Ephesians 4

0:00 It really doesn't take very long in life to figure out the lesson that who you think you are affects the way that you act. Who you think you are affects the way that you act. If you have a self-conception of yourself as an honorable, dignified person, then more than likely you're going to do honorable, dignified things. If you think of yourself as a kind of hopeless loser, then you're probably going to do hopeless loser things. Who you think you are affects how you act. Mariah and I saw this in our own kids, especially back when they were young, because our kids were fanatics for costumes. I don't know if your kids are the same way, if you have them, but they go through a period, or at least ours did, where they didn't want to be Justin and Jack and Juliet. They wanted to be someone else entirely, And so whether it was Halloween or just getting on Amazon and buying a costume, they would dress up as something other than who they were.

1:01 So Justin, for example, went through about a two-year period where he was, in fact, King Peter the Magnificent of Narnia. And he spent his days and nights running around the house in the yard slaying dragons and going after the ice queen and all the rest of it. He was King Peter, and so he did King Peter things. Juliet, for her part, went through a period where she wasn't Juliet. She was an Olympic gymnast, and she spent most of her time upside down doing cartwheels and bendovers and all the rest of it. She took it so far that most of the time she was wearing not one or two, but more like five or six tutus, and she was incredibly cute. Jack went through a phase of being Spider-Man at some point. I think he was, I don't know, four, five, six years old, something like that, and we got him one of these Spider-Man costumes, only the thing about this Spider-Man costume is that it had fake muscles in it, right? You've seen these costumes before, and so, you know, the arms were, like, jacked, and it had pecs and abs and all the rest of it, and so we got this costume from Amazon or whatever, and little Jack pulled it on, right? He got his legs in, he pulled

2:07 it on. I pulled it over his shoulders and zipped him up from the back, and I kid you not, he looked down at himself, and he looked at his arm, and he went like this, and then he went like that, And he looked up at me and he said, Dad, I have to look in the mirror. He still does that. Who you think you are affects the way that you act.

2:43 That's what we're going to talk about today as we look at the book of Ephesians chapter 4. If you've got a Bible, you can turn there. Ephesians is going to be near the end of the Bible. So, you know, you can see the difference right there. Massive part of the Bible before it and then, you know, a little bit after it. So, I don't know. Look about 90% into your Bible. You'll probably run into Ephesians. If you're using one of these Bibles, you can look on page 977 because that is where Ephesians chapter 4 begins. Just to give you a little running start on the book.

3:14 This book that we call Ephesians was in fact a letter that was written by the Apostle Paul to probably a number of churches in what we now know as western Turkey. The biggest of those cities, the biggest of those churches probably was the one in the city of Ephesus, a port city in Turkey, part of the Roman Empire. And so this probably circular letter that was meant to go to several different churches from Paul ended up taking on the name of Ephesians. The point of the letter, unlike Paul's other letters, is not so much to fix some problem in these churches.

3:46 That's the point of most of Paul's letters. They're meant to fix a problem. Paul will get a letter or somebody will come visit him from, you know, Corinth or Galatia or whatever it is. And they'll say, oh, Paul, things are going terrible in Corinth. Things are falling apart in Galatia. And you need to write to them and fix the problem, right? And so Paul will dash off a letter to fix a problem in those cities. That's really not what's happening in the book of Ephesians. There doesn't seem to be any particular thing that was going wrong in Ephesus or the other churches. Paul is just writing to them as new Christians, in fact, new Gentile Christians, to encourage them in their faith as Christians.

4:23 And the main thing that he wants to do in them is create in them a sense of who they are. He wants them to think of themselves and know themselves, not first as Romans, not first as Ephesians or Colossians or Laodiceans or whatever it is. He wants them to think of themselves first and foremost as citizens of the kingdom of heaven, as Christians, as people of King Jesus. And so what he's trying to do in this book is essentially form a Christian identity in them.

4:56 For the last few weeks, we've been looking at chapters 1 through 3. I think we've spent four or five weeks in these chapters. And so now we've come to the beginning of chapter 4. Now, what you need to understand is that with chapter 4, we've come to a major division point in the book. The book falls down into really two big sections. There's chapters 1 to 3, and then there's chapters 4 to 6. And there's a nice and important break between chapters 3 and 4. Now, what is that? Well, when Paul writes his letters, because he understands human nature, he always follows a particular structure, a particular sort of logical progression when he's writing.

5:32 And that logical progression is that he starts every one of his letters by just laying out truths. This is true of you. This happened. This is who you are. This is who God is. This is who Jesus is. It's all like indicative statements, right? These things are true. And then at some point in every one of his books, he turns from things that are true to things that must now be done. So these things are true. Therefore, because these things are true, you need to act in these particular ways.

6:04 So in other words, if you like these kinds of words, he moves from the indicative to the imperative. From statements to commands. And that's exactly what you're going to see here as we start chapter 4. He makes this turn to exhortation. So essentially, it's working like this. Having built up this sense of Christian identity in them. Having convinced them that you need to think of yourself first and foremost as a Christian, as one of the people of King Jesus, now I'm going to exhort you in how to live.

6:36 This is how you ought to act now that you know who you are. So that's what's about to happen as we start to read chapter 4. So look down with me at Ephesians chapter 4, page 977 in the Pew Bibles, and I'm going to start reading right there in verse 1. Paul writes this. I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

7:10 There is one body and 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. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. And therefore it says, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men. And in saying he ascended, what does it mean? But that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth. He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things.

7:46 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and 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 deceitful schemes. 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 it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. They've become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned

8:49 Christ. Assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus, 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, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor doing honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up as fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 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, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in

9:51 Christ forgave you. All right, I think with very few exceptions, you can see really clearly what Paul is doing here. There's nothing super difficult about this text. There's no, you know, theology really to, you know, difficult theology that we've got to unpack and try to understand. It's all very straightforward. What he's doing is addressing these churches, not just as individual Christians, but as churches, and telling them that since you've got all these riches that we've been talking about for the first three chapters, now that you know yourselves to be Christians, now that you know yourselves to be people of the king, you now have an obligation as a church to live in a certain way. You can see what he's doing here in verse one. It acts as a kind of topic sentence for the whole thing. He says, I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord. And here's what he wants to, he wants them to do. He says, I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called.

10:52 Well, what's the calling to which you've been called? It's everything that he's talked about in the first three chapters, and now he's turning to say, now, given that you've been called to that great calling, you need to walk or live in a manner that's worthy of all that. Now, over the course of this chapter, he essentially tells them two things. You can see two big sections in this text, just marked off by the subheadings in your Bible. So mine says, unity in the body of Christ, and then the second one says the new life so those are the two big sections one to 16 and then 17 to 32 and he does two things one each in each of those sections so first of all in that first section one to one to 16 he says you as a church are to live in unity that is what it means to walk in a way that's worthy of the calling to which you've been called you were to walk in unity that's what he talks about for 16 verses. Second, from 17 to 32, he says you as a church are to live in purity.

11:52 That also is what it means to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called. You walk in purity, and that's what he talks about for those 14 or 15 verses. So those two things, because you are Christians, because you've been called together as now members of this church, this body of Christ, you are to walk in unity, and you are to walk in purity. That's what he says, and that's our main idea. Our God is one and holy. Our God is one and holy, and therefore you, we, as a church, must live in unity and purity. See the connection there? Our God is one. You must live in unity. Our God is holy. You must live in purity. That's the main idea. Our God is one and holy, and therefore you, we as a church, must live in unity and purity. So we're going to look at this text in those two big points, just looking at those two big sections and breaking that main idea apart. God is one, so live in unity. Number two, God is holy, so live in purity. My prayer as we

12:57 study this passage is that you, we, as a church, as Third Avenue Baptist Church, as this particular embassy of the high king of heaven, I pray that we'll be spurred on to realize again who we are, to remember the witness that we've got in the world, and to remember that the way we therefore live together as a church speaks to the world around us about who our God is. That's my prayer. Let's dive into it. Number one, God is one, so live in unity. Chapter four, as I said, begins this second major section of the book of Ephesians, where Paul is turning from laying out theological truth. That's what he's been doing for three chapters, and now he begins to drive home the implications of all that truth. And if you, as we read through, you know, four, five, and finally chapter six, you're going to see how everything Paul says about the way we are to live as Christians links up with what he said about who we are as Christians. That's just the way it works.

13:53 These things are true, and therefore you should live like this. If you look down at verse one, it's the topic sentence for the whole thing. The therefore refers back to the entirety of chapters one to three. Worthy of the calling is what he's about to unpack in both of these sections, really for the, you could say, the entirety of chapters four, five, and six. But it doesn't just pertain to the first 16 verses. Walking in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called is sort of everything that he's about to say. So in verses one to 16, that first big section there, Paul first calls the church to unity.

14:29 Now, it takes him a second to get there. He sort of starts into how to have unity before he even gets to the sort of word unity or the idea of unity. But you can see his main point if you go down to verse three. When he finally gets to the end of that sentence, he says, you should do all these things that we're gonna talk about in verse two, but ultimately you do all these things because, verse three, you're eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. That's what all this is about. That's why you do all the stuff in verse two. is because you're trying to be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

15:01 What does unity of the Spirit mean? I think we can often mysticize stuff in the Bible. We can make it something, you know, spacey rather than concrete. But what Paul means by unity of the Spirit is not some mystical thing. What it means is a unity that belongs to and is built by the Spirit. So you should be eager to maintain the unity that the Spirit has built among you as a church. That's what he means. Maintain the unity of spirit in the bonds of peace. In other words, not in the dissolution of warfare and disagreement.

15:35 What you want is the unity of the spirit bound up in peace between the members of the church. That's what he means. What he wants us to understand from that is a couple of things. First of all, he wants us to understand that any unity we enjoy in any local church is not strictly human. I mean, I even said that wrong. It's strictly not human, is what I mean. Any unity that we enjoy in the church is strictly not human. Humans are not built for unity. Our psyches, our minds, our hearts, our spirits, they're not built to hold together with other people.

16:09 That's just counter-human to do that. So any unity that a church enjoys is because the Spirit has created it, because the Spirit has built it, because He indwells us all as people of Christ. And yet, the second thing he also wants us to understand is that we have to maintain it. In other words, the Spirit creates it, but there's work to be done in maintaining it. So you and I, as we live together in a church, have work to do. We don't get to just float along and just sort of, you know, cash checks on the Spirit's unity.

16:43 We have to maintain that unity in the bond of peace. Well, over the course of these 16 verses, Paul tells us how we're to go about doing that. He says four things about this unity that the Spirit has created. So first of all, first thing he says, unity in the church depends on us, the people of God, bearing the fruit of the Spirit. Unity in the church depends on us bearing the fruit of the Spirit.

17:14 That's his point in verse 2. Look at it. Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called, verse 2, And do this with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love. Fully three out of those five words there, humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another, and love, five words there, fully three of them are listed in Galatians as fruits of the Spirit, specific fruits of the Spirit. So our unity in the church depends on us bearing the fruit of the Spirit.

17:45 So what are these things? Well, humility was a common word in Greek life. It was used a lot. It's not one of these words that Paul made up. It's a very common word in Greek life. The difference between the way we use the word humility, at least usually, and especially in the church, and the way the Greeks used it, is that the Greeks hated humility. They did not want humility. Humility was not a virtue. It was a vice. Because the virtue that you were supposed to pursue in your life as a Greek soldier, a Roman warrior, whatever, was not humility. It was glory. It was to advance.

18:17 It was to push the golden eagle forward, right? To march Rome into new lands and bring glory to the empire and to yourself. The Greeks didn't want humility. Humility was for a man who had been defeated. Humility was for a man who was down and who had no glory. But when Jesus came, all of that changed for Christians. Christians realized that, no, humility is not a vice. Humility is a virtue. Because our Lord Jesus Christ embodied it in his own self in every way. And so, therefore, we are to live in humility.

18:51 Gentleness there is an interesting word. It's just the word meek. It's the same word that Jesus uses of himself when he says, I am meek. And what's interesting about it is that it doesn't mean weak. It doesn't mean weak. In classical Greek literature, you would refer to a domesticated bull as being meek. Now, bulls aren't weak, right? They just have all of that gigantic strength under control to be used in a certain way for good.

19:25 That's what gentleness means. That's what meekness means. It doesn't mean meek. It means strong, but strength under control to be used for the good of others. That's what Jesus was, right? Nobody would ever call Jesus weak. He's the king of the universe. It's like he said, I could call 72,000 angels out of heaven and to take me back to my father if I wanted to. But I don't. I have strength that's under control for the good of others. Friends, that's what you need to be.

19:57 It doesn't mean you're a pushover. It doesn't mean that you just agree with everyone who says anything to you. What it means is that you have strength. You know who you are. You know what God requires of you. You know what is right. And you're determined to do that right thing. But it's strength that's under control. And you're using it for the good of others. Bearing with one another, having patience. That's exactly what God has done for us, right? The theological reason that we act in these certain ways is because they're exactly the same things that God has shown to us. He's shown us patience.

20:28 He's born with us in our sins. He's been meek with us. He's been humble with us. And then look how Paul wraps it up there. You do all of these things. You have humility, you have gentleness, you have patience, you bear with one another, and you do it all in love. Sort of the umbrella term that pulls all these things together. However you act, whatever you say, whatever you do in the life of the church, do it in love for the good of other people.

21:01 That's what Paul is saying. Unity in the church depends on us bearing those fruits of the Spirit. And without those fruits, there will be no unity in the church. You know what the opposite of all these things are? I mean, if you just look at them, humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another, love. You know what the opposite of all of those things are? Pride. And you know what most tends toward destroying the unity of a church? Pride. Friends, there's a whole way of thinking out there in the world right now that is teaching you to have a mindset that says, you know what?

21:37 I am tired of being humble. I am exhausted with being patient with people. I am sick of being meek. I don't want to be meek. I don't want to be humble. I don't want to put others before myself. What I want is to take what's mine. There's a whole worldview out there. There are thousands and tens of thousands of TikToks that are teaching you to have that kind of mindset. Recognize how tired you are of letting other people walk on you.

22:11 You know what you're saying when you say that? When you say, I'm tired of being meek, I'm tired of being patient, I'm tired of being humble, I'm tired of putting others before myself. You know what you're saying? What you're saying is, I'm tired of being a Christian. Because being a Christian is being humble and patient and meek and putting others before yourself. And friends, if that mindset, if that TikTok mindset invades this church, That I'm going to take what's mine. That I'm tired of being meek and humbled. You know what happens to a church when that happens? It falls apart.

22:44 Our unity as a church depends on us showing the fruits of the Spirit. Not the fruits of the world. That's the first thing Paul says. The second thing he says is that unity in the church is necessary because God is one. Unity is necessary because God is one. And that's the main theological weight. whole section. The reason Paul fastens on unity here and wants to talk about that is because he knows God is one and therefore the church must be one. Look at those verses starting in verse 4.

23:19 He says there is 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. All right, now this is interesting. How many times is the word one used in those few verses there, that sentence? Not going to take time to let you count them. It's seven. How many times is the word all used? Again, you can't take time to count them. It's four. Seven ones and four alls.

23:51 So you see what Paul is doing there? I mean, if you were here when we studied Revelation, you know all these numbers have a certain connotation in the Jewish mind, right? So one, of course, is one. Seven is a number of completeness. All means all, right? And then you've got four alls, and four is the number also of completeness having to do with the entire cosmos, all of creation. So do you see what Paul is doing there? I mean, not just with the words one and all, but by using seven of them and four of them, he's cramming this thing together and saying, this thing is supposed to be unified.

24:24 It's supposed to be packed together like a really tight snowball. It's supposed to be one thing. Notice too there that you have mentioned the Spirit and the Son and the Father. Paul understands that the triune God in his three persons are themselves one. And so therefore we as a church are to be one. I mean, just by the way, theologically speaking, this is why there is, in fact, only one way of salvation.

25:02 God is not a multiplicity of gods, and therefore there are not a multiplicity of ways to get to him. He is one, and the one way he has said we can be saved from our sins is through Jesus Christ. So, friend, just understand that if, you know, if your mind starts to be enticed by the idea that, oh, well, maybe there are multiple ways to God. Maybe God in his mercy has allowed Christianity to be one way and Islam to be another way and Hinduism to be another and Sikhism to be another and Buddhism to be another.

25:34 Maybe all of those are ways to God. Just know that what you're doing ultimately is dividing the unity of God. You're pulling him apart. There is one way to God because there is only one God. And that's why there's only one church. Paul says, you are to be one, not divided, but united, because God himself is one. Third thing he says there is that unity in the church, and this is a bit of a surprise, unity in the church, despite its oneness, despite its unity, unity is expressed in a multitude of different gifts and roles. Unity in the church is expressed in a multitude of different gifts and roles. That's what he says from 7, really all the way down through verse 12. But look there at Verse 7, because it does come as a bit of a shock.

26:23 He's been saying one, one, one, one, all, all, all, right? One unified church. But, he says in 7, grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Right? So not only is he saying, look at this snowball that's so tightly packed together. It's one snowball. But then, you know, it's as if then he pulls it all apart into all its, you know, millions of beautiful flakes. And says, and each one of those flakes that makes up that unity is different. And each one in its own way is beautiful. He says there in that section that God gives each of us in the church different gifts that we are to exercise.

27:02 In other words, for all the talk about unity and all the talk about oneness, God does not intend for his church worldwide or each expression of it as a local church like us. He doesn't intend his churches to be just this sort of, you know, like the meme, this undifferentiated mass of gray people that are just droning on about the same thing all the time. It's not what he intends. What God intends is for us as a local church and his worldwide church at that to be a beautiful variety of people, all of whom are using a beautiful variety of gifts that are all functioning together in a different way to showcase God's grace and kindness.

27:40 We are supposed to be a treasure chest of stuff. And if you think about a treasure chest, maybe the first thing that comes to your mind is a treasure chest full of gold coins that are all exactly the same. That's not the image. The church is not a treasure chest of gold coins, all of which are the same. It's a treasure chest of diamonds and rubies and gold coins and pearls and emeralds and sapphires and all of it, a multitude of different gifts and roles that are all brought together to create beauty and showcase God's wisdom. I mean, it's worth figuring out what kind of gemstone you are, whether you're a ruby or a sapphire or a pearl, or maybe you're sort of a weird mashup of a bunch of those.

28:24 It's worth taking some time to think about that and figure it out, because you do realize, right, well, you might say, you know, I'm not, I don't have any gifts, right? If all you guys are gold coins and rubies and sapphires and all the rest of it, I'm a rock. Well, no, you do realize, right, that what Paul is saying here, and it's a promise from Scripture, is that each and every person whom God calls into his kingdom is gifted in a way to do good for the church. Every single one.

28:55 And guess what? If you're a Christian, that includes you. Whether you believe it or not, whether you've seen it in your life or not, God has gifted you with something that you're supposed to use for the good of the church. It's a promise from the Bible. That's not just me saying it and being hopeful for you. I'm not just giving you some self-help here, right? This is not me being hopeful for you. This is just the Bible telling you what's true. It's worth figuring that out. It's worth having some conversations with people. It's worth testing some things. Maybe you're a teacher and you don't even know it yet because you've never tried it.

29:27 Maybe you've got gifts of leadership in some way and you have no idea that that's true because you've never even served in a way that would allow you to get into a position of leadership. And maybe your gift is to encourage people. I mean, for some of you, your gift is not going to be even talking or doing anything in particular. It's just that you're going to be a great listener. You're going to be somebody that just because of the way God has shaped your personality and maybe even your face, people just want to open up their hearts to you. I know several of you who are like that.

29:57 I see your face and I'm just like, I don't want to tell you everything. Do you know the Bible says that a spiritual gift is spreadsheets? Now, the Greek doesn't translate to that word particularly, but it does translate to administration. Administration, spreadsheets, organizing stuff, getting people to come to a particular place at a particular time, making sure that there are snacks out there for the Simeon Trust people.

30:29 All of that stuff is a spiritual gift, and the Bible calls it administration. It's worth figuring out what yours is. It's worth figuring out what kind of gym you are. in 8 through 11 you get this picture of a royal victory procession so this was a common thing in the ancient world the most famous of course are the roman victory processions right the triumphs when a victorious roman general would be in a chariot and the horses would pull him through the the middle of the roman forum and there'd be thousands of people yelling at him and throwing flowers at him and and all the rest but ancient kings in israel did that as well if they want a great victory they would process back into the capital city of jerusalem and crowds would throng around them and throw flowers and palm trees and not the whole tree palm fronds at them and welcome them back into the into the city but what's interesting about it this image of the procession is that when the general was coming back into the capital city it was not just that the people were throwing things to him he was often or at least he had a servant behind him

31:31 doing it throwing things to the people part of the spoils of war that he had brought back into Rome or Jerusalem or whatever. So he'd have a chest of coins or rubies or whatever it was, and he'd just be throwing them out to the crowd. He was giving gifts to his people as he ascended on high to wherever the procession was going to end. Well, that's the image that Paul is using here. When Jesus ascended on high, he led a host of captives behind him, just like a conquering king would, and he gave gifts to many. He's throwing these things out. Now, verse 9 and 10, that parenthesis there is a bit of a puzzle and you know people have argued for a long time about exactly where Paul is saying Christ descended to so you can see the phrase there in verse 9 the lower regions the earth can also be translated as the lower regions of the earth or even the lower regions of creation right of the cosmos right it can be translated like that and people have people have argued about it so some have said that that's a reference to Christ descending to the realm of the dead when he

32:35 himself died. So the argument would be that when Jesus died, just like every other human, he descended to the realm of the dead until Sunday when he came back out, right? And then was resurrected from from the dead. Some have said that's what that's a reference to. Others have said it just means no, it means the lower regions of the created order. It just means that he came to earth, right? He descended from heaven to the earth. So it's earth, they say, as opposed to heaven. I don't exactly know what it means. What I know is that either way, the focus is on what Jesus did, not as he descended. That's just Paul saying that had to happen so that he could ascend into heaven. The focus is on the ascent. And what he did as, excuse me, as he ascended was to give gifts to men as the conquering king does. And that's what verse 11 is about. You can really read straight from verse 8 to 11. It makes perfect sense to read from 8 to 11, and that's why we put 9 and 10 in parentheses.

33:34 But verse 11 lists out some of the gifts that Jesus gives as he ascends. And here, at least, Paul focuses on the gifts that are, in fact, people. Now, there are other lists in the Bible, other lists in Paul's writings of these spiritual gifts that Jesus gave to his people that aren't people, right? Things like administration or helps or, you know, faith or, you know, this or that. There's a bunch of lists. All those lists are different. None of them is exhaustive. And probably if you stuck them all together, you still wouldn't have an exhaustive list of everything Jesus gave to his people. You just, this is not the point in any particular place. But here, Paul focuses on gifts that are people. So look at it. Verse 11. He gave, these are the gifts that he gave, the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers. Okay, so who are those people? Well, let's just look at it for a second. The apostles and the prophets, because they're listed first and second, the apostles and prophets are the apostles of Jesus Christ and the prophets

34:39 of the Old Testament. That's who they are. And the reason we say that, and it's not some, you know, lower category of sent one or prophet that you can read about in 1 Corinthians, the reason we say it's the higher category of both of those, apostle of Jesus and prophet of the Old Testament, is because back in chapter 1, Paul says that our entire faith is built on the writings of the apostles and the prophets, right? And so that's got to be scripture, and therefore that's got to be Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles. So that's who they are. What about evangelists there? We don't exactly know who the evangelists are. I mean, maybe there was a, it doesn't seem to have been an office in the church, but maybe there were particular people in the church who were known as a person who, wow, that person seems to have a whole lot of fruit when he tells people about who Jesus Christ is. People just seem to flock to Jesus because of the witness of that guy right there. There seem to have been people like that in the early church, and frankly, there are people like that in our own church, right? You can probably list them off in your mind. These are the people who just seem to be incredibly fruitful at bringing

35:42 people to Jesus. The Holy Spirit just seems to use them in a special way to bring people to Christ. It's a good thing to have those people in the church. Next he talks there about the shepherds and teachers. What's interesting about that is that you'll notice that each of the others has the word the in front of it. The apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds. And then teachers doesn't have the. So what we think is probably the best way to understand that is that he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherd teachers.

36:17 The shepherds dash teachers, the shepherd teachers, right? That's what we think it is. And it lines up incredibly well with everything that's taught about pastors. That's the untranslated word for shepherd, right? Pastor. What it says about pastors throughout the whole rest of the New Testament, that the main thing pastors are to do is the ministry of the word, teaching. All right, so think about them all together. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherd teachers. What do they all have in common?

36:50 They all have in common the fact that all of them primarily teach. They speak truth so that others can ascertain truth. They all have to do with teaching. Which is why, of course, we spend so much time and energy in this church on teaching. It's because we understand from passages just like this and other ones that the main thing we are to do as a church, the main thing we as pastors are to do for you is teach you, give you truth, so that the Holy Spirit can use it to conform your heart more closely to the image of Jesus.

37:32 Now, I think that in large portions of American evangelicalism in particular, that emphasis on teaching is entirely lost because people think it's boring. And there's so many people, so many people who think that Christianity is primarily a matter of feeling something. The spiritual maturity or spiritual worship of God consists mainly of getting to the point in a church service or at a conference or whatever it is of emotional catharsis, of emotional release, of a feeling.

38:10 And if you don't get that particular feeling on a particular Sunday, then you go away thinking you haven't worshipped God. I wonder sometimes if that's why conferences are such a big part of American evangelical life. Because I think there are a whole lot of Christians, this is not true of everybody, But I think there are a whole lot of Christians out there who are just living from one conference to another and therefore from one emotional catharsis to another. They gather together in their church where there's faithful but maybe boring preaching and teaching.

38:45 But the music isn't everything that it is at a conference. There aren't 10,000 people gathered together singing. There's no gigantic amp that's making the music loud. And so the endorphins don't hit and the dopamines don't hit in quite the same way they do at a conference. And they walk away thinking, I haven't worshipped. Because I don't feel a certain way. But friends, look at it. Look at it. When Paul wants to talk about the gifts that the risen and ascending Christ gave to the church on his royal procession to the throne in heaven.

39:26 What does he talk about? He talks about teachers. You want to grow as a Christian? You want to deepen your spiritual maturity? This is how. Learn. You want to become a better, more mature Christian? Learn. Deepen your understanding of God's word. Look, don't misunderstand me. Emotions are not bad. They're good. But emotions are only good when they're based on and fired by rock-solid truth.

39:58 I have a wood-burning fireplace in my house, and I love using it. And man, I can get a fire started in that thing in about two and a half seconds. Literally, I'm not even kidding. That's not hyperbole. I can get a fire going in two and a half seconds. All you gotta do, literally, to get a fire going in a fireplace is wad up a bunch of paper towels. An entire roll, shove it in the fireplace, and put a lighter to it. You'll get a fire going in two and a half seconds, and it will be an impressive fire for about seven seconds and then it all burns up and there's nothing left a whole lot of christians emotions are like burning paper towels because it's trying to burn on just music it's trying to burn on just a feeling that you get from a piano or a guitar or drums or whatever and it's like paper towels burning up in the fireplace no what you want What you want is not to shove paper towels in your fireplace.

40:51 You want to shove rock-solid wood in that fireplace. It may take a little longer for the thing to get going, but once it does, I promise you, the furnace will roar, and it will roar for a long time. Emotions are good. Fire is good. But it's of no use if it's not burning something solid. Fourth. Fourth. Unity in the church has the goal of maturity. Unity in the church has the goal of maturity.

41:23 Paul begins to talk about that in verse 12 there. So he says, all of these teachers are given to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ. That's the goal. The teaching happens to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ. Now, verse 12 has confused people for years, and it's due to early English Bibles having what one commentator called an accursed comma in the middle of it.

41:54 An accursed comma that really set the entire English-speaking world off on a wrong understanding of a pastor's relationship to the church. Let me show you where that accursed comma goes, or doesn't go. Quote, he gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints. And then, early English Bibles had an accursed comma right there. To equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up of the body of Christ. And the impression that that left was that he gave apostles, teachers, all the rest of it, to do three things.

42:27 To equip the saints, to do the work of the ministry, and to build up the body. And eventually somebody came along and said, no, that's not what the Greek says at all. what the Greek says is to get rid of the accursed comma so that it says all of these teachers are given to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry, right? No comma. It's to equip you to do the work of the ministry. And that's why, for example, we put so much weight on you to take care of one another in your home groups and discipling relationships and all the rest. We don't want each one of you to just have a single string from your heart to the heart of the pastor and that's it.

43:04 No, we want strings going everywhere, right? connections everywhere, like a holy spider web through the church of relationships, so that all of us are doing the work of the ministry, of serving each other, of caring for one another, of spurring one another on to faith and good deeds. He goes on in this vein in 13, all of this is supposed to happen until we attain to the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood. He just goes on and on and on. You can see in verse 14 what he doesn't want us to be. Mashes up a lot of metaphors here. So that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves. You put those metaphors together and it's terrifying. Children tossed by the waves. That's not good.

43:49 He moves from children to a boat, right? We don't want to be children and we don't want to be a boat that's tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine. The word carried about is interesting there. It's a word that had to do with a child's toy of a top. You know what I mean by that? You spin the top and it whirly gigs around, right? Well, that's the word, carried about. And what the image that's supposed to be in your mind is of a ship that's being tossed by the waves, right? But it's not even just being tossed in one direction. As it's tossing, it's also turning in the water.

44:20 It's completely out of control. Like a top, it's spinning on the waves even as it's getting tossed by the waves. And Paul says, I don't want you to be like that. 15 and 16 pictures the church as a body growing together until we attain maturity. You see that? I want you to notice in this whole thing that when Paul talks about attaining maturity, like every time he mentions it in, say, 12 through 16, every time he mentions it, he mentions it in terms of the church growing to maturity.

44:57 The church, not just you as an individual Christian. I mean, yeah, of course he wants that. He wants you as an individual Christian to grow into maturity in Christ. But he wants even more for the church as a whole to grow together in maturity. Now, for some of you, that may sound like a discouraging thing because you're thinking, man, I don't know. I'm growing like crazy. I feel like if I just stick with my program and if I keep my head down and if I don't get distracted by other people in the church, if I just stick on it, me and God, I'll grow a whole lot faster than if I were to link arms with all these other people.

45:38 They're just going to slow me down. If I link arms with these people, they're just going to pull me back, right? That's possible, yeah. It's possible that if you have deep relationships with other people in the church that are not moving as fast as you are, they're going to slow you down. But you know what the flip side of that is? you may also speed them up. And God cares far more about that than he does about how fast you yourself as an individual are running the race. So what's the point of all this?

46:14 Well, I want you to see the importance that Paul puts on this need for the church to remain unified because it's a high importance. Just look back at verse 3. Again, all of this, all of this means, he says in three, that you are to be, we are to be eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bonds of peace. Eager is a little bitty word in English. Not very many letters and it's easy to read over it too fast.

46:47 But it's a strong word. And in fact, the word that Paul uses there for eager means to fight for something. to want to move fast on something, to have an urgency about something. It's how you respond to an emergency. It's how you respond to red lights flashing. You move fast and strong to fix the problem. Paul says that's how your heart ought to be when it comes to building the unity of the church. You ought to be fighting for it and fighting for it with urgency. It's that important.

47:22 Friends, this church right here, Third Avenue Baptist Church, according to Paul, is a witness to the world about who God is. We should never, ever take that lightly. And we should fight for unity. Second point, God is holy, so live in purity. So first thing Paul said was God is one, so you need to live in unity. Now he says God is holy, so live in purity. That's the main point of that next big section, 17 to 32.

47:53 So you can see it right there at the beginning in 17. This I say and testify in the Lord, you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do. Gentiles are impure, the Gentiles are dirty, the Gentiles are sinful and rebellious against God. And therefore you, even though you all are Gentiles, he's saying, must no longer walk or live like them. So I want you to notice just a few things about these paragraphs. First, just kind of let your eyes roll over 17 to 21. Well, you can even go down to 24.

48:26 Notice the words that are used. Notice the verbs that are used in there. What does Paul, just looking at his words, what does Paul think is the fountain, the base, of both pure and impure living? He says it again and again and again in there. He uses words that point to it. What causes impure living, living like the Gentiles, and then what causes pure living, The kind of living that we ought to have as Christians. He uses several different words to talk about it.

48:57 But he thinks one part of us as humans is responsible for both pure and impure living. What is it? It's the mind. Do you see that? Paul thinks the mind is the source of the way you live. Do you see it in there? You can see it in 18. Well, 17 also. The futile, they walk like this, they live like this because of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding.

49:28 They're alienated from God because of ignorance. See that? And then look at when he starts to talk about Christians. 20, that is not the way you learned Christ. Again, another word about the mind. Assuming that you have heard about him, another word about the mind, and were taught in him, another word about the mind. Paul thinks that the mind and how it is shaped by what it is taught is the fountain of both pure and impure living. In fact, if you look at 17, 18, there's a kind of logical progression there.

50:01 Look at 17. So they walk like this, 17, because of the futility of their minds. They're darkened in their understanding, which is kind of the same thing, right? Futility of the mind, darkened in understanding. They're alienated from the life of God. So all that is their condition. Why? Why is that their condition? Because of the ignorance that is in them. And what's that ignorance coming from? Their hardness of heart. It's the same progression that Paul lays out in Romans 1. The truth is revealed to us, but because of the hardness of our hearts, we turn away, and therefore we become ignorant, and therefore we become alienated from God, and therefore we become futile in our thinking, and therefore we give ourselves over to sin.

50:43 Same logical progression as Romans 1. Revelation is given, we turn away, we get wrecked. And what's the remedy? Well, look at 20. And what Paul's describing there is this process of becoming a Christian. He's describing the Ephesians conversion from 20 to 24. And how does he describe it? Well, again, word after word after word has to do with the mind. You learned this, you heard this, You were taught this.

51:18 This truth was given to you. Friends, becoming a Christian, becoming a Christian is first and foremost about having the truth of the gospel put in front of you. The truth of who you are. The truth of who God is. The truth of who Christ is. The truth of what you deserve for your rebellion against God and how Jesus saves those who come to him in faith. You've got to know that stuff. And then the Spirit takes that stuff and uses it to bring your heart to life. That's how it happens. I mean, I wonder, if you're here and you're not a Christian, but it's interesting to you, do you know the first thing you've got to do on the road to becoming a Christian?

51:59 You've got to understand it. It's not some mystical thing that you're waiting around for a feeling or a burning in the bosom or something. That's not it. You've got to put the truth in front of you. You've got to ask questions. I mean, is there stuff you don't understand about Christianity? Ask the questions. I promise you, nobody in this church is going to give you some, you know, hokey answer like, well, you just got to take it all on faith. Nobody's going to do that. Because we are a church that understands that Christianity is based on things that are true, and there are answers to the questions.

52:34 Ask them. Don't be afraid of that. Not to say everybody will know the answer to every question. I won't. But what I'll tell you if you ask me a question I don't have the answer to is, give me 48 hours, I'll find out. because Christians have been thinking about these things for a very, very, very, very long time. I promise you, I can find an answer to the question if you'll ask them. And look what happens when the Spirit brings a person to life, 22 to 24. You've got two different images that are kind of squashed together here. I mean, for one of those images that he talks about being a Christian as being a whole new man, right, a new person.

53:12 It's like Paul says in another place, You are a new creation, right? You've been brought from death to life, from darkness to light. You've been brought from a kingdom of death and law and hell and sin and rebellion to a kingdom of life and light. You are a whole new man. But he also talks about that new man, that change, as putting off one set of clothes and putting on another, right? Christian life is constantly about that battle. Constantly about that battle. Because, yeah, it's true, your old man has died on the cross with Christ in the same way that you have died on the cross with Christ.

53:52 But, friends, that's a legal declaration. The old man is still with you until the day you stand before Jesus. And it's going to fight against the new man. And day by day by day, what it means to be a Christian is to put off the old and put on the new. 25 to 32, really you just get a kind of machine gun volley here in this paragraph of examples of what it means to live as this new man. We're going to run through them really quickly, not going to spend really any time on it, but these are great things for you to think about over lunch this afternoon. But I want you to just, in the big sense, like looking at all of them at once, I want you to notice three things about them. First of all, they have to do with relationships, all of them. They all have to do with relationships. It has nothing to do, being a Christian, Paul is saying here, has nothing that he says here has to do with the way you feel or what you're doing inside your own heart or in your own mind. Christianity is not a turned in sort of religion. It's an outward

54:53 looking religion, right? It's an outward, excuse me, outward looking faith. And every single one of these examples shows that up. Second, each one of these commands you'll notice has a negative and a positive. A whole lot of people think that Christianity is all just about don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. And sure, there's a lot of that. But you know why it's don't, don't, don't, don't, don't? It's because always there is a do, do, do, do, do. And third, all of those do thises are all based on theological reasons. It's because God is a certain way, therefore we live in a certain way. Christian ethics is not just a list of do's and don'ts. It's a list of do's and don'ts because God is. And that makes all the difference in the world. Okay, let's look. 25. He says, speak the truth, basically. See that? Therefore, having put away falsehood. It's not even really falsehood. It's just having put away the lie is what it

55:54 what it says. And it may even be capital T, capital L. Having put away the great lie that Satan told all the way back in Genesis, now live in this way. Speak the truth. Why? Because we're members of one body. Do you see that in 2025? Speak the truth because we are members one of another. And when you lie, you're putting distance between the members of the body, right? That's what you're doing. And if I put distance between the body and this member of the body, that's going to be gross. Bodies are meant to be together. The members of a body are not meant to have distance between them. Something's gone terribly wrong, if that's the case. Don't lie. Tell the truth, because lies tear apart. 26-27 is interesting, because it doesn't say there, don't be angry. You notice that?

56:47 It says be angry, but in your anger don't sin. It's just recognizing that sometimes anger is precisely the right response to evil. Jesus looked around and saw the unbelief of the people, and it says he was angry. Now, there are some places that say he was grieved. That's not the same word. Sometimes he's grieved, and sometimes he's angry, and it was right for him to be angry. The command here is not to not be angry. It's not to sin in your anger and, in that little phrase, don't let the sun go down on it, don't nurse it, right?

57:21 Don't take joy in it. Don't treat it like a little pet mouse. You're not supposed to take that literally. Don't let the sun go down on your anger. That's not what that means. Sometimes, you know, a pervasive injustice deserves a pervasive anger, right? It deserves an anger that makes it through a sunset and into the next morning. Sometimes you've got to be angry about injustice and evil for more than one day. But what that's saying is don't nurse it, right? That's what that means. Anger has a place, but it is to be kept in its place.

57:55 Something to think about. 28, don't steal. Work. Why? So you can be generous as God has been generous to you. 29 and 30, don't let corrupting talk come out of your mouth, but only what's good for building up. The word corrupting there is actually, it's like a rotten fruit. It actually means rotten or rotting, right? So don't let words come out of your mouth that are going to tend to the rotting of other people. The slow corrupting and rotting and decaying and breaking down of other people.

58:27 Friends, some of you need to ask that question before you speak, before you text, before you tweet or post. Who is this going to help? Or is it going to cause somebody to rot? 31, 32, you get a kind of wrap up there. Be kind to one another. The word kind, it became a particularly precious word to Christians because the Greek word for kind is actually krestos, which sounds, you know, a whole lot like Christos, right?

59:01 So the Christos was krestos. Christ is kind, and so therefore we as Christians ought to be kind ourselves. It's a fitting word. And look at the theological reason that we're to be kind to one another, tenderhearted, and forgiving each other. Why? Because God in Christ forgave you. Here's the point. Something absolutely extraordinary has happened in you if you're a Christian. You have been forgiven.

59:31 You've been reconciled to God. And now you've been brought into this particular body, this particular church, which is what makes the universal church visible in this particular place. You've been brought into that, which means that if you're a part of that, you're now living for something infinitely greater than yourself. And the way you live, the way we live together as a church, is going to speak to the world about who our God is. Brothers and sisters, let's not lie to them.

1:00:05 Let's tell them the truth. Let's pray. Our God, we thank you and honor you and praise you that you are one. You are the one true God who is all holy and all good. And Lord, we thank you that you have called us, therefore, as your people to be one and holy and pure. Lord, help us to do that and help us to do it for the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.