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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Randy Roberts

The Everyday Gospel

It's a privilege to be back here with you at Advent Hope and to join you in this service this morning.

When Carlos Moretta originally talked to me, he said, I'd like you to talk about a couple of possibilities.

He gave me 2 options, 1 of which immediately jumped out at me.

And that was the theme of practical Christian living.

How it is that we put into practice in our lives the faith that we feel and experience and choose in our hearts.

So I wanna take you to a favorite epistle of mine in the New Testament, and that is the epistle to the Ephesians.

In our staff Bible study on Tuesday mornings, we are currently studying Ephesians.

Every Tuesday morning at 8.30 we gather as a pastoral staff and as an extended staff, support staff, maintenance staff.

We come together and we are working our way through this magnificent epistle.

This is an epistle that I think has maybe as much to say about practical Christian living as pretty much any missive you will find in the New Testament.

I want to give you just a brief piece of background before we go to Ephesians chapter 4, which is where I would like us to spend our time today.

I want to tell you just briefly how Paul outlines his letter.

Although in the original manuscript, and certainly in the ones that we have, the manuscripts that were copied, there was no indentation, no paragraph, setting off from another paragraph, no punctuation, nothing of that sort, so it's difficult to read.

Even though there wasn't that, Paul clearly divides his thought into 2 sections.

In the chapters we have them in, Ephesians 1 to 3 form the first section, and Ephesians 4 to 6 form the second section.

In chapters 1 to 3, Paul lays out what it means to belong to Christ.

You have to remember that those who would have received this letter at the beginning were members in a very new religious community.

Ephesians was probably written about AD 60, which means that the Christian faith as a faith was only about 3 decades old.

The key question had been, is Jesus of Nazareth the sent of God?

When people affirmed that they believed that he had indeed been sent by God, they were baptized and they became Christ followers.

But there was so much left yet to learn, especially as the gospel spread outward away from the center of learning in Jerusalem.

The further afield you were, the more there was to learn.

And so whenever you were in a place like Ephesus, you had named the name of Christ, you had accepted Him, you had learned all you could along the way.

When an epistle came, when they came and knocked at your door and said, we've gotten an epistle from Paul, everyone came.

There was a great deal of eagerness, no doubt, to know what he would say in the epistle, because in that way you could learn more about what it meant to be a Christ follower.

So when this epistle originally came to Ephesus, And the church gathered to heard it read, their hearts must have thrilled at what they heard in these first 3 chapters.

Because in the first 3 chapters, Paul talks about our identity in Christ, who we are in Jesus, what it means to belong to Him.

And in those chapters, we could summarize his thought by saying every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places is ours in Jesus.

In other words, he is saying to them, since you're His, what's His is yours.

Everything that heaven can give is yours.

Their hearts must have thrilled at that reality.

They must have sat back and said, Wow, is that so?

Can I accept and believe that everything that is His is mine because I belong to Him?

It's a magnificent piece of Christian writing, those first 3 chapters.

But when he comes to the end of those chapters, his thought and his thinking turns.

It turns a corner not away from what it means to be in Christ, but it turns to what it means to live in Christ.

Now, from our identity in Christ, He turns to the matter of giving us instructions on how to live in Christ.

First, He gives doctrine, now He gives duty.

First, He speaks in indicative, which means this is who you are.

Now I want you to live as though you are in Christ.

Now 4 verse 1, and that piece that surrounds that is a key part of the passage or of the letter.

Because in that particular place, he turns the corner to talking with them about their life in Christ.

He says in 4 verse 1, as a prisoner for the Lord then, I urge you to live a life worthy, to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.

Now that word is an interesting word in the original because it comes straight out of the marketplace.

If you went down to the marketplace in Ephesus, a place where we have been privileged to walk in the city that has been excavated.

If you went down there and you found a cellar of grain and you said, I wanna buy this much grain, the seller would use the ancient scales.

He would put on 1 side of the scale, the weight that represented the amount of grain you wished to buy.

He would put that and immediately the scales would tip in that direction.

And then he would go over and he would get the grain and he would begin to scoop it up and to fill the other side until those 2 sides balanced.

So that after he has talked about our identity in Christ, after he has talked about who we are in him and the magnificent blessings that he bestows, he then says, now, I want you to balance the scales by the way you live your life.

Now we hear that and we say, wait a minute, Paul, how could I ever balance the scales?

The grace and the mercy and the riches of God's love is so unspeakably grand that it is impossible to balance the scales.

But do you know what I think Paul's thought is?

I think Paul says, on this side we have represented all of God's heart.

The way you balance the scales is by on this side placing all of your heart.

And by the grace of God, in his view, that balances if you give everything that you are.

Now, our question then is, well, that's wonderful, but be more specific.

In this second section, he then goes on to unpack in specific cases what it means to live in Christ.

It's a section starting in verse 25 of chapter 4.

But before we begin reading, let me just tell you what Paul is doing here at this point in time.

He is telling us that there are certain realities of our old way of life that we have to take off, that we have to leave off, and certain realities of the new life that we have to put on, that we have to take up and be willing to live.

And he speaks of 5 of them, 5 of them in that context.

He says, therefore, each 1 of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of 1 body." First thing he says is, the thing that you have to put off is falsehood.

The thing that you have to put on is truth.

Now remember that in this context he is speaking to people who are Christ followers, people who are Christians like you and me, and yet he says to them, put off falsehood.

Now wait a minute Paul, we're in the church.

Came across some interesting, some interesting stats that 1 person wrote up and said there are a number of fibs that are among the most famous in America and the most commonly used.

I'm quite certain nobody here has uttered these, but just to check.

Give me your number and the doctor will call you right back.

This offer is limited to the first 100 people who call in.

Leave your resume and we'll keep it on file.

Half hour later you're still trying to extricate yourself.

In fact, in a book called The Day America Told the Truth, it says Lying seems to be a way of life for many people.

91% of those surveyed lie routinely about the matters they consider trivial.

86% confess to lying regularly to their parents.

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