Thank you to the music ministry of Providence
Baptist Church. If you have your Bibles,
turn with me or look on the screen to Ephes
ians chapter 4 and verse number 1.
We come now to this second half, as I've been
telling you about, of this tremendous
epistle from the Apostle Paul. And the first
set of verses that we're going to focus on
is verses 1 through 6. And if you have a Mac
Arthur study Bible, you'll notice these
sections that are broke down the context of
each set of sections you'll see in that study
Bible
about walking in unity, being in the first six
verses. Sometimes go with that as a section,
sometimes not depending on the verse, but we
're not going to get past verse 1 today,
so don't get excited about anything. Whenever
a person joins a certain organization or a
society,
they obligate themselves thereby to live or
act in line with the standards of that society
.
I mean, that's true in the workplace. You
think about it. No matter what kind of
business it is,
you work there at that place of business on
the premise that you conform yourself,
you cooperate with the standards and the goals
and the objectives and the principles
that are a part of that particular
organization. Now, some of them are looser,
some of them are
tighter, some of them are well-run, some of
them are not as well-run, but they all have
standards.
I mean, that's true in all schools. That's
true. You join the Kiwanas or the Lions Club.
That's true
even in the cults. It doesn't matter really
what kind of organization you're talking about
.
There are certain principles in each
organization that you pledge your loyalty to
uphold. And if you
choose not to cooperate, if you fall out of
line with the conformity, you will at some
point lose
your place within the framework of that
organization. That's true even with government
.
If you don't conform to the standards of the
laws, both state and federal, in our land,
there in place, then you will find yourself,
if you do it enough times and at a severe
enough
level, you will find yourself incarcerated in
prison. I found that out a number of times in
my life. And you do it enough times and to a
certain severity, you will be taken out of
society
and no longer able to hinder the function of
an ongoing normal society, however you want to
define
that. If you fail to live up to the
expectations that your place of employment
puts on all its
employees, at some point, you're going to get
fired. Coaches on football teams will let kids
know real quick. If you don't do things our
way, get off the team, right? This is how our
society
works. No matter what we're involved in,
socially, economically, politically, there is
an expectation
of cooperation and conformity if we are to
maintain our place in that organization. Now,
this can be very negative. This can be very
binding on people. And it really is amazing
what in some cases people will do to conform
to a negative situation. I had some friends
in my high school years who became members of
the Southern University marching band,
the Human Jukebox. They played in that band
all the way throughout their college years.
And when I heard the stories from them of the
initiation process that they had to go through
,
as freshmen, they called them crabs, my
perspective, even as a lost person was
Noé José. And not that I would ever be a
member of the Southern University marching
band anyway. And we've seen that in fratern
ities, the hazing, right? We've even seen kids
die
as a result of trying to conform to the
initiation process of that fraternity. I had
one here at
LSU not long ago. It was a big case in the
news. But I've learned that that is just a
part
of our natural human desire to belong to
something and to gain acceptance and to have
a sense of identity in some particular group
or organization. Everybody wants to be a part
of
the team. Now there's positive aspects to that
. When Jordan was a cheerleader and when Trent
on
played football, it was a big deal at our
house when they came home for the first time
with the
uniform. The uniform laid it out on the couch.
It was a big deal. That was a good thing. And
like
with most things, there can be good and
positive things that come out of certain
organizations
and groups. But also, there can be very bad
things, depending on the team and depending on
the rules.
In John 9, when Jesus healed the man born
blind, remember? He was from birth. He was
born blind.
All his life, remember Jesus spit in the clay,
made some mud, and he told him, "Go wash in
the
pool of Siloam." And the man came back for the
very first time in his life and he could see,
that was a great scene in Jesus of Nazareth of
that, when the man could see if you ever
watched
that movie. And then, of course, the Jewish
leaders had to investigate what was clearly a
miracle. The man was born blind, now he could
see. What do you got to investigate? Well, you
know,
they hated Jesus' guts. And so, they go to the
man's parents to find out what the parents
knew.
And if you look there in John 9, 21, they said
, the parents said, "But how he now sees we do
not know,
or who opened his eyes we do not know." Ask
him. He is of age. He will speak for himself.
And then,
the very next verse, verse 22, his parents
said this because they were afraid of the Jews
,
for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone
confessed him, Jesus, to be the Christ,
he was to be put out of the synagogue. They
knew everything that happened.
But they wouldn't acknowledge anything about
how he was healed. They didn't even want to
discuss it.
They gave no credit to Jesus at all. And why?
They feared that the Jews would put them out
of the synagogue. They were so clamped down by
the desire for acceptance in that particular
society and in that synagogue that they would
not confess, think about it, their son that
they had to deal with all from a baby being
blind. They would not confess that he was
actually given
sight by Jesus because they didn't want to
lose their social status in the Jewish
community in
which they lived. So, on the negative side,
people can identify with things that become so
binding
that they become blind to the reality of what
they ought to know and ought to be a part of.
I mean, if they had been thinking straight,
after with their own eyes that they could see,
with seeing this miracle, they should have
immediately wanted to identify with Jesus,
who had just made their blind son to be able
to see. I mean, who really had the power here
in
this situation? No wonder that Jesus or wasn't
these Jewish leaders. They never made any
blind
man to see from then to this day. But the
drive in the heart of people is very strong
to belong, to be a part of something, even in
clearly bad situations. If they lock into that
situation, they will do anything to conform
because they need that acceptance. And when
you
translate this reality over into the church,
oftentimes, something can go very wrong.
People
come in the church and they want all the
blessings. They want all the rights and the
privileges of
the church, but they never really want to make
the commitment to conform to the standards of
the
church. And the thing is, the church and the
head of the church, King Jesus, has standards,
just like every other organization. When you
come to Christ on His terms of repentance and
faith,
and you are a part of His church, He gives you
all the rights and the privileges by grace
that come with being a Christian. And He
expects us to conform to His standards.
Remember, I tell you all the time what He said
. If you love me, keep my what? Not my
suggestions.
And in the New Testament, if anybody in the
church doesn't conform to the standards
by committing known public outward sin, what
does the New Testament say after the process
of Matthew
18 has been gone through fully, go do them one
-on-one, then bring two or three witnesses and
they still don't repent, bring them before the
church. They still don't repent. When you
bring
them before the church, what do you do? Put
them out. You not repent, you're out. You
haven't conform
to the standard. In fact, sometimes the Lord
puts people out on His own. We read that every
time we
have the Lord's Supper. Some of you are weak,
some of you are sick, and some of you are
asleep,
you're dead, you died because they were not
acting right at the Lord's Supper. So my point
in telling
you all this is that if people can join
organizations that are a part of the world
and conform with such rigid conformity, and
like in our example, if people can be so
fearful
of being excommunicated by the Jewish superst
ructure of their day that they literally
damned their own souls and blinded their own
eyes to the reality of the Son of God,
healing their blind from birth son, if people
can make those kind of commitments to things
that ultimately don't matter, don't you think
that as Christians, we can make a high-level
kind of commitment to walk in the way that God
has asked us to walk within the framework
of His own Church? Don't you think we should
be able to do that? Well, that is what Paul
is calling us to do here in these last three
chapters of Ephesians. Look at how he starts
out
here in verse 1. "Therefore, I the prisoner of
the Lord implore you to walk," that's how you
live
your life, walk in a manner worthy of the
calling with which you have been called.
So in the first three chapters, along with the
theological foundation that we've been talking
about, we were taught all about the rites and
the privileges that we have as a result of
being in
Christ, and now we get to the last three
chapters, and he says, here are the
requirements.
Do you want to be a meaningful part of the
Church? Do you want to advance the kingdom
of Jesus Christ on the earth? If you really
believe in this, then here are the standards
by which you are to walk. Think about all the
blessings that we learned are ours in the
first
three chapters as we've gone verse by verse,
letter by letter, through every one of them,
starting with every spiritual blessing in the
heavenly places in Christ Jesus, and then it
just
goes on from there. All these amazing things
that we have learned that are true about us
now that we have been adopted by grace into
God's family, and Paul gets to chapter four,
and he starts here with a "therefore." So what
do we do, Bible study guys? We got to
understand
what this "therefore." So in other words, "
therefore, on the basis of all that I just said
to you in
the first three chapters, now walk worthy of
such a calling." That's what the "therefore"
is there for.
This is who you are. So what I just taught you
, now walk in line with that.
Live up to that standard with your daily life,
and it's the highest standard there is
in the universe. Verse Peter 2, verse 15 says,
"For such is the will of God that by doing
right you
may silence the ignorance of foolish men." In
other words, we ought to be silencing the
critics
by the way that we live. I mean, how would it
look if I go to work in my secular job and
everybody
knows if I'm a pastor, if I'm up there cussing
all day? Huh? And how sad is it in our daily
life
when we don't do this, when we don't silence
the ignorance of foolish men? How terribly sad
is it
when Christian leaders don't do this, and they
fall publicly? One commentator said this, "The
whole
Christian life is simply becoming what you are
." What you already are. It's a daily process,
living up to who you are in Christ. Not easy,
but it can be done, and we've already learned.
We
have all the resources necessary at our
disposal. They're already there in the church
of Jesus Christ,
He, the boss, He expects conformity. And
listen very carefully.
Not a conformity to rules and regulations out
of fear. No, not a conformity to rules and
regulations
out of legalism or legalistic pride. What we
're talking about here is a conformity
to righteousness in your life out of a love
and true desire to be obedient to Christ with
your life. You truly want that because we
realize and we understand the tremendous
reality
of God's sovereignly granting to us that which
we don't deserve, His grace in salvation.
And then we want to do what God wants us to do
because of what God has done for us in saving
us.
The natural outworking of that reality is that
we want to be what God wants us to be.
We want to walk worthy in saving us. As you've
heard me say many times, God changes our want
to.
He changed my want to big time in 1997. And if
you're a Christian, again, you've been adopted
by grace into the family of God. And that says
something about how we ought to live every
single
day. Paul said in Philippians 1-27, "Only
conduct yourselves," here's the same phrase, "
in a manner
worthy of the gospel of Christ." In other
words, match your conduct with the gospel.
As we've learned, the first three chapters of
Ephesians are filled with positional truth,
who we are in Christ. And then that long list
of incredible riches and resources that are
ours
as a result of being in Christ. And I won't go
back over all that again. If you missed any of
those messages, they're all online. You can go
back or go back, just read the first three
chapters.
And after giving us three chapters of
incredible truth, incredible blessings and
resources that
are available to us every single minute of
every single day as the Christian, Paul gets
to chapter
four and very simply, pointedly,
straightforwardly, directly says now, walk
worthy, how you live your
life. This is a very typical pattern for Paul
to make this kind of transition in his ep
istles.
He loves to go from doctrine to duty, not a
begrudging duty. Okay? Like, I have to cut the
grass
of begrudging duty. Some of you may like it. I
'm not particularly fond of it, but it has to
be done.
No, for a Christian, our duty is our delight,
right? For all believers, there is never a
random
transition in Paul's letters. It's always
doctrine, the building of a theological
foundation of truth
in our thinking. And that is always the basis
then for our conduct, for our daily living.
How are you going to understand the basics of
Christian living without first learning the
principles for it? You can't have a genuine
Christian lifestyle unless there is a robust
biblical theology taught and understood that
undergirds your Christian lifestyle.
Again, verse one, excuse me, verse one starts
with that, therefore, it's there to take us
back.
It's the transition on the basis of all the
doctrine that you have just learned.
Therefore, this is your duty. Same thing in
Romans, the constitution of Christianity.
Read Romans, 11 straight chapters of magnum,
opus, doctrine, and theology. And then you get
to
chapter 12. Verse one, what's the first word?
Therefore, therefore, I urge you, brethren,
by the mercies of God to present your bodies a
living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God,
which is your spiritual service. And then he
goes off with here is how you are to live
through the
rest of Romans. So I set up the same way. For
the Christian duty is always a response to
doctrine.
Behavior is always a response to precepts. Our
life is always a response to our theology.
You have all the theology in your head. You
can know as much theology as our sea sprawl,
but if you don't live it, it's more of nothing
. That is why with our verse by verse exposit
ory
preaching, we are heavy on doctrine and
theology here at our church, both in Sunday
school and
from the pulpit. We are to work worthy of our
calling, Paul says here in our text.
We know who we are. We know what Christ has
done. We have the principles clearly laid out.
And guess what? It's on us to walk his way and
not our way. Paul says this in 1 Thessalonians
4
and verse number one. Finally then, brethren,
we request and exhort you in the Lord Jesus
that as you receive from us, look at that word
, instruction as teaching as to how you ought
to
walk, live your life, that you excel still the
more. You see the, you see the point he's
making?
We have taught you how to walk and I'm exhort
ing you now to do it, but the teaching comes
first.
How in the world can we expect Christians to
function on what they don't know?
You can't live out the principles that you've
never been shown, that you've never understood
.
You can't behave in a way that you don't
understand. You have to dig into the word of
God
to learn and understand the principles of how
he wants us to live.
Proverbs teaches us this, that you will know
the wisdom of God when you desire the wisdom
like you desire gold, like people search for
silver is the example it gives.
Job makes the comparison of it being the same
as men who will go to every length possible to
mine treasure out of the ground. Proverbs
again makes it clear that when you put as much
effort
to know the wisdom of God as men will do to
find gold and silver, then you'll know God's
wisdom.
And there's only one mind to dig in, God's
book. That's the only place the treasures
found.
Again, back in Colossians 1 verse 9, Paul says
, "For this reason also,
since the day we heard of it, we have not
ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may
be filled."
Look at this, "with the knowledge of his will
in all spiritual wisdom and understanding."
What I'm telling you is this is a matter of
the mind, wisdom and understanding.
And then look at that very next verse in verse
10, "so that you will walk in a manner worthy
of the
Lord to please him in all respects, bearing
fruit in every good work, and increasing in
the knowledge
of God." And then he just keeps going from
there. You can read it when you get home.
This is why we are different, I would say,
from a large majority of churches in our
nation.
I absolutely refuse to ever get up here and
tell you stupid stories that go on and on and
on,
and wind up with some kind of shallow little
point when you get there.
That happens every Sunday in so many churches.
I refuse to ever get up here and give you
life-coaching self-help principles with Bible
verses attached that are delivered to you out
of
context. That happens in churches all over our
land all the time. If I fear God and I love
you,
I am going to do every time I get behind this
desk what Paul told Timothy to do in 2 Timothy
chapter 4 and verse 2, "Preach the Word, be
ready in season and out of season,
reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience."
And what? Instruction, teaching. King James
says doctrine.
That's my job. If I just get you in here and
tell you tear-jerking stories and get you all
whipped
up into an emotional frenzy or just constantly
fire-hoes you with feel-good, light-shallow
teaching that does not have the text of
Scripture as the subject matter of the message
, guess what?
I have just committed a dereliction of duty as
your pastor. And I just can't do that.
My duty and your duty is predicated on
doctrine, on teaching from the Word of God.
When April 15
comes around, you don't say, "And I think this
year I'm going to send a large check to the
federal
government." I mean the government has done so
much for us. I mean all these great smooth
roads
that we have to ride on, all these great
programs they have for the needy. FEMA does so
much for
us when disaster strikes. I think I need to
send the federal government a couple extra
thousand
dollars just because they do such a great job
up there in D.C. I mean only if you're
mentally ill
do you think that way. The real reason that
you send that check is because there's a
doctrine,
there's a law that says you're going to send
it or you're going to be fined and you may
wind
up in jail. That's the only reason why you
send it. That's one of the rules here in
America and
it's the same in the Christian life. We don't
do anything arbitrarily. And unless the people
know
the reason, you have a hard time getting
people to make a commitment to duty.
And part of my job is to convince you that you
ought to operate on the basis of the
theological foundation that we are given in
the Word of God. And again I don't want you to
conform
legalistically. Oh biting my fingernails or
God's going to strike me with lightning. I don
't want
you to conform emotionally. Okay? Emotion for
emotion's sake is useless. As we talked about
this morning in Sunday school, emotion that
you have should be the reaction to what you've
learned
with your mind and theological truth. And then
the emotion that you should have is thanks
giving
for the fact that you know these things and
you've been saved by God. That's where the
emotion comes
in. And I don't want to intimidate you into it
either. What I want to do is teach you the
Word
of God and then the responsibility is on you
whether or not to obey it or not to obey it.
And that's out of my hands after that. And
then it's between you and God Monday through
Saturday
after you walk out that door. If the preacher
gets up to the pulpit again and whips up
people
emotionally and gives them lists of things to
do without giving them sound theological
reasons
for doing those things, not only does it miss
the whole point of Christianity, not only does
it
actually eventually leave them empty, it also
produces in them a works-based righteousness
because they think that if I just do these
things the preacher's saying out in the
community by way
of service or whatever it is, then that means
I'm a Christian and that is completely antith
etical
to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The dumbest
thing that you will ever hear in any church is
, well,
we don't get into all that theology and
doctrine, we just preach the love of Jesus and
love our
neighbor. That is the stupidest thing that you
could say in the church. I'm here to tell you
if that's all they've got, that's not even a
true genuine church. That's a social club
in Jesus' name is what it is. We got far too
many of those in America today.
Folks, we live in desperate times. This is a
nation clearly under judgment and we deserve
it and it's time for the church to step up and
be the church, preach the word. As I've said
many
times, we don't need all the contemporary
music and the seeker-friendly programs to
attract people
that whole term seeker-friendly. The Bible
says no man seeks after God.
So how are you going to be seeker-friendly?
You know who the only people there are on
earth who
seek after God? The people who are already
regenerate, who are already saved, those are
the only
people who are seeking after God. The rest of
the people are seeking the benefits they can
get from
God or who they think God is, but it's usually
a God they make up in their own mind. The
church
needs to be uncompromisingly proclaiming the
whole council of God in sound biblical verse
by
verse expository preaching and if that's not
what you're looking for in a church, don't
come to this
one because that's all we're ever going to
have here. Even if it gets down to just me and
Christy,
that's all we're ever going to have here. Paul
prays in Ephesians 1-17, look at this,
that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Father of glory,
look at these words, may give you a spirit of
wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of
Him. Are you getting the point here? God knows
that the whole heart of the matter is to know
the
truth in your mind and we get to know His
truth by digging into the doctrine and the
theology of
the Bible, Ephesians 4-23 and that you be
renewed in the spirit of your mind. Again,
that has to be
the foundation of our duty of how we live.
Philippians 1-9, and I pray that your love may
abound
still more and more and a lot of times people
stop right there in quoting that verse that'll
stop right there, that your love may abound
still more and more but keep reading, keep
going. What
does it say? In real knowledge and all discern
ment, finish the verse and keep going next.
Knowledge,
discernment, so that you may approve the
things that are excellent in order to be
sincere and
blameless until the day of Christ with the
knowledge and the discernment, that's how you
get there.
You have to understand love, knowledge, and
discernment in order to get the behavior of
verse number 10. Colossians 1-10, here we are
again, so that you will walk, you will live in
a
manner worthy of the Lord to please Him in all
respects, bearing fruit in every good work.
How
do we do that, Paul? And increasing in the
knowledge of God. Colossians 3-10, "And have
put on the new
self who is being renewed to a true knowledge
according to the image of the one who created
him." Knowledge, to know Christ, to know His
Word through the renewing of your mind. That's
the
issue. 2 Peter 3-18, "But grow in the grace
and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus
Christ."
The critical subject of knowledge is all over
this New Testament. You have to study and you
have to know the Word of God. As I told you
last week, you're going to starve to death. It
's all
that your input is just here on Sunday. You're
going to starve to death. In order to live the
Christian life in a manner that's pleasing to
God and brings glory to God, you've got to
study
also on your own. Now, with all that in your
head, you just got a bunch of knowledge. Go
back to
Ephesians 4-1 and we'll close with this. Let's
read it again. "Therefore, I, the prisoner of
the Lord,
implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the
calling with which you have been called."
Now, let me ask you, is that a goal for you
with your life? Is that important to you?
Do you want to walk in a manner worthy of this
high calling with which you have been called?
If you are a Christian, you have all the
resources you need to do that
on the inside. And guess what else? You have
all the resources that you need on the outside
.
One of the resources is the means of grace of
the church. That's why you need to be here on
Sunday
morning. There's so many aspects to why you
need to be here with your church family,
worshiping God
on Sunday morning. Not the least of which is
the preaching and teaching of the Word. Week
in
and week out. That's what we focus on. But you
also have on the outside, you also have every
one
of you a Bible in your hand. That's the
ultimate treasure of all treasures right here.
Dig down
in the treasure is what I'm telling you. Keep
digging on your own for the rest of your life
till your very last breath. If you go blind,
Bible on your phone, just listen to it. What
technology has done for us, right? In order
that you might be able to walk worthy of your
calling
and bring glory to God with your life. Isn't
that what you want as a Christian?
That should be what you want. If it's not,
then there's evidence that you don't know him.
But if you do, that's the program. And Paul is
putting us in the plan for these next three
chapters. That's what we're going to be
learning all about. Boy, we got all kind of
stuff in here
we're going to learn about. But that's not
till next time. Let's bow our heads and close
our eyes.
We just thank you, Lord, that Paul, under the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit,
lines things up so easily for us to be able to
understand doctrine, teaching, knowledge,
based on that. Now, here's how you live. It's
so wonderful. It's so wonderful to have
a life of true meaning and true purpose and
true fulfillment. Only a Christian knows those
things.
Lord, outside of Christ, people run after
everything under the sun and never fulfills.
It never fills them up. It never scratches the
itch and goes from one thing to another.
But what a grace and a blessing it is to know
why we're here, to know where we're going.
Of all the blessings that you give us, Lord,
it should cause us to desire to walk worthy,
help us, Lord, to do that in spirit and in
truth. We pray that all that we've done from
your house
today has been done in such a way as to bring
you maximum glory today. Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.