You are listening to the preaching ministry of Faith Baptist Church. Technology changes a lot, doesn't it? When I was a kid, we played music from cassette tapes and watched movies from VHS cassettes. We played games on the Atari and Nintendo NES. We had cell phones. I don't know if you remember these, but the cell phones that we carried around in cars, they were big, big units. And then they would have a five foot antenna hanging off the outside window of the car. And we did our computing in DOS and Windows 3.1. I still remember doing my word processing in WordPerfect, which was nothing more than a blue screen with white text. I don't know if you remember that. 25 years later, though, we no longer use any of these technologies. They're out of place, out of touch, incompatible with the way that we live right now. I mean, what in the world would we do with a VHS movie? And that's why we all make changes, don't we? But reluctantly sometimes. No matter how long we hold out to save money, we eventually have to buy a new cell phone. We eventually have to upgrade our version of Windows, eventually, don't we? Now, as believers, we also have to upgrade our way of living. As believers who've been joined to God and placed into his family, we need to upgrade the way that we're living. And this, of course, is far more important than any technology upgrade that we face. Making this upgrade in our spiritual lives is not a matter of convenience or being efficient. It's a necessity. Because the way we used to live is not only out of date, it's corrupt and out of place, completely incompatible with our new identity as God's children. But how are we doing? Are we still trying to go about our Christian lives following our old corrupt programming and sinful desires? Living as though we're children of the devil and of this world? Or are we taking serious measures to upgrade our mindset and lifestyle, choices and desires, to be compatible with being children and saints of God? As believers and saints, children of God and followers of Christ, We must embrace an upgraded version of life, and not just for our own sake, but for the good of our church, the world, and the glory of God. This is what we're learning. in Ephesians, isn't it? I suppose you could say that the first three chapters of Ephesians are the programming and the code that goes into this new life that we have in Jesus Christ. And chapters four through six tell us what is supposed to come out of that programming, what's on the other side. This upgrade is not something we do through our willpower and determination alone, though God uses those things. We must do it in full dependence on the grace of God and with divine empowerment from the Holy Spirit. We'll learn more about that in Ephesians chapter five. But first, we have to be clear in our minds about what this upgrade entails. What does it look like? What does it require of us? And what does it mean to live as children of God with our hands, our heads, and our hearts? to get a clear picture of what this upgrade entails. Let's take a close look at Ephesians chapter four, verses 25 to 32, which Jim read for us today. In these verses, we'll discover what this updated way of living includes. We won't make it even all the way through these verses. We'll end at verse 28 today and continue on next Sunday. But here are three critical updates that need to be happening in our Christian lives. And if we aren't making these updates, we're really out of date with our Lord Jesus Christ. These three updates we're going to call the number one honesty update. Then, the Good Anger Update. And then, number three, the Hard Work Update. The Honesty Update, the Good Anger Update, and the Hard Work Update. Let's take a look at what these updates mean for our lives. First of all, we need an Honesty Update. As we take off the old self and put on the new self, we are aiming to live like Jesus. Let's keep that in mind. In a holy, in a righteous way. Ephesians 4, 20 to 24, teach us that. Leaving behind the various versions of immoral and greedy lifestyles we lived before Christ saved us. This is our calling, of which we must walk worthy," Ephesians 4, 1. This in mind, Paul told the believers at Ephesus some details about what this new godly lifestyle includes. First he said, putting away lying. Let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another." In these words, we see the old way of living, the new way of living, and a reason why we should embrace the new way. In our old way of living, we told lies, we gave false impressions, we deceived people into believing false things about ourselves. This habit describes all of us before Christ. Yet now that we're children of God, we must make a conscious choice to put an end to this terrible habit of dishonesty and deception. We must take it off as though it were a dirty outfit that is so soiled that it doesn't need to be laundered or bleached. It needs to be thrown away. According to various studies reported in 2017, 90% of children have learned the concept of lying by age 4, and approximately 60% of adults lie at least once in every 10-minute conversation they have. This matches what King David himself said in the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament. David said this in Psalm 58.3, the wicked are estranged from the womb. They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies. So maybe the statistics are a little off. Maybe children learn to lie before age four. According to this research, most people lie an average of four times a day. That's a total of 122 lies per week and 1,460 lies per year. The top two reasons for lying are A, improving how people view us and getting out of trouble. Can you empathize with that? Sadly, but unsurprisingly, this is the normal way of life for non-believers, of whom Jesus himself said in John 8, 44, He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. As children of God, we're followers of Jesus who not only speaks the truth, always, but is the source and epitome of truth. As Satan is the source and the father of lies, Jesus is the source and our God is the father of truth. You see, there's a new way for us to live as God's children. We are not Satan's children any longer. To explain this new way, Paul shows that though it's a new way of living for us, it's not a new idea in history. It's a timeless truth. He said, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor. Now, if you're paying attention, that verse comes from Ephesians 4.25, but on the screen you see Zechariah 8.16. You see, Paul is quoting a timeless truth, not a new idea for Christians. He's quoting from the Old Testament book of Zechariah, one of the last prophets of the Old Testament. And this prophet taught the Israelite people who would return from resettling in Jerusalem after 70 years of captivity in Babylon due to their nation's sins. He taught them this and it occurred, this teaching, at the end of the Old Testament, 400 years, four centuries before Jesus Christ came into the world. That's longer than the United States of America has existed. Zechariah taught the Israelite people to speak the truth to one another in their communities, from one neighbor and household and family, from one business owner to an employee, and so on, especially in the courts of law. Speak the truth to your neighbor as you settle back into the Promised Land. And so today, we also as believers, just as the nation of Israel resettled into the land, we must ourselves speak the truth to each other and not be dishonest. Why? Because unlike the nation of Israel, we're not just a group. We're not just a people group or a group of people. We are also a body. Paul makes a similar point here. He says, we are members one of another. This is why we should speak the truth to each other as Christians. Not only are we neighbors in a social, national, or community sense, but we're even more closely and intimately connected as a church. We're not just a collection of people in a large crowd. were a collection of parts on the same body, so to speak. Why is this such a crucial point? Okay, imagine with me that your body parts failed to communicate properly. Now, if people in a group fail to communicate properly, other people in the group can kind of more easily make up for that. A person can be absent or say something and other people will make up. But what about your body parts? If the parts of your body fail to communicate properly, your brain sends mixed signals to various parts of your body. One part of your body feels hot, one feels cold, one is numb, and so on. Your senses withhold important information from your brain. Your nervous system behaves erratically. In the world of physical health, these kinds of problems classify as what? nervous disorders, like seizures, neuropathy, arthritis, Alzheimer's, and all kinds of things. Disorders like these make it very difficult to function in life as a body. The same is true for the church, the body of Christ. If we view ourselves only as individuals who are members of a larger organization, a crowd of people called a church, we can easily rationalize our absence from gatherings. Oh, it doesn't matter, we might think, if I don't show up because everyone else can make up for me. It's not like that. That's a wrong conception. You see, you don't just remove a nose for a couple of weeks and everything's fine. You don't just shut down a certain portion of the brain for a couple of days and everything's fine. No, that's how heart attacks and that's how strokes happen, right? And then, of course, there's the subject of amputations. So you can't just remove yourself from this body and everything is okay. Now Paul is emphasizing withholding of information or sending wrong information to one another as members by assuming that the rest of the group will be able to do just fine without that truth. But we're not just a group of interchangeable parts. Individuals in a group with insignificant, exchangeable roles to play. We're vital members of the same body. When we don't speak honestly one another to another, we're actively participating with one another. We are contributing to various spiritual and functional disorders in the church. That's why we need to communicate with each other. And that's one of the dangers of our social isolation right now. Some of you are getting a little too content with not talking to anybody. You don't ever make a phone call. You hardly contribute to the little chat groups. You never go onto social media. You're not making any visits or any kind of connection. You're just kind of sitting back and waiting for us to get back together so you can have it all at once, so to speak. I think that's the wrong perspective because we're a body and the more that you don't communicate, we're already at a disadvantage with this social distancing, the more that you just choose not to communicate for whatever reason is besides the point, you're not helping us be healthy as a body. To make it even worse, when we do communicate, we need to do it honestly. Speak the truth. So, brothers and sisters in Christ, if someone says, how are you doing today? Don't say, oh, I'm fine, when you're actually hurting. That's not speaking the truth. That's like a body that is being burnt at the finger, but the brain says, oh, no, everything's fine, and the nerves don't feel it. Well, what happens then is the finger gets destroyed. because there was a lack of proper communication, right? There's a lot of things we could say about this, but when we are not honest and we are not sharing accurate information with each other, we're not being honest with each other, we're deceiving each other, we're giving false impressions with each other, we make ourself look like one kind of person on social media, but in reality, we're a different kind of person. Or we show up to church and we're one way and we go home and we're another way. That creates disorders in the body of Christ. We have to know each other accurately. We have to communicate with each other honestly. Why? I think I've made the point. Because we're members of the same body, and we don't want spiritual nervous disorders. As members of Faith Baptist and followers of Christ, let's upgrade our lifestyle. The world knows how to not communicate. The world, in their programming, naturally, they are deceptive. They tell lies. That's the way that unsaved people behave. But we are children of God. And let's get into better sync with each other. Let's swap lying for honesty. Let's not deceive each other because we're working closely together in the family of God. Update number two. We also need what I'm going to call the good anger update. The next update that we need to embrace concerns our anger. Paul says, be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil. In these instructions, we see one, what to do. Two, how not to do it. Three, a time limit. Four, a warning. What should be done? This might sound a little odd, but be angry. When's the last time you heard a pastor tell you that? Christian, be angry. Does this sound odd to you? If it does, you should know that Paul is actually, again, not coming up with something novel and new. This is not new technology, so to speak, new truth. This is timeless truth. It comes again from Psalms. We saw that in our scripture reading, chapter four, verse four. It came in a place where David shared perspective on how to feel and respond to opposition, dishonesty, and the injustice of wicked men. In Psalm 4-2, David said, How long oh you sons of men an old testament way of talking about non-believers Will you turn my glory into shame? How long will you love worthlessness and seek falsehood? There's the honesty update that we need right then in psalm 4 4 he said be angry and do not sin Meditate within your heart on your bed and be still like david We should definitely be angry sometimes at wickedness. Our Heavenly Father hates wickedness, and so should we. Now this is not serious, this is light. I like Fords and Hondas, but I don't like Chevys. So you won't be surprised that my sons feel the same way. In a much more serious way, we should hate wickedness and injustice just like our Heavenly Father does because we're His children. We like what He likes and we hate what He hates. How should we not do this though? We should not be angry Or put it this way, we should be angry, even furious and irate sometimes at wickedness, but we should never let our anger cause us to sin. In other words, we should never respond to sin with sin. As we've watched our nation in the last week and a half to respond to the brutal and unjust treatment, the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, we have witnessed a perfect example of what Paul is teaching us. For instance, it is entirely appropriate for us to be outraged over the death of George Floyd. It is also appropriate to express that outrage in a measured, self-controlled way that is concerned for justice. How do you think God felt when he saw that instance? How do you think God feels when he sees every instance of injustice that never makes the headlines? He sees it all, all the time. We get a news story just some of the time. Yet, how many non-believers, and perhaps even believers, how have they responded? They have allowed their anger, which is just, to spill over into sinful actions of their own, going beyond peaceful protests to engaging in vandalism, theft, and physical violence. There is a place for a peaceful protest. There is not a place for vandalism and violence. Let's not be surprised. Let's not be shocked. We can't expect this kind of behavior from non-believers. They don't have the confidence that we have that there is a just God who will make all things right. They don't have that hope. And so they may feel justified inventing their violent responses. Let's not get uptight about that. It's natural. We should empathize. We know what that's like, don't we? but as children of God, we're the ones who need the upgraded lifestyle. We need to learn how to be angry without sinning, to do like David said. Let's not go out and make a bunch of noise. Let's lay quiet in our beds at night and meditate on God. How long should we be angry? That's another important qualification for our anger as a part of this good anger update that we need as Christians. Though it's right to be angry against wickedness, you should be. If you're not, you have a problem. We should ensure that our anger is short-lived. James, or I'm sorry, Paul says, do not let the sun go down on your wrath. Ephesians 4 26 We shouldn't interpret this little phrase in a wooden literal way as though we should always release our anger Before the Sun sets every day or before midnight so to speak. I Say that because we might actually get angry in the morning in the afternoon? What happens if you find out something that is wicked at 11.59 at night, or right before the sun sets? Do you have to immediately offload that anger in the next 30 seconds or you violate this principle? No, God doesn't expect us to resolve our anger in seconds based upon solar cycles. What Paul is doing here is he's using an illustration from the natural world to teach us that just as the solar system provides us with 24-hour cycles with a beginning and end, a refresh state, we should bring an end to our anger as well. It should run its course, the shorter the better, and then go away. It's an unchrist-like an unhealthy thing to allow our anger, which is just against unwickedness and injustice, to wear on us forever. And that's why Paul gives us an important warning. You see, the world doesn't want to let anger go. They want to keep it going and going and going. As believers, we need to know how to vent that anger without sinning and give it to God in the quietness of our beds. Now what important warning does Paul give about anger? If we let our anger cause us to sin, or if we let our anger linger too long, even if the anger is for a good reason, get that, then we give place to the devil. This means that we give him a foothold in our lives, a special opportunity to leverage our lives for his evil and destructive influences. It's so tricky, we can allow ourselves to get angry for a just cause and for a little while be on God's side of the injustice, but if we let that anger turn to sin, or last too long, then it has a negative effect upon us and we are no longer on God's side. We switch over to the devil's side. So be very careful at times like this. We can begin to slip over to the devil's side. The world doesn't know how to let go of anger. Have you figured that out yet? Have you witnessed that? Don't fall for that. We should be angry with injustice, but we should let our anger go before it turns nasty and devilish. As God's children, we know that our heavenly father is sovereign and just and will make all things right. And for that reason, we can go to bed at night and trust him with our anger and our future. This leads me to one final update for today. We need a hard work update. We need a good anger update. We also need a hard work update. About this new way of living as God's children, Paul says, let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give to him who has need. This instruction, of course, repeats what Moses wrote in the Ten Commandments. You shall not steal, Exodus 20, 15. And it also offers the proper alternative that we should work hard instead. It's not good enough to sit at home and not steal. We should work instead. Regarding stealing, you might say, Pastor, I may have gotten angry a little bit too much in the wrong ways before. But I, you know, I've done some bad things in life, but I haven't really stolen anything. Maybe I've told a lie, but I'm not a thief. Well, we're probably safe to assume that it isn't true for all of us. However, there's a variety of ways to steal. robbing other people of what is rightfully theirs, taking it for ourselves, beyond the stereotypical forms of theft, such as break-ins, smashing grabs, pickpocketing, ID theft, and so on. Other forms of stealing include, here's a list, refusing to report your income so that you evade paying taxes. Filing for bankruptcy when your debt is the result of wasteful irresponsible spending Reneging on a debt rather than getting it paid Exaggerating your work hours. So you get paid for more time than you actually worked if you're an hourly worker using work time as personal time even though you're getting paid and Keeping the change when a cashier gives you too much back at the bank or store. Taking work supplies home for personal use without your employer's permission. Reporting personal expenses as business expenses when they have no connection. As an employer, refusing to pay your employees a fair and honest wage. equal to their work. Choosing not to leave a tip or leaving a pathetic tip, I've been convicted of this myself sometimes, for a waiter or other service worker who should rightfully receive one. I could even add refusing to contribute to your church's financial needs when it's in your ability to do so. More examples of stealing may also be offered. We may even have other examples in our minds right now. As we can see, stealing occurs in a variety of ways and is the result of our fallen sinful nature, without a godly perspective of life, an upgrade so to speak. We naturally look for ways to avoid paying our fair share, working hard, and meeting the needs of others. Instead, we want to accumulate as much as we can for ourselves, by whatever means necessary, without any hard work. Yet the child of God needs to update this mindset and behavior to reflect the hardworking, generous nature of their Heavenly Father. The word labor here refers to hard labor, painful toil, and is related to our English word copious, which means to produce a lot of something, as in writing copious notes, meaning taking lots of detailed notes or storing copious supplies. It describes someone who grows, harvests, stores up an abundant supply of food for the winter. The assumption here is that the abundant notes or stockpile of supplies are the result of diligent effort and lots of hard labor and work. If you've been around for any length of time, then you know that the people of this world are all about getting something for nothing. Free money, free handouts by any means possible, and not just because they need it. Let's be honest, we know the feeling, don't we? We're born with the same fallen nature and made of the same stuff. After all, it takes just as much effort to teach young children to work hard as it does to teach them to tell the truth! That's because our old selfish, inborn, sinful nature is dishonest, deceptive, and lazy. Therefore, we must embrace a diligent, dedicated work ethic. As children of God, we must embrace the fact that diligent, dedicated work is supposed to be a defining quality of God's children. In fact, this is not an isolated tip from Paul tucked away in this letter. This was a major teaching in both his letters to the believers in another city called Thessalonica. Evidently, that church had some members who refused to work and gave pseudo-spiritual reasons to excuse their laziness. In his letters to the Thessalonian believers, Paul had this to say. 1 Thessalonians 4.11 says, Aspire to lead a quiet life to mind your own business and to work with your own hands as We commanded you then in a second letter second Thessalonians 3 11 to 2 he said we hear that there are some who walk among you in a disorderly manner not working at all, but are busybodies Now those who are such we command and exhort through our Lord Jesus Christ that they work in quietness and eat their own bread. There's a difference between someone who has a need because they can't do anything about it and someone who has a need because they're lazy and wasteful. There is a difference. We are commanded by God to meet the needs of those who genuinely have a need, but we are to exhort one another when we have become wasteful and lazy. Hard work with good returns is rarely easy and doesn't always bring good returns either, does it? It's often unfair, repetitive, physically uncomfortable or painful, uninspiring, not always, Yet this has been the case since Adam sinned. That's not injustice. Hard work, difficult work environments are not injustice. They are normal life from Genesis three on. And despite all these factors, God has made us in his image and is restoring that image in his born again children. The divine image in all of us includes the capacity and ability to work and achieve hard things with pain. When we work hard, we glorify God. And that may be what Paul is getting at when he says, working with his hands what is good. He may be also emphasizing the importance of doing good work as opposed to bad or dishonest work. As Paul mentioned before in Ephesians 4, non-believers also will work in inappropriate, ungodly ways, doing things for money in the name of work and engaging, though, in industries that earn their profits from immoral activity for covetousness and greedy motives. One more thing about work. Hard work increases our ability to meet others' needs. We work hard doing good things. Something else happens besides glorifying God and earning an honest living. We also increase our ability to help others in real need, not the needs of those who are wasteful, but those who are in need. Paul describes this motive as that we may have something to give him who has need. Now you might expect him to say work hard with your hands so that you can provide for your own needs. He does say that in 2 Thessalonians, but here he goes a step farther. This word have something to give is one word in Greek and it means to share or to transfer part of what you have earned to someone else who is in need and is not able to earn and who is not being lazy and who is not living in a spending wasteful way. Do you have this mindset? Do you actually work extra hard during the week to do more than pay your bills? Do you do what you do so that you can actually have some extra that you can give to meet your needs, the needs of your family, the needs of your church? Even more, do you work hard so that you will be able to meet the needs of others? We shouldn't rely on the generosity of a few. We should do what we can to all contribute to the needs of others, especially in a church, so that we all learn the joy and blessing of giving. We are all in one body, aren't we? And this is what the quote-unquote hard work update makes possible. When we embrace what it means to be a child of God, we're not just getting ourselves out of debt, we're not just meeting our needs, we are putting ourselves in a position to actually contribute to other people's real needs, to advance the cause of Christ, and to be his hands to those who need his help. We work hard to be generous. This approach reflects the hardworking, generous nature of, you got it, our father. And so it should be reflected in the lives of his children. That leads me to ask this question, what kind of lifestyle are you wearing today? Have you updated the put off, put on motif of Paul here? Have you put on your wardrobe, updated it to reflect what it means to be a child of God and a member of Christ's family? Are you still wearing those old clothes? Perhaps you've heard the motto, you are what you wear. Let me rephrase it the other way around. You should wear what you are. And that's what Paul is teaching in this letter to the Ephesian Christians and to us. John Stott, a thoughtful British preacher, who died in 2011, had this to say about Paul's teaching in Ephesians 4, of taking off our old unchristian behaviors and putting on a new Christian lifestyle. He says, the kind of clothing we wear depends on the kind of role we fulfill. For example, when we go to a wedding, we wear one kind of clothing. When we go to a funeral, we wear another. I realize, of course, that some young people in the West wear blue jeans at all times. Nevertheless, the custom of adapting our dress to suit the occasion still stands as a general principle. Many people's dress is also determined by their job. Soldiers and sailors wear different uniforms. Lawyers have special clothing, at least when they appear in court. So do clergy, sometimes. So do prisoners and convicts, even. But when we change our role, we change our dress. When prisoners are released from custody and become free people, again, putting off one role and assuming another, they change what they are wearing, putting off prison garb and putting on ordinary clothes. Similarly, when a soldier leaves the army and becomes a civilian, he gets out of uniform into regular clothes or civvies. So, Since by new creation we have put off the old humanity and put on the new as children of God, we must also put away the old standards and adopt new ones. Our new role will mean new clothing, our new life, a new ethical lifestyle. As believers, I urge you to adopt this mentality. We must all embrace our new identity, not just as individual Christians, but as a community of believers, a family of brothers and sisters, a fellowship of saints, and the members of one body who each play a vital, intimate part in this church where God has placed us. Can you envision with me a church in Queens who's truly functioning like a body? Whose members all rise to this challenge together as a mountain climber scales Mount Everest. to accomplish this feat. She needs more than her feet, doesn't she? She needs every body part to cooperate. Every muscle, every ligament, every bone, both feet, both hands, both lungs, both eyes in every part and zone and function of her brain must work at max performance and health with sharpness and skill to climb that mountain. For us, the challenge, men and women, before us is not Mount Everest. It's growing our church and reaching our community with a gospel for the glory of God, even under self-isolation. It's loving God and making disciples. That's our motto. To do this, we must embrace this upgraded lifestyle Paul teaches us here in these verses. This week and month ahead, let's commit ourselves to updating the honesty update, not lying. Let's embrace the good anger update, not sinful anger. And let's replace laziness and covetousness with the hard work update. Are you ready to reboot? Are you a member who is up to this challenge in the week ahead? Let's pray to that end. Let's climb this mountain. Let's update our lifestyle and make the necessary choices in full reliance on the grace of God.