St Theodore's

Wattle Park

Sermon of the Week
Look up the passage

7/5/06

The Ephesus Code for Pleasing the Saviour Eph 4:17-5:2

The central theme of Ephesians is all things united in Christ. So Paul, when he's finished his prayer for the Ephesians, with all its detours to explain its theological underpinning continues in ch 4 like this: "Therefore I beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, ²with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, ³making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." If we're to achieve anything as the people of God, if we're to live up to the calling to be his people then we need to work on expressing the unity we have in Christ through the relationships we have in the world.

So he address 4 areas in which we're each called to live and work. And in each place he calls us to demonstrate the gospel in the way we speak and act.

1. Demonstrate the gospel in the church 4:1-16

• Maintain unity of the Spirit

Notice how unity is maintained, v2: "with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love." One of the greatest sources of disunity in the church is our desire to get our own way, to be in control. Most of us naturally think that our way is the best or that our way of thinking is the only logical one. So the first step is humility: elsewhere it's described as thinking of others as better than yourself. It's a radical thought for some of us that others might have a better idea than we do. It's even more radical to think that someone who isn't at the forefront of leadership might have the best idea, but that's sometimes the way God works in the church.

Then there's gentleness, patience and bearing with one another. If we're to maintain the unity of the Spirit then we need to treat one another with gentleness and patience. Sometimes we'll be wrong and others will need to set us straight. Sometimes we'll be right and will need to set others straight. But the way we do that will make all the difference. If we come in with a heavy handed approach or an attitude that says we have all the answers and you'd better listen or else, what will happen? People will just get their backs up won't they? They'll just harden in their attitude towards us and worse still towards the ideas we're putting forward. But if we do it humbly and with gentleness, patiently waiting for their thinking to catch up, then we'll begin to get somewhere.

This is one of the lessons that's been learnt by people working in community development. There was a time when aid workers used to come in and tell the people what to do to solve their problems. But what they discovered was that even if they listened, the moment they left people would go back to the way they'd always done things. Instead they needed to sit down with the people and spend time explaining and demonstrating and giving them time to work out for themselves what would work best in their situation. Then when they left, the leaders of the community would take over making sure the new approaches went on.

So relate in humility, patience and forbearance, but especially in love. And then he says "making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." Sometimes it involves an effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit.

The unity we have is a gift from God. We have it because we've been born again, because we have God's Spirit within us. But at the same time we need to work hard to maintain it, to overcome our old sinful nature. We need to take advantage of the gifts God has given us to build up the church: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers. God has given us these gifts to equip us for the work of ministry, to build us up as Christ's body, to bring us to the full stature of Christ. That's something to aim for isn't it? The full stature of Christ!

• Grow up into Christ. We're to stop being children, swayed by every loud or attractive voice. Rather we're to grow to maturity. Notice by the way that the "you" here is a plural, a corporate you. Look at vs 15 & 16: "¹⁵But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, ¹⁶from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love." Our growth isn't the sort of personal growth we hear so much about today. We're not called to develop for the sake of our own self development our own self-fulfilment. Rather we're to grow into a united body. Well that's actually a tautology isn't it. Inherent in the image of a body is the idea of unity of purpose and action. A body that stops functioning as a unit is seriously ill, maybe even in danger of death, but certainly inhibited in what it can do. So we're to grow for the sake of the body. That is, our growth is to do with the way we interact with one another, the way we feed and strengthen one another, the way we help one another, challenge one another, work in partnership with one another. And notice the opening phrase there:

• Speaking the truth in love

There's no suggestion that we need to pretend that all is well when it isn't. What does your body do when there's something wrong? If you touch a hot stove, does your body ignore the danger? No, it reacts quite violently doesn't it? It jerks your hand away as fast as it can. If you pick up a virus what happens? You begin to run a fever. You feel tired as your body begins to transfer some of its energy to fighting the virus. So too, in the life of Christ's body, the church we need to be honest with one another. If there's an issue that might affect the body then we need to deal with it within the body. Always with the proviso that we do it in love. If we speak the truth without love first of all it'll be like the development worker telling the third world peasant what to do. It'll be ignored or worse. And secondly it's likely to create a breakdown in the body rather than healing the body, because it'll provoke a reaction that has the same amount of love as was given.

So if we're to demonstrate the gospel in the church we need to maintain unity of the Spirit, grow up into Christ and speak the truth in love.

2. Demonstrate the gospel in your relationships 4:17-5:21

• Put off the old and put on the new life

We must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds. This sounds simple, but I think it's actually a very hard thing to do. Our minds are so filled with the ideas of the world around us that we're in constant danger of being led astray. Unless you never watch television or read a newspaper or go to the movies, you're mind is being bombarded by ideas, by value systems, by various temptations that are totally opposed to God to the way he wants us to live. So how are we to overcome these forces dragging us back to the old way of thinking?

Well, the answer is down there in vs23 & 24: "be renewed in the spirit of your minds, ²⁴and ... clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." How can you be renewed in your mind? Well, it begins with the work of the Holy Spirit doesn't it? The new birth involves a renewal of our hearts and minds. But it continues by the way we feed our minds. You've no doubt heard the story of the man who ran a dog fighting establishment. He owned two dogs that would fight each other every Saturday night. And people would come along to bet on the outcome. But they could never predict it. One week it would be the black dog and the next it'd be the white dog. Mind you he always seemed to be able to back the winner but as much as they figured he was fixing the fight no-one could work out how he was doing it.

One day though one of his best mates asked him how he picked the winner every time. He said "Oh, it's simple. Each week I feed one dog and starve the other. The outcome is a foregone conclusion."

So too we can fix the outcome of the battle we have with the world by making sure we feed our minds with God's word more than with that of the world. We can put on the nature of Christ in the way we think and act and speak. We can choose to live upright lives, avoiding behaviour that's immoral, language that's impure, lusts and desires that will lead us astray. Instead we can thank God for all the good things he's given us. In other words we should

• Imitate God and live like Christ

We don't have time now to go into all that this means, but just look down the list of behaviours that are there in vs 25-32: put away falsehood, speak the truth to our neighbors, be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger; thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. Notice how the removal of an unrighteous lifestyle is complemented by the addition of a righteous act - of generosity in the use of money. ²⁹Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, so that your words may give grace to those who hear; the gospel value here is grace, God's unmerited favour. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, ³²and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Again a set of vices replaced by a set of virtues.

It's an impressive list isn't it? It's a list of the sorts of characteristics that fit with our new life in Christ. Notice though that this is a list of behaviours that flow out of our new life in Christ not ones that will create our new life. As one of the speakers at the Eastern Region ministry conference pointed out this week, we work from God's love, not for God's love.

• Be filled with the Spirit

Again, how are we to do this? Notice how he repeats himself, sometimes in slightly different words. He wants to make his point so he says it again and again. Look at v18: "¹⁸Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit, ¹⁹as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, ²⁰giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." You an fill your mind with the ideas of the world or you can fill them with God's word. You can get your highs from drink or drugs or extreme sports, or you can get high in the Spirit. Notice that being filled with the Spirit has a communal aspect to it? It's as we sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among ourselves, as we make melody in our hearts to the Lord as we give thanks to the Father that the Spirit's filling begins to take effect. If you think it's OK to neglect meeting with other Christians on a regular basis you need to read this over and over a few times. Sometimes we get the mistaken impression that we just meet together to worship God. But if that were the case then you might just as well stay home and do it by yourself; turn on TV and watch hymns of praise. Of course worship of God is at the centre of our meeting together, but that should be true of everything we do. What's so special about meeting together is that we come together to relate to one another as the body of Christ. As we sing God's praise, as we join in thanking God together, as we hear his word proclaimed we begin to experience his Spirit working within us, changing us, inspiring us.

3. Demonstrate the gospel in the household 5:21-6:9

If we're to demonstrate the unity of the gospel in the Church and in our relationships then it's equally as important that we demonstrate it in our households. So we find a series of instructions in how to live faithfully as God's people in our everyday life. We don't have time to go into these in great detail but let me encourage you to think about how you might express the truth of the gospel in your particular circumstance.

• In marriages

Husbands are to love their wives the way Christ loved the Church. That is they're to forget any status society may give them as the head of the household. Instead they're to give up their life for the sake of their wife. Wives are to honour their husbands as though they were to them what Christ is to the Church. A wife is to give her husband the honour he deserves for giving himself up for her sake.

This is completely counterintuitive isn't it? Have you ever driven someone else's car and discovered the first time you turned a corner that the blinker and the wiper controls were the opposite way to your own car? You went to indicate a turn and what happened? The wipers started going. So what happened at the next corner? You did exactly the same thing again didn't you? Well I did anyway. I found it takes about twenty turns before I get it right. Well that's the sort of thing we have to overcome if we're to get our marriages right. Our natural inclination, our ingrained habit if you like is to want to be boss. The husband expects to be the head of the house, to have his word obeyed. The wife expects her husband to see that of course she has the better perspective on things, the greater experience in running a household, raising the children etc. But the counter-cultural, counterintuitive attitude is this. The husband abandons his rights for the sake of the wife. The wife looks to her husband for a lead. And if they're both filled with the Spirit it works. The key of course is that little phrase in v21: "²¹Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ." If we're to live out the values of the gospel then we have to have this as our overriding rule of life. Mutual submission. No boss of the household, no ruler except Christ. He is our head, not you and not me.

• In Families

Well we've run out of time. The other household relationship are there. Children and parents.

• At Work

Masters and slaves. These days that translates to employers and employees I guess, with a bit of translation perhaps.

3. Demonstrate the gospel in the household 6:10-24

And we've left out the final section about living out the Gospel in the world. All we have time for there is to point out that living in the world requires us to be prepared. Our calling is not to overcome the world, Jesus has done that, but we are called to stand firm against all the opposition that the world will present to us. So we need to be prepared like good boy scouts. We need to prepare our armour so we'll be able to stand firm. And not only that but we need to maintain our strength. Armour by itself is not enough. We need God's power to persevere. So we need to continue to pray in the Spirit at all times (6:18) both for ourselves and for our fellow believers. Our ability to stand firm will depend to a large extent on those who stand beside us and those who lead us. So Paul reminds us to pray for one another and to pray for him so that when he speaks it might be with boldness.

The Gospel is an amazing message, It announces the love and grace of God. It tells of his plan made before the creation of the world to create a people united in their love for him, built into a single organism, a body united under Jesus Christ as its head. Our part in that eternal plan is to proclaim the gospel not just through our words but by the way we live as a church, in our relationships with one another, in our households and in the world. Let's pray that we might be enabled to make known to the world the wisdom of God in all its rich variety.

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	Sermon of the Week	Look up the passage
	7/5/06
	The Ephesus Code for Pleasing the Saviour	Eph 4:17-5:2

	The central theme of Ephesians is all things united in Christ. So Paul, when he's finished his prayer for the Ephesians, with all its detours to explain its theological underpinning continues in ch 4 like this: "Therefore I beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, ²with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, ³making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." If we're to achieve anything as the people of God, if we're to live up to the calling to be his people then we need to work on expressing the unity we have in Christ through the relationships we have in the world.
	So he address 4 areas in which we're each called to live and work. And in each place he calls us to demonstrate the gospel in the way we speak and act.
	1. Demonstrate the gospel in the church 4:1-16
	• Maintain unity of the Spirit
	Notice how unity is maintained, v2: "with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love." One of the greatest sources of disunity in the church is our desire to get our own way, to be in control. Most of us naturally think that our way is the best or that our way of thinking is the only logical one. So the first step is humility: elsewhere it's described as thinking of others as better than yourself. It's a radical thought for some of us that others might have a better idea than we do. It's even more radical to think that someone who isn't at the forefront of leadership might have the best idea, but that's sometimes the way God works in the church.
	Then there's gentleness, patience and bearing with one another. If we're to maintain the unity of the Spirit then we need to treat one another with gentleness and patience. Sometimes we'll be wrong and others will need to set us straight. Sometimes we'll be right and will need to set others straight. But the way we do that will make all the difference. If we come in with a heavy handed approach or an attitude that says we have all the answers and you'd better listen or else, what will happen? People will just get their backs up won't they? They'll just harden in their attitude towards us and worse still towards the ideas we're putting forward. But if we do it humbly and with gentleness, patiently waiting for their thinking to catch up, then we'll begin to get somewhere.
	This is one of the lessons that's been learnt by people working in community development. There was a time when aid workers used to come in and tell the people what to do to solve their problems. But what they discovered was that even if they listened, the moment they left people would go back to the way they'd always done things. Instead they needed to sit down with the people and spend time explaining and demonstrating and giving them time to work out for themselves what would work best in their situation. Then when they left, the leaders of the community would take over making sure the new approaches went on.
	So relate in humility, patience and forbearance, but especially in love. And then he says "making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." Sometimes it involves an effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit.
	The unity we have is a gift from God. We have it because we've been born again, because we have God's Spirit within us. But at the same time we need to work hard to maintain it, to overcome our old sinful nature. We need to take advantage of the gifts God has given us to build up the church: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers. God has given us these gifts to equip us for the work of ministry, to build us up as Christ's body, to bring us to the full stature of Christ. That's something to aim for isn't it? The full stature of Christ!
	• Grow up into Christ. We're to stop being children, swayed by every loud or attractive voice. Rather we're to grow to maturity. Notice by the way that the "you" here is a plural, a corporate you. Look at vs 15 & 16: "¹⁵But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, ¹⁶from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love." Our growth isn't the sort of personal growth we hear so much about today. We're not called to develop for the sake of our own self development our own self-fulfilment. Rather we're to grow into a united body. Well that's actually a tautology isn't it. Inherent in the image of a body is the idea of unity of purpose and action. A body that stops functioning as a unit is seriously ill, maybe even in danger of death, but certainly inhibited in what it can do. So we're to grow for the sake of the body. That is, our growth is to do with the way we interact with one another, the way we feed and strengthen one another, the way we help one another, challenge one another, work in partnership with one another. And notice the opening phrase there:
	• Speaking the truth in love
	There's no suggestion that we need to pretend that all is well when it isn't. What does your body do when there's something wrong? If you touch a hot stove, does your body ignore the danger? No, it reacts quite violently doesn't it? It jerks your hand away as fast as it can. If you pick up a virus what happens? You begin to run a fever. You feel tired as your body begins to transfer some of its energy to fighting the virus. So too, in the life of Christ's body, the church we need to be honest with one another. If there's an issue that might affect the body then we need to deal with it within the body. Always with the proviso that we do it in love. If we speak the truth without love first of all it'll be like the development worker telling the third world peasant what to do. It'll be ignored or worse. And secondly it's likely to create a breakdown in the body rather than healing the body, because it'll provoke a reaction that has the same amount of love as was given.
	So if we're to demonstrate the gospel in the church we need to maintain unity of the Spirit, grow up into Christ and speak the truth in love.
	2. Demonstrate the gospel in your relationships 4:17-5:21
	• Put off the old and put on the new life
	We must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds. This sounds simple, but I think it's actually a very hard thing to do. Our minds are so filled with the ideas of the world around us that we're in constant danger of being led astray. Unless you never watch television or read a newspaper or go to the movies, you're mind is being bombarded by ideas, by value systems, by various temptations that are totally opposed to God to the way he wants us to live. So how are we to overcome these forces dragging us back to the old way of thinking?
	Well, the answer is down there in vs23 & 24: "be renewed in the spirit of your minds, ²⁴and ... clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." How can you be renewed in your mind? Well, it begins with the work of the Holy Spirit doesn't it? The new birth involves a renewal of our hearts and minds. But it continues by the way we feed our minds. You've no doubt heard the story of the man who ran a dog fighting establishment. He owned two dogs that would fight each other every Saturday night. And people would come along to bet on the outcome. But they could never predict it. One week it would be the black dog and the next it'd be the white dog. Mind you he always seemed to be able to back the winner but as much as they figured he was fixing the fight no-one could work out how he was doing it.
	One day though one of his best mates asked him how he picked the winner every time. He said "Oh, it's simple. Each week I feed one dog and starve the other. The outcome is a foregone conclusion."
	So too we can fix the outcome of the battle we have with the world by making sure we feed our minds with God's word more than with that of the world. We can put on the nature of Christ in the way we think and act and speak. We can choose to live upright lives, avoiding behaviour that's immoral, language that's impure, lusts and desires that will lead us astray. Instead we can thank God for all the good things he's given us. In other words we should
	• Imitate God and live like Christ
	We don't have time now to go into all that this means, but just look down the list of behaviours that are there in vs 25-32: put away falsehood, speak the truth to our neighbors, be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger; thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. Notice how the removal of an unrighteous lifestyle is complemented by the addition of a righteous act - of generosity in the use of money. ²⁹Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, so that your words may give grace to those who hear; the gospel value here is grace, God's unmerited favour. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, ³²and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Again a set of vices replaced by a set of virtues.
	It's an impressive list isn't it? It's a list of the sorts of characteristics that fit with our new life in Christ. Notice though that this is a list of behaviours that flow out of our new life in Christ not ones that will create our new life. As one of the speakers at the Eastern Region ministry conference pointed out this week, we work from God's love, not for God's love.
	• Be filled with the Spirit
	Again, how are we to do this? Notice how he repeats himself, sometimes in slightly different words. He wants to make his point so he says it again and again. Look at v18: "¹⁸Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit, ¹⁹as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, ²⁰giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." You an fill your mind with the ideas of the world or you can fill them with God's word. You can get your highs from drink or drugs or extreme sports, or you can get high in the Spirit. Notice that being filled with the Spirit has a communal aspect to it? It's as we sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among ourselves, as we make melody in our hearts to the Lord as we give thanks to the Father that the Spirit's filling begins to take effect. If you think it's OK to neglect meeting with other Christians on a regular basis you need to read this over and over a few times. Sometimes we get the mistaken impression that we just meet together to worship God. But if that were the case then you might just as well stay home and do it by yourself; turn on TV and watch hymns of praise. Of course worship of God is at the centre of our meeting together, but that should be true of everything we do. What's so special about meeting together is that we come together to relate to one another as the body of Christ. As we sing God's praise, as we join in thanking God together, as we hear his word proclaimed we begin to experience his Spirit working within us, changing us, inspiring us.
	3. Demonstrate the gospel in the household 5:21-6:9
	If we're to demonstrate the unity of the gospel in the Church and in our relationships then it's equally as important that we demonstrate it in our households. So we find a series of instructions in how to live faithfully as God's people in our everyday life. We don't have time to go into these in great detail but let me encourage you to think about how you might express the truth of the gospel in your particular circumstance.
	• In marriages
	Husbands are to love their wives the way Christ loved the Church. That is they're to forget any status society may give them as the head of the household. Instead they're to give up their life for the sake of their wife. Wives are to honour their husbands as though they were to them what Christ is to the Church. A wife is to give her husband the honour he deserves for giving himself up for her sake.
	This is completely counterintuitive isn't it? Have you ever driven someone else's car and discovered the first time you turned a corner that the blinker and the wiper controls were the opposite way to your own car? You went to indicate a turn and what happened? The wipers started going. So what happened at the next corner? You did exactly the same thing again didn't you? Well I did anyway. I found it takes about twenty turns before I get it right. Well that's the sort of thing we have to overcome if we're to get our marriages right. Our natural inclination, our ingrained habit if you like is to want to be boss. The husband expects to be the head of the house, to have his word obeyed. The wife expects her husband to see that of course she has the better perspective on things, the greater experience in running a household, raising the children etc. But the counter-cultural, counterintuitive attitude is this. The husband abandons his rights for the sake of the wife. The wife looks to her husband for a lead. And if they're both filled with the Spirit it works. The key of course is that little phrase in v21: "²¹Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ." If we're to live out the values of the gospel then we have to have this as our overriding rule of life. Mutual submission. No boss of the household, no ruler except Christ. He is our head, not you and not me.
	• In Families
	Well we've run out of time. The other household relationship are there. Children and parents.
	• At Work
	Masters and slaves. These days that translates to employers and employees I guess, with a bit of translation perhaps.
	3. Demonstrate the gospel in the household 6:10-24
	And we've left out the final section about living out the Gospel in the world. All we have time for there is to point out that living in the world requires us to be prepared. Our calling is not to overcome the world, Jesus has done that, but we are called to stand firm against all the opposition that the world will present to us. So we need to be prepared like good boy scouts. We need to prepare our armour so we'll be able to stand firm. And not only that but we need to maintain our strength. Armour by itself is not enough. We need God's power to persevere. So we need to continue to pray in the Spirit at all times (6:18) both for ourselves and for our fellow believers. Our ability to stand firm will depend to a large extent on those who stand beside us and those who lead us. So Paul reminds us to pray for one another and to pray for him so that when he speaks it might be with boldness.
	The Gospel is an amazing message, It announces the love and grace of God. It tells of his plan made before the creation of the world to create a people united in their love for him, built into a single organism, a body united under Jesus Christ as its head. Our part in that eternal plan is to proclaim the gospel not just through our words but by the way we live as a church, in our relationships with one another, in our households and in the world. Let's pray that we might be enabled to make known to the world the wisdom of God in all its rich variety.

St Theodore's

Wattle Park

Contact us

Check our Mission Statement

Our Mission Strategy

Our 5-Year Plan

Preaching Program

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sermon by email