls us, Lord, the truth that pushes us, the truth that transforms us and shapes us, Lord. We pray and ask for hearts that are receptive to this truth, Lord. By your spirit, would you reveal to us these things in our heart which we still need to deal with, Lord? Those things that we are still holding on to, that pertain to our old self and not to the new self that is being made in the likeness of Christ. Lord, help us to confess those today. Lord, would you transform us? Make us new. Would you help us to be truthful people, Lord? We are angry about our own sin, but ever sinfully angry. Lord, help us. Help us to be transformed into the image of Christ that we may walk in obedience to all that you have commanded. We love you, Lord. We ask all these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.