Well, thank you so much. You got to kind of collect myself here. After that, I almost wanted to pronounce the benediction and go straight to the table. Wow. The scripture reading is from Ephesians chapter 4, verse 31, through chapter 5, verse 2. As many times you'll see in Paul's letters, there's a bit of an unfortunate chapter division here. So we'll read the last two verses of chapter 4, the first two verses of chapter 5. You can find it on your Bible. In your Bible it is also printed in the order of worship. 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 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. The Word of the Lord, let's pray together. Father, it is a joy and a privilege, an amazing miracle of your grace that we do call you Father, that in Christ you have made us beloved children. And as children, we are enabled to imitate you, teaches now from this passage, the gospel of grace and the impact it has on our lives in Jesus' name. Amen. A couple of Saturdays ago, not yesterday, but the Saturday before that, I spent really one of the most enjoyable afternoons that I've spent in a long time. And unfortunately, to some of the more concerned parents, myself among us, it did occur while I was just simply lounging in front of the TV doing nothing. But it was acceptable television because what happened, I decided I would relax and I turned on the TV and there was college football. And not just college football, it was SEC college football. It's none of this big 12 Missouri Kansas kind of thing. It was Tennessee against Florida. And so I sat back on the couch, propped my feet, put my hands behind my head and thought, ah, yes, college football in the fall, there's nothing better. And I started to watch. And not long after I had sat down, my son came into the room, Jackson, who's four-year-old, four-years-old, and by the way, this was a boy's afternoon. Shannon and Emble were out, it was Jackson and me, and Tyler were the dog. And that's a story for another sermon. But Jackson comes into the room, sits on the sofa, he tries to pop his feet up, but they don't reach the coffee table. So he's not to be deterred. Well, he gets down from the sofa and he goes and he has this little chair that sits off in the corner of the room. And he grabs this little chair, he brings it up to the sofa, he puts it up as close to the sofa as it will go, sits back down right next to me, props up his feet. When that happens and he gets comfortable, he gets his hands and he puts them right there behind his head. So we're watching football, Jackson and me, and it's hilarious because when I cheer, he cheers. When I kind of sit up because there's an exciting play, he sits up because there's an exciting play. When I yell at the dog to quit running around and circles around our table, he yells at the dog to quit running around circles. And for an of our table, we spent probably an hour doing just that. It was a beautiful thing. It was really an invitation from him to me and he did it just because he loves me. And I enjoyed it so much just because I love him. In the first two verses of Ephesians chapter 5, Paul is telling us to do exactly what my son did here. Be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love. Copy God, follow God, imitate God, be like God. And you say, yeah, right. Well, I mean, how am I supposed to do that? Is that easy? Copy God, imitate God, end of sermon, have a great week, see you next time. And you're thinking, it's impossible. I can't do that. But before we dismiss Paul right out of hand is giving us an impossible task. We have to notice that there are two parts to this statement that he makes there. The first is a statement of fact. You are dearly loved or beloved children. That's who you are. And the second is really a result of the first. Therefore, that's the first word in Ephesians chapter 5, be imitators of God. In Christ we are dearly loved children. Therefore we are enabled by the grace of God to follow him by walking in love. And before we get into any of the specifics about what it means to imitate God, we have to be perfectly clear about what Paul means regarding our being of children of God. Because if we don't understand this, and if this is not true, the rest of the passage makes absolutely no sense. If you don't know what it means to be a child of God, you will never ever be able to imitate him. In fact, you'll be stuck not imitating God, but imitating the devil, which is what Paul has been talking about in Ephesians chapter 4 up until this point. So what does he mean about being a child of God? Well, all of chapter 4, really all of Ephesians up to this point talks about this. And there are two things that we can pinpoint from just these four verses that help us to make sense of it. The first is found in chapter 5, verse 2, Christ loved us and gave himself up for us. That is the gospel. He was a fragrant offering, a sacrifice to God on our behalf as Paul goes into scriven. And without the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf, we would never be reconciled to God. And so Jesus came, taking on human flesh, living a life of perfect righteousness, never one sinning, dying to death on cross that we deserve. He's a sacrifice. He substituted himself for us, giving his righteousness to us, taking our rebellion on himself, and paying fully and completely for our sins. And what is the result of this? Is it that God begrudgingly accepts this? Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what Jesus did, but you better watch out, because I've got my eye on you. And if you get out of line, that's it. But that's not what Paul says in this verse. He says because of the sacrifice of God, of Christ on our behalf, we are, we are dearly loved children. God is saying because of what my son did, I cherish you as my own son. I cherish you as my own daughter. And you can rest then securely in your position in Christ. The other way Paul sums up this relationship in these verses is by reminding us using his favorite shorthand term for the gospel at all of the Ephesians, two little words in Christ. He can't even get out of this part of it without saying it. In fact, in chapter 4, he's going through some pretty negative stuff, some hard stuff, but he can't leave us there. He's got to tell us that we're in Christ. And so in verse 32, he says that God in Christ forgave you. What this means is that when God looks at you, he sees the finished work of Christ. He sees you in Christ. He sees Christ righteousness instead of your sinfulness. He sees Christ's courage instead of your fear, all that belongs to Jesus now belongs to you because you are so wrapped up in Him that you cannot be separated. And just like Jesus is God's son, if you trust in Him alone, as your Savior, you too are God's son, you too are God's daughter. This, and only this, only the gospel, makes sense of Paul's admonition to imitate God. If you are here this morning and you are not a believer in Christ, you simply cannot do what the rest of this passage talks about. And the very, very last thing I would want anybody to leave here this morning with is the idea, some sort of an understanding, that all we have to do is try our best at doing a good job in this life. You know, kind of nebulously following Jesus. He's our great example. You know, just sort of be like Jesus, and that's enough. That is a damning message. The phrase that was popular several years ago may still be popular right now, that what would Jesus, it's an excellent question. It is an outstanding question to ask yourself. But it's only an excellent question. If you've already asked and answered the question, what did Jesus do? Because that's where Paul starts. What Jesus did was offer himself up as a sacrifice to God. And if we trust in him as the only one who can reconcile us to God, then and only then can we begin to understand what it means to imitate God as he is our father, and we are his children. I remember having a conversation with my minister when I was in seminary in St. Louis. He was talking about how he really came to understand this idea of our actions as following God always flowing from our state of being in Christ because his father pressed it into him growing up. And he did it in a variety of ways. And one of the ways that he did it was with his practical behavior. He would grow up saying, son, you're a bitten. That was his name, bitten. Son, you're bitten. And you know what that means? That means you act like a bitten. So when he got into high school, my minister, and he had more freedom out in the world, he could always answer the question. Going out the door, his dad would say, son, who are you? Are you a Smith? No. Are you a Johnson? No. Are you a Miller? No. Who are you? I'm a bitten. And I'll act like a bitten. That's what Paul is saying here. You are in Christ. If you are a Christian, the term itself means little Christ. You are in Christ, you're a child of God. So what does it mean for us that being the truth, the factual statement about us, to act like it? What it means is that we walk in love. And I love the verb that Paul uses here. We walk in love. It's very active. He doesn't just say, well, be loving. He doesn't even say, love one another, although that's part of it. What he says is walk in love. That's the pattern for your life. You are a person that radiates love everywhere you go, and in all the people that you contact with, you are walking in love following your father. We've got to put some feet on this to understand it. So what does it mean that we walk in love? First, it means that we walk in love following Christ's humility. We follow Christ's humility. In chapter 5, verse 2, Paul tells us to walk in love as, that's the key word, walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us. Christ's sacrificial life is therefore the model for our sacrificial life. As Christ humbled himself even to the point of death, we are called to mimic that humility. Now it is obvious that there is no way that we can do this to the extent that Jesus did. He sacrificed his own life so that we could live. In fact, Jesus makes this exact point in Matthew 20, 27, and 28. The disciples were all gathered around before Jesus was going to go into Jerusalem and they were having this argument among them about who was the greatest. I'm the greatest, Peter says, because I walked on water for a little while, even though I almost drowned. John would say, I'm the greatest because Jesus likes me best. And they're arguing, they're having this argument about who the greatest is, and Jesus cuts them off short. And he says, you know what, guys, let me tell you who the greatest is. Whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. There's no way that we can give our lives a ransom for many. That was Jesus's task on earth, and he completed it fully. But he was making a practical point about how his disciples should live in the world. And what he was saying was this, we can live our lives not to be served but to serve others. Ask anybody, go to the mall after church or tomorrow or whatever, and just take a poll and say, who is the greatest person that ever lived on the earth? Christian or non-Christian? Probably half of the people would say, Jesus was a great person. He was a great guy, even if they don't believe he was a guy, he was a great person. But if you ever stop to think about it, what made Jesus great? He didn't have a lot of money. In fact, he got in trouble on the Sabbath because his disciples were hungry, and they were picking heads of grain to eat so he got in trouble. He didn't have a big fancy house. In fact, he didn't have a house at all. The son of man had no place to lay his head. He did not walk in the circles of power. In fact, the rulers and authorities, the people that had influence in the world, hated him and wanted him dead. So he hung out with common laborers and really the riff-raff of society that nobody would talk to, but he was great. Do you this morning want to be great? And what is your definition of greatest? Do you want to be the most beautiful? Do you want to be the smartest? Do you want to have either one with the biggest home, with the most stuff? I know the thoughts of my heart, and even though my body is progressing its way through adulthood, my heart is still in eighth grade because I still want to hang out with the influencers, the people that can, you know, just by being with them can elevate me. Maybe this morning, not only is your heart in eighth grade, maybe your body is in eighth grade, maybe you are in middle school or high school. And it might be your temptation to try in all the ways that you can to become great, not by being a servant to other people, by looking outward, but by trying to manipulate other people and other situations. So you use them to serve your own ends. Paul says, this is worldly greatness. This is the foothold for the devil that he talks about in chapter 4. And what does this mean for us as a church? Well, it means that we can truly believe that we are children of God. And this is so important because as such, our significance is totally, completely 100% taken care of, and it doesn't matter about anything else. What you look like, what your job is, what your home looks like, nothing. Your significance is found in your position in Christ. And so we are free. We're freed up to serve other people. We're free to talk to people and reach out to people that really won't win us any cool points in our neighborhood if people see them coming out of our front door. It won't make us look good, but we're free to serve them. We've heard a lot, even though the past couple days at the local outreach conference about people that we can serve, you do not have to look far to get outside of yourself and serve other people as Christ did. But the gospel gives us freedom. It gives us freedom to spread the kingdom of God in the city, even among people who may never thank you, and you may never be seen doing it whatsoever. And it also means this, that there is no task that we could do that is too medial for us as believers. If we are needed in the nursery just to hold babies, which by the way, I don't think is a medial task at all, because I give thanks to God that people did it for our children. But some people may see it as such, but if we're needed, we'll get in line to go to the nursery to hold babies. Nobody will probably ever see you do it. The babies will see you do it, and it will make an impression on them. I guarantee you. And there are people in this church that do things that you would never know about, but it didn't happen. You would not be able to sit here right now for moving chairs, to filling communion cups, to negotiating, and reading, and re-reading the lease with this community college so that we can meet here and worship the Lord. And there's no glory in it. But the economy of Christ is simply children of the Father imitating their dad. It's what children do. Not long ago, I was listening to a sermon by Tim Keller, who is a minister in New York City, and he gave an illustration that really made a deep impression on me. In the days of the early church in the Roman Empire, a serious plague came sweeping through a certain city, and at first, just a couple of people got sick, and then a few more people got sick, and then a whole lot of people got sick, and so much so that the evacuation started. The movers and shakers of the city, the people connected to the government, the rich and the powerful, who had the means, they cleared out first. But it wasn't long after that that everybody cleared out. Everybody cleared out except for one group of people. The Christians stayed behind. The Christians stayed behind to take care of the sick most of whom were Roman pagans and not the leavers, so they made sure that they had food and water. They made sure that there was someone standing beside them when they breathed their last breath. They took care of them. And I was listening to this illustration, and I was thinking, and so what I was thinking was, and here's what happened. The Christians did this great thing, and God spared them, and tons of conversions came about, and the gospel spread. But here's what Tim Keller said, no, that didn't happen. They dropped like flies. The Christians who were taking care of the sick got sick, and most of them died. But the people who survived, and the people who came in after them, they remembered them. They remembered that the honor of Christ who they served was held up, and they walked in love by following Christ's humility. But there really is one other aspect walking in love as well, because not only we call the follow Christ's humility, we're also called an able to follow. And when I say that we're called the follow Christ's heart, I mean that we are truly to see ourselves as people enabled by the grace of God to manifest some of the attributes that made Jesus, Jesus. The section of text at the end of chapter 4 is really following Paul's discussion of the old life versus the new life. We either follow the devil, or we follow Christ. I mean he makes it as simple as that. And we follow Christ because we are in Christ. And remember that being in Christ means that what belongs to him now belongs to you. And so you are able to follow his attributes, so Paul enumerates them in verse 32, and he sets them over against the attributes of the world or the attributes of the devil. So here's what it means in these couple of verses to follow Christ's heart. First that we are kind, we're not bitter. The bitterness that Paul is talking about here in verse 31, it refers to people who harbor grudges in their hearts. Old hurts that never go away and they just nurture them in their own hearts. They allow to so work on their spirit that they become downcast, cynical, just basically sour people. But we however are called to be kind. This means that there is a peculiar pleasantness around us that is there irregardless of the situation. It extends not only to people that we like and it's easy to be kind to, but also those who are bitter towards us. And second we are called to be tenderhearted people and not wrathful. A ratful person spends a lot of time at a lot of energy, either daydreaming about or even actively plotting the downfall of another person. They take particular pleasure and even the smallest failings of another person. They get some kind of a satisfaction when another person suffers a personal loss or an economic hit or even disease. But the tenderhearted person helps other people to succeed. If you are tenderhearted you are compassionate in the best sense. And that means that you share in the joys of other people and you also share in the sorrows of other people and you take no pleasure in the sorrow, no matter what your state of life is at that particular moment. Even those people that make it hard to do so. And finally we are forgiving and we are not slandering. This means that when someone wrongs us we are not going to go around telling this wrong to other people trying to bolster support for our cause. It means that we face it head on. And in the church this is a peculiar temptation because it often takes the form of a prayer request. Please pray for my boss. My boss is being such a jerk. He is making my life at work impossible. We should pray for him. And I think that we should pray for him more because I hear he is having some struggles at home. So let's just pray for my boss. Can we take a little time to do that now? That is really slander in the guise of spirituality. And there are two things that we can pay special attention to as Paul contrasts following Christ with following the ways of the devil. Because first following Christ always focuses us outward while following the ways of the devil always focuses us inward. You may think that a wrathful or slandering person is focusing their venom outward but that is only a guise because what you do in this vein is always for the purpose of self protection. You will come bitter because your hopes are dashed. And when you are a wrathful you are so totally consumed with thinking about yourself and how you can get even that you are totally unable to interact meaningfully at all with other people. When you are slandering you are using your mouth to tear someone down so that you can build yourself up. But when you are kind or when you are tender-hearted, when you are forgiving, following Christ because you know that your security lies in Christ alone. It is taken care of so that attacks, although they sting, they don't stick. And you can really look outward at home. So what this means is that you can really look outward to love your husband or your wife when you do not allow yesterday's fight to fester so that adds to last week's fight that you let fester, that adds to last month's fight that you let fester, that adds to last year's fight, that is festering in your heart so that the end it blows up. And the second thing to notice is that following the ways of the devil is really an act of complete cowardice while following the ways of Christ takes courage. If anyone thinks that love is, I don't know, you know you hear the word love and it starts to get in these touching feeling things and you know you might be a man and you might go that is not for me. What I am here to tell you is that love that follows Jesus is courageous, strong, difficult love. You know why? Because bitterness and wrath and slander are always to avoid taking a situation on. They are always to sweep things under the rug. You either let it soak into your very being to the point that you spent time and energy thinking on how you can ruin another person or you speak about it to everyone except the other person. But following Christ means that we face things head on. Following Christ means that we believe the gospel has something to do with life in the universe as we know it. It doesn't mean that we pretend that offenses are not real, it means that we deal with them quickly, quietly, refusing to give the devil a foothold. You know what this means for you? This takes the gospel out of the realm of kind of the purely spiritual and I'm not exactly sure what that means but it takes it out of there and it plops it right down smack into the middle of where you live. It plops down right into the middle of your living room. It plops it down right into the middle of your hallway at school. It plops it down right into the middle of your car when you're sitting on traffic in the loop desperately trying to get somewhere and you're not going anywhere. And it plops the gospel down straight down right into the middle of the church where the devil is most eager to cause destruction. I had a friend who went to a church where for years and years offenses got swept under the rug. There were offenses between the people and the leadership offenses between the pastors and the leadership offenses between the pastoral staff offenses between the people offenses everywhere. But there was no culture of following Christ by dealing with them head on but only sweeping them under the rug. There were no short accounts and what happened? Well the entire thing blew up over a relatively minor issue. Once something came up that affected everybody in the church and had the least bit of you know contention to it years and years and years of past hurts and bitterness and secret grudges boiled over and just boiled over the top and the church divided. The elders, the church split into two camps. The pastoral staff of the church split into two camps. The congregation of the church split into two camps and I am not joking on Sunday mornings they divided themselves literally on both sides of the Isle of church depending on what side of the issue they were on. And you know what else I think split in this situation? I think the side of the devil split as he laughed uncontrollably at the havoc that he caused. Don't think for a second that this sort of thing can't happen here because it is a tragic scene for an unbelieving world to see Christians torn apart and devouring other people, devouring each other and it gives the devil particular pleasure. And that's why Paul tells us to follow Christ and in his humility and in his heart. We are unable to do that because we are in Christ because he loved us and gave himself up for us as a sacrifice pleasing to God and once you have experienced that grace you will be enabled joyfully to imitate your father. It's what all children did. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for sending your son who gave himself up for us as an atoning sacrifice. Go with us now, enable us to imitate you as we love one another dealing with each other in terms of the gospel and we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.