SPEAKER_01 0:00

Great to be with you. My name is Russ, and if I haven't met you, I'm one of the pastors here at Church of the Grove. Excited to be with you today. And we're celebrating baby dedications. We're also celebrating baptisms today. We've got a baptism coming up here in just a moment. But I'm going to share a little bit out of scripture this morning as we continue in this series called The Rules of Engagement. The rules of engagement. Now I have a confession to share. I came to Christ when I was 18 years old, and I would love to be able to tell you that all of my life instantly transformed at the moment that I repented and put my faith in Jesus. But that didn't happen. My confession is that I struggled. And I would take that turn, and inevitably I would stumble over that messed up place in the concrete. Well, you would think that I would recognize that it was there the next time I went down the sidewalk. But I would continue to do the same thing over and over, and I would stumble over and over and over. And it's a little bit of a metaphor for life because when we put our faith in Jesus, our life begins to change. And that change happens through the power of the Holy Spirit. But it involves my own choices at the same time. God's sovereign work in my life, together with my volitional choices. And so it's as simple as me deciding one day I'm going to stop walking in the direction that's going to cause me to stumble, and I'm going to walk in a different direction because I know that that will help me walk more closely to Jesus. Now I know that's probably not your story. When you came to Christ, those of you that have put your faith in Christ, you instantly experienced a measure of sanctification, right? And your language immediately changed. Your behavior and the friends that you hung out with immediately changed. And I'm being a little bit sarcastic, right? We all know what it's like to be a believer, but to still struggle with behavior that is more associated with unbelievers. And so that's what we're in this series called The Rules of Engagement. One of the ways that I still see my own flesh and my own sin show up in my life is through the words that I speak. Now it's not that I use ugly language, but I can have a sharp tongue toward my wife. I can have an attitude with my coworkers. I can sometimes be mad at you and you don't even know about it. That was meant to be a little bit funny. Obviously, I need to rethink that. But here's what Jesus says in Luke 6, 45, second part of the verse. He says, For his mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart. And I would venture to guess that we all could probably identify with that. There's all areas in our life where the old self or the old ways resurface. One of the things I have found out that sometimes the hardest thing to change is what you say. I think we all struggle sometimes. We hold on to an old way of life, and it comes out in a lot of ways. It can come out just being defensive, the art of turning a simple comment into a courtroom drama. That's my definition of defensiveness. Or it can come out as sarcasm, and you can say something, but you can just add in just kidding. But it's already out and it reveals your heart. Shutting down. Your body's in the room, but you've checked out. Yelling. Sometimes we we just grow up in a home and this the belief that the louder we can get, the more right we are. It can be passive-aggressive behavior, uh conflict that is camouflaged, anger that's delivered with a smile, or maybe rehearsing arguments. Here's what I do a lot. When I'm in the car by myself, I rehearse arguments, conversations that I know I need to have, but I want to win. Now I spoke about this a few weeks ago. Sometimes our goal in life, rather than making a difference, we want to win. And so rehearsing arguments or bringing up the past. We want to, we're we're good at archaeology, which means we're good at digging up the ancient sin of our past or somebody else's past. And here's what the writer of Proverbs says, Proverbs 18, 21. Death and life are in the power of the tongue. And so we mistakenly think that spiritual maturity sometimes can be associated with how many Bible studies that you've been through, how often you attend church, whether or not you wear a Christian t-shirt. I mean, we measure spiritual maturity in a lot of ways that maybe aren't biblically accurate. Now, those things are important. Don't get me wrong. A Bible study. Wearing what you wear can be a witness. All those things can be great. But sometimes we've got to consider what comes out of us. It reveals whether we have experienced change or whether we haven't experienced change. As a matter of fact, a changed heart, listen to this. A changed heart produces changed speech. Because what's in you eventually will come out. What's in you will eventually come out. And so as we look at this series, we spoke the very first week of this series, we said everything flows out of our identity in Christ. Who we are in Jesus. We're a child of the God of the Heavenly Father. We've gone from being an orphan to being adopted. We've gone from being alone to being part of a family of believers. We move from being lost to being found. We go from being unsaved to saved. We go from being owned by our sin and our shame, but now we are redeemed by Jesus. We're bought by him. So that was week one. Week two, we talked about humility. Humility is one of the greatest characteristics for healthy relationships to exist. And then last week we heard from Nathan and Jonah, we engage for growth, not just our comfort. The relationships are God's purpose. And so today we're going to read out of Ephesians 4, 17, verse 17, verse 32. And I don't do this all the time, but I'm just going to read this whole passage right now. And then we'll talk about a few things related to it. Paul says verse 17 of Ephesians 4. He says, Therefore, I say this and testify in the Lord. You should no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thoughts. They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them and because of the hardness of their hearts. They became callous and gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more. But that is not how you came to know Christ. Assuming you heard about him and were taught by him as the truth is in Jesus, to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires, to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, the one created according to God's likeness in righteousness and purity of truth. Therefore, putting away lying, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor, because they are members of one another. Be angry and do not sin. Don't let the sun go down on your anger, and don't give the devil an opportunity. Let the thief no longer steal. Instead, he is to do honest work with his own hands, so that he has something to share with anyone in need. No foul language should come from your mouth, but only what is good for building up someone in need, so that it gives grace to those who hear. And don't grieve God's Holy Spirit. You were sealed by him for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, anger, and wrath, shouting and slander be removed from you along with all malice. And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ. Now that's a great passage. That's a lot there. Paul is talking. Who is he talking to here? He's talking to believers. He's talking to but people who've already put their faith in Christ, who happen to live in the ancient city of Ephesus. He's describing what our life should look like, what their lives should look like once it's been changed by Jesus. This is not Paul telling us, hey, you need to do all these things. You need to change this way so you can be a believer. He's saying, no, as a result of you being a believer and a follower of Jesus, your life should look different. You've been changed by Christ. Don't live the old way any longer. He's not telling us that we have to behave a certain way to belong to Christ, but belonging so we behave as God commands us. Now why is this a big deal? Why is this important? Two reasons. The first one is this the old life numbs you. It numbs you before it destroys you. The old life numbs you before it destroys you. Let's look back at what Paul says here. He says in verse 17, therefore I say this and testify in the Lord, you should no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thoughts. You could circle underline that word futility. Come back to that in a second. It says they are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their hearts. Circle underlined the hardness of their hearts. They became callous, circle underlined, callous, and gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more. So Paul is contrasting the way that unbelievers live their life from the way that we are expected to transform once we put our faith in Jesus. I think one of the one of the things that may be holding back revival, and I believe there are seeds of revival taking place in our country, in our world. But one of the things that I think holds back people from putting their faith in Christ and becoming part of a church family is they see believers who profess Christ with their mouth, but then turn around and with the same mouth, the same lips, the same tongue, they use it to curse, they use it to talk down to people, and they use their mouths and their speech as a weapon in a sense. And so Paul is saying that there needs to be something different. There needs to be something different. This is in Ephesus, the city of Ephesus. It was not a Bible-belt southern city. It was a cosmopolitan, metropolitan. It was more like New York, LA, Chicago, Atlanta, maybe, Las Vegas, certainly. It was a place that where there was extreme levels of sin and debauchery. I mean, they had tremendous wealth, lots and lots of money. They had a temple dedicated to the goddess of Artemis. The goddess Artemis, and where sexuality and spirituality were blended together. It was so sinful and so dark. And it fueled their flesh and their appetites. And so when the believers first heard the gospel and they put their faith in Jesus, they repented and they believed, they had to deal with life change in a very hard place to change. I think that's where we all are. The culture that we live in here, right here in the Metro Atlanta area in Walton County, East Atlanta. We have a lot of the same characteristics. And so the people, what was taking place is people were professing Jesus, but they were going back to the old way of life. There was no change. They continued to feed their appetites and the sinful flesh. They didn't honor one another, but they fought to they fought to gain honor for themselves, and so they would put others down and put themselves before their neighbors, before the other believers in the church. And so Paul starts off this section by identifying, hey, don't look like the Gentiles. They were people that were outside the faith. They didn't have the revelation of God. And so Gentile was at that time in history, it was simply a non-Jewish person. But to us, it's a dividing line to say, hey, someone who is outside the faith doesn't know Christ. I have there God has no expectations. I certainly have no expectations to try to convince people to change their behavior if they don't know Christ. That is a futile attempt. And so Paul uses a few interesting words. He uses that word futility. And that word for futility is it means a mind that is turned from God, unable to arrive at the right conclusions of what truth is. And then he uses this phrase, hardness of heart, which is it's it's this numbness from repeatedly saying no to God. There may be a point in someone's life where God just withdraws the Holy Spirit and says, you know what, if you're gonna have a hardened heart, I'm gonna give you over to your hardened heart. And then he uses the word callous, which is which is come comes from this understanding of scar tissue or calloused hands from work and and it and it's this it's the it literally means losing the ability to feel moral pain when you sin. And Paul's saying, this is this is this is the way that I see you going, church at Ephesus. This is the direction I see you. You still have hardened hearts, you you still have the futility of living like a Gentile. You have a calloused heart. And walking in this way will lead to destruction. But here's the second why. The second why this is a big deal. The gospel, when I say gospel, I'm talking about the good news of Christ. The good news is that Jesus has come, Jesus has lived a perfect life. Jesus surrendered his life, died on a Roman cross, was buried, but on the third day he was bodily resurrected. That is the good news. And so the gospel calls for replacement, not renovation. Listen, we you if you don't, if you're outside of Christ, there is there is no renovation to try to get you up morally where you need to be. No, it's replacement. It is a new life, it is a new birth, it is a new heart that God wants to give you. So this is important because the gospel calls for replacement, not renovation. Here's what he says in verse 20. But that is not how you came to know Christ, assuming you heard about him and were taught by him as the truth is in Jesus, to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires, to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, the one created according to God's likeness in righteousness and purity of truth. Paul says in verse 22 take off the former way of life. Take it off. There's sin, darkness, disobedience. He says, don't wear it. He says, take it off. Take it off. That's just when we come to Christ, one of the first things we should evaluate is where do I need to change the direction of my life? Am I going to walk down the same sidewalk that has the same hole? Or am I going to just do something as simple as cross the street and change my path? He says, take it off. Take off the sin. Take it off. You don't want to wear that anymore. It calls for replacement, not renovation. So, Jonah, bring me my new clothing. So here's what he says: he says, take off, and then he says, put on. What does he say? Put on the new self, put on a new character, put on a new direction. Put on something that shines the light of Christ through you. And so literally the Greek word for take off the former way of life is the word that means to take off a piece of clothing. Remove it. And then put on the righteousness of Christ. Listen to this. When you come to Christ, a miracle takes place. All of your sins in the past are forgiven. All of your sin in the present is forgiven. And all of your sin in the future is forgiven. Amen. That is the gospel. Now that doesn't give you license to sin and do what you want to do. Because if your heart is changed, you're going to want to take off and you're going to put on something new. And so if I am forgiven, then I have the freedom to walk in the righteousness that God has already given me through Jesus. I don't have to gain anymore. I don't have to put on anymore. I simply walk in the righteousness that he has already given me. Some of us treat sin like it's just a bad habit. We try to manage it. Paul says, no, it's like a garment. You've got to strip it off. Be careful how you might say that. But here's the picture. So all of my kids at some point in their life had stirred up a nest of bees, yellow jackets, something. One of my memories was in North Georgia, Caleb was kind of out in the woods behind a cabin where we were staying, and he starts screaming bloody murder murder. Caleb is my youngest. He's 21. And at this time, he's probably four, five. And he stirred up this nest of yellow jackets, and they just come out and they swarm and they start stinging. He starts screaming, he starts screaming. And I could see him about halfway uh to the back of the building. I could see him there. And I and I I mean, all this happens just in a split second. But I had this argument with myself. I'm going. No, I'm not. I'm going. No, I'm not. I'm going. He's on his own. No, I need to save him. I'm his dad. That doesn't matter. Those C's, those bees hurt. And I mean, there's this argument. It only happened for a second, and then I just took off, started running. I mean, and with one arm, I scooched him up and grabbed him. I saved his life. And then I we brought him to the house, and then he just kept screaming. We're like, why are you screaming? The yellow jackets aren't in here. He said, I know they're in my clothes. And so we just start stripping him. And you know what? He had no shame. He's like, take it off, take it off, take it off. That's the image, that's the picture. I believe when we put our faith in Christ, listen, we don't mess around with sin, we don't mess around with unrighteous things. We take them off, we get rid of them, and then we walk in the righteousness of Jesus. Because Christ has set you free. Now, how do we do this? How do we do this? How do we go through this change? Paul says we uh we renew our minds in one place in scripture. It's not that there's a new set of rules to live by, but he gives us a new operating system. The internal has changed. And when the internal has changed, the things that are external will begin to change. What does it look like? What does it look like? There's these four replacements. Four replacements in our life. Now listen, the life of becoming a believer and choosing to follow Jesus, it's a big deal. And here's what I'm finding is there are people in the culture now wrestling with the reality of whether or not they should put their faith in Jesus and what that means in accordance to changing their behavior. Now I want you to listen to a short little podcast clip from a guy named Theo Bond.

SPEAKER_00 24:43

You know, sometimes I realize for myself I would pray to God to help me get away from certain behaviors in my life. Um, but at the same time that I was praying, there would be a part of me that knew I was probably gonna do those things again. And there's a story called John 5, and it's about a guy who's at these pools. There's a sick man there, and he's been sick for a long time. And um and Jesus asks him, Do you want to be healed? He asks him, Do you want to be healed? And that's a crazy question because you know, if I get healed, then I'm different. So that's just been something that I've been having to ask myself. It's like, yeah, do I want to be healed? Do I really want something different? And uh sometimes a lot a a lot of the answer is no. I don't I want something different, but I don't want to. I don't know if I'm scared of it, I don't know what I am. I don't know if I don't want to do what it takes to get I can't even tell what it is. It's hard for me. This is some of this stuff's a little bit hard for me to say. I think I don't even know why. But I I think I want a new story.

SPEAKER_01 26:03

Wow. I don't know if you know who Theo Vaughn is. I I'm I'm not necessarily a big-time follower, and I'm not encouraging you to go listen to his podcast or watch his podcast. As a matter of fact, your kids probably should not get accustomed to the language that he uses on his podcast. He's a likable guy. I saw him on game day. He was a game day guest picker this past year, which which basically means he has one of the biggest followings in the world of podcasting. If you're invited to be a guest picker on game day, you're you're you're a big you're a big deal. But but this guy doesn't, he's Theo is not, he is not a person who proclaims to be a believer. What you just saw here is one little bit of many conversations that he has been having in and on his podcast and in his life because he is wrestling with the deep issues of what it means to follow Christ. And you heard what he said. I know if I put my faith, then it will demand change, and I don't know if I want to change.

unknown 27:14

Yeah, come on.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

And you know what I respect? I respect the honesty of his wrestling. Because a lot of times many of us, we just kind of say, yeah, I put my faith in Jesus, but then we go on living our life as if nothing has changed. And so there's four replacements that reshape our relationships that we see in this passage. And the first is this is to replace lies with truth. Paul says in verse 25, therefore, putting away lying, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor, because we are members of one another. And Paul starts with truth because in a place like Ephesus, or in a place like Atlanta or in America or in any other metropolitan area, truth is not considered a virtue. Truth is countercultural. And so Ephesus is a place where people lived on image and and and they image lived on wealth. And so speaking the truth, they didn't believe in truth, much less speak the truth. We can live and speak lies, but we can also live a lie. Sometimes truth doesn't show up in a verifiable, easy-to-see lie. Truth sometimes is just a half-truth, or lying is sometimes telling half a truth. Or it can be strategic silence, or it can be exaggeration, it can be playing a victim, framing things in a way that makes you look better than you really are. And so Paul is saying, listen, replace lying with the truth. Don't lie to other people. We should speak truth to one another, especially in the body of Christ. We should honor one another. That's how we that's how we grow together. And lying is also a form of manipulation to protect ourselves. See, the church isn't just a bunch of people, the church is a body. And so there are standards that we should have in how we interact with one another. So so how does this play out today? We're swimming in a culture that values what we call curated images. We we try to present a false version of ourselves. How do we do that? Look at Facebook, look at so look at social media in all areas, Instagram, TikTok, whatever it is. We we present ourselves, and what we think is Christianity is in actuality brand management. We're tempted to shape the narrative so that we look better. And so God says, replace all that with truth. See, lies protect my image, truth protects the community. Next, we see that we should replace unresolved anger with self-control. Paul says in Ephesians 4 26, he says, be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and don't give the devil an opportunity. My wife and I made a decision when we had premarital counseling before we got married, we would put this into practice, that we would not let the sun go down on our anger. And so we lost a lot of sleep. We finally got to a point that said that we agreed to say, okay, I love you. I'm committed to you, but I'm going to bed. We may not resolve everything, but we didn't let the sun go down on our anger. See, anger, anger is a valid emotion, but it's a dangerous driver. Just like any emotion, anger can be a signal light, but it shouldn't be, and it doesn't make for a good steering wheel. The real danger is that anger, but it's unresolved anger. Unresolved anger is a spiritual real estate that is leased to the enemy, the devil. James speaks to this. He says, My dear brothers in James 1, 19 to 20, my brothers and sisters, understand this. Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, for human anger does not accomplish God's righteousness. So we replace anger with self-control. What else do we do? We replace tearing down with building up. Paul says, no foul language should come out of your mouth in verse 29, but only what is good for building up someone in need, so that it gives grace to those who hear. Build up people with your words. Build up people, not tear them down, not foul language. We think sometimes that's cursing and using God's name in vain. Certainly that's part of it. But it can be cutting sarcasm, it can be an off-color joke, it can be a label that you put on somebody, it can be public shaming, it can be venting that leaves awake as it moves forward. Um sometimes it can be a prayer request that is disguised. It's actually gossip disguised as a prayer request. And so God says, replace tearing down with building up. Then finally, here's what he says: he says, replace bitterness with forgiveness. Replace bitterness with forgiveness. He says, Let all bitterness, anger, and wrath, shouting and slander be removed from you along with all malice, and be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ. So you say, replace bitterness with forgiveness. Why do we replace bitterness with forgiveness? Because it is what forgiveness is what was offered to us even in our state of lostness without Jesus. He decided to forgive. Christ died for us while we were yet still sinners to provide forgiveness for us. And then he says in verse 30, don't grieve God's Holy Spirit. You were sealed by Him for the day of redemption. So that's what that's what this series is about. Rules of engagement. It matters how we relate to one another. Because how we relate to one another sends a message to the people around us inside the church, but it also sends a message to the people that are outside the church. And so this morning.