Resolved to Grow and Build in Love

This is a vision sermon for The Resolved Church in 2010 titled, “Resolved to Grow and Build in Love – Part IV: Continuing to Be Changed by the Gospel” which surveys how God has worked in our church in the last year and then takes an exegetical look at Ephesians 4:17-32 as the vision for our continued growth in the gospel in this next year. This sermon was originally preached by Pastor Duane Smets on January 17th, 2010 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA.

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The Resolved Church
Pastor Duane Smets
January 17th, 2010

Resolved to Grow and Build in Love – Part IV
Continuing to be Changed by the Gospel
Ephesians 4:17-32

I. Past Lessons
II. How Not to Walk
III. How to Walk

Introduction

At least a few times a year we like to take a Sunday to address who we are as a church, what we are trying to do and where our church leadership sees we need to grow. The New Year is one of those times. Just as we took a Sunday to address our own personal individual lives in the last year and took ahead to see where we need God to work in us in the next year, it is also good for us to do that as a church.

I met with Ron Boersma, our other elder, and with Ted McCann, who’s in a sort of testing and proving stage as an elder…I met with them this week and together we looked back over the year to see what God has been doing among us and what we need to work on as a church. So since I’m a preacher and do most the speaking here, it’s my joy and my job to share with you those things today.

For the past three years when we’ve done this, we’ve used Ephesians 4 as our guide, focusing on different parts of it. We’re a church plant that started from scratch five years ago this year. Many pastors and Bible dudes throughout the years have noted that in many ways Ephesians 4 is like a manual to church planting. So once again we’re going to use Ephesians 4 this year as our guide for a fourth installment of what has become our yearly “Resolved to Grow and Build in Love” sermon.

I. Past Lessons

First off let me kind of give you an overview of what we’ve done with Ephesians 4 so far and what we’ve learned from it as a church. The first year we worked with it, we looked at how it tells us that Jesus, who is the head of the church, has uniquely given gifts to each one of his followers and has something special to do with each one of them.

That’s true. Regardless of who you are, you are unique as your fingerprint to God and the way that he has designed you… he intends to use you for something great, for his purposes, for his glory, for his kingdom when you offer yourself to him.

What we learned from that is when people start really offering themselves to God and start using their gifts that it makes the church grow. But the interesting thing, is that the growth in view in Ephesians is not horizontal, numerical growth…it’s vertical upward growth into Christ. Jesus’ goal in the leadership of His church is to cause the body to grow up into him.

This is backwards to a lot of ways that people look at church planting. A lot of guys want to grow a big church and grow it as fast as possible. They’re looking horizontally. So they’ll do anything they can just to get people in the door. We’ve decided not to go that route. Instead we have moved forward with a vision to look to vertically, upward to Jesus and grow into him in depth. Our hope in doing this is that we have created something long lasting, with roots that go down deep, so that this church, The Resolved Church will exists for hundreds of years to come, if the Lord tarries. I mean that.

The year after ended up being a year of developing a real strong core of mature people in this church. That year we looked at verses 13-14, which talk about maturity and it being the difference between boats and trees. Boats float on the water at the sea and are at the mercy of winds and often get tossed to and fro. Trees have roots that go down deep that enable them to withstand the winds and storms that come. Verse 15 says the way we as a church grow like a tree instead of a boat is by speaking the truth to each other in love.

That makes a lot of sense. It’s impossible to have a strong core of a church body if people are not being honest with each other and challenging one another spiritually. If you’re new to the church, we’re glad you’re here. It’s our hope for you that as time goes on and as you feel comfortable by God’s leading that you will increasingly be able to move from just being a Sunday attendee to actually getting to know some of the people here and begin to start sharing life together. As we have grown numerically, our community groups have become essential for us to maintain that type of experience.

Last year we looked at the bulk of the whole chapter of Ephesians 4 and looked at each one of the seven “one’s” that are in it: one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all. We talked about how Jesus intends for there to be a massive unity in his church, where everything is flowing from and looking to him.

Only Jesus can truly pastor and plant a church and he is very jealous for his glory. He wants his church to be one in him and anything else will simply divert attention and bring in dissention and destruction. In Matthew 16 Jesus says that he will be the one who will build a church and the way that Jesus builds a church is by making it one in him. He is the axis through which all things revolve. So as a church we work through things together and are on mission together.

Our whole church has come under and committed to these three core values: being a glory driven, gospel centered, city within a city. Our goal is to be a church that is about God’s glory, we’re a worshipping church, we love God, serve God, and enjoy God…we’re about him and not about ourselves. Second, our goal is to be a church that is gospel-centered, everything we are and do springs from who Jesus is and what he has done for us. To put it simply, it’s all about Jesus…if you’re wondering what this whole deal is all about, it simple. It all comes down to Jesus. Then lastly it’s our goal to be a church that is a city within a city. This reflects our constant commitment to be a church on mission to share and demonstrate the goodness of Jesus to our city so that the city of San Diego will come to know and share the goodness of living in the gospel city that lives under the rule and reign of Jesus. We’re on mission. We have a job to do.

That brings us to this year. When I sat down with Ron and Ted this week they would not stop talking about all the good stuff we’ve experienced this year as a church. It’s been a huge year for us. At the beginning of the year we drafted a church-wide prayer list and we’ve seen every single one of those prayers answered.

We prayed for more families and now our kids room is overflowing and along with it Kathy has developed a really solid system and program for the kids.

We prayed for another pastor to serve in counseling and God brought us Ted who used to serve at the Institute of Biblical Counseling and Discipleship. And now we’re on the verge of launching our own counseling center.

We prayed for real spiritual growth and discipleship to take place and a good majority of the church is in discipleship relationships where they are regularly meeting with others to talk and encourage one another in spiritual growth.

We prayed for growth in our music worship ministry and God sent us Sean to not only lead us but build teams and really multiply the music part of what we do and it’s been awesome. In this next year Sean will launch a once a month Sunday evening music coffee house here and it’s just amazing.

We installed Ron officially as an elder and have had a number of new people go through our membership class and officially become members of the church.

We’ve prayed for and seen people become Christians like you heard Stuart share about last week.

We’ve seen our community groups grow strong and are seeing the beginning stages of new ones being birthed.

There is just so much stuff it is really exciting times here at The Resolved Church. It has sort of felt like a whirlwind and it’s great just to be caught up in the middle of it all. So much good stuff. In our meeting Ron and Ted couldn’t stop talking about the good stuff. I kept asking, yeah but what do we need to work on, how do we need to grow? And then they’d just talk about more good things. It was like pulling teeth to get them to say something bad. Finally Ted was like…we’ll maybe we could get a second cup with grape juice instead of wine if some people have an aversion to wine or for their kids.

It is just really clear, not only among the leadership of our church, but I’m sure for all of you that Jesus is doing some great things here. It seems so clear that the message for us this year is to keep going, keep doing the things we are doing. I don’t know what it is but it’s working so don’t stop!

I joke about it but that is really how we feel as your pastors. That we need to continue to move forward by being changed in the gospel. That’s what is really at the core of all the good things happening among us…it’s the gospel. The gospel is at work in our lives, changing us as people and moving us and using us.

So in light of that, what I want to do with Ephesians for the second half of this sermon time today is to look at the second half of Ephesians 4, which is about just that…the change that the gospel works in our lives. In the first 16 verses of chapter 4, Paul, the human author, looks at church growth on the corporate or group level. In the last 16 verses of chapter 4, he looks at church growth on the individual level. The point is that they are dependent on one another and can’t be divorced from each other. Corporate growth is dependent on individual growth.

So here’s the deal. Ephesians is a sick book. Not sick like bad, sick like good. It’s sick because of the way it is organized. You’ve got these five sections all divided up by this analogy of walking. In 4:1 we’re told to “walk in a manner worthy of our calling.” Here in 4:17 we have don’t walk any longer in futility of mind. In 5:2 we are to “walk in love.” In 5:8 we are to “walk as children of the light.” And in 5:15 we’re to walk carefully and wisely. That sick. Good sick. I like it.

Our walk, the one from 4:17 is addressing gospel change, how we used to walk compared to how we are supposed to walk now because Jesus is in our life. We’ve talked about this analogy of walking before. It’s not a new metaphor. For thousands of years Christians and non-Christians alike have compared this life we live as being like a journey. Our time on earth is a journey that we are walking through.

The older we get and the more the more we really understand ourselves the more we know how much we really need change and how hard it is for real change in us to happen. The beautiful thing is that the gospel really can change a person and when it does that true change is awesome and energizing.

So let me read verses 17-32 for you and then we’ll fire through them. It’s like a vocabulary hurricane, so get ready. Here we go.

Ephesians 4:17-32

“17 Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20 But that is not the way you learned Christ! — 21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

25 Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of another. 26 Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and give no opportunity to the devil. 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. 29 Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. 32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”

Okay, so let me break this down real simple for us. There are 4 things it says about how not to walk and 8 things it says about how to walk. So let’s just go through them one by one.

II. How Not to Walk

First, “How Not to Walk.” Four main things here. Number one, get your head out of your _____. The actual words are futility of mind and darkened understanding. Futility is the idea of vanity, purposelessness, and absurdity. It’s like trying to hammer a nail into a piece of wood and using a feather to pound the nail. That’s futile, that dumb.

We waste so much time thinking about meaningless and dumb stuff instead of the things which really count. That’s what the darkened understanding is. It’s like we’re walking through life with the lights off and so we end up just wandering all over the place and have no direction because we cannot see where we are going. God intends for us as Christians to walk in his light where we see things from his perspective, we see the things that really matter and really count and that’s what we live for and it effects not just the things we think about but the way we think and the decisions we make.

Number two is walking in alienation from the life of God. It’s walking alone, where you are only looking internally at yourself and your needs, wants and desires for your life. You’re not getting the drive and passion and perspective for life from God. Think of blood supply. Life is in the blood. If you get cut open and lose all your blood, you will bleed to death.

God is the source of all life. He created life and is meant to be its source. You were made and meant to live for God. Life is not designed to be lived apart from or alienated from God.

When we try to live apart from him, it’s because the next thing has happened. We become hard hearted and callous. When something becomes hard, like say a piece of play dough. My daughter loves playing with play dough so I’m really into play dough lately. If you leave the play dough out after time it gets hard and brittle. You pick it up and it feels hard and if you try and poke it, you can’t because it’s stiff and resistant. When play dough soft it is moldable and if you poke at it your finger goes into it and leaves an impression.

What happens to us when we live life apart from God is we get hard, brittle, stiff and resistant and ultimately numb so that the proddings of God don’t really effect us. We don’t want to listen or take it in.

One of the main tools that God uses to try and mold and shape us is his people. God most often will use His people to poke us and prod us. But when we’ve become hard hearted, we become resistant to them and instead give ourselves over to the next thing, end of verse 19 “sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.”

Sensuality comes from senses. Stimulation. It’s mainly getting at ungodly forms of sexual stimulation, but can include other things. It’s where you are overcome and overrun with desire. Greedy for it. You see the hardness and just ignoring God eventually gives way to where you then begin to crave and pursue sin. It shifts from being just a passive deal to an active fulfilling.

There is a guilt and an emptiness from living life apart from God that becomes like this unsatisfiable void and so we become like these ravenous dogs eating up anything and everything in hopes that it will quench our thirst…but nothing does, we just get more and more hungry.

So that’s the four things in how not to walk. The Bible knows human nature better than any book. The Bible is pretty R rated if you read it through. It’s full of real-life stories of murder, rape, famine, disease, judgment, war, adultery, theft, corruption…it doesn’t give us the edited version. It knows us.

It knows that we have strong tendencies to walk in these ways. Even after becoming a Christian. That’s why Paul has to give this reminder to say, hey…you’re different now, don’t walk how you used to…because we are still tempted to and at times fall back into those patterns and ways. When we realize it we need to repent and get back on track with God and start walking the way he has enabled us to.

For some of you today maybe right off the bat with one or more of those four things…you know you’ve gotten off track. You we’re taking some steps forward but you’ve taken a couple steps backward either in your thinking, or becoming alienated from God, or you’ve noticed hardness start to form, or you’ve all out turned away from God and have been just embraced pursuing your sinful desires….?

If that’s you, today God is calling you to and inviting you to repent. To be sorry and to turn from it and to get back on track with him in the good life, walking with him in his ways. The good thing about God is he is a forgiving God and has provided a way for us to be forgiving and changed through the person and work of his Son Jesus.

III. How to Walk

And that is what the rest of the section turns to. You only have about four negative things here and then it turns to about eight positive things about how to walk. So let’s run through them.

They begin and end with Jesus. So first off, is verse 20-21. The reason we walk differently now is because Jesus has come into our life and that changes thing. Check it out. Verse 20, “you learned Christ! —assuming that you have heart about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus.”

Really amazing what it says here. You have to look closely. Notice it doesn’t say “you learned about Christ” or were “taught about him” or “the truth about him.” It doesn’t say that. It doesn’t say we learned about him like we would learn about George Washington in an American History class. Christianity is not just learning about a person, it is learning him. It is much more intimate and all-consuming.

We are taught in him. There’s this intersection where Jesus changes and effects everything. The truth itself is him. You see it’s not just about who’s right and who’s wrong when it comes to religion. What this says right here is that reason, truth itself is Jesus. Jesus is the embodiment of all that is true and right, he becomes the lens through which we see and understand everything. Jesus is a whole worldview.

What is true in the Greco-Roman world of the first century, like in Ephesus the city this was originally written to, what is true there is like the glue that holds the universe together. Truth is reason, it’s just the way things work both physiologically and relationally. Truth is order and reason. And here Paul says, Jesus is the truth. Reason and order become flesh in the person of Jesus. This is huge.

It’s like saying math and language and morality became a human person in Jesus. Learning Christ is for our thinking about everything to be altered because of the massiveness of who he is and what he does in us.

So much so that anything before him becomes extremely insufficient and outdated. So I don’t know if you even count Jesus as one of the ways to walk, he is the walk. So the first thing that is really said after going through the how to walk ways is in verse 22…to put off your old self, the former manner of life.

This is a clothing analogy. It’s great because we get dressed every day and Paul digs into it right away that this is a daily activity of getting dressed. Put off, put on. Put off, put on. Put off your old self. Verse 24, put on the new self. Put off the old, put on the new. Put off, put on. Get dressed in Jesus each day. You see because Jesus is so encompassing it takes discipline and time to work out all those implications…especially because we still live in a sinful world and still have sinful tendencies.

The new self is one created in the likeness of God, in true righteousness and holiness. Just as in the Garden of Eden when God gave Adam and Eve new clothes in exchange for their clothes of shame after they sinned, God has given us new clothes made by Jesus for us. Where righteousness and holiness truly become ours.

And that leads to change in all kinds of ways. The next verse just sort of go on a rampage talking about all the good things it does in us. It changes the way we talk, our care for one another, our anger, our work, our giving, encouraging, sensitivity to God, and our affections. It just changes a ton of stuff in us.

One, how we talk. That’s verse 25 and 29. We put away, or put off, falsehood and speak the truth. No corrupting talk comes out of our mouth. The tendency to lie…to present ourselves to others as being someone we’re really not. That gets changed. We become honest, humble, truthful people…where we don’t feel the competitive need to put others down so we feel better. We know we’re a mess and we’re looking to Jesus and he is changing us.

Two, how we care for one another. Notice that is the motivation for speaking the truth. Verse 27, we’re no longer just about ourselves but see ourselves as members of one another.

Being part of a church is a huge, deep, powerful commitment. It’s a close-knit family of brothers and sisters. It’s a group of people who work together, hurt together, and care together.

Just this last week at our community group we we’re reflecting together on how we’ve grown in the last year and what we need God to do in us in the next year…and several people began to open up about the frustrations of the last year or fears of the next year. One person shared about a miserable job they feel stuck in. Another shared about graduating from college and feeling pressure and anxiety about what the next year will bring. And so we listened, asked questions, encouraged, and prayed for each other.

That’s what it means to be members of one another. We talk about what’s really going on and we help each other through it. Life is not clean. It’s messy. And often times our reaction to it isn’t good. Often times we get angry.

Which is the third thing in verse 26. “Be angry and do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.” I don’t know a person who doesn’t get angry. Some are very expressive in their anger. When things don’t go right or when they get hurt they explode and lash out and become enraged. Others are very inexpressive in their anger. When things don’t go right or when they get hurt they implode and internalize and become bitter.

Both forms of anger are dangerous and ruin us. They become opportunities or literally here, footholds for the devil. The become areas where our spiritual adversary sneaks in and gets a grip on us. Because of Christ and with the help of his people we don’t have to give into bad forms of anger. We can work it out with our members and help us see how the gospel applies to our life and the reason for our anger.

Jesus very much so knows what it is like to be wronged, a lot of reason to be angry and he died so that justice would be served and that we would be freed from the grip that anger gets on us.

Next, our new walk, new self in Jesus changes our work and the way we work, fourth thing. Rather than straight up stealing or just stealing time, we are, verse 28, enabled to labor, doing honest work with our hands.

Here’s the deal. Everyone falls within one of two camps. We either tend to overwork ourselves or under work ourselves.

First under working. We hear the word thief and everyone is like, yeah, that’s bad. But it’s not just addressing the dudes who rob banks or go on beer raids. Paul adds to it honest work with one’s hands. That’s because a lot of people, especially you young dudes, are lazy. You want to find out how you can work the least amount and make the most amount of money. Or when you do work, you do it lazily and you steal time from your employer…doing stuff you shouldn’t be doing while you’re working.

What about overworking? Some of you work really really hard and it’s all consuming. Which is just another form of stealing because you figure that if you work harder than anyone else, things will go better for you and you’ll get more.

Instead, we are supposed to see that our security is who we are in Jesus and our goal isn’t just to make a lot of money, have a lot of things and life a life of ease. So we work, we work hard, and we work honestly and the goal is that we might be able to give.

That’s the fifth thing. It’s at the end of verse 28…”so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.” As Christians we have been given so much in Jesus that it is meant to naturally make us a giving people. And not giving so that we feel better about ourselves, like we’re good philanthropist, giving people. But giving because we truly care and want to give. We care about the needs and plights of people and do what we can.

Three more things. Sixth, encouraging. Giving money is a form of encouraging but we can also give words. Verse 29, “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”

Life is hard. We need a lot of encouragement. Sociologists say that it takes seven good things said to a person to make up for one negative comment to them. To encourage means to pour courage into. We need to be built up not torn down.

We have such a strong tendency to gossip and tear others down, whether it is making fun of them or criticizing them either to their face or behind their back. A life of love and care for each other like Jesus has shown and given to us recognizes and empathizes with one’s struggles and looks for things to say that will build them up.

Seventh, sensitivity to the Holy Spirit. Verse 30, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.” This is huge. God is a person. Not just a nebulous, vague idea or moral code that is just out there. He is a person and when we sin, we hurt him, it grieves him. Calling sin our guilty conscience falls far short of the idea.

Think of it this way, when you sin against a person you hurt them. If I cheated on my wife and slept with another woman, Amy would be extremely grieved and hurt. When we sin, we sin against God and we hurt and grieve His Spirit.

That’s why when I have to discipline my daughter, I take her into the other room, sit her on my lap, tell her what she did wrong and I tell her what you did makes daddy sad but more importantly it makes God sad Adina.

Putting on the new self, involves being sensitive to God’s Spirit, no longer being hard and callous means we walk more carefully and cautiously. If we feel hesitation or temptation we consider who it will affect and ultimately what God will think and feel.

If we don’t, all kinds of unruly and ugly passions will consume us, which brings us to the eighth and last thing and that is Godly affections. Verse 31, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.”

Put off, put away these things…these affections are ruinous. If we are not sensitive to God’s Spirit and instead ignore him and not care, these things will consume us. We will become bitter, always the victim, prone to judge and condemn, angry, trash talking, manipulative and conniving.

When you hear that or read it…no one wants to be like that. That sentence sucks. But that is what happens to us when we walk in the old self and do not live under the rule and reign of king Jesus who changes us and our affections, approach, perspective and heart in this life.

Jesus changes us and what we need most of all is for him to continue to change us. The Bible knows that these things are real issues for us, real things we struggle with. Sometimes the early church gets overglamorized, like they had it all together. Oh no they didn’t. They struggled with lying, anger, stealing, trash talking and hard feeling just like the rest of us. The answer for them and the answer for us is the same, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And that’s how I want to end today’s message, with the way this whole section and chapter ends, in the gospel.

Conclusion

Verse 32 is like the bottom of a funnel. Paul takes everything he says and pulls it all down and roots it in the gospel with verse 32. Look at it, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”

Huge, huge verse. I could have preached the whole sermon on just that verse. I’ll say this about it. What verse 32 does, is guarantee for us that this whole message has not just been about morality, about just being a better person and doing things better. Verse 32 gets underneath.

It says, look…if you try and do these things and be this way you will fail. Dark mind, alienated from God, hard heart, impure relationships, bad talk, self-centered, angry, lazy, hoarding, tearing down, insensitive…we don’t have the power to change those things. The only way we will not end up that way and in those things is for our motives to change. And the way our motives change is by being a recipient of grace.

When we see that God has had grace for us, it becomes this well of a resource for us to have grace for others. When we see ourselves as a forgiven people, it enables us to be a forgiving people. When the put our faith in the good news of the gospel we find the strength and the motivation to give it’s goodness away to others.

Only Jesus can change us and it involves a continually going back to the gospel. Putting off and putting on, putting of the old way and putting on the new way of the gospel. It’s the way of love, that Jesus showed and sacrificed his life for it to be born in us.

God has done a lot in our church in the last few years. Some great things. They’ve been great things because the love and truth of the gospel has truly been at work in us. We’re a different people. We’re changing as we center ourselves in Jesus’ grace.

So the message for us this year as a church is to keep being changed by Jesus. Keep having him work in our lives. Keep loving each other. Keep reaching out to others.

Let’s go to the table and receive Jesus’ body and blood in the bread and wine and worship him and thank him. If you need to repent of some things, have got off track and want to get back on track with Jesus, do that. If you never have before and today’s sermon has really hit you and you want to become a Christian today, please come and partake with us.

All of us here are sinners who are looking to Jesus and being changed by him. As we all go to the table today let’s make this declaration and commitment as a church: Let’s resolved to grow and build in love.

Let’s pray.