Ephesians 4:31-5:10 • Gospel Witness

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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)

As we try to help our world behold Jesus, let's look in our Bibles this day, wherever you are, at Ephesians chapter 5. I'm going to concentrate just on the beginning of that chapter and actually back a little bit into the preceding chapter.



 But the goal, I hope, is clear. As we have gone through this entire Bible in a year, the mission of the Lord, I think, is crystal clear. It is to bring the saving message of a Redeemer to a fallen creation and a fallen world. Not only did Jesus come, live a life of purity, suffer for our sin, and rise the victor over that, but He began to send His disciples into the world. And we talked about that ever-expanding ark from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth, and then the Holy Spirit made plain. It wasn't just individual disciples, but the body of Christ that had that responsibility, the whole church.



 The church has the responsibility of the witness of Christ in the world until the righteousness of Christ covers the earth as waters cover the sea. But what could make that witness wither?



 That's clear as Paul begins to address a church at Ephesus. Just to ultimately help make Christ known all in all and says what they need to remember, to be powerful witnesses for Christ. Ephesians chapter 4 verse 31, right before chapter 5, he begins to explain what is needed for our witness to be powerful.



 Verse 31 of chapter 4, "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.



 Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.



 Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children, and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."



 Some of you will know the name Francis Schaeffer, a pastor and philosopher who became one of the greatest witnesses for Christ in the 20th century. His fame has spread so much because he became a witness to a generation of college-age students who were turning away from Christ in his generation. He was in so many ways the Tim Keller of his era, explaining Christianity with intelligence, with power, and with fervor to a generation that was walking away, often because of what they had perceived to be the witness of the church. Because Francis Schaeffer's intellect and impact are so powerful, many of us have never heard of his own crisis of faith that almost made him walk away from the church and from Christ also. What happened? A pastor, not so far from here, in St. Louis fighting against the voices of his age that said, "Yeah, the Bible's a good book."



 But intelligent people who know the revelations of modern science, who understand true philosophy, would not trust an ancient book about a crucified rabbi.



 Oh, yeah, it's a good book. But we would not trust it for all the matters of our lives. We would not think that it has truth that would apply to all peoples. And Schaeffer fought with others for the truth of the Scriptures, that they were sustainable and they could sustain the challenge of the intellects of his age.



 But at some point, Schaeffer began himself to question, not was the Bible itself true, but was Christ real in the lives of his people and in his church? He was caught between two crushing forces, the wisdom of the world that was backed by the powers of academia and philosophy and the arts and the church, which claimed it had the power of the gospel.



 But when he saw the church, he did not see much of the presence of Christ.



 The church, the body of Christ that was supposed to demonstrate in microcosm what it meant for the Spirit of Jesus to be alive and witnessing in the world. That very church was so often characterized by anger and jealousy and name-calling and infighting, disrespect for the image of God in all people.



 He began to say, "How is the church any different from the world? And if it is no different, then is the living presence of Christ real at all?" People he said with whom he'd fought for the truth of the Bible would hold up the Bible and say, "This demonstrates the love of Jesus," and then would speak as spitefully as anybody in the world about their political enemies or their family enemies or their church enemies.



 And when they would do that, he began to say, "Is this real?" The church would speak of Jesus and smell like the world.



 And he began to say, "Is this aroma of Christ that the Apostle Paul is talking about that is to pervade the world? Is it real if the body of Christ, his church, demonstrates so little of the presence of Christ?



 If, in fact, the church will speak of Jesus but smell like the world, you recognize that witness will not work. Not just not work in the world, it will not work with our own children. They will not listen to a church that demonstrates such character." And so Francis Schaeffer, like the Apostle Paul, began to search, "What is it that would truly demonstrate the presence of Christ in the church as a witness for the world that would be powerful and sustained enough to change hearts for eternity?" What was ultimately required, he said, was more heart than you got.



 What heart is required to show Christ? Well, that's clear. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice. Verse 32, "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you." Words like that in the Bible. Our reflex, even in the churches, "Oh, how sweet! Bless their hearts. They are trying to be sweet, nice people." Yeah, that's right.



 Although the implication for us is that the words about forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven us are for sentimental, mushy-hearted weaklings who don't understand the challenges of the real world and have not faced people as difficult as the people in our lives, or else the apostle would not expect such things for us. What we're really saying is if we are being called to be kind in such a way that we are required to forgive people who are hurt us, that is going to require a strength that is beyond you.



 There's a power for our power to be the witness of Christ that is not ultimately found in us. There is the need for the church to be this microcosm of the presence of Christ in the world, to be an alternative society.



 But we struggle to be that society. And the divisions that we struggle with are the very ones that the apostle was struggling with as he wrote to these people in Ephesus. There were divisions in the church, and they are the same divisions that exist today between the people who celebrate the mind and the people who celebrate the work of the hand. In Paul's time, this church at Ephesus could be characterized by newcomers coming into the church who had been raised in Greek philosophy and Greek religions.



 And what they worshiped was the intellect, the arts, the ability to make music wonderfully to celebrate what the gods had done through the mind. And those people were coming into the church and they were just accustomed to celebrating the achievements of the mind.



 But they were coming into a church that had background in Jewish religion and culture.



 And what that meant was they were gathering in a church whose roots had the way of distinguishing spiritual superiority by human practice.



 My religious practices are better than yours. I go to the temple more frequently than you do. I pray longer than you do. My fervency is greater than yours. There was one aspect of the church in which people were evaluating, "Am I okay with God on the basis of intellectual achievement, the worship of the mind?" And there were those who were celebrating their own practice of devotion as the reason that they should be accepted by God. One pole of the church was toward sophistication.



 I know more than you do.



 And one was to devotion. I do more than you do. And each caused people to begin to live the religion of comparison.



 The way that I establish myself before God is I even think better or do more than you. And it sounds innocent enough because we recognize the Bible itself tells us through Jesus' words that we are to worship God with all our mind, with all our might. There are elements of truth in the fact that we should be honoring God with our intellect and with our devotion.



 And yet at the same time, if all we are doing is evaluating our faith by how great is our thought or how great is our practice, we recognize that God's holiness is perfection. All we can really do to establish if we are okay is compare ourselves to others.



 That means I build myself up by demeaning you in some way. What does that look like in the church? Well, in the ancient day, it meant that the Greeks would say, "I know more than you, you simpletons."



 And the Jews would say, "I do more than you, you pagans."



 We might think it's not with us today such comparison religion.



 But these tensions between the mind and the hand continue to show themselves in all kinds of pride and snarky texts and mean-spirited judgments and sarcasm about other people, building me up by diminishing you, not willing to forgive grievances of the past, not allowing people to grow, not allowing a church to change or itself be forgiven, somehow gathering in camps of like-minded people who like kind of throwing ridicule at camps of other-minded people.



 We think it wouldn't be true, but it's always something we fight in the church because especially in a time of sheltering in place where we've got lots of time on social media and to write texts, despite ourselves, we can begin to live the religion of comparison. I'm doing better, I know more. I'm more sophisticated. I'm more devoted and not even recognize what is happening to the witness of the church.



 How do we keep mind and hand together in the witness of the work of Christ? The answer, of course, is by appealing to Christ on heart. I mean, what is going to hold the center between the mind and the hand?



 It is the heart.



 It is a heart that is set on Christ in ways that easily escape us if we depend either upon our sophistication or our devotion as the basis for our standing with God.



 Francis Schaeffer talked about what happened. He said, "I went through a very deep time in my own life when I observed the inconsistency of the Word of God and the witness of the church." He said, "I've been a pastor for ten years, a missionary for another five, and I was connected with a group that stood very strongly for the truth of Scripture.



 But as I watched, it became clear to me that I saw very little spiritual reality."



 Where was the fruit of the Spirit? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control. Where was humility?



 Where was forgiveness?



 He said he began to walk the mountain trails of Switzerland where he was a missionary and consider whether or not God was real or not. He said to his wife, "Edith, I have got to think this through."



 He was so willing to be honest about what he would discover about the reality of Christ. Was he real or was he not real? If this was what his church was like, that he was willing to return all the way back, he said to his early agnosticism as a youth, "Was God real? Is He knowable?"



 And he had to consider what would be the consequences of God who has sent His Son Christ to pay the penalty for it. What would be the consequence of Christ not being real for a broken world or for a broken people?



 And this was his conclusion.



 I had been right to become a Christian. We can know about God in the revelation that He has given in His Scriptures.



 God's truth can be known so that we can be in relationship with Him, and we do not minimize the intellectual. We engage the mind.



 But Christianity is not just the repetition of propositions, not just saying we believe in certain truths in the Bible. There must be something real in the work of Christ in the moment by moment life bearing His fruit through me if the church is to do its job and if Christ is to be real.



 He must bear His fruit, or the indwelling Holy Spirit is not indwelling.



 He wrote, these are hard words, "A dead, ugly orthodoxy." "With no spiritual reality must be rejected as sub-Christian."



 True Christianity, I love this, produces beauty as well as truth, especially in the specific areas of human relationships. If we do not show beauty in the way that we treat each other, then in the eyes of the world, and He said, in the eyes of our children, we are destroying the truth that we proclaim.



 He said it this way, it's a philosopher speaking, "We need not only an orthodoxy of doctrine, what we believe, we need an orthodoxy of community, rightness in the way that we treat one another." If we truly see the image of God in other people, as our musicians so wonderfully said, if I am crucified with Christ and I don't live, but Christ lives in me, if Christ is all, am I treating people that way? As though I'm not dealing with you in your faults, in your weaknesses, and in the anger in you, but I'm dealing with Christ in you, then how does that change the way I talk about you, and deal with you, and ultimately love you? As simple as it may seem. This was the revolutionary insight of Francis Schaeffer, more important than all his great philosophical debates and insights. He said, "The witness of the church that will enable us to fill all in all with the goodness of the Savior is a commitment not only to biblical truth, but to biblical love for the unlovely."



 Well, you know, I say that, and I think for people who are watching or people who are in church life, you kind of go, "Well, duh." I mean, nobody's going to do a V-ed head slap over that. We're supposed to show love. Well, you know, nothing's new in that.



 And yet all of us recognize that if all the church does is stand for propositional truths or greater work than other people in all our practices, but have not love for the unlovely, who wants to be a part of such a church? In fact, is such a church even a church?



 And for that reason, we have to understand what Christ's witness truly requires in this world by His body if we are to take His words so that He fills all in all ultimately. What is required? Well, it's pretty simple.



 His heart.



 You know, we almost don't like reading the words. "Let all bitterness and anger and clamor and slander be put away.



 Be kind, forgiving one another." If you just stop right there, you know, then what the preacher says is, "Y'all need to straighten up."



 What this church needs is people just love each other a little more.



 All true.



 But you recognize the heart cannot engage that, nor is it the heart of Christ.



 How does that heart come that changes relationships, that changes us, that makes our witness powerful? It comes from understanding what does God really require? I mean, what's really expected? He's not just doing the best we can. Chapter 5, the first verse, "Therefore be imitators of God." Some of your translations will say, "Follow God's example." Well there's what's required. Just be like God. Go ahead. Piece of cake. Be holy because God is...you can do it. Just go be holy.



 Now if you really understand what that means is no bitterness, no wrath, no anger, no slander,



 your hearted forgiving hearts, even as Christ forgives...what ultimate he can say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa." He can't be serious. I mean, he can't really be serious.



 He is serious.



 Verses 3 and 4 of chapter 5, "But sexual immorality, all impurity, or covetousness must not even be named among you." Not even a hint of it. As is proper among the saints. If you're really imitators of God, totally pure. Verses 4, "Let there be no filthiness, or foolish talk, nor crude joking which are out of place, but instead be filled with thanksgiving."



 Well yeah, come on. I mean, yeah, I mean that's ideal, but is he serious?



 Verses 5 and 6 say how serious he is, "For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, who is covetous, that is an idolater, desiring things God did not mean for you to have, worshiping other things for your happiness, including your own mind or performance.



 That person has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience." I think he's serious.



 And because he is so serious about living with the heart of Christ and the purity of God and the relationships that he requires in morality, honoring our spouses, in humility before God, not desiring the things he is not meant for us to have, being content before God and content with the families and the situations he has called us to in order to witness to him. He is serious about that. And if we really say he's serious, then our hearts say, "Then get real."



 Nobody can do that.



 Well, that's what I said first.



 What this witness requires is more heart than you got, more power than your power, more strength than your strength. Where does it come from?



 Chapter 5 and verse 1, I never read the whole thing yet. "Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children," some of your translations say, "as dearly loved children." What this means, what's going to give us power, ability to have the witness of Christ, the holiness, the forgiveness, the lack of bitterness and competition among us is recognizing deep down in us, not just that we're called to be imitators of God, but that we are already dearly loved children. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He has given us the identity of His own child so that we in our faults, in our weakness, our sin, our failures might recognize we are still treasured by God. What difference does that make? It ultimately changes everything to recognize it's not my mind's achievement or my hand's devotion that make me right before God, but His heart for me that makes me treasured before it. That changes everything.



 News commentator Trilia Newbell has described the experience for her family of what means to shelter in place at this time as the mom of some young children.



 She writes, "It almost started like a summer vacation.



 My young daughter kneels on the floor, drawing on a sketch pad. My son sits at the kitchen table reading through one of his many books. How sweet! Who wouldn't want to shelter in place as a family?"



 Then she writes, "The moment the safer at home orders began, so did the advice.



 Momps took to social media to share a highlight reel of their daily routines.



 But after two weeks of this, the once welcome articles became a burden, even a threat.



 The mom who shared her productivity was now seen as someone attempting to shame the mom who simply struggled to get out of bed in the morning.



 Those sharing their ideas for a better way of being at home seemed as though they were attempting to lay a heavy burden on parents who weren't able to maintain as much structure. I imagine people giving the advice and the tips and the ideas genuinely wanted to help.



 But these things tempt us mere mortal moms to envy and shame and anger."



 We'll just be like God.



 Somehow that doesn't help.



 What does?



 Remember you are also dearly loved children, the beloved of God. Nobody can make you insignificant or ashamed without your own cooperation.



 And where you give up your cooperation to those things is when you claim your identity in Christ.



 I'm a child of God. I am His precious treasure. He holds me as His own treasure. So when I'm struggling to get out of bed, when I haven't got all the toys picked up, or I just yelled at the teacher for giving another homework assignment that's going to put tension between me and my kids, I remember even still before my first failure or my last failure.



 I was God's dearly beloved, loved as much as He loves Jesus Christ, and nothing is going to change that. It's that understanding of my identity that makes me understand the being like God is not a qualification for His love, it's the response to His love. If I am that dearly loved child, there's encouragement again, and in the encouragement there is joy, and in the joy there is strength, not because of my accomplishments, but because of my heart's claim of the treasure that God has made me to be.



 The philosopher, Francis Schaeffer, who began his quest for the reality of God in questioning the actions of others, ultimately came to a place that they had to look inside.



 Where was His real hope going to be? Where was His joy going to be? He had to ask why. I saw very little spiritual reality in the group of churches who stood so strongly for the truth of Scripture. Then he said, "I looked at myself, and I realized that my own spiritual reality was not as great as it was immediately after my conversion." Do you remember those days?



 When you first knew that your sin was forgiven, you first knew that you were a child. Do you remember the joy that used to fill you? You weren't perfect yet. You knew you had a long way to go, and yet there was this sense of, in Christ, I can make progress. I am dearly and deeply loved, and that joy was such strength for the Christian life, even when we were just learning what that was meaning. And Schaeffer just said, "That joy's a long way away from me right now." And he said, "Gradually, walking those mountain trails, I found something. I found something I had not been taught, a simple thing, but profound. I discovered the meaning of the work of Christ in a relationship with God moment by moment on the basis of not my performance, not my intellect, but the blood of Christ. He has made a way. He has provided for me to be forgiven. He has provided for me to have a life with my God where I am pardoned and privileged and treasured. And knowing that, I'm filled with joy, with the reality of the goodness of God." I mean, I think, what would it mean if we claimed it again? If you could just imagine yourself walking on those mountain trails with Francis Schaeffer, and you say, "Oh, down there are some dark valleys, and over there are some storm clouds,



 but right now on this path, I'm walking in the light," and how your heart would be filled with joy at the privilege of the position that God had put you in, almost as though



 verses 8 and 9 would apply to you. "At one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of light is found at all that is good and right and true. Try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord." Why? Because you're in the light. And it's that goodness and that glory of walking in the light that is more than just serving God with drudgery. It is dancing in the fullness of the glory of what He has provided for those who know what treasure they are. For those of you who recognize what I'm saying right now is the beauty of what it means to be a pastor with people who celebrate the goodness of God, I asked for you to pray for me. I asked for you the announcement this week that the Lord is calling us not just to leadership here but to leadership of this denomination, not for a church but thousands of churches.



 And these truths press on my heart with a church that stands so strong for Scripture but so often the attitudes are anger and bitterness and criticism. And I'm praying, I would ask that you pray for me that what has happened in this place, how God is changing us, would multiply far beyond us as people perceive the treasure it is to be the beloved of God and how it takes competition and pride out of us and replaces it with forgiveness and loving respect and care even for those who have been careless toward us.



 We're face timing with grandkids these days of sheltering in place.



 And our son in Colorado did something very special, even sacrificial for his children. In their living room they have a tall vaulted ceiling. To give his children something to do as they shelter in place, he actually built a climbing wall up the side of his living room for his children. And as he sacrificed the living room for them, they felt the specialness of themselves. You know, in face timing they said, "Look, Grandma, look, Grandpa, look what I can do." What they did not anticipate, my son and his wife, is the climbing wall got the little kids just tall enough up the wall that they could reach to the staircase and then go on up to the balcony up above.



 Depending how precious they were to their father gave them the ability to go far higher than they had ever anticipated.

 It's our privilege too.

When we recognize how great is the Father's sacrifice for us, that we are now his beloved, treasured children, wouldn't we know it?

The joy of the Lord becomes our strength, and we can go ever higher in the witness of God for the name of our Savior.