Good afternoon. Thankful to be back here, back home in Stafford, Fredericksburg, Virginia, to be able to give a message for y'all. It's a joy and a privilege every time, and so thank you, Pastor, for allowing me to give the message today. And I wasn't feeling the greatest earlier, and so I'm thankful as well for the Lord for helping me feel a bit better. And so bear with me if there's anything going on, but praise the Lord for His kindness and mercy. Today we're gonna be in Ephesians chapter four. Ephesians chapter four, verse 25 is where we're gonna be starting in. So as you're turning there, So with this sermon, one of the things we wanna focus on is why we are here. One of the biggest questions that every person has to answer in their life is, what is my purpose? What am I here for? Why has God placed me on this rock to do? And why has he saved me? What is the goal of my salvation? This is something that we all have to wrestle with And it's a question that doesn't go away as we become a Christian. In fact, it becomes more pressing of and becomes more important of who are we and what are we to do now that God has not only made us, but now saved us as well. What are we to do? Well, I'm sure you know this verse, Ephesians 2, 8-9. You know how Paul talks about, it's by grace we have been saved. It's a gift, it's not of ourselves. But then he also says in verse 10, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. So we have here a reasoning given why he made us, why we are his workmanship, his masterpiece that he has remade us in Christ for. And it's so that we would walk in these good works, good works that the Lord had prepared even before the foundation of the world, before the very beginning. And in the next chapters of Ephesians, especially in chapter four, we see the more practical side of our salvation. As Paul, he moves on to talk about how we have all been joined into the body of Christ. Christ died, he was raised, and he gave gifts to the body so that the body would be equipped up to the full maturity of who Christ is, that we would grow each individual part that we make up of the church, that we would grow and come together into the head who is Christ. And then Paul talks about, in the latter half of chapter four, about how we are to no longer walk as all the Gentiles walked. We've been rescued from the corruption of darkness and we've been brought into light. And he says, we did not learn Christ in the way that the Gentiles act, but we learned him in him. We learned to put on the new man. We learned to put off the old man. and to put on the new man, which is being created in righteousness and holiness of the truth, as it says in verse 24. And so, what Paul's doing here now, in this section of Ephesians, is he's giving the practical side of what is the Christian life, and what are we to do as Christians? What is our calling? How are we to live out the new man in Christ? And Paul gives 13 commands in total in this section that we're going to be looking at, 13 commands. And what he's doing is he's pressing Christ and the redemption of Christ into all the areas of our lives and shows how the grace of God changes everything about our life. It's a faith that has hands, it's a faith that works, it does things, it accomplishes. And we know that obedience is not something necessary for our salvation, but it flows out of our salvation, and it's a necessary component of the Christian life. And so, this passage, we're gonna look at six characteristics, or six traits of the new man. And so, let's go ahead and read this passage. I'm gonna read up to chapter five, verse two, but starting in verse 25. Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Be angry and yet do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and do not give the devil an opportunity. He who steals must steal no longer, but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands what is good, so that he will have something to share with the one who has need. Let no unwholesome word proceed up from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for building up what is needed, so that it will 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 anger and wrath and shouting and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Instead, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, gracious, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has graciously forgiven you. Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children, and walk in love just as Christ also loved us and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. So, the first characteristic of the new man that we have is that the new man's speech, his communication, is truthful, It's full of truth and it's for the good of others in the church. And that's in verse 25. Look at verse 25. It says, we have laid aside falsehood, therefore laying aside falsehood, which here in the context, falsehood was what characterized the life of the old man. The old man was a life full of lies, deceit, and falsehood. Before God saved us, we were deceived. verse 22 it says, we are being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit. And so from this verse we see that lies are destructive. Lies corrupt men. Lies have actual real world consequences. They pull you further, they have a tendency to take you further and further down like quicksand destroying you. But when we came to Christ and believed in him, what happened was God broke the chains of deception. He revealed the truth to us, the lie was taken away. And we cast aside and threw away these chains of deception and said, I have nothing to do with this anymore. We put off the old man. So Paul's point is that as Christians, we've been saved from these shackles of lies and falsehood. And now we should have nothing to do with falsehood. We should have nothing to do with lies. They were our past, but our present and future is defined by truth. And as Christ says in John, the truth will set you free. Part of living the life, part of putting on the new man is that all of our works, everything we do should be done in truth. But what does this exactly look like? Well, he's talking here about our communication. He's talking about how we talk to one another, how we speak, the command, is to let each of you, as he says, speak truth with his neighbor. Everything that comes out of our mouths as Christians must be true. Whatever we say must be said in honesty and have no mixture of lie in it whatsoever, for there is no mixture of error in Christ. He is the truth. But Paul also gives another reason why we are to obey. He says, speak truth because we are members of one another. So why does our speech need to be truthful? Because we are all a part of the body of Christ. We are joined to one another by the Holy Spirit. Lies are destructive, as I said. And so why would we want to harm, why would we want to do harm to our brothers and sisters, those who are fellow members of the body of Christ? Our words in the church should not be like huge wrecking balls destroying everything in its path of one another. But God gave us speech so that we would build, so that we would be constructive to one another. And so we should not be selfish in the way we speak or concerned with merely our own good, but for the good of our brothers and sisters. A couple verses down in 29, if you look there, Paul adds additional insight saying, let no evil word come out of your mouth, but whatever is good for the building up of what is needed so that it might give grace to those who hear. The words we say to our church family should not be evil words but good words. The word for evil here is used in other places to refer to something that's rotten, something that's foul. And so the picture that we're getting is that the words that we speak should not be a foul odor in the noses of our brothers and sisters. It should be something filled with good and it should be wholesome words that are for building up, for the betterment of one another. The Lord, when he was on the earth, all of his words were words that gave life. And so we should emulate him and give words of life to others. And so as Christians, I mean, you heard it, we outdo one another in good works. Well, I say we should also outdo one another in good words. We should speak good things to one another. And so this means that we should not flatter one another. As Paul said, our speech should be truthful. We shouldn't say good things simply because we know people will like compliments or people will like to be puffed up. We shouldn't flatter because we want to be selfishly liked or get on someone's good side. Proverbs says a flattering mouth works ruin. What we should say, it should be genuine and it should come from a heart that loves the person we're talking to. and wants to see them prosper in their genuine good. Scripture says in Romans 13, seven, give honor to whom honor is due. And the way we do this is by speaking truthful and good words. And it says there, a very literal translation in verse 29 would be speak whatever is good for the building up of what is needed, the building up of the need. So there are certain times when those in the church need an encouraging word. whether they're going through a difficult trial or testing as we've talked about. There are times when we should be on the lookout for where we can say a good word that's going to build up a brother or sister, a word of exhortation or a word of comfort. So we should keep an eye out and discern this and bless one another with our words. Also with our words, there's a unique aspect of a father in doing this as well and giving honor. Part of raising a child in fear and admonition of the Lord is using words to encourage your children and to praise them and to verbally praise them when they do well, when they do what is pleasing to God and to the father and mother. And this applies to the parents as well. They should speak well of their children. They should speak highly of them and especially in the presence of others. And even this principle applies to marriage as well. Husbands are called to edify their wives, to nourish her and cherish her as their own bodies. And so they do this by thanking her, by encouraging her. And wives are to do the same, to speak words of blessing, words that will be for the good of their husbands. One way not to obey this command that often gets a pass in churches is to speak or complain or speak kind of critically of your spouse in the presence, especially in the presence of others. This does not help anyone and is not fit for the church of God, where we speak good to one another. And this command not only applies to our public speech, but also what we say in private. And so it applies to gossiping, which gossiping occurs when you're speaking critically about a person, and maybe their problems, issues, to someone else who would not be a part of the solution to help those those problems or issues they're going through. Gossiping comes because we truly don't care about the good of others, their restoration, their ultimate good. Which is why here in this verse it says our words should give grace, they should give kindness and grace and mercy to those who hear them, in which gossiping does not give grace to those who hear, and it creates fractures in the church. It can start small with something you might not think is super significant, but it's like a wildfire that catches, and it quickly devours a whole forest. And so, our speech and recap should be truthful, it should be filled with grace, and it should always be for the good of others. The second characteristic of the new man is that he rules over his own spirit and that he does not let anger control him. Look at verses 26 and verses 27. It says, be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down your anger and do not give the devil an opportunity. There are four commands here. The first is a positive command, be angry. And the second is a negative command, do not sin. With the first, there's no way to downplay this as being a command. Paul tells his audience, the Ephesian church, that they should be angry. The Christians, the Ephesian church, should be angry. Christians should be angry. We should be angry. There's a place, there's a place, there's a category in the Christian life for a type of anger that is righteous and that is holy in the sight of God. I mean we even see the Scriptures tell us over and over again that God Himself gets angry. But why does God get angry, and what does He get angry at? Well God hates sin, and He must punish sin, and He must hate sin because He is holy, He is right, and He is good. David says in the Psalms, the boastful shall not stand before your eyes, you hate all workers of iniquity. Even in the Gospels we see Jesus who is our great example that we are to follow. He's described as gentle and lowly, but at the same time, he's the same Jesus who crafted a whip of cords and drove the money changers and the sellers out of the temple for making his house into a place of business. In Mark 3, 5, when Jesus was about to heal a man on the Sabbath, it says he looked at the Pharisees with anger. He was grieved at their hardness of heart that they would not believe in him. So there is truly a time to be angry as Christians. like our Lord. We should be angry at sin. We should be angry at the sin in our own lives, the sin that infects even the Church, the sins that plague the Church. We should have a holy hatred for these things which seek out to destroy the body of Christ. If we are flippant about sin in our own lives and sins in the Church then we are disobeying the Lord's command in this passage. But just as much as we should be angry, we should also obey the command to not sin. And so we should be careful. And the next command, verse eight, gives us some insight. Do not let the sun go down upon your anger. While we must obey the command to be angry, we should also be cautious not to let anger overtake us to the point where we lose control. Because self-control is a fruit of the spirit. It's something that defines who a Christian is to be. And so whatever makes a Christian lose control of himself, It's sinful and it's not good. And anger, as we've seen, it can be a good tool. It can be a powerful tool that can do good. But if we let it linger, if we let it overstay, it's welcome. If the sun sets and we are still in our beds fuming, we should be careful lest Satan gets a foothold. And here's the thing, we need to be vigilant. We need to be on guard for we are in a spiritual battle. What does Paul say later in this chapter? It's not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and powers. And so when we put ourselves in these situations of being angry over certain things that may not be, that we should not be angry over, it gives Satan more of a chance to tempt us. And so we should be watchful whenever we feel that anger welling up inside of us. and we must be alert to resist the devil. In verse 26, we see that the word for anger, the sun go down your anger, and in the original, the best translation could be the cause of your anger or the source or reason for why you are provoked. And in this context, as we've seen, Paul is writing to the Ephesians on their relationships within the church. And so what we have is if something in the church or someone is provoking you or has caused you to be angry, the idea is to go and reconcile, to resolve the issue and to not let it slowly fester and grow into bitterness or to something that will destroy the church. And now I do want to caution against making this command of letting the sun go down a very, we can treat it as almost if it's a very legalistic principle. I mean, there are certain situations where we might not be able to reconcile that night. It may be better to do it the next day or to, but the general principle applies that you must, It's good to not let anger stay longer than it should. So soon you should reconcile. You should seek out soon to put it to death and to reconcile with what's causing you to be angry. The third characteristic of the new man that we see is that he works hard and he's generous to others. The Lord saved us and he redeemed our hands. He redeemed our hands for productivity and generosity. Look at verse 28. He who steals must steal no longer. Rather, he must labor, accomplishing good with his own hands so that he might have to share with those who have need. The old man was characterized by a life of stealing and theft. But in the new man, when we walk, we are to work hard and do good with our hands. While not all of us were thieves before we came to Christ, the principle still applies here to other things such as laziness. being idle, Proverbs 18.9, he who is slack in his work is a brother to him who destroys. So just as stealing destroys, also laziness destroys. The hands of those who do not know God are hands that only take from others, they only steal. Proverbs 30.15 says, the leech has two daughters, give and give. So just like Satan, who is a harsh master who only takes from his servants, so those who walk in his grip emulate him and steal and take from others to fill their own selfish desires. And we know stealing is wrong not only because it's taking what doesn't belong to you that belongs to others, but it's ultimately wrong because it's stealing from God. When you steal from others, You're stealing from God because the Lord owns all things. And he has given every person just as much as he deems fit. But once we come to Christ, everything changes. Once we put on the new man who loves God and loves the way he made the world, we no longer use our hands for purposes of destruction, for taking and stealing, but our hands are now used in giving to others. They're used for good, to give life and nourishment. And this is where that next part of the verse. So that you may have something to share with the one who has need. This is the reason for the command. That out of the fruit of their labor, they may give to others. And specifically in context here, we may give to others in the church. This is in the body of Christ. The reward for our work, the money we earn, our wages, should not be for ourselves, but it should be to bless others. And this applies to if God has materially blessed you with much or if he's blessed you with little. You are called to obey this command and help your brother and sister however much to the extent God has equipped you to do so. God is the one who determines how much we have, but he has given us all something that can be used for his kingdom for the good of others. And another way we can apply this command is to the lives of our children. I can't think of anyone who has more need than a baby, than a little child. And so we do this with the mindset of laboring for the welfare of our kids, and even for our children's children. As Proverbs says, a good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children. What we have, the possessions on this earth, our material possessions, they're fleeting. You know, we try to People in our culture, they try to accumulate and accumulate, but ultimately it's gonna go to somebody else when they die. It's not theirs, which is why Christ says we should seek to build up and store up the treasure that's in heaven that doesn't fade away, that's eternal. And we do this by blessing others. We do this by blessing those in the church, those in our family, those in our children. And so God saved us and redeemed us so that we would put off idleness, laziness, and stealing, and that we would be fruitful, that we would produce good works, work hard, work with our hands, that we would not work sloppily or lazily, but hard, and that we would work toiling and doing hard labor. It takes time, energy, and skill because this is what God made you for and he redeemed you for. The next characteristic, the fourth one that we see in the section is the new man seeks to please the Holy Spirit. Look at verse 30. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Paul here speaks of the third member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, who is God himself. If you go as far back as you can think of, the Holy Spirit was there. He has always existed eternally within the triune God. being in perfect communion with the Father and Son for all eternity. And the Holy Spirit here, he's not a force, he's not some type of energy that's out there, but he's actually God and he is a person, he's personal. And as we see here, he can be grieved, he can be offended, he can be sinned against. And so when we sin against him, he experiences and feels that pain, he feels that sorrow. And so in salvation, when we put on the new man, Paul's saying we were sealed. As pastor mentioned last week, we were sealed by the spirit. And he mentioned those letters and how they had the wax seal that you would press down on there. I guess maybe some of your Christmas gifts were sealed in maybe plastic or something like that. Or you could think of vacuum sealing food where it's tightly, that food's not getting out, it's preserved. But the sealing done by the Spirit is not one that can be broken. It's something that's eternal. As it says here, it's sealed for the day of redemption, for the final day when we will be redeemed, when we receive our new bodies and are conformed unto Christ's perfect heavenly body. That's when we will be fully and totally redeemed. We have already been redeemed, but yet there's a full and total redemption that comes when we will sin no more and be finally freed from the clutches of sin. and the curse. And so, this looks forward, the ceiling looks forward to that future resurrection. And it's guaranteed by the spirit who lives in us right now. If you believe in Christ, his spirit dwells in you. God himself dwells in you. And so, you are now his temple. He dwells amongst us, and the presence of him is with us. And so, The command here is to not grieve the Spirit. It's getting at how can we go on? How can we go on sinning against the Lord when He has done this great work of salvation and merciful grace He has given to us by sealing us in His Spirit? How could we, if you think about the Temple, if we are God's Temple, how could we defile the Temple in this way? So when we, in our speech, or in our anger, or in our work, we grieve God, which we should not want to grieve Him, but in obedience to the command, we should seek to please Him, and seek to obey, and please Him in all that we do. The fifth characteristic that we see, in verses 31 and 32, if you look there, is that the new man has put on kindness and forgiveness, and he has taken off the sins that divide the body of Christ. In verse 31, It provides a list of sins. And all these sins, they have in common that they have no place in the body of Christ. These are all descriptors. They all describe the old man that we have put off. Mankind and Adam is alienated from God and is totally dead because of their sin. And the sin that entangles, it destroys any hope of relationship between God and man. It separates God and man. And it also separates man from man. Mankind cannot have peace with one another. But in the second Adam, in Jesus, we have put on the new man. We are being built up into him who is the head. And so when we put on the new man, we are putting on kindness. We are putting on forgiveness and compassion to others. These are all things that give life. These are all things that build up the body of Christ, the church. And so if we see these sins in the church, they must be removed. They must be given no quarter. We must put them to death. And if we see these in our own lives as well, they must be put to death. Because these are things that seek to destroy the body of Christ. But it is no good to stop there and simply put them to death. We also must replace them. We must replace the wicked things with good things and put on kindness, compassion, and forgiveness. And specifically it says here that we are to forgive in what way? Just as God and Christ has graciously forgiven us. Forgiveness is one of the key components of the Christian life. Both extending forgiveness and receiving forgiveness is a part of what it means to be a Christian. We have been redeemed, we have been saved, yet as long as we live in this corrupt flesh, we battle with indwelling sin. And so we will sin against one another. It's gonna happen. And when we fail these commands, what we do is we repent. We turn to our brothers, we humble ourselves, and we go to our brothers and sisters, and we ask for forgiveness. And we also must be willing to forgive and be gracious to others when they ask for us, because God does this to us. God forgives us. What a joy, what a privilege it is to extend that same forgiveness that God forgave you for all of your sins, past, present, future, that we get to be a part to extend that to one another, to extend that to our brothers and sisters. And this applies to even the most trivial of sins if there was one. Did Christ not forgive you for much worse? Then how can you not forgive your brother or sister for something less? Colossians 3.13 puts the idea another way. Bearing with one another and graciously forgiving each other. And whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord graciously forgave you, so also should you. And so this command is to be kind, to be compassionate and graciously forgiving. And it's so important for there's so much at stake here in the church. If we neglect this, the unity of the body of Christ is at stake. The health of the bride of Christ is at stake. Local churches disappear because of this very thing when we do not extend forgiveness for others. And so think about this verse and the joy that we have in forgiving one another the next time you have a complaint against a brother or sister and Satan tempts you to hold on just to a little bit of bitterness or just to a little bit while you make excuses in your head for not extending that grace. Proverbs 19.11 says, it is one's glory to overlook a transgression. If you wanna find glory, look to forgiveness. There's glory found in forgiving one another. Now the last and final characteristic that we will look at is that the new man imitates God. Look at chapter five, verse one. Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children. Paul is saying here to imitate God because we have been brought into his family. We are a part of his household. We are sons of God in Jesus Christ. And this is speaking of our adoption. All people born into this world, as we've seen, corrupted by sin, totally alienated from God, and are not God's children, but instead they are children of their father, the devil. But by faith in Christ, by faith in Jesus, we who are not children of God by nature have been now made children of God since we are reunited to Christ, the incarnate son by faith. And not only is this fact true that we are children, but you Christian are beloved children. God the Father loves you. You are beloved. Think about that. You are loved by the creator of the entire universe. The one who made all the galaxies and the black holes and everything in space and who also made the smallest honeybees who talk by dancing. And he loves you, this God loves you. What are you, what is man that he would be mindful of us? We are his beloved children. Therefore, the verse says, because of this, we should imitate our father. It's the same way a little boy wants to imitate his dad, wants to be just like him. Jesus said, if you don't become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. To be in God's kingdom is to be a part of his household, is to be a part of his family, and we are his children. It's that simple faith, that simple trust that a child has in his dad whenever his dad promises to do this or to go somewhere. It's that simple faith, that trust, that I know his character, I know who he is, and what he says will come to pass. And the next command here, if we look at verse two, it says, walk in love just as Christ also loved us and gave himself up for us as an offering and a sacrifice to God as a pleasing aroma. Paul points us to the love of Christ to show us how we are to love others. When we think of Christ's work, his salvific work on the cross, We see Him that He is our substitute, that He took our place, He bore the wrath that we deserved and took our punishment upon Himself. But we also can't neglect that Christ truly is our example as well and that we are to follow in His footsteps. His whole life, His whole ministry provides us with models of how to love, how to follow Him. He was truly man. just as He was truly God, He was truly man, and such, He illustrates, He shows what mankind was meant to be, what mankind was meant and designed by God to be. As we looked at this morning, Hebrews 12, 2, we are to fix our eyes on Jesus, who is the author, the captain, and the finisher of our faith. He is our example, and we look to Him. And the ultimate way in which Christ models this love is that he gave his very own life on the cross for us, we who were his enemies, who were hostile against him. He loved to the very end. He gave himself up to the very end, to the last drop. John 13 one says Jesus knowing that his hour had come that he would depart out of this world and to the father having loved his own who were in the world. He loved them to the end. He loved them to the end. That should be our call as well. The sacrificial giving of ourselves for others. our whole lives to the end with all that we have. Our lives were meant to be spent. Our lives were meant to be used. They're a gift on loan from God to be spent for the good of others, not for our own selfish wants. And so this may mean devoting our time, talents, our energy, giving up our preferences for others. Philippians 2 says that we should have that same mindset that was in Christ Jesus, where even though he was equal with God, he did not count it. robbery with God, but he emptied himself. He became a man. He suffered a humiliating death on the cross to save his people from their sins. And so if you want to please God, if you want to please your Father to imitate him, then it is to walk in love. It is to walk as Christ did, to give your life up. We bear our cross daily, as Christ says. We die daily. And in that death, that's when we truly find life. Real life is found in giving up our own lives. And so I'll finish with this. The commands which Paul gives here that I've been talking about, all 13 of them, that's a lot. If you are in Christ, if his spirit dwells in you, these commands are not burdensome. These commands are not far from you. They're not far from your reach, your grasp. You have been washed, you have been sanctified, and you have been justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by his spirit. The same spirit who raised Christ from the dead lives in you. So, because of this, we can walk in obedience. We can love. and walk in love and do what God asks of us because he has given us the power to do so. So let us walk humbly doing the things that please the Lord and let us also walk boldly knowing that the triune God is with us and he has come to dwell within us. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord God, we have heard your word, Lord. We see the glorious truths that are in there. Father, I pray that you would give us the grace, you would give us the power, Lord, and the ability to obey you, Lord, that we would be full of your spirit so that we may please you in all that we do, Father, that we would speak the truth to one another, speak what is good, to control, our own spirit, Lord, and to work hard, to please you and not grieve your spirit, Lord, and to forgive and to put on kindness and forgiveness and compassion, Lord. All these things we need you, Lord, for we are nothing in ourselves, but you have come down and sent your son, and he has sent the spirit, Lord, that we may be able to please you and obey you, all for your glory, Father. So I pray that as we go out, that we would not forget these things, but keep them near to us, Lord. and I pray that you would be with us as we go now. In your name we pray, amen.