Hebrews Lesson 167 July 30, 2009
NKJ Isaiah 40:31 But those who wait on the LORD Shall
renew their strength; They shall
mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall
walk and not faint.
In the last several lessons we’ve
been going through the Doctrine of One Another. Last time we got up to about
the 14th point so I’ll just quickly review the last 4 for those of
you who weren’t here the last time. If I took time going all the way back to
point 1 we’d never get to the end of this.
We’re to serve one another through
love, Galatians 5:13. Now what’s important as we look at all of these points -
I keep coming back to this because it’s just foundational to understand all of
these are different facets of love, what it means to love one another as Christ
loved us.
John 13:34, 35, Jesus said:
NKJ John 13:34 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love
one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
NKJ John 13:35 "By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."
So the more we think about that
model, that pattern that Jesus Christ gave us on the cross and in terms of His
love for us, the more then that we can come to understand what it is that we
are to do toward one another. That’s not based on who the other person is. So
often we are prone to react to people.
We’re prone to treat them on the basis of how they’ve treated us. We
need to rise above that and treat people on the basis of who God is and what
Christ did on the cross. That’s the pattern.
Again and again we see as we do in
so many of these passages that the pattern is Jesus Christ; to do it as Christ
loved us. For example, we saw last time in the series of verses that deal with
forgiveness – we’re to be kind to one another, forgiving one another. Forgiveness
is that act of kindness towards other believers. Just think how it is when we
mess up. We know we’ve offended somebody. We know we’ve hurt someone’s
feelings. We know that we have done things that have irritated, angered them
and what a relief that is when we know that we have forgiveness. Forgiveness is
a two-way road. We need to be ready to forgive others just as we have been
forgiven in Christ.
So we looked at key passages that
emphasize this. The whole illustration that the Lord gave as He washed the
disciples’ feet wasn’t to teach being a servant, but serving one another
through forgiveness.
Jesus said:
NKJ John 13:14 "If I then, your Lord
and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet.
The point there was cleansing from
sin. So we looked at John 13, also Ephesians 4:32.
NKJ Ephesians 4:32 And be kind to one another,
tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you.
Now I want you to open your Bibles
now to Ephesians 4:32. We have never (or I’ve never) taught through Ephesians.
That’s one of the things that we have to look forward to in the next ten years
is to look at Ephesians and Colossians, to get into Acts, in Romans and
probably Matthew. I just might have enough things figured out eventually to
teach Matthew. Matthew is again one of the toughest books to teach because of
the parables. There are a number of other things that relate to dispensational
issues, issues between Israel and the church. So that’s a tremendous
challenge.
But Ephesians is a rather simply
structured book. If you look at it as a whole, you’ve got two sections; the first three chapters and the last three chapters. The first three chapters are more instructive.
They’re didactic. They are unpacking all that God has done for us in Christ. So
there’s tremendous theology there that you have to understand before you can
understand the application, which comes in the second half of the epistle.
We were laughing about this this morning. On Thursday mornings as I’ve told you before
I meet with a group of pastor’s. We usually have anywhere from 3 to 5 here
locally and then via video conferencing using Skype or some other internet tool
we can have sometimes as many as 4 or 5. We had 5 this morning from around the
country, from Tucson, Maryland, Ohio, and Northern Virginia. So we had quite a
group. We were talking about different things. One of the men
that was here locally commented about the problem that you’ve heard me complain
about before, i.e. the biblical and historical ignorance of Christians today.
Not necessarily this congregation, but it’s true for us, it’s true for me,
because we are the products of our glorious public education, government-sponsored
education system.
Our education has been so diluted
over the last 100 years that we just don’t know things. Those of you who
managed to gut it out on Tuesday night when I spent an hour going through
Middle Eastern history during the 3rd and 4th centuries BC that we were never taught in school at any time. Even though I had a
history major in college no one ever talked about those things. You were more concerned
about great empires. You are more concerned about Alexander the Great or the
Egyptians or of course Rome. Nobody spends any time on many of these other
things, not to mention the fact that don’t ever study history related to India
or China or Japan. There are these huge gaps in our knowledge.
But when it comes to understanding
the Bible there are so many areas Scriptures where a whole chapter is built on
history. If you don’t understand the details, all the nuts and bolts of the
historical events that were occurring 300, 400 years before Christ or 1500
years before Christ; then you can never understand the application. You have to
understand what is actually being said in the Scripture before you ever get to
the point where you can answer the question - now that I understand the “what”;
now I need to answer the question, how does this apply to me? That’s just
history.
When you get into Romans and you get
into Ephesians and Colossians and you have these tremendous chapters where Paul
stacks clause upon clause upon clause using words he coins to put together
these great Biblical theological doctrines (and he does this for example in
Ephesians for 3 chapters) if you don’t understand chapters 1 through 3 you
can’t really understand why he says what he says in chapters 4 through 6.
But we live in a world today where
people say, “Don’t tell me all the stuff in 1 through 3, I just get all confused.
I don’t want to think about that kind of stuff. I just want to know how to live so I can have a happy
marriage and not be in debt. And I’ll raise good kids and they’ll do what I
want them to do.”
And we don’t understand that you
can’t get to that without understanding that it flows out of a framework of
thinking. If we don’t understand that framework of thinking about reality and
as it is as God has defined it, then we won’t understand how to make the nuts
and bolts decisions that we all have to make as we live our lives. As a parent
you are raising children. A situation occurs and they come to you with a question
and there’s a conflict. There’s an issue related to discipline and children or
teaching them.
You can’t call me up on the phone or
send me a quick email and say, “Okay, what do I say?”
That has to come from this reservoir
of doctrine that is in your soul that you’re able then through the Holy Spirit
to put these things together that you have learned and then have wisdom to
answer questions for your children or in a situation where you’re witnessing to
somebody to be able to address questions that they raised or just in terms of
conflicts or problems that come up in your own life in work, in ethical
conflicts that may arise or in dealing with people, personnel at work whatever
that may be. Those decisions that you make really flow out of a way of thinking
that gets built into our souls by a study of the Word.
It doesn’t just happen overnight. It
doesn’t just happen in an instant. We have to study these things. Well, we had
a great example I think Tuesday night in hacking our way through the 8th
chapter of Daniel. Then there are a number of other chapters like that in the
prophets where unless you really understand all of this ancient history and
what was happening then, you never can get to the real application.
The same thing happens when we get
to Ephesians. We’re going to be looking at several things from Ephesians 4
through 6 tonight as more of a global survey. But it helps to put things
together. I think from our backgrounds so often we’re used to looking at
Scriptures through a microscopic analytical tool that we lose the broader
perspective, the broader context, the connection that verses are a part of
sentences, sentences are part of paragraphs, and those paragraphs fit within a
thought structure. So we not only have to do the analysis, but we also have
broader look from a synthetic point of view where you put things together.
There are several of these “one another” passages that we studied that are
found in Ephesians 4 and in Ephesians 5.
So we’re to be kind to one another,
forgiving each other, Ephesians 4:32. Just so you see where I’m going while I’m
here right now, if you look at Ephesians 4:32 it reads:
NKJ Ephesians 4:32 And be kind to one another, tenderhearted,
forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you.
Now the problem is that we tend to
stop there. Because, what happens next? There is a chapter break. In most of
our Bibles there is not only a chapter break, but the editors have put a
chapter heading in there or some sort of summary or there’s an outline heading
that is placed in there, maybe a couple of different lines. I think the Ryrie
Study Bible has an outline so you might have a Roman numeral break and then a
sub-category break. But the way we read that, it looks like there’s a break in
Paul’s thinking. But in the original none of that was there: no verse breaks,
no chapter breaks. If you read it without chapter breaks it reads:
And be kind to
one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ
forgave you. Therefore be imitators of God as dear children.
That next command in 5:1 “to be
imitators of God” is often taken in isolation, right out of context. We start
there. But being an imitator of God is connected to the act of forgiveness in
verse 32, and then that is connected to verse 2, which is to walk in love How? We get that pattern again.
NKJ Ephesians 5:1 Therefore be imitators of God as dear children.
2 And
walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling
aroma.
Then the text goes on.
So being kind to one another and
forgiving each other is a manifestation of God’s character. That’s what the
Holy Spirit produces in us. Now of course the question is: how in the world
does the Holy Spirit produce this character in us? I started on this last time
and I want to come back to address it some more tonight.
So just skipping ahead here we get
to another verse that we looked at: Colossians 3:13.
NKJ Colossians 3:13 bearing with one another, and forgiving one another,
if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you
also must do.
The 13th point is we’re to
bear one another’s burdens. “Bearing one another” is used metaphorically: the
idea of lifting someone, carrying someone. It is part of loving your neighbor. It
is part of helping them go through difficult times in life. You do that in
different ways: prayer and comments that we make as we encourage one another.
Now I want to stop there a minute
because we had another interesting conversation this morning talking about
encouraging one another. We looked at those verses earlier in our study and we
were talking. I was talking to 2 or 3 other pastors and we were just thinking
about different ways in which we come together as a body of believers to
encourage one another.
One way we encourage people and we
encourage one another in the body of Christ is just by being in Bible class. You
never thought about it that way.
See, most of use think – I know I did – I’m going to go to
Bible class because of what I’m going to learn tonight and I’m going to be able
to grow spiritually. But by being physically present in Bible class, it is an
encouragement – first of all towards a pastor. Now I’m not prone to this
problem. I know some pastors are. Some pastors are in discouraging
circumstances.
I heard of a guy this last week
whose congregation is down to about 16 people. I think they’re all qualified
for Social Security and ¾ of them are women. They’re in a little church on the
east side of Houston. They’ve been surrounded basically by a
Hispanic community, and they’ve been isolated and left there. In order to get the bills paid they
rent the church out to two different Spanish-speaking churches, which is a
great thing to do but it’s just a struggle. This guy feels so defeated in his
ministry because of what has happened to the congregation.
We all know that we can have –
pride and arrogance can enter into this. But that’s not what I’m talking about.
Those are the negative sides. As a pastor or as anybody who gets up in front of
people and speaks, it’s a lot more stimulating, it’s a lot more encouraging to
look out on a crowd of 100 or 200 or 500 or 1,000 than it is to look out on 15
or 20.
But, there are dynamics that happen
here. If we had 100 people showing up here every Tuesday night or Thursday
night, it generates an unintended consequence of encouragement. It creates. There’s
an energy that happens (that takes place) when you have a full house of
people.
I’ve talked to people who have a background
in theater. You look at somebody who’s an actor who’s going through rehearsal. They’re
rehearsing a play and there’s no audience out there. There’s one level of
energy. Part of their inner makeup is to reach inside themselves and pull up
that energy level. Some nights they can have a full house, but it’s a negative
crowd. They can just sense that.
“We’ve got a dead house out there.
They just try everything.”
If it’s a comedy the jokes fall
flat; things like that. Then other nights it’s just a different crowd of people
and there’s an energy that comes out of the crowd that the players will work
off of. It just sort of drives them to greater skill and greater heights in
their own acting.
The same thing can happen as a
pastor. I never forget some of the first times that I spoke at a black church. Now
I’m not saying all of you should be saying amen and creating dialogue because
that’s their culture. But after I got passed the fact that there’s a dialogue
going on and you’re going to say something and you’re going to hear several
people respond and dealing with concentration issues, after awhile you realize
that they’re really paying attention to you. What they’re saying is what you
have just said and it is a way of repeating back. It is a way of learning and
concentrating on what the pastor is saying. But it also creates an energy level
that as a pastor you start feeding off of. When that energy level is pumping
you, your brain’s working faster. You’re getting more into what you’re talking
about. They’re getting more into what you’re talking about. It just creates a
great environment for communication.
If you’re standing up here you’re
talking to people who got up at 5 o’clock this morning, spent an hour in the
gym or out jogging and then they had a 30 or 45 minute commute to work. They
worked all day and dealt with all kinds of problems and barely made it to Bible
class. They haven’t even made it home yet. The first time they sit down all day
long (And you know who I’m talking about; you know who you are) and the first
time you sit down all day and just rest is at 8 o’clock at night at Bible
class. By 8:10 you’re taking a really good nap.
I’ve done that too when I have sat
out in the pew. That’s just a normal, natural thing. I’m just glad finally
you’re having a little rest for the day and you can relax. But it makes it more
difficult as a communicator to be upfront and try to pull everybody up and get
everybody excited or interested or concentrating, especially when you’re talking
about Antiochus Epiphanes or something like that
that’s not really dealing with the Bible per se. But you have to spend so much
time to get people to the point where you can talk about application that,
“Wait a minute! We’re out of time now. We’ll get to the application next week.”
Next week it’s a slightly different crowd. You’ve lost them. That’s just what
happens.
So there’s a different energy level that
goes on, visual feedback. See one of the things that we’re losing a little bit
and I have no idea how much this is; but I know that there are people who live
within 20 miles of West Houston Bible Church who could be here tonight; but
they’re not. Now some of them have legitimate reasons. Some of them can’t drive
at night. Some of them are more homebound. Others are sick or because of their
work/job commitment they just can’t do it all. I understand that when it’s
legitimate. But there are other people who yield to the temptation to say that
it’s just a lot easier to stay at home and catch it on live streaming.
“So I’m going to do that.”
See if there were only 20 people
here tonight, what would happen is we would kind of look around and go,
“Wouldn’t it be nice if there were 60?”
When there’re more people here it
seems like there is a little bit more of an energy going on and we’re encouraged.
“Look! Other people like me who want to know the Word.”
Let’s say that we have a visitor
that comes in. The visitor comes in some night, especially during the summer. Sometimes
the crowd can get little low. Let’s say he came in and ten people were here. What
goes through your mind when you go to a church that seats 200 people and you
see ten people there?
“I guess it’s not very important. I
guess I really don’t need to be here. There are just a few people here so this
must not be a good thing to be in.”
But, you walk in and there are 80
people, 100 people to 200 people depending on the size of the auditorium; you
have a good group there. What you pick up is that this is something that’s
important.
“I need to be here.”
Now there may be 20 people here. We
may have 500 people in Houston all listening on live streaming. We don’t know
that. I don’t know that. I don’t see them. So I don’t get any feedback off of
that. You don’t see them. You don’t get any feedback over that. So there’s
something that is important that’s non-tangible just about being present in
Bible class because it encourages other people because you’re present. It
encourages the pastor. So we can encourage one another just by our physical
presence.
Also, when we
grow as believers we go through different stages of growth. I’ll never forget the time I moved back to Houston in
’91. I’d already gone through my
master’s work at Dallas and gone through doctoral work at Dallas, published a
book - all of these things. I moved back from Dallas sitting in the pew in
Bible class one night and I thought, “You know I’m not really learning anything
new. I’ve heard all this before. I’ve heard sometimes better people teach it
better. I’ve heard this man teach it better.”
All these thoughts go on. You’ve
said the same thing listening to me I’m sure. You’ve heard a tape from
something I listened he was teaching the same doctrine so you just tune out. We
all do that at times. There’s a lot of repetition if you’re a pastor because
you’re trying to remind people, encourage people.
But when we go through growth stages,
when you’re a baby believer and if you’re really hungry – think about
this back when you first started getting excited about learning the Bible –
what drove you to Bible class? (Not your car. Not your mother.) What drove you
was something internal. You wanted to learn what the Bible said. You had
specific questions. You might not have clarified them or focused on them so
much, but you had specific questions you wanted answered about your life. What
does God want me to do? Who does God want me to marry? What does God want me to
do with my career, do with my life? Where should I live? How do I really know
Jesus is God? How do I witness to people? What about the heathen? We have
doctrinal questions, practical questions; all these
kind of questions. You’ve been sitting in Bible class. Some of you have been
sitting in Bible class for 1500 hours, 2000 hours, 3000
hours. A lot of those questions that you wanted to have answered got answered
within the first ten or 15 years.
What happens with a lot of people
that you no longer see sitting in church is that they didn’t make the
transition in growth maturity because what happens is your motivation has to
change.
Initially, like a new-born
you’re driven more by “I want to get fed and I want to get fed now.” You are
screaming for milk and for nourishment. But as in the physical life when you
hit those adolescent years, something is driving you other than just putting
food in your mouth. Some of you
take still need to that by faith I’m sure, but something is driving you other
than just putting food in your mouth. It has to do with: “Now I’m a little more
concerned about putting good food in my mouth or just utilizing it
better.”
You see adolescents and all of a
sudden they start getting interested in exercise, sports, different things of
that nature and utilizing what they have physically in a better way.
The same kind of thing happens
spiritually. You reach that stage where most of you questions are answered so
it’s not that you’re saying you know it all, but when you come to Bible class
it’s not so much because you are hungering and thirsting to get answers and to
learn more about the Bible because you feel like you are getting a pretty good
handle on this. But you’re coming because you are beginning to understand who
God is and what He expects of you and motivation isn’t “I want to get fed.” The
motivation is “I need to learn more about God.”
There’s a shift that occurs there.
You want to learn more about God and you want to learn how to live in order to
maximize your spiritual life which means you realize you’re here to serve God
and that’s what needs to be driving you and motivating you. A lot of people
don’t make that shift.
Another thing that happens as you
reach that stage is you realize that you’re not really there because you’re
trying to find out the answers to certain things as much as you need to be
reminded of promises of God (that God cares.) No matter how bad things may
appear in the world, no matter what kind of disasters or adversities you are
going through you’re reminded that God still has a plan. God still cares about
you. God is still faithful to His Word and faithful to His promises and
doctrine works. If you hear that every night you somehow make it through
whatever it is that you are going through right now.
So that motivation shifts. It’s in
that context that we encourage one another just by being in the Word, just by
being there and we see other people grow and mature. Some of you have been
around others in this congregation long enough to where you have seen
tremendous spiritual growth in other people in this congregation. They see the
same thing in you. That is a way in which we encourage one another.
So we looked at 11, 12, 13. Fourteen was that we were to show tolerance for one
another, Ephesians 4:2. To lead into where we are going I want you to turn to
Ephesians 4:1. Ephesians 4:2 doesn’t operate in a
vacuum.
The emphasis here is of course that
we are to bear with one another which means to show
tolerance or put up with one another’s weaknesses. It’s the Greek word there anecho, to endure
patiently. It’s used both in Ephesians 4:2 and Colossians 3:13 where it’s
stated:
NKJ Colossians 3:13 bearing with one another, and forgiving one another,
if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you
also must do.
But Ephesians 4:2 is out of the
previous sentence, and it’s part of a sentence that
extends down through several verses. Verse 1 reads:
NKJ Ephesians 4:1 I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to
walk worthy of the calling with which you were called,
Which means he is begging them; he
is challenging them. I think is a better word in our context. He is challenging
them to walk worthy of the calling with which they were called.
Now the main verb there is to walk.
Now this word “to walk” is used 6 times in the next 2½ chapters: chapter 4,
chapter 5 and the first part of chapter 6. This word walking is repeated several times so that the
theme of chapters 4 through 6 is talking about walking. You walk in chapter 4;
you walk in chapter 5 until you get down to the armor of God. Then what do you
do? Just stand. So there is an important shift there. You walk, you walk and
you walk; and then you stand in Christ. The walking is talking about lifestyle.
It was a metaphor for how a person lived their life and what characterized
their life. So this governs everything that is said in these 3 chapters is a
description of the Christian lifestyle and what is to characterize the
Christian lifestyle.
Now if we think about other passages
that we’ve gone to, for example we are to walk by means of the Holy Spirit,
Galatians 5:16. This idea of walking is a fundamental metaphor that Paul uses
in order to communicate and to illustrate the Christian life.
So I’m going to skip ahead through
these next couple of slides here until we get to 16. Is that right? Did I skip
one? What did I skip? Who’s got 15?
Anybody? Did I just leave it out? See, numbers aren’t my spiritual gift.
Okay, I’ll correct it for next time.
So this will be 15. We are to submit
to one another. This is where I stopped last time because the command to submit
to one another is part of that Christian walk in Ephesians 5:21. But 5:21 comes
in a context. This is one of the most important sections I think of the New
Testament. It really starts in the first part of chapter 4, but this subsection
I think really begins in verse 17 where we read:
NKJ Ephesians 4:17 This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should
That you should what? Three times we
have the word walk.
no longer
walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind,
So there’s a negative there. It’s
not painting a positive picture; it’s painting a negative picture. This is how
the gentiles walk in the futility of their minds
NKJ Ephesians 4:18 having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of
God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of
their heart;
19who, being past feeling, have given themselves
over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
20 But you have not so learned Christ,
So the context is walking. Then we
come to Ephesians 5:2 and we have another use of walk. We are to walk in love. Now
on this slide what I’ve done is set up the verses from Ephesians 4:32 down
through 5:2 and taking out the verse and chapter marks so we can read it in its
original context and with the original flow.
And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving
one another, just as God in Christ forgave you.
Remember that word there for
forgiving is charizomai
meaning being gracious. But charizomai is
frequently used not only as a synonym for apheimi which is the verb form for forgiveness; but it’s even used in one
of the parables that we looked at one time as a cancelling of debt. So charizomai and apheimi had a large overlap of
meaning related to forgiveness, the cancelling of debt, removal
of debt, removing of a past injury.
And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving
one another, just as God in Christ forgave you. Therefore be imitators of God as dear children.
Doing the same thing, in other words
and:
And walk in
love,
So we are to be imitators of God and
walk in love. Now at the bottom of this screen I put a Greek term “en agape.” The en is the Greek preposition plus the dative form of the verb for
love. In these contexts it makes more sense to understand the en there in an instrumental sense rather
than what grammarians call the locative sense. Those are the two basic meanings
that you have for the preposition en.
Now if you look down to verse 5 it
says:
NKJ Ephesians 5:5 For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man,
who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.
Same
preposition, en. But when I say “in the kingdom”, we think of kingdom
in terms of a location, don’t we. You are in an environment. You are in a location.
You’re in the kingdom. You’re in a time period so that has that idea that
grammarians call locative. What happens is you get a
certain number of scholars and theologians who will look at these passages:
walking in the Spirit, being filled with the Spirit, (uses the same Greek
phrase) baptized in the Spirit. They try to make that locative as well. But
when I say, “walk in love”, how do you walk in the location of love? Now what
we hear is we hear the sense of that.
We say, “Okay this has something to
do with what you characterize the walk.”
But grammatically how would you understand
walking in that sphere? How do you get out of that sphere? It’s a mystical
idea, and the same thing with walking in the Spirit.
“You are in the Spirit.”
I always say to myself, “Do you feel
something? How do you know that
you’re in the Spirit? What does
that mean? How does that do
anything?”
The Holy Spirit isn’t a location. “Being
in Christ”, that’s a location. You are in the body of Christ. Being in the
Spirit or being in love (and this says walking in love) isn’t a locative idea.
It is a tool, an instrument for accomplishing something. We walk by means of
the Spirit. The Spirit is the instrument or the means by which the lifestyle is
accomplished. Love is viewed as the instrument of means my which this walk is
accomplished so that we have a more concrete idea of what that phrase
means.
It doesn’t get into this kind of loosy-goosy quasi-mystical sort of idea. In my mind it
makes a tremendous amount of sense. Now that’s a subjective call. You don’t
have anything in grammar that says it’s this or it’s this. The word can be used
either way. You just have to analyze it in terms of thinking about its meaning
and its sense of operation there for it to make sense.
So we walk by means of love as we
live by means of implementing the commands to love, which is a mental attitude
and not an emotion. It’s patterned on Christ’s behavior. Then maturity and
spiritual growth take place. In doing that by walking by means of love, what
are we doing? We are fulfilling the initial command in 5:1. We are being an
imitator of Christ. Now I don’t want you to loose the forest through the trees
here or think I’ve just run off down some rabbit trail and I don’t know where
I’m going.
Verse 32 says that we’re to be
forgiving one another. Then when we get down to verse 21, we’re submitting to
one another. Now what happens between those two “one another’s” describes the
crucial elements of the Christian life, the spiritual life of how we walk. That command to walk that’s what governs this whole section of
Ephesians. You have the word used, walking in Ephesians 4:1.
NKJ Ephesians 4:1 I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to
walk worthy of the calling with which you were called,
Twice in verse 4:17
NKJ Ephesians 4:17 This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no
longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind,
It’s used in 5:2.
NKJ Ephesians 5:2 And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an
offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.
In 5:8:
NKJ Ephesians 5:8 For you were once darkness, but now you
are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.
In 5:15 we have the command:
NKJ Ephesians 5:15 See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but
as wise,
We are to walk as wise or with
wisdom. That’s the main idea that we have in these two chapters. So all these
other commands, all the other characteristics and descriptions are there in
order to flush out what this lifestyle looks like.
Now the key in all of this comes in
verse 18, chapter 5, which is where I stopped last time.
The command there being:
NKJ Ephesians 5:18 And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with
the Spirit,
Now in the Greek text “with wine”
and “with the Holy Spirit” translate the same sort of instrumental clause. You
have that phrase “en pneumati.”
Now this is where you get into some
confusion in how Greek is translated into English. You have this preposition in
the Greek “en” pronounced “in” just
like the English preposition in. If you look it up in Greek dictionary, you’ll
see that you have options. You can translate it “in” which would have sort of a
locative idea. You put your coffee in the cup. You have “with.” That’s an
associative idea. "I went to the movies with my wife." So you have
this association together. Or you can say, “I dug the hole with the shovel.” The
shovel is the instrument that you used to dig the hole. But in Greek you could
express each of those ideas with the same preposition. In the English we have
these three different prepositions that we use: in, with or by. As native
English speakers when we hear that, our mind immediately without any conscious
thought whatsoever, we discern the difference in the sense of those three
different prepositions.
Let me show you why this creates great
confusion in the church. In the Gospels John the Baptist came along and said:
NKJ John 1:31 "I did not know Him; but that He should be revealed to Israel,
therefore I came baptizing with water."
En pneumati. Is he saying, “I’m baptizing you in the water?” Is he saying, “I’m
baptizing you with, along with the water?” Is he saying “I’m baptizing you by
using water?”
You have to factor that in.
He says:
NKJ Matthew 3:11 "I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is
coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He
will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
So the “en” is translated with. That
gives some people certain ideas of how they understand the baptism of the
Spirit.
Then you come along to 1 Corinthians
12:13 and Paul says:
NKJ 1 Corinthians 12:13 For by one Spirit we were
all baptized into one body -- whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free --
and have all been made to drink into one Spirit.
That sounds different, doesn’t it? By the Spirit versus with the Spirit. It sounds like two
different things. But in Greek it’s the exact same phrase. It’s talking about
the exact same thing because you had one translator translating in one area and
you had another translator translating in another area. One guy preferred
“with”; the other guy preferred “by”. In English it looks like two different
baptisms.
So Pentecostals came along and said,
“These are two different baptisms. One you get when you are saved, and one you
get after you’re saved.”
You start doing the Christian
two-step. You get part of the Spirit when you’re saved and you get another part
when you get dedicated, when you walk the aisle, when you speak in tongues. So
you get Christian two-steppers. You thought that started with a Texas dance,
didn’t you?
Now the reason that’s important is
when you look at Ephesians 5:18, you’ve got to decide what this means to be
filled with the Spirit. Let me use the example of a coffee cup. You can fill
the coffee cup with coffee or with orange juice or water, whatever. What are
you talking about? You are talking about the content of what goes into the cup.
Now some people have that idea of what it means to be filled with the Spirit:
that somehow I get more of the Spirit and that’s what we’re to do. We’re to get
more of the Spirit. That’s one approach.
We can also understand that to mean
an instrument. In other words, we’re not talking about what goes into the cup. We
are talking about what is used to fill the cup up with something else. So we
would say, “Fill my coffee cup with what’s in that pot. We want decaf and not
the other, so fill it up with what’s in that pot.” So that would indicate the
instrument that is used to fill it up. That’s an important distinction.
If you take the first view that this
is content, you have another problem because in the Greek this is expressed
with the dative case and content is never expressed by the dative. So you’re not
getting more of the Spirit. Some people think that way. When I confess my sins
that somehow I’m getting more of the Spirit in me, that’s not what this is
saying. It’s an operational verse; it’s not a content verse.
As I pointed out last time, another
problem that I think has entered into the misunderstanding of this verse is the
initial part, which says:
NKJ Ephesians 5:18 And do not be drunk with wine,
Now if we understand that to be
instrument and not content, then it changes the focus and we’re not going to be
as prone to think this is talking about control as influence or instrument, the
tool that’s used to become close to God.
I pointed out last time that in the
ancient world that Ephesus well as areas in Greece, but in Ephesus it was
prominent. We often think of Artemis of the Ephesians the many-breasted goddess
who was there because of the problem that occurred with the silversmiths as
Paul and Timothy and others taught the gospel. People quit worshipping the false
idol of Artemis there and that was big business for the silversmiths because
they made all these little bitty statues as representatives of idol of Artemis
or Diana of the Ephesians. Then the silversmiths were losing business. Christianity
was bad for their business because people quit buying what they were making. So
that was one religion that was there.
Another one that was prominent
throughout this whole area was the worship of Dionysius. That was part of the
mystery religions. The origin of the worship of Dionysius came out of that area
of Turkey. Dionysius wasn’t a Greek god. He was borrowed from those who lived
over in Anatolia. So he got absorbed into the pantheon of the Greeks sometime
way back there in the early stages of their development.
In that mystical-mystery religion,
the way that you entered into fellowship with the god was that you drank
wine. Hopefully the god would if
you drank enough wine, the god would enter into you and he would speak through
you. The maenads have these glossolalic utterances. So
"tongues" is also an interesting background into all of this. But
wine was the way you got close to god.
(Now some of you want to say amen there; I know it!)
Wine was how you got close to god.
It’s an instrument. What Paul is saying here is wine isn’t the way to get close
to God, to grow spiritually. It’s through the relationship by means of the Holy
Spirit, the same thing he said over in Galatians 5:16 related to “walk by means
of the Spirit.”
So when you look at this passage,
he’s talking about how the walk is going to be produced because when you go
back to chapter 4 and you read through all of the different characteristics of
the Christian life especially forgiveness, forgiving other people as Christ
forgave us.
We look at that and we say, “That’s
impossible. I can’t do that.”
You’re right; you can’t do that. You
can do it through God the Holy Spirit, but you can’t do it in the power of the
flesh. There’s got to be a supernatural way through the help, through the aid
of the Holy Spirit to produce that. That’s why love is the first part of the
list of the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
So he’s describing that walk. We are to be filled by the Spirit.
Now Ephesians 4:17 he says
NKJ Ephesians 4:17 This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no
longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind,
He’s talking Christian life is going
to differ. It’s going to differ in the futility of their minds.
The first place it’s going to differ
is it’s going to make a difference in how you think. Christianity is about
thinking. It’s not about emoting. It’s not about feeling good. It’s not about
experiencing worship on Sunday morning. It’s not about all these things that
our shallow, superficial simpering little Christian churches are doing today. It’s
about thought. It’s about thinking in a way that changes the way you live.
Paul says in 5:8:
NKJ Ephesians 5:8 For you were once darkness,
but now you are light in the Lord.
The trouble is they are still
walking the old way. See walking in darkness is walking like the Gentiles walk,
like the pagan cultures walk, living the same way where there’s no discernable
difference. But now you’re light in the Lord positionally
so you need to make your experience conform to your position. That’s why he
says:
Walk as children of light
Now what we have here in this part
of Ephesians is a contrast between two different states of living. You’re
either walking in darkness or walking in the light. That’s where John picks
that up and uses that same imagery in 1 John 1. He says in 1 John 1:6:
NKJ 1 John 1:6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk
in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.
NKJ 1 John 1:7 But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we
have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son
cleanses us from all sin.
So walking in the light is related
to fellowship. Walking in the darkness is not walking in fellowship. They’re
viewed as two mutually exclusive spheres, two mutually exclusive ways of
living.
You get down to verse 15:
NKJ Ephesians 5:15 See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools
but as wise,
You’re not partially foolish and
partially wise. It’s one or the other. That continues down into verse 17.
NKJ Ephesians 5:17 Therefore do not be unwise,
but understand what the will of the Lord is.
So wisdom is
understanding God’s will which is understanding God’s Word. So it’s able
to take the data from Scripture that you have internalized and absorbed into
your soul and as you’ve taken that Scripture, God the Holy Spirit then is going
to be able to take that and put it together in different ways to meet the
necessities of different situations in life so that application flows from
that. Application doesn’t flow from a pastor coming up with 5 artificial
examples of application and then building his sermon around it, which is what
happens in many places. That just doesn’t help. It creates a superficial
approach to Christianity. In fact it divorces it from doctrine; and you end up
with a moral ethical system where Christianity is do this, do this, do this, do
this, don’t do this, don’t do this and don’t do this. That’s just another form
of legalism, and there’s no undergirding rationale or thought system that informs
a person’s whole decision-making process in life.
So it’s fools verses wise, unwise
versus those who have understanding and those who try to get close to God
through wine and those who get close to God by means of the Holy Spirit.
So when we look at Ephesians 5:18
we’re told:
NKJ Ephesians 5:18 And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with
the Spirit,
That’s how we should translate that.
The results are then given in the next verses. It has to do with singing psalms
and hymns and spiritual songs. It’s singing praise to God, thankfulness in our
souls to God, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name
of our Lord Jesus Christ and submitting to one another.
Now what does that actually mean, to
“submit to one another”? Does that mean that we’re going to take that as some
hyper literal legalistic way and we’re all going to run around and see how
we’re going to be submissive to one another, we’re going to bow and scrape to
one another. No, that’s not what it’s talking about. It’s talking about using
what we used to call common sense, but I think common sense is a product of
wisdom of the soul so without doctrine, you don’t have it. It has to do with
the fact that you’re not going to operate in arrogance toward people. You’re
going to operate in humility and you’re not going to push your agenda and steamroll
over other people just to get your way.
When you contrast or compare
Ephesians 5:18 with Colossians 3:16 which we did briefly right at the close
last time in a very quick way, we see that the command in Colossians 3:16 is to
let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom. Wisdom there is
application of doctrine, teaching and admonishing one another a result in
psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.
NKJ Colossians 3:16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and
admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with
grace in your hearts to the Lord.
So you have the same results,
different commands. So if doing this produces these results and doing this
produces the same results; then your two commands to be filled by means of the
Spirit, which is instrument, what do you use to grow
spiritually? It’s done by means of the Holy Spirit.
Well, what fills you? What fills you
is the content of the Word of God. So you see the connection between the two by
comparing these verses. It’s the Spirit of God with the Word of God. It’s not
the Spirit of God operating apart from the Word of God. That’s mysticism. It’s
not the Word of God operating apart from the Spirit of God. That’s legalism. It’s
the Spirit of God and the Word of God tied together. When you study the Word,
learn the Word, while you’re in fellowship the Holy Spirit uses that to
challenge us to produce growth in our lives.
You can use a gardening
illustration. You go out in your garden and you water your plants that you
water. They need nitrogen so you put manure on your plants or you put manmade
fertilizer on your plants. So they have food and they have water. But something
happens. You go out there. This happens to me a lot this time of year. I forget
to water my potted plants, which I have to do every morning. I go out there and
make sure everything gets soaked down. If I don’t I come out there at 12
o’clock and they’re all wilted and hanging over the side of the plant looking
like they’re about ready to give up whatever ghost they have. They’re just
short of dying. I water them. I come back an hour later and something has
happened. They are all standing up looking happy and growing. But that has to
do with whatever God built into the dynamics, the metabolism of the plants so
that as they absorb the nutrition there’s something God built in there that in
turn produces certain chemical reactions that produce growth and eventually
produce the seeds and the fruit of the plant.
The same thing is what happens in
each of us as believers. Volitionally we have the responsibility to take in the
nourishment of the Word of God under the teaching ministry of God the Holy
Spirit in fellowship. As that comes into our souls, it’s at that point the Holy
Spirit takes over.
We don’t know how it happens. We
can’t take out our magnifying glass and examine it that way. The Scriptures
don’t go into those details, but as the Word of God comes into the Spirit of
God, He then takes that and produces and uses that to impact the way we think,
to bring things to our minds, to produce spiritual growth over time. We can’t
volitionally produce the growth. We can only produce the feeding of our souls
and that produces the growth through the Holy Spirit. He’s the one who produces
that. And as a result of that growth then what accumulates in our souls is this
pool of data that becomes the foundation, the elements of wisdom as God the
Holy Spirit takes that and puts it together. And what comes out as we apply
that is the beauty and the skill of spiritual growth.
Now I want to close with an
illustration that is familiar to most of you. This used to be the top and
bottom circle, but I became a heretic. Now we have a left and right circle. We
have on the one side eternal realities and on the other side temporal
realities. The eternal realities have to do with our position in Christ. How do
we walk? As children of light. That’s why it’s a white
circle on a dark background. Our position is children of light. So we have all
of these things that are ours in Christ. We get identified with His death,
burial, and resurrection and we are entered into Him by means of God the Holy
Spirit. We have all of these things that are true. We’re reconciled. We’re
redeemed. We’re regenerated. We’re adopted into God’s royal family. All of
these things: we’re new creatures in Christ; we’re freed from sin. This is all
ours positionally. We have new life. We’re sealed by
means of God the Holy Spirit. We are indwelt by God the Holy
Spirit. That is all true of is as our position in Christ. Paul explains
most of that in the first part of Ephesians.
But then we have an experiential reality
– our day-to-day life. The white circle represents walking in the light
experientially, and at the same time we’re filled by the
Spirit. They’re just different ways of talking about the same thing. When
we’re first saved we’re filled with the Spirit. We’re walking in the light. We’re
walking by means of the Holy Spirit. But we can sin. As soon as we sin, we’re
out of that circle. We’re no longer walking in the light. We’re walking in
darkness. The sin nature, the flesh is what energizes.
Paul says:
NKJ Galatians 5:16 I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of
the flesh.
But when you stop walking by the Spirit
then the flesh takes over. That’s our default position. So then we have to
confess our sins, 1 John 1:9. We’re back in fellowship.
When we’re walking in that circle
that is when the Holy Spirit can produce growth. As part of that growth, it
impacts the way we relate to other people in the body of Christ. We realize
they’re not any different than we are. We are both obnoxious sinners in the
sight of God. But God has saved us, and He’s transforming us by the Holy Spirit
so then we have a code of conduct that is to characterize our relationship with
other believers whether we know them or not. That’s why we use the term
sometimes, impersonal love. We don’t even have to know who they are or what
their name is. We know that they’re another believer in Christ. So this defines
and describes how we are to relate to them.
So all of this is related to
understanding the whole concept of submitting to one another in Ephesians 5:21
and this affects our most intimate relationships.
Wives are to be submissive to
husbands. Husbands are supposed to be submissive to the Lord. Children are
submissive to parents, servants to masters. This is the application Paul makes in the rest of
Ephesians 5. All of it flows out of the command to be filled by the
Spirit.
1 Peter 5:5 says:
NKJ 1 Peter 5:5 Likewise you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be
clothed with humility, for "God resists the proud, But
gives grace to the humble."
That’s the issue in submission. It’s
not to think more highly of yourself than you ought to think because God
resists or stands against the proud or the arrogant, but He gives grace to the
humble. Arrogance stops your Christian growth, but humility is essential to
spiritual growth.
Now the 17th point is one
that comes out of the verse we studied to begin with. We’ll start with that
next time in Hebrews 10:24.Then we have one other great passage to get into and
that deals with the passages in James 5, to confess our sins to one
another,
So everybody get
ready – no, just kidding. You have to find out what that’s about. Now
that’s a fun passage in James 5 – “confessing to one another and praying
for one another”. So we’ll get into that next Thursday night.
Let’s close in prayer.