Walking Worthy

--- Welcome to our women's Bible study on the book of Ephesians, which is called Finding Purpose, and I want to start with a question right off. Do you think that what we believe affects how we behave in life? Well, the Apostle Paul certainly thought that, because as we've been saying, the first half of the book of Ephesians establishes, as Christians, what we believe. There is one connecting word, therefore, and the second half of the book then expresses how we behave based on what we believe. Our relationship with God is not such that we adjust our behavior in order to get him to notice us or like us. That's not the point. We adjust our behavior because of what he's already done for us, because of how he has blessed us. Now, this is unique to the church age. This is unique to the New Testament believer, because the way God dealt with Israel was, you're my people. If you obey me, I will bless you. So when we read our Old Testament, it is important to understand that there's a distinction there, but in the New Testament, God said, look, I've blessed you. If you accept it, then you will obey me. Then you will have the power to obey me. So we're going to talk a lot about behavior in this study in the coming final weeks, in addition to finding purpose, but I want to give you a heads up that in verse 1, we are going to find one of the most important clues in the whole book on finding purpose. So let's read Ephesians chapter 4, verse 1.

So if we were to ask the question, what is my purpose? Is the answer really that simple? To walk worthy of the calling that I have received? That is what we see here, and so I titled today's lesson, Walk Worthy or Walking Worthy. What does this mean? Well, what it means is since we're already in God's family, we are to walk, verse 2, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, and bearing with one another in love. So if you're doing the study guide, and if you are actually writing and using your colored pencils, your pink pencil is now your best friend for the rest of this Bible study, because we were marking in pink those virtues that we understand now that we are to apply to our lives. Maybe these virtues have been modeled for you in your life, even as you were growing up. Maybe these things were modeled for you, maybe they were not, but as Christians, our lives can be marked by these virtues because they have been modeled by Jesus Christ for us. So I want to go through these a little bit and talk about each one that we see, beginning with humility. Spurgeon says that humility is the right estimate, to make a right estimate of one's self, and since the word itself is derived from hummus, meaning earth, to be humble is to be grounded, to understand our place in the larger order of things, to understand our place in the larger order of things. And so whenever we're talking about humility, really my favorite verse, I feel like the most clear definition of humility, comes from Philippians chapter 2. I'll put it on the screen. It says, our attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but he made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant. He humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on the cross. Why did he do that? Because he understood his place in the larger order of things. He put us in front of his own rights. He had the right to be equal with God. He was equal with God, and yet in service, he served us by paying the penalty for our sin. So what is our purpose? Putting others needs in front of ours. Understanding our place in the greater order of things. Look at gentleness. Gentleness is possessing great strength, but keeping it under control. This was modeled for us by Jesus as well. Think about the day on Palm Sunday when he came into Jerusalem. It says, your king comes to you gentle and riding on a donkey. Gentle and riding on a donkey. He had every right to be galloping in as a king because he was the king, but yet he confined his strength at that time and demonstrated his gentleness. So it makes so much sense as Matthew wrote in Matthew 11 then. Let me put this on the screen for you, one of our favorite passages, right? Don't we love this?

So I think gentleness parallels approachableness, and this is our purpose. Now, approachableness is not the same as availableness, because you may be available for someone, you may not be available for someone, but if you are available, then to be approachable, that is to be gentle. Your strength is under control. Patience. We think of patience as waiting for something, but actually in this sense, I like this definition, the ability to endure difficult situations in people without giving in to anger or without giving up hope. That is patience, and of course Jesus demonstrated this all through the New Testament, his patience with the people to whom he came to minister to, and we use phrases that are similar. We use a phrase like patient endurance or long-suffering, and I really like those phrases, especially the long-suffering. This is our purpose, and it's very closely tied to the fourth thing that you identified, which is love, bearing with one another in love, and when we're talking about love here, again, this isn't the emotion that we think of, but this means seeking another person's good, okay? When we seek another person's good, we may be injured along the way. We might need to patiently endure a wrong that is launched toward us. Every one of us has had this happen in our lives, in a family situation, in a friend situation, or maybe even an enemy situation, but Jesus demonstrated this for us, too. I want you to look at Romans 5, 8. It said God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. While we were still children of wrath, he sought our good. While we were enemies of God, he died for us, and so our purpose is to continue to seek someone else's good. So before we go on to verse 3, I want us to recall for a minute where we were in chapter 3 last week, and all the time that Paul put into explaining the mystery of the church to us, this new entity that united people in a new and a specific way, even Jews and Gentiles, to where they were now, as it was called, one new man. And so now in verse 3, he goes on to say that we are to be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. Unity is an agreement with both who God is and what he has created and what he has done with this new entity called the church. So we are to be eager to maintain that unity. For, verse 4, there's one body, one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. So it's a clear reminder of our unified purpose here. So when we go on now to verse 7, we have a big change from the general purpose of all of us to the unique purpose of each of us. All of us, all of us in this room are to demonstrate those virtues that we just read about, love and patience and gentleness and humility, but each of us is to use our particular gift for the good of all of us. Okay, look at verse 7. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. And Paul's going to go on to give some examples of this grace, which we also call gifts. Now, last week we called it the administration of God's grace, and I told you how much I liked that because it reminds us that God begins it and God carries it through as well. But what I want to do for verses 7 to 14 is I want to put on on the screen kind of a visual of the main point of this conversation. So let's look at that. The main theme of verses 7 to 14 is grace was given to equip so that we may no longer be children. That is what we are to get from this if we were to just make it into one sentence. And so we ask a few simple questions about this grace. We're going to ask when, what, and why. So our first question is when was the grace given? Well let's read verse 8 through 10.

So it wasn't until after Jesus's earthly ministry, his death and resurrection, when he ascended back into heaven and the Holy Spirit was then descended to give us his presence and these gifts. That's when this happened. What was the grace given? Well the grace is unique gifts and ministries and callings. Look at verse 11. It says he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers. We'll come back and explain that in a minute but I want to ask our third question. Why was this grace given? Look at verse 12. It was given to equip the saints for the work of the ministry for building up the body of Christ until we all attain the unity of the faith of the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness, and in deceitful schemes. That is why. But in those verses we learn a lot about the church. In those verses I want to share three things that we learn about the church. We learn that the saints need equipping. Okay? It's God's intention to use the saints to equip the saints so he gave gifts for some to be equippers. We learn that the saints need building up. When I say saints I mean believers. I mean the church. I mean the body of Christ. Okay? So the saints need building up. We are not naturally strong and we are not automatically mature. So God gave the gift of some to be coaches to strengthen us. And we also learn that the work of the ministry is apparently what the saints are to do. That is what we are to be doing is the work of the ministry. So God gave some to be trainers for us to do that. Now we also learn about some potential problems in this passage if there is a neglect to the leadership gifts that Paul has expressed there. Three things that we learn. We learn that the church might remain like children. How many of you know that children have a difficult time focusing on one thing and staying focused on that one thing for a long time? That's what it's like to be a child. We lose focus very easily. And so without leadership gifts the saints might lose focus and be tossed to and fro. We learn that the church might be tempted by winds of doctrine. We might be tempted by fashions of religion and chasing the next uncovered mystery that someone wrote a book about and says no one has ever understood this before but now I'm telling you about this thing. And we might bounce from one thing to another. And so without leadership gifts the church might be carried away like chaff in the wind just blowing after the next wind of doctrine. We also learn in this passage thirdly that the church might be vulnerable to cunning and craftiness and deceitful schemes. Without the leadership gifts we might be susceptible to these persuasive cults drawn off into religious scams. We might even partner with evil rather than expose it. Unintentionally partnering with evil rather than exposing it. And so since the leadership gifts are what Paul is trying to express here. Now look there there's other lists of spiritual gifts in the New Testament and those are really valid. We can find them in Romans chapter 12 and in 1st Corinthians chapter 12. But we're studying Ephesians and for some reason Paul wanted to highlight these leadership gifts. Why? Because he's talking about the church. He's talking about the mystery of the church. And so the conversation is settled on that. So I want to go back to those and quickly just discuss them beginning with the Apostles. The Apostle means one sent by commission with a message. It's used 79 times in the New Testament and it's usually referring to those who were appointed and commissioned and empowered by Christ to proclaim the good news, to proclaim the gospel. Now in the strict sense the New Testament Apostles were eyewitnesses and as well as Paul he says as one abnormally born. So in the strict sense the ministry of Apostle has ceased. But in the broad sense we still have those functioning in that definition of Apostle today. Meaning one sent out with a commission or a message. Many, many missionaries could be described as employing this gift. So secondly he talks about prophets. And a prophet is one who speaks God's truth to others. Again in the strict sense the ministry of the prophets as we talked about last week that the foundation of the church was built on the foundation of the Apostles and the prophets. In the strict sense that has ceased. But in the broad sense of the definition like one who speaks God's truth to others that is still happening. People speak prophetically for the Lord. I love John Stott's definition. Look at this. He says the prophecy is a powerful combination of accurate exposition and pertinent application. Well in that sense we hear a prophetic message very often. If you're saying it is a powerful combination of accurate exposition meaning teaching what the Bible says with a pertinent application. So the New Testament though I have to say is filled with warnings about false prophets. And so we should just take a minute to recognize that and to say that that is something that we're the church is definitely warned about over and over. Beware of false prophets. So how do we discern a true prophet or a false prophet? John in his epistle 1st John he said test the spirits to see whether they are from God. Well what is a good test? Well I thought of a couple things. These are just mine. A true prophet will be committed to speaking God's truth. Look you you guys have all experienced someone in some way that called that they tagged on the title prophet. Prophet so-and-so or YouTube videos or whatever. I feel like three during the pandemic we had a lot of prophets suddenly rise up and have messages for you know it was yeah. So we need to we need to say so what what is the truth of it here? Well a true prophet will be committed to speaking God's truth. A true prophet will never contradict God's revealed word. And I want to add to that a true prophet will willingly work alongside of the other leadership gifts. They're not going to be a solo. Like I'm the only one that has this revelation and I'm telling you about it. And you know they'll willingly work in the in the church. That's the point of this passage. It's given to the church. All right evangelist. One specifically suited to proclaiming the gospel. And in the broad sense all Christians should be able to give a reason for the hope that we have. But in the strict sense there is a special gift that God gives to some and they just have the ability to very winsomely and effortlessly share the good news of Jesus Christ with other people. Have you ever been with a person like that and you just look at them and you go how come I can't do that? How come people don't respond to me the way that they respond to you? Because it's a gift. So whether it's one-on-one or whether it's from a platform God gifts some people to just be so good at expressing his gospel. And finally we have the shepherd teacher and that is one who oversees a portion of the body of Christ and feeds the body. It is two names for the same ministry I think and this is the one that we're probably the most familiar with because just about every church has a pastor or a teacher and I kind of prefer how the ESV uses the word pastor, excuse me, shepherd rather than pastor, because if you say shepherd teacher, then it gives you this idea of a flock, and what are the needs of the flock, like a real flock of animals? Well, the needs are to be fed and to be protected. And so that gives you a really good understanding of the main goal of a shepherd teacher is to feed well, that in itself is a protection against all these problems that we just saw could develop. So Paul outlined these leadership gifts. These facilitate the maturity, the unity of the body. But now we're going to see, you look through that list and you're like, nope, nope, nope, nope. I don't have any of those. Well, now we're going to see again that each one, each part needs to be active. So this is where you and me kind of read ourselves into the text. Verse 15, rather speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ, from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which is equipped, that's us. And each part that is us is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. What I want to do here is I want to handle this phrase, speaking the truth in love, because I think it's familiar to us. We've heard that phrase used a lot. And there's two components in that phrase, truth and love. Now in the Greek, as they're translating it, there's really nothing in the verb that denotes words coming out. And so really a fair rendering could be truthing in love, truthing in love. This is our purpose. We are to be going about our day truthing in love, reflecting God accurately as we can, expressing the wisdom of God. But it must be done in the tension of love. So again, those two components, truth and love. Some of us love truth. Some of us are so focused on truth that we are just, you know, we're looking to expose heresy and we're looking to make sure that everything crosses every T and dots every I. And sometimes we lose the love. And then some of us are so focused on the love, brotherly love and affection is our highest need inside. And we will even glaze over the truth to be able to have that sense of love. And you can't take a church and say, okay, you 300 are all about truth and you 300 are all about love. Good. We're balanced. Everything is going to go well. No, no, no, no. The balance has to be in me. Every single one of us has to strive for this tension and this balance in our own lives to be useful, that we balance truth and love. We allow the Holy Spirit to help us balance that in our lives. And we hold us in tension. I want to show you again a quote from John Stott. He says, truth becomes hard if it is not softened by love and love becomes soft if it is not strengthened by truth. So the goal here is a healthy church, a healthy body of Christ, a mature body. And the method is truth and love. Okay. And we see the repetition here of everything that should be done in love. I want to just repeat to you in this chapter what we've already seen, bearing with one another in love, speaking the truth in love or truthing in love, and building up in love. Why is the body so important? Why is the church so important? Why is the unity so important? Why is the health? Why are all of these so important? We're Americans. We're independent. We think about ourselves, right? We're kind of geared to, we don't naturally, even as a Christian, sometimes we don't naturally think about being part of a bigger thing. So why is it so important? Well, in our study of Ephesians, this has been the focus since last week, the mystery of the church. It's important because what Paul told us in chapter three was through the church, through this new thing that God was doing, he put angels and even demons on notice that now God's plan of redemption was no longer confined to just the descendants of Abraham. That now God's temple was no longer a building in Jerusalem, but rather it was in all of us. And that God's wisdom was no longer discussed only among the nation of Israel. Through the mystery of the church, now God's wisdom, the wisdom of God, was taking over the world. Okay, this was written at the beginning. This was the first century church. But the gospel, the church, the Christians, they were beginning to take over the whole world. They were beginning through the gospel now to take back that territory that had been owned by Satan and by the demons opposing as the gods of this world, the paganism that was all around. That's why it's so important. It was spreading. It was going out. And from that day until today, you could truly say it has covered the world. Not every single person has heard the good news of Jesus Christ, but the gospel has covered the world. How has it done that? Through the body of Christ. Through the church. That's why it's so important. And we have a purpose in that. We have a purpose in this gospel being spread. It's really exciting when you begin to meditate on what God has done here. But we've got to move on to the second part of this chapter, and now Paul's going to go on to explain the part of our purpose is knowing how not to walk and knowing how to walk, knowing what to take off and knowing what to put on. Let's read verse 17. He says, now I say, and I testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do. Gentiles here means those who are unsaved, okay? And in the New Testament, Gentiles means those who don't belong to the Lord, okay? They walk in the futility of their minds. Can you take that phrase and put it up on your shelf? Futility of their minds. They're darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of heart. They've become callous. They've given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ, assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus. And so we realize when we read that, that it is possible, it might be possible as a Christian to continue to walk as if you're not, to continue to walk as the Gentiles do, which would be a great tragedy if we never see a change in behavior because we've learned that Jesus changes people. How does Jesus change people? Well, there's an instantaneous change when we accept him as our savior. We are changed from children of wrath to children of God. And then there is this long process that happens now through the rest of our life where he changes us, he changes our behavior. It is a slower progress and it has to do with our mind. Let's keep reading. Verse 22, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds. So take that phrase and put it on your other shelf, okay? And to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. So the Gentiles, the unsaved, are characterized by the futility of their mind. That was over here. And Christians, children of God, are renewed in the spirit of your mind. I'll just start saying renewed in the mind, okay? That was over here. God has made us new, absolutely, but we have a part now to play. We have a part now to play and a lot of it begins with the renewal of our mind because that's where our decisions are made and that's where our want to lives. And so the renewal of our mind enables us to do true thing because we have decisions to make. We have decisions to make about what is in agreement with the life of self that we should take off and what's in agreement with the life of the spirit that we need to put on. And I really like that Paul talks about that. Of course, it makes us think of clothing. I think that's absolutely what he wanted the readers to think about was taking off clothing and putting on clothing. And this really helps us understand this a lot. us girls know about proper attire, right? You don't wear the same clothes when you're camping that you wear when you go to a wedding. You have a completely different uniform for a wedding than you do for a camping trip, okay? And, you know, I loved, I was thinking about uniforms that people wear in our culture and I thought, I think we've lost a little bit of something, but if I kind of like, if we walk back to like about the time when I was a little girl or something, there were so many more uniforms in our culture. You walked into a hospital and every nurse wore the white dress with the white shoes and the white cap. You were identified. You could quickly say, Oh, look how she's dressed. That is a nurse. And every mailman had the exact same and every, uh, uh, car mechanic or, you know, servicemen had the same. And even people who came and fixed your furnace, right? They had a, they had a uniform. People wore uniforms so much more. And what we could say is they dressed for their purpose. People used to dress for their purpose. We still do. If we're going to a wedding, we don't come with our flannels from camping. We dress for the purpose and our calling is for us to dress for the purpose for which God has called us. And so what I'm going to do with these last, um, this last little bit of text, I'm not going to read the whole passage. You already studied it once. But what I've done is I've summarized all these things that we were, are to take off and put on and I've summarized them into six, uh, statements. And so what I'm going to do is put those on the screen and maybe with my different wording, this will just help you see things a little bit, um, maybe in a new way. So first of all, number one, Paul is saying we are to remove the lies and instead tell the truth, speak the truth. Number two, we are to eliminate our temper and rather resolve things quickly. Number three, we are to stop stealing and learn to work hard and share. Fourthly, we are to cut out course language, use encouraging words. Number five, we are to resist bitterness, but practice forgiving, practice forgiveness. And finally, we are to erase slander and put on a tender heart. So that's kind of like my words of taking that text. And you can see I tried my hardest to create a thesaurus for you in those words of what it means to, you know, take off. I used words like remove, eliminate, stop, cut out, resist, and erase. I don't want to go through that list and belabor them calling each one out point by point. And the reason I don't want to is you already studied it. Number one. Number two, the Holy Spirit either convicted you or he didn't. If he did, you're working on it. If he didn't, I'm not going to come in with a law and say, you need to feel bad about this. No, that doesn't help anything. This is why we're in the word all the time because the Holy Spirit has an opportunity to speak to us. And so when the Holy Spirit tells us, hey, in that area, you got to change your clothes. You are not dressed for the purpose for which I have called you. Take that outfit off. Put on something that's in agreement with your purpose. Then we need to respond to that. And by the way, it's never useful to tell your husband that he doesn't have the right clothes on spiritually. I mean, if he says something naughty to you, it does not help to say, well, don't you have a Gentile shirt on today? You know, that is just, just let the Lord do it. Okay. But the main point is the renewal of the spirit of our mind. Now you might notice that in that list, I really didn't even touch on verse 30, which is the, it is the bow on all of this. It says, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. So our point is we, we work with the Holy Spirit to eliminate the things that we are to take off and we work with him to add the virtues that we are to put on. But we have a warning here. Do not grieve him because look, he's not, God said, I will never leave you or forsake you. He's going nowhere. So if you continue to dress in the improper way, he's right there with you and you're doing that in connection with him. He's staying. He's not leaving when you're naughty. And so you can see that grief that would settle in a Wednesday night in church. Paul finished a study in Genesis. It was in Genesis chapter 26. I was so glad that it dovetailed with this because it reminded me of something the Lord had shown me years and years ago about a connection between the very last verse in Genesis 26 and this very verse in Ephesians 4, 30, do not grieve the Holy Spirit. And let me just tell you what's happening at the end of Genesis 36. We're talking about Isaac and Rebecca and their two sons, Jacob and Esau. We just had a whole, um, information about Jacob and the very last sentence very briefly gives a short history about Esau. And it says that Esau married two Canaanite women. For our sakes, I'll say they're Gentile. He married two Gentile women. And the very last words of that chapter are, and they were a source of grief to Isaac and Rebecca. The presence of those two Canaanite women, Gentile women in the family, nobody's going anywhere. Nobody's going to leave. Now they're all connected together. It was a source of grief to Isaac and Rebecca. And that really meant a lot to me when I saw the connection with do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. He's not going anywhere, but let's not grieve him. Let's quickly turn from those things that he says to turn from. Let's quickly add those things that he says to add. Amen? Father, this is our heart. And you know that we, um, as we renew our minds here in the word, you know that we want to do this and we have a want to, but clearly it is a work of your Holy Spirit. And so we ask here that all of those things that maybe you have stirred up in our minds while we think about the purpose that we have, and we can see how maybe we're just slightly off course in that purpose. I just ask right now by the power of your spirit that you would enable us Lord to adjust our lives, to walk in agreement with you, adjust our lives that we might walk worthy of our calling. Lord, that is what we want to do. That is what you want us to do. And that is our purpose, Lord, but we need you. And we just ask that you would work in our lives in Jesus name. Amen. ---