No room at church Ephesians 4:17-32
Ill. I asked a Methodist preacher one time if he was having mice problems like we were in the Baptist Church. He said, “No, our attendance is so good now, we don’t have room for mice so they moved out.”
Eph 4:17 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.
Eph 4:18 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.
Eph 4:19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
We covered these verses before summer. The call is for Christians to stop responding to issues like lost people do. Their solutions are futile, destructive, from darkened minds. There is no presence of God in their responses because they reject God. Treating others without love seems natural to the callous. Living for what satisfies self is all they understand.
But when you are saved, something is supposed to change. Some of that change is immediate. Some of it is gradual as you grow in Christ.
The problem becomes when Christians do not know the scripture, or do not apply it to their lives, they resemble lost people. This is not a popular message. I know why many Christians or professed Christians do not want to hear it. This hits us all on a bad day, and we’ve too many bad days lately.
Eph 4:20 But that is not the way you learned Christ!—
Eph 4:21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus,
Paul makes a startling assertion. He said, if you have Christ, that (the worldly natural) is not where Christ is taking you….And then he adds, “if indeed you truly have been saved.”
Wow, that took nerve. Everybody knows the Christian bully. The Christian bully; if he/she likes you, you are flowered with kindness. But if they don’t like you, you pay. They control other Christians out of fear.
I have been told there are members in every Church you don’t want to cross. If you do, they will make your life miserable. If you are a pastor, they seek to ruin your ministry and reputation. They start picking at everything you do and put it in the worse possible light, with the worse possible motive. Exaggeration, and downright lying is not out of the questions.
I believe Paul saw some of these in his ministry. As a matter of fact, I know he did.
1Ti 1:17 To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.
1Ti 1:18 This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare,
1Ti 1:19 holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith,
1Ti 1:20 among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.
In one part of his ministry, Paul said Alexander was a good helper. But near the end, he said he turned him over to Satan to teach him not to blaspheme. What did he do?
2Ti 4:14 Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm; the Lord will repay him according to his deeds.
This one did not just oppose Paul to his face. He went behind the scenes and spread rumors. He did more than hurt Paul. He hurt the work.
There is a theological study about “turning one’s flesh over to Satan to teach not to blaspheme. The word, “blaspheme” means to vilify, to speak evil of, to defame. One quick reference and we will move off this without further comment.
1Co 5:4 When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus,
1Co 5:5 you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.
When one hurts the work of the Church, either through creating division or promoting division, by repeating rumors, or simply not seeking resolution to an offense, the Church, the Bride of Christ, are called to obey the Head of the Church, Jesus Christ.
We hate Church discipline. And Church discipline, when it gets out of control, is ugly. And it easily gets out of Control, as seen in 1 and 2 Corinthians.
But when a Church does not discipline those who hurt the fellowship and unity, we offend Christ. He died to purify His bride, not to give us a playground to see how much division we can create.
In this passage, he is saying there needs to be a distinct difference in how we treat each other, good times and bad, when we agree or disagree. He says, that is what you learned from Christ. That is what Christ is teaching you in your life lessons, in your growing moments.
And then he warns, “If you are indeed saved.” The point is, some Christian bullies are saved. Some are not. It can get so bad, you cannot tell the difference. As a warning, Paul says, if you are struggling with your temper or your ability to love, you best check your heart.
I. No Room for Old-life Living
Eph 4:22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,
If Paul put this into our lingo, he would say, “Stop it”. Put off your old self. It doesn’t belong in your life today. If you are saved, that belonged to your old life, your former life. It was as corrupt as your heart, through deceitful desires. Put away that behavior to match your purified heart that Jesus gave you, if you are saved.
Eph 4:23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,
This is the exact thing we see in Romans 12:2. You who are saved have a new heart. Our Christian growth consists of renewing the spirit of our minds to match the pure heart Christians have received from the blood of Christ.
Eph 4:24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Christian growth is putting on the new self, which matches the very life of Christ in our hearts. It looks like God in true righteousness and holiness.
The Paul gets into specific problems which bothered this Church.
II. No Room for Dishonesty. (25).
Eph 4:25 Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.
Honesty is a benchmark. Dishonest my include honest descriptions of events tainted with our impressions. Just the truth. Not assumptions based on our observations and experience. Just the truth.
When there are breaches in your relationships, I promise you, much of it is based upon misunderstanding. Anybody who has done any mediation will tell you that resolution comes when finally the truth is separated from what people believe or assume to be the truth.
This sounds so simple: but only the truth is the truth. What is not the truth is falsehood. Falsehoods are at the heart of relationship problems. As Paul taught unity in this troubled Church, he said, “Zero in on the truth and discard everything else.”
III. No Room for Anger’s Fruit (26-27).
Eph 4:26 Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,
Eph 4:27 and give no opportunity to the devil.
Next, he said, there is no place for anger’s fruit. Much has been said about this and books have been written. I will give you the cliff notes.
All of us get angry. This scripture says that anger does not have to be accompanied by sin. “Be angry and sin not.”
Anger turns into sin when it takes control of what we do or say. Many Christians are incapable of becoming angry and not letting it take control. We have stopped teaching this.
We spend too much time justifying our anger and justifying what the anger creates in us. This tears up relationships.
Have you ever known a relationship that was harmed without anger being involved? When we get hurt, we are angry, and we strike back. Is that what Jesus did?
1Pe 2:20 For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God.
1Pe 2:21 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.
1Pe 2:22 He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.
1Pe 2:23 When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.
Listen, you have been called to get hurt, to get mad, to be offended, to not get your way. Yes, you have been called to that. You are called to feel belittled and disrespected.
But you are called to suffer and endure it, and to reflect Christ in it. Christ suffered for you, and that is our example. When hurt, He did not sin. When angered, the Father still controlled His life. When he was insulted, reviled, He took it without revenge or hurting the relationship. He bore the wounds of difficult relationships as His investment into the relationship and our example of how to be a Church.
This suffering Christ did and the belittling he endured was for us, and now is expected in us.
What a loving, successful Church we would have if we learned this, from the pastor all the way through the nursery.
IV. No Room for Self-centeredness. (28)
Eph 4:28 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.
Next, Paul addresses selfish self-centeredness. Fallen mankind (that cursed life from which we were called away from) demands things go our way and we get, at the expense of anyone in the way, what we want. The extreme of this is the thief. But it’s the same spirit throughout.
Look at the remedy to the selfishness, “must have my wants and desires” life. Work, honest work, benefiting so you can share. The direct opposite from selfish self-centeredness.
V. No Room for an Uncontrolled Tongue (29)
Eph 4:29 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.
Corrupt talk. You CAN have a purified heart, the life of Christ in you as your life, and still have an un-renewed mind, still thinking like a lost person, and thus, still talking like a lost person. Paul says, maturing believers are to control what comes out of their mouths.
Not things that tear down, but things that build up. Not things that create condemnation in those we don’t agree with, but that which gives grace to the hearers.
This is not the occasional encouragement where we are amazed that God used our mouths to do good. He said, “Let NO corrupting, defiling, defeating words come out of your mouth.” The Amplified Bible, which tries to squeeze the full meaning of the Greek and Hebrew words into the verse says, “Let no foul or polluting language, nor evil word nor unwholesome or worthless talk [ever] come out of your mouth”.
Then Paul summarizes the previous verses in a three general statements.
1. The Plan for Unity. Matthew 18:15.
Eph 4:30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
When we do not operate with spiritually healthy characteristics in our Church and fellowship, we grieve the Holy Spirit. Remember, the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps us saved. Thus Paul says, “by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”
There are a lot of things for God to be grieved by. (The Holy Spirit is God, by the way.) But the only thing mentioned that grieves the Spirit of God is disruption to the fellowship.
This is not a light matter, or a secondary message in the Bible. It is primary to the calling of God and the mission of God through us. Many, many passages are instructions for our unity and forbidding discord.
God had a plan for unity and we must go by his plan. That is:
Mat 18:15 "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.
Mat 18:16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.
Mat 18:17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
I make a motion. If we are not going to act like a true Church of Jesus Christ, operating by His instructions, let’s call this something other than Church. If we are going to act like a club, without Christ in control, let’s put out a news release.
But if we are going to be the Church that pleases Christ, that reaches this community, that obeys the Head of the Church Jesus Christ, our leaders and every member MUST insist that we do it His way. His way is further summarized in the last two verses.
2. The Product of Unity (31-32).
(ERV) “Never be bitter, angry, or mad. Never shout angrily or say things to hurt others. Never do anything evil. Be kind and loving to each other. Forgive each other the same as God forgave you through Christ.”
No room in the Church for old-life living. No room for dishonesty and deception. No Room for Anger’s Fruit. No Room for Self-centeredness. No Room for Uncontrolled tongue.
But there is room for unconditional love. Gracefully esteem others more than our own selves.
This morning, there will be people praying for the altar (for you, themselves, our church, your pastor, your deacons, your teachers, your fellowship, and your unity). Encourage each other with faithfulness. Share joy when one has a reason for joy, heartache when one has a reason for sorrow.
We invite others to join us in the cause of Christ, and faithfulness to His bride, the Church. Pray for more people in the kingdom, people being saved.
