Amen. Thank you very much. Great to see you this morning. Let's open our Bibles if you have one with you to Ephesians chapter 4. We're going to begin reading at verse 25, and this is also found in your order of worship. If you would prefer to read from that Ephesians chapter 4, there's 25 through 32. Therefore, having put away falsehood, late each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. The angry and do not sin. Do you know what the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil? Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let it labor doing honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. But no corrupting thought come out of your mouths that only such as is good for building up as it fits the occasion that may give grace to those who hear. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you are 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, tender-hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. Beautiful, powerful, very practical words that we want to look at this morning together. So let's ask God to add his blessing. Our Lord, we bow before you, we beg you to speak to us, use the frail and human words that I will utter. From a tongue O to prone to lash out and bring hurt and harmed others, use my tongue this morning amazingly by your grace to communicate the riches of your grace in Christ. Convict us, warm us, heal us, empower us and lead us, Lord, to that which you have called us. Your name we pray, amen. I remember the day very vividly back in August of 1978. My oldest sister, Karen, was leading home, heading off to college at the University of Texas. It was one of those settings that you can well picture my mother there at the terminal of the airport was just a blubbering idiot in a pile of tears and my father was all choked up as well. My other sister, Sally, I'm the youngest of three. My other sister was as well sobbing uncontrollably at this turning point in our family's life. And I cried too. But if you've ever been in one of those situations where everyone else is very moved and crying and you just feel like, well, I guess I'm supposed to cry too. And so you cry as well. And so I cried. But you know, I thought in one sense, what is the whole new lease on life? I mean, with kind of the star of the family gone now, I mean, I was now well positioned to assume that central role. And so I cried but inside there was that overwhelmingly selfish urge to rejoice as well. Well, a strange thing began to happen that older sister that was very much like a mother figure to me throughout growing up went off to college and found herself in a Bible study that radically changed your life. For freshman year, she entered into a small group Bible study with some other young ladies. Actually, one of the teachers of that was Gail Dury who is now a member of this church. And in that study, my sister started hearing things that she'd never heard before. Now, you know, we grew up in El Paso. El Paso is that city in a way out west, 800 miles basically from here amazingly enough. And we are not in El Paso. You know, El Paso, you are not in the Bible belt. So, I mean, we did the religious thing but we had never, ever seen peers that were personally in love with Jesus Christ. And we never really understood the real gospel. And that came to Roost in my sister's life, so to speak. And remember, she came home that first Thanksgiving and sat the whole family down and said, I need to tell you, I've become a Christian. And we, you know, it was kind of a, you know, what was she before, you know, a Turk? I mean, of course you were a Christian, honey. And you know, wondering what bizarre cult she'd gotten involved in in this liberal place. And yet over time, it wasn't so much her words that began to show up in my own life, a need that I had. It was more her life. She began to look more and more like her creator. And I began to see more and more the reality of Christianity through her changed life. Well, it's a powerful principle that many of you could testify to as well. Studies would show that most people come to saving faith in Christ through a close friend or a close relationship. Relationships are key in that respect. And they really become the Bible would tell us something of a window or a doorway through which people see what the real gospel, what real Christianity is all about. That's a way to responsibility as well. This is how the Apostle Paul catches it in his letter to the Ephesian Christians. Now, if you're new at our church, we are really since April, we'll run all the way through to December. We are working our way through this little letter in the New Testament called Ephesians, the Apostle Paul who himself had a radical conversion experience. Pinned this letter to a group of people that he dearly loved in a city called Ephesus, a principal city in that time and in that place in the world. And he spends three chapters talking about really what it means that you are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. He's been about the powerful, beautiful riches of grace in Jesus. And then he turns a corner in chapter four. And for the rest of the book, he gets very practical, exceedingly practical. He starts off by saying, look, having become the beneficiary of all of these things in Christ, being delivered out of this dark world and being clothed in the person of Jesus Christ by faith alone, having a weighty responsibility to live a life worthy of the calling you received. And he works that out throughout the rest of the book. Curiously, though, the first major place that Paul tells us this radical change should be lived out and evidenced are in relationships. Relationships of life. And he gives us this concept of transformation that the Christian moving from being a person that was corrupted by the darkness of this world to one who really glimmers, shines with the light of Christ. He says that radical transformation should be taking place in every single Christian's life. There's no such thing as someone who quote, prays the prayer, but doesn't have a change of life. That's just an obvious in Paul's mind. And he says, this transformation must take place. He gives us first the mandate or the what of transformation. Then secondly, he talks about the motive or the why of transformation, how weird to be transformed, and then finally the manner or the way to transformation. We talked last week about change and how it's not a welcome subject to most of us. But the underlying idea here, last week and this week, is that every single one of us are in process. And the change is maybe not something we long for in one sense. It disrupts our life, causes us to have to leave behind the habits and things that we have a love hate relationship with. In another sense, all of us are thirsting for real change as this book talks about. And so we want to look at that together for a few minutes. First of all, the what of transformation or the mandate of transformation. You see this throughout this passage in a very powerful way. He talks about, first of all, in verse 25, that one of the things that ought to evidence that transformation in our relationships is the way we talk. There shouldn't be any lying. He said, having put off falsehood, let each one speak the truth with his neighbor that we're honest. We're not always honest, are we? We speak oftentimes with things that are shaded in half-truths, white lies, we call them seemingly harmless. But Paul says, no, this is very important to understand how wicked it is to remain in a pathway of lying or falsehood. We've got to throw that off in our relationships of life and embrace lying. There's another aspect to this that we'll get to a little bit later. He emphasizes anger probably more than anything else in this passage. Not at all convicting to this redhead. Verse 26, be angry and do not sin. Now, I kind of like that. I don't know about you the way that the ESP puts it. That's really the literal. It's a command. Be angry and do not sin. So I'm thinking, boy, this is great. I now have a biblical command to be angry. Are you all listening to me? Be angry. No, that's not really the idea here. Rather, it is that Paul is saying in essence, opportunities to sin abound when anger rises up. No question. There are sometimes when anger is not a bad thing in and of itself, which you might call righteous indignation. In other words, you hear about a child who is brutally abused. The correct response is not apathy. It is anger. When you hear about a woman who has been faithful to her husband for 25 years, only to find out he's been cheating on her for 15 of those 25 years and then leaves her, anger is the right response. When we learn that our country, the model in so many respects of freedom throughout the world, is brutally attacked, terrorized. And even for so-called religious ends, I'm here to tell you, anger is the right response initially. But watch out. Be careful. Because as the Lord cautioned Cain, very early in the Bible, remember Cain enabled the children of Adam and Eve. He said, Cain, watch out. Be careful. I know what's in your heart. Sin is crouching at the door like a roaring lion. He personifies sins like a lion. Crouching at the door, ready to seize this opportunity to wipe away any vestige of virtue that that anger first had. Cain's case, doubtful whether there was anything righteous about it to begin with. But for you and me, there are times when we feel anger and it's not altogether bad in the dividing line between good and bad of that first rising of anger, that's difficult a lot of times. What he's saying here is gotta be very careful because anger can take advantage of you and undermine anything that was good to begin with. He amplifies on the concept of anger later in verse 31. When he gives a whole litany of words, it's sort of like he's getting to the end of his passage. The timpani drum or maybe in this case, the conga drum is rolling because you're getting the climax. And so he spouts off all these words, let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander be put away from you. Again, that put off put on language, along with all malice. The word bitterness there is the idea of a sour person. You know, just a sour push, you know that kind of person as soon as I say that, someone comes to mind probably. It's the kind of person that everything's always negative. And everything is always always or never, you know, those people. You always treat me that way or you never nice to me in this respect. That's a sour person. Wrath and anger both used here related concepts. Wrath might be more of a violent, extrovertive anger. Anger here might have more to do with that deep-seated anger that frankly, a number of you have in your life. But you've done a good job to sort of mask it and cover it up a good bit. Reminds me of the word in verse 29 where Paul said, let no corrupt talk come out of your mouth. You know that in the Greek, that's the same word that's used for a rotten fruit. And for a lot of us, really, we have to come to admit that we, you know, we might look good on the outside. Like a nice beautiful apple does, but when you bite into that apple, you just want to spew it out of your mouth because it's rotten. It's disgusting. A lot of us may look good on the outside. Things look peaceful and serene. Then inside there, there's boiling anger. You have been hurt maybe many years ago. Someone snubbed you. You were overlooked for a promotion at work. Your spouse has this way of placing guilt trips on you that just, you know, you try to be a beautiful spouse and not respond verbally and angered. But boy, it is seizing. It's real. Maybe it's with your parent and you just, you know, you are sick and tired of a lifetime of them telling you what to do. But you're going to honor them. And yet that anger is there. I mean, it's it's crouching. It's really there. And it's evident. The word for malice. Well, slander. First of all, slander is speaking evil of another person. It's like gossip. It's making someone look bad in front of other people by the words you say. And clamor is the person that's just losing control of their temper, like a clashing of assembles that coffin is clamor. And malice probably is a collective term to bring all of them together in a climactic moment to say, this is all bad. It's all like poison. And we need, if Christianity is real, if you've caught the real disease, you're going to see it in these areas as it works out in the relationships of your life. All right. So that's the what of transformation. The mandate that these things have got to change. We can't simply go on. I'd like you to think as we talk a little bit further about at least one. Just focus in on one relationship that is not the way it should be. I may have mentioned a word or a concept there that brought conviction. Consider that the Holy Spirit telling you this is an area that needs to be addressed. Not a why. Well, there's many reasons the Bible would tell us why we need to do this. There's an ethical reason along the lines of the law of God. If you think of the 10 commandments, you may know that the second table of the law, number five through 10, all talk about the way we relate to other people. In Jesus summarized the two tablets by saying, you know, you boil all of religion down to loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength, everything that makes you up as a person and loving your neighbors yourself. That Paul said, don't bother telling me you love God. Don't give me your pious mumbo jumbo unless you evidence it in your transformed relationships. So Paul could summarize all of the law in what we know of unfortunately is that secularized golden rule, but it's this principle that we've got built into the fabrics of our very life. I mean, if I went up to my friend Jonathan here and just pounded him in the face, you would go, that's wrong. I mean instinctively, of course you'd say that's horrible, that's a heinous act of cruelty to him. Why? Because in the fabric of our being, we are created to treat people with dignity and respect and love and honor, and that's part of this general affect that certainly is well been throughout the scriptures. There's also in this passage a motivation based on, I guess, a practical reason. He tells us in verse 25, he said, you need to put all these things away. Why? For we are members of one another. He's talking about the body of Christ. We're all members of one another. There's a practical reason here. Look, it's not, I'm not called simply to love you because it's right to love you. There's a sense in which the Bible is saying, I need to love you because I am you. You and I are connected. We are one in Christ. And when there's division, when there's hostility, then the house is divided. And there's a sort of ecclesiastical schizophrenia, practical reason, but the best and highest reason that he gives is found suddenly in this passage, but I'm telling you it is the major theme of this passage. That is, please hear me. The reason why we should give dog and attention to transformation in our relationships is because our principal relationships in life are the battleground where the kingdom of darkness does war with the kingdom of light. It's where the devil seeks to stake his claim to authority as it were. And where King Jesus says no, that land is mine. Let's look at this just very briefly. Paul tells us in verse 26, he says, don't let the sun go down in your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. And expression, don't let the sun go down in your anger. Often here in premarital counseling, it's very good practical advice for most people. Don't turn the light out. Don't let, don't go to sleep if you're still angry with one another. That is not what this means here in my view. You can disagree with me. That's a fine application for most people. Ellen and I learned early on. That was a terrible application for us because I mean, I could have been a litigator. I don't know how successful I would have been, but I'm pretty sure I would have been pretty good because I'd love to argue. And there was never an argument that I didn't think I could win. If I just kept at it long enough, right? And preachers are very good at doing that in a spiritual vein. Honey, we cannot go to bed unless we settle this right now. Sometimes I just need to pipe down, turn out the light and cool down until the morning. The point here is do not nurse anger. The Hebrew is not meant to be taken literalistically, but it means don't nurse anger. Anger is not this little sin in the rankings of sin. And what did Jesus say? The sermon on the mount, it's murder. Jesus did not drive a hard and fast line between murder and anger. And yet why do we do that? So he said, don't nurse it. Don't treat it in a subtle way. Why? What's the reason why? Because when you do that, please hear me. When you and I allow anger to have its way in our life, no matter how subtle and quiet it appears to be, we are opening the doorway to the devil. That's what he says. He says, do not give the devil an opportunity. Combine that with verse 30 where he says, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. Why would the Holy Spirit be grieved? Because this is his territory. He came in when God redeemed me. He filled me with his spirit and sealed me with the Holy Spirit being my badge of guarantees, the authority of God, and I marked his hands unto eternity. He lives in me. I'm the temple of the Holy Spirit and win those wicked thoughts that are like little flowers of hell getting ready to bloom in my soul when I allow them to live and grow. I am asking the Spirit to move aside. Instead, what I should be doing is seizing the opportunity given in verse 29 to not allow any corrupting, remember that rotten talk to come out of your mouth, but only what is good for building up as it fits the occasion that it may give what? Grace to those who hear. Please, if you like writing your Bible, underline that. Every relationship that you have is either right now being used by Jesus as a conduit of grace to build that person into the person he intends for them to be, or that relationship is being used as a conduit of the work of the devil. I know that sounds extreme, but it's what the Bible teaches. Cross reference. I don't have time to look at it. James chapter 4. It's the exact same concept here. You and I are in the midst of battle. The warfare is our relationship. The battleground for the warfare is our relationships. And one of two things is happening. We are either being used of God to build up that person. It's beautiful language. It's constructive language is what it's talking about that we are being used of God as a contractor to help shape and fashion people to look more and more like their creator as we'll learn next week or in two weeks. Or we are being used like a bulldozer to come in there and plow down God's work in people's lives. C.S. Lewis's wonderful little book, The Screwtap Letters, is obviously a fictional series of letters written by a general in the devil's army to his underling nephew who's very new and frankly not that skilled at tormenting people. And he's just failed badly because his subject has become a Christian. But his uncle tells him no fear warm wood. There's still lots of opportunity here in the first place he tells him to focus in or the close relationships of his life, specifically his mother whom he happens to still live with. He says to take full advantage of this for this reason he says when two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unendurably irritating to the other. Work on that brings fully into the consciousness of your patient that particular lift of his mother's eyebrows which he learned to dislike in the nursery. And let him think how much he really dislikes it. And then he says your patient must demand that all his own utterances are to be taken at their face value and judged simply on the actual words while at the same time judging all his mother's utterances with the fullest and most oversensitive interpretation of the tone and context and the suspected intention. And of course she must be encouraged to do precisely the same. Now we can get a little smile or chuckle out of that because you know how that is exactly true in some of the relationships of your life. And that's just the surface there, the tip of the iceberg. But this my friends is the way the Bible paints the picture. And the chief motivation for pursuing in a dogged way the kind of transformation God mandates for us is to see that our principal motivation is that we are either being used of the devil or of King Jesus in individual's lives. Now how do we do it and I've got to do this really quickly. But there is motivation here beyond what we simply talked about it's really the way or the how of transformation the way that we go about this is to notice the book ends of this passage. I love to analyze a passage and see how literally it fits together and this one is a beautiful one because he starts off in verse 25 saying having put away false it is take off put on language symbolizing like you take off and put on clothing take off the clothing of the old person you once were before Jesus came into your life and speak the truth to one another. Now you define a word based on its usage and context particularly nearest context Paul had just talked about this very same concept a few verses earlier when he said in verse 21 that we were taught in him that is in Jesus Christ as the truth is in Jesus. When he says to put off falsehood and put on the new man and therefore speak in truth to one another what is he saying well you see saying don't lie not even white lies. But what he's saying at a much deeper level I believe is we must put on and model and speak the truth that is in Jesus. We must allow that to break our hardened hearts to cause us to see that as I needed to see it wasn't my sister that was the problem. I'm the problem the apostle Paul was able to cry out late in life that he was the chief of sinners and yet on the basis of that be able to rejoice because of who he was in Christ. And so the truth of Jesus is the key and you find this at the other book in verse 32 be kind to one another tenderhearted forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. I'm so thrilled that the Bible never gives me an excuse to remain unforgiving to any person for any length of time because it says Leo. The basis upon which you are to love and accept and forgive them has nothing to do with them. It has everything to do with me and the way that I have loved and accepted you Leo I have not loved and accepted you because you were a good little boy. I've loved and accepted you because I was pleased in my tender mercy to love and accept you. When I was a little boy I remember one instance from my father and I got into a horrible argument and I remember why but screaming and yelling at him. I think he remained much more calm than I and I ran away from it and it was in a public setting you just imagine a parent rolling their eyes and he runs after me. It's though he didn't care anyone was noticing you ran after me finally caught up to me grabbed me turned to me around looked me in the eye and said Leo I love you. I said no you don't you hate me and he said Leo I love you so much I would die for you I will never forget that. One of my two or three most important memories of my father still living pictures to me the gospel because you and I both before Christ and once we become Christians as that him says our hearts are prone to wander we run away from God but you know what in the gospel Jesus runs after us. He dogively pursues us regardless of who's watching he hunts us down as the hound of heaven he grabs hold of us turns us around looks us in the eyes and says I love you and we argue with him and the gospel argues back with us and he says no I love you so much I have died for you and I'm telling you that truth that you and I need every day of our lives. That we should forgive as we have been forgiven powerful gospel truth sinks into our life and begins to show me up somehow joyfully is the chief of center freed up to move out into those relationships especially the ones that I am most uncomfortable about to pursue love and peace and tenderness so that I might be a conduit of God's matchless transforming grace and not an opportunity for the devil to do his word. When the gospel runs after us captures us enters us the beautiful truth my friends and that it does not simply stay there. It not only runs into us and through us it runs outside of us into the relationships of our lives so that it enters into your friend or your parents or your child and your spouse and begins to tame their lust. It seems out of control and it begins to quiet the terrible fears that lead them so anxious day and night it begins to quiet the clamor of contention and idolatry that so controls them and as it stills the anger in them whether loud or quiet it turns them around as a person to love not only you and others but of course him for whom they were made Jesus Christ that is the power of the gospel at work transforming our lives in the name of the Father's Son and Holy Spirit Amen.