Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] We are in the book of Ephesians. We've been walking through this for several weeks now, and we're going to be in a passage today where the tone of this letter shifts a bit. In this first section, we've been talking about how we were all together in one space, needing the grace of God. Nobody was higher or lower than the others. Whether you had a religious background or not, we all need the grace and the mercy.
[00:00:32] And then we talked about how that grace leads us into a new kind of community and where we have to guard that unity inside of what Jesus has built. Divisions want to pop up and we want to be fighting and angry all the time. And Jesus says there's a better way. And Paul would encourage us, of course, to preserve this unity.
[00:00:53] And we've been looking at the nature of grace and since a couple weeks ago when I talked about how grace has the first word and grace has the final say, and how grace in the end is the only thing that saves us. Christ's work on the cross is what gives us salvation from God. It's not our own works. It's not something we earn. It's not something we strive for. It is a free gift of God.
[00:01:18] And since that message, I've been having these great conversations with people sending me verses from other parts of Paul's writings where he clearly cares about how people act and say, well, what about this? I know, Pastor Evan, you said it's all grace, and it's grace from the beginning before we need it. No, we need it. And it's grace at the end, even when we fail. But then why does Paul care about how we live?
[00:01:42] That's what we're going to talk about today.
[00:01:45] Because here's the thing. We don't work for God's grace, but instead God's grace is at work within us.
[00:01:54] And that work within us should change how we think and act and speak and live, that we should be different people because of the grace of God in our lives than we were before it. And if that's not the case, we are challenged and invited to re enter this economy of grace, this grace of God at work within us. It changes us.
[00:02:20] It shifts how we think and how we live. And so the question now is not of one of does God love me? That is settled. Christ on the cross said it's finished. God's love is poured out on everybody.
[00:02:34] There should be no question if God loves me or not. But this becomes the question, because we now know that he loves us. What does God's love require of me because I am now under the grace of God, the mercy of Jesus, shown at the cross.
[00:02:49] What does that create in my heart and my life?
[00:02:53] Another way to say it is, how will I respond to the grace of God in my life?
[00:02:58] So Ephesians chapter four. We're going to start in chapter four, verse two. We're going to cruise through four and some of five today. So I'm not going to read every single verse, encourage you to read this on your own. But starting in verse two, it says, always be humble and gentle.
[00:03:12] Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other's faults because of your love.
[00:03:18] Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you've been called to one glorious hope for the future. So Paul is saying, listen, stick together in this. The person next to you is not going to get it right all the time. And so you're going to have to operate in love and grace for one another, even as you've received it, to preserve this peace and unity within the community of the Spirit. And then he goes on, we're going to jump down to verse 21. It says, since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from him, throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception.
[00:03:59] Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes, put on your new nature, created to be like God, truly righteous and holy.
[00:04:09] Paul's making it clear that to live in the new thing of God's mercy and grace is not going to happen because we try hard enough. It's going to happen when the Spirit renews our thoughts and our attitudes.
[00:04:22] And we joyfully respond by putting on this new nature, this nature of righteousness and holiness. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word today. I pray that what Paul wrote and sent to these churches centuries ago, in a different context, a different culture, a different time, it would find its way through the centuries and to our culture today, and that we would be able to receive what you're speaking to us.
[00:04:48] May this community look more like Jesus. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen.
[00:04:55] Here's a metaphor I want us to consider when we think about what it is to be saved by grace and and then to be transformed by that grace into a people that lives and acts differently in the world. I want you to imagine maybe 100 years ago that you are adrift at sea. Okay, you had a ship, maybe you were fishing, the ship went down and so you're clinging to a, you know, Swiss Family Robinson style cask of, you know, what's an old timey supply?
[00:05:28] Hardtack, okay? Hardtack. So you're clinging to this cask, okay?
[00:05:34] No one responded the way I wanted, so I just said hardtack, clinging to this cask.
[00:05:40] And days turn into weeks, and two weeks later, you're still barely surviving, holding onto this for dear life.
[00:05:49] Maybe you've caught a few fish and you're barely making it. The sun has burnt your skin, you are dehydrated, you're. You are on the edge of death.
[00:05:59] And another boat comes and that boat sees you and comes alongside you. And not through any effort of your own, but these sailors reach down and they grab you and they hoist you on board and you get water for the first time in days. And you get food and they give you new clothes and you rest and you recuperate.
[00:06:19] And when you come to a few days later, you, you find out that they're going to take you home. But first they have to carry out what they are setting out to do. And so they're not going to make it back to your home for more than a year.
[00:06:32] And so now for the rest of the foreseeable future, these are your people.
[00:06:38] These crusty, questionable sailors, tough guys out on the sea. They are your people now.
[00:06:48] And so once you've recovered enough, you go to the captain and you say, what do you want me to do? What do you want me to do?
[00:06:56] And for the first, you know, days or weeks, you have to adjust from being that person that was adrift with all the habits that come with someone who's just barely surviving, right? And you have to break some of those adrift habits. Maybe the captain catches you like scooping a little seawater off the side, you know, just for old times sake.
[00:07:14] Captain says, don't do that, it's going to kill you. We got some good water for you here. And it takes some time, but you begin to adjust to a life that is not adrift any longer.
[00:07:24] And this community, you didn't choose it, you wouldn't have picked it. But these are your people now. And so what it is your job to do now is to figure out your place amongst this crew. This is your new community. This is the picture, a metaphor for the picture that Paul is giving us, that we were lifted out of deep waters, the psalmist says, by the grace and the mercy of God, not of our own doing, he came and he found us when we couldn't get anywhere on our own.
[00:07:55] But now that we've been lifted up and placed into a new community with people we may not have chosen, but here they are.
[00:08:05] And we are given this task not to just lay in a bunk and wait for the year to pass, but instead to say, lord Jesus, what do you have for me to do?
[00:08:14] And along the way it will take some time because we have some adrift habits.
[00:08:19] We have some ways of living and thinking and acting that at one time were what was needed to survive. But now we are in a whole new community.
[00:08:29] And so as we go, Jesus our captain, begins to untrain us of those things that are out to kill us and bring us into a new way of living.
[00:08:40] And what the Christian tradition would call this process of once we've been saved, then learning how to live.
[00:08:47] Christian tradition would call this formation, okay?
[00:08:50] And growing in faith, it will always move us from salvation to formation.
[00:08:56] We been saved by grace, not to just sit and wait to go to heaven, but saved to then be part of a new community, saved to then do the good works that God has set out for us to do. As we learned In Ephesians chapter 2, salvation will lead to formation. As we are growing in our faith, it's not a matter of doing more for God. It's God doing more in and through us, empowering us by his Spirit to live a new way.
[00:09:24] John Mark Comer, a pastor originally from Portland, said, we arrange our lives in ways that make space for the Spirit to transform us.
[00:09:34] That this work of the arrangement of our lives is not to earn God's love, but it is a response to his love that says, now how shall we live?
[00:09:46] We continue on and go back to Ephesians 4, 22. And this image is one that Paul uses. He says, throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. And then verse 24, Put on your new nature, created to be like God, truly righteous and holy. This is clothing imagery, right?
[00:10:08] This is take off one garment and put on a different garment. And the difference between an infant and a child who is maturing is one of the markers of this is they can put their own clothes on, right?
[00:10:22] So my first grader, if I have to clothe him every day, I might say, you know, I think it's time to grow up a little bit.
[00:10:30] What are they teaching in these schools? Put your shoes on, right?
[00:10:34] Because as we Mature. We go from infancy where we can do nothing on our own in our spiritual life and walk.
[00:10:41] And then we come to this place as we mature in our faith, where we begin to partner with the work of the Spirit within us, to take off what is old and put on a new way of living.
[00:10:53] And if you think as I'm talking about this, this kind of sounds like we're earning it, like maybe our work is the thing that makes God pleased with us. I want to read this quote from Dallas Willard. He said, become the kind of person who routinely does what Jesus did and said, and every holy act you do will have to be upheld by the grace of God.
[00:11:14] He goes on to talk about how the grace of God is the jet fuel that gets burned as we lift off into maturity in our faith, that we don't graduate from needing grace and then go back to earning it. No, as we continue to mature in who we are in Christ, it actually is the jet fuel. The grace of God is the jet fuel. We burn more than ever as we ascend into where God is taking us. We need his grace to sustain us. It is the thing that holds. Holds us and lifts us and carries us. It's the grace of God.
[00:11:48] Ephesians 5:1. He continues, he says, imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because why? Because you're his dear children.
[00:11:57] Imitate God because you are his dear children. It speaks to our identity that if we truly are loved by God, then we are invited to do what he does, to think like he thinks, to act like he thinks. And we've been given this picture as we look at the life of Jesus in the Gospels.
[00:12:17] And here's where we maybe go wrong with this idea of our behavior reflecting the life of God in us is that we get the order wrong. We get the order wrong. I want to show you what maybe is the natural way we think that this should work in our seeking out, to be approved by God. This is how we might naturally think of it, that if we behave, then we could belong. And once we belong, then maybe God will love us, behave, belong, be loved.
[00:12:49] That's the opposite, actually, of the gospel.
[00:12:54] The order of grace is, I am loved, I do belong, therefore I imitate.
[00:13:03] The order gets flipped on its head. And that we come to a place where we realize that we've been loved by God long before we knew we needed it.
[00:13:11] That he offers us belonging in this new community, this new humanity that he has created. And because of that, the outflow of that love, belovedness, and that belonging is that we imitate God, that we imitate the life and the way of Jesus. As one pastor said, if we want the life of Jesus, we need to imitate the lifestyle of Jesus.
[00:13:33] A lifestyle marked by sacrifice, compassion, mercy, prayer, healthy rhythms, rest and work. All these things come together as an outflow of the work of grace in our lives. And we pray this every single week. We're going to pray this at the end of our service as our benediction once again out of Ephesians, chapter three. And what is the prayer? Is it, you know, that we might do better and be better, that we stop making bad decisions and make good ones instead? That'd make a good benediction.
[00:14:08] I pray that you would stop being stupid and instead be wise, go in peace, you know? No.
[00:14:16] We pray every single week that we might know the love of Christ.
[00:14:22] That we might know how high and how wide and how long and how deep is the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. That we might be filled with all the fullness of God. It's an inside out work that we're praying for.
[00:14:33] And what is the result of that? I hope it's that we make better decisions. I hope it's that we live a kind of life that produces health and flourishing in our world and the world around us. I hope that that happens. But it doesn't start when we decide to do better. It starts when we pray that we would know the love of Christ not at some intellectual level only, but that it would get down into our hearts and it would begin to work itself out in the way that we live.
[00:15:00] This is what we pray every single week.
[00:15:02] That his grace would change us and transform us from the inside out.
[00:15:08] As you go further in this chapter, Paul begins to list out foolish ways of living that lead to destruction. He talks about drunkenness, immoral speech, greed, uncontrolled sexuality.
[00:15:22] And then he contrasts that with what it looks like to live out of this place where the Spirit of God is at work in your heart. He says, instead of drunkenness, be filled with the spirit. Instead of immoral speech, verse 19, Fill your mouth with worship. Instead of greed, verse 20 says, Be thankful.
[00:15:39] And instead of sexuality out of control, he says in verse 21, give up your desires for the sake of others, in mutual submission to one another.
[00:15:50] And these are sometimes misunderstood to be just religious ideals for the sake of religiosity, right? If you can do these, then it proves to us that you're serious about being a religious person. And what I see these as actually is these are guardrails. That protect us from going off into places that are not good for us.
[00:16:12] No one, one pastor, no one has ever regretted setting up healthy guardrails in their lives and their morality.
[00:16:19] No one's ever thought, oh, man, I wish I was more out of control when it comes to drinking.
[00:16:26] Ha. I wish. I wish. I just. I wish I had more addictions in my life.
[00:16:31] No, healthy guardrails are for your good.
[00:16:38] They set up these lines beforehand, right? We don't decide, you know, in the middle of making bad decisions. I wonder where my line should be.
[00:16:48] But beforehand we said, these are the guardrails that are gonna keep me from going off into places where I won't be able to control that.
[00:16:57] And so it's these guardrails that protect our freedom in Christ. And we don't have to make these up. Paul gives us what this looks like. It's being filled with the spirit and being full of worship and thankfulness and sacrificial living in relationships.
[00:17:10] This is the way that we live in that space that's good for you.
[00:17:16] And at the risk of sounding, you know, like Mary Poppins or something like spoonful of Sugar makes the menace.
[00:17:23] I want you to know that it's not just willpower that gets you there. It's the spirit of God at work in your life that produces these things in your life.
[00:17:31] I'm grateful for that.
[00:17:35] There's so much of these sins that Paul mentions and talks about, not only in this letter, but in his other writings of the New Testament, Jesus also.
[00:17:47] And these are like the big moral failures, the big sins, right? Sexual immorality, lying and cheating and stealing, greed, Murder, Right? We all agree murder is bad, right?
[00:18:03] Of course.
[00:18:06] But there is, I think, another layer of the old self that Paul would encourage us to take off that maybe isn't so blatantly impulsive and just raw, you know, bad living.
[00:18:27] I think there's a layer of what encumbers us, what traps people that actually looks a lot like responding to a painful time or a time of grief, a struggle, some brokenness in our lives that we come out of that and we reach for things to help us cope that maybe in the beginning weren't even unhealthy or bad per se, but as we've gone on, those things that we reach for to cope actually have taken control of our lives.
[00:19:01] It's medication that was designed to help us heal, that's now become an addiction.
[00:19:07] It's an attitude that protected us from being too vulnerable in unsafe relationships that now has become isolation and keeping all relationships at arm's length.
[00:19:18] It's compulsive behaviors that we entered into one time long ago, and now they've become all consuming in our lives, and these addictions come for us. And I want to tell us that I think we need to have a lot of empathy for people that are struggling with things that are beyond their control.
[00:19:36] That too often, religious spaces stigmatize those that are trapped in things that are bigger than them.
[00:19:44] And could we be a kind of community that understands that healing comes not just to condemn people who are making stupid decisions, but to have empathy and compassion for those that are encumbered and trapped by behaviors and compulsions that they can't control?
[00:19:59] And I was.
[00:20:00] I got this phone call out of the blue from an old friend. We actually went to elementary school together a long time ago, and he called me out of the blue, and he asked if we could go to coffee. And so I said yes. And we sat down, and I didn't know why he wanted to meet. You know, it's always a risk when someone calls you up after 20 years, like, can we talk?
[00:20:24] And so we sat down for coffee, and unfortunately, he looks great for his age and I look like me. So that was depressing.
[00:20:34] Haven't seen him in a while. You always hope, you know, see an old friend. You're like, ah, yes, we've aged appropriately together.
[00:20:44] Yeah, thanks. We sat down.
[00:20:48] We sat down. We started talking and caught up with family stuff.
[00:20:52] And then he started to well up with some tears. And he said, well, the reason I wanted to meet with you.
[00:21:00] And he shared with me his journey into sobriety over the last two years.
[00:21:05] And he said, you know, these weren't my most proud moments.
[00:21:11] I could tell that talking to me after all these years, and now I'm a pastor. And there was a sense of embarrassment.
[00:21:18] But he said, you know, the reason I wanted to meet with you is because I attend aa and you guys have opened your space up to AA several nights a week.
[00:21:27] And he said, just thank you.
[00:21:29] Thank you for doing that. He said, that program has radically stepped in, and it saved my marriage and made all the difference in the world. He's, like, weeping and.
[00:21:44] And I picked up on that sense of embarrassment. And I said, you know, I can tell that you feel some kind of shame over the life that you've walked through to this point. But I said, so many people are so ashamed. They struggle in silence and without telling a single soul what they're going through.
[00:22:04] And I said, instead, you had the courage to find help and as I'm talking with him, I'm thinking about all the different ways. And we host a lot of community partners, but we also celebrate recovery. We have Westside care. We meet with people every single day. And it's people who have the courage to say, I think this place might be safe enough for me to be real about what I'm going through and what they find on the other side of that conversation. I hope, and if I can say this, I demand that it be empathetic and compassionate and full of mercy. That looks like Jesus, that for everyone who is dealing with an old nature that is stubbornly hanging on, that we would be the kind of church that says, this is a place where you can find healing.
[00:22:54] I was remembering I broke my arm in the first grade, Technically, my older brother broke my arm in the first grade accidentally, so he says.
[00:23:09] And so got a cast on my arm, bright blue cast, you know. And I went to school the next Monday or whatever after getting the cast on, and I realized for the first time the power of attention when you have a cast on.
[00:23:24] And so I loved it, man. Like, everyone's asking me the story, so I told the story. I'm still telling the story today. I'm chasing that.
[00:23:30] Chasing that attention.
[00:23:35] And I remember it, you know, the cast was. It was. When it was brand new, it was bright blue, and so everybody signed it. And by the time it was time for the cast to come off, weeks later, it was kind of dingy, right?
[00:23:48] And kind of smelled funky.
[00:23:52] And the thing is, if I had said, no, this is my cast. This is what gives me attention, and this is, I needed this, and so I'm going to hang on to this.
[00:24:01] That cast, which served a purpose for a time, would have been the thing that would have killed my arm, caused atrophy, a lack of growth, and eventually it would have destroyed the arm.
[00:24:15] And so what happens, of course, is you go in and the doctor's there, and they have that little round blade, and it goes. And it's really scary.
[00:24:25] And I remember the doctor saying, okay, this blade is going to cut through the cast, but it doesn't cut skin. And he said, hold out your hand. And I go, I don't know.
[00:24:34] Hold out your hand.
[00:24:36] And he pushed the blade to my palm, and it wouldn't cut through that.
[00:24:41] He said, we're going to take the cast off. And he said, cut the cast off.
[00:24:45] And of course, if you've had a broken limb, you know, when the cast comes off, it just kind of limp, right?
[00:24:52] It needs a lot of care to come back to strength.
[00:24:57] And I think about that as a metaphor for what Jesus does, is that we cling to these things that helped us cope for a long time, and they gave us something, and they seem to really help the hurt and the brokenness inside of us. And Jesus comes, he says, it's got to go for your own sake, for your own health and your own growth and your own life, that that old thing has got to go so that you can grow and that you can flourish.
[00:25:26] And Jesus is really good at caring for the broken parts of our lives.
[00:25:32] And as we imitate him, what we're going to find is that we are shoulder to shoulder in a community that reflects that kind of care from the heart of Jesus to mend what is broken.
