13. The Making of a Christian (2)
Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians
Knowing Your Privilege in Christ
“The Making of the Christian (2)”
(Ephesians 4:25-28)
25 Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another. 26 Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: 27 Neither give place to the devil. 28 Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with hishands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.
OUTLINE
- A privileged people separated from sin unto holiness (v17-20)
a. A Changed Man
- A purchased people in intimate fellowship with the living and true God (v25-32)
- A Changed Life
Continued…
25 Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.
Lying, dishonesty is the way of the devil. The changed life entails a truthful life. A life of honesty.
As the old saying goes, “HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY”.
“An honest man is the noblest work of God” so says Alexander Pope. “Honesty is the best policy” so says Benjamin Franklin. “If a man really thinks that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons” says Ben Johnson. “Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world” says Thomas Carlyle.
Proverbs 11:1 offers the hearer two contrasting thoughts. The first part describes what is wrong and the second, the correct. The reference to the action is whether it pleases the Lord. Using deceit to gain is not good in the eyes of the Lord. Although no man may see, God sees. This proverb reminds us that God hates deceit.
“A gentleman jumping from a bus in the city of New York, dropped his pocket-book, and had gone some distance before he discovered his loss; then hastily returning, inquired of every passenger whom he met, if a pocket-book had been seen. Finally, meeting a little girl ten years old, to whom he made the same inquiry, she asked: ‘What kind of a pocket-book?’ ‘Is this it?’ ‘Yes, that is mine.’ He opened the book, counted the notes, and examined the papers. ‘They are all right,’ said he; ‘Had they fallen into other hands, I might never have seen them again. Take, then, my little girl, this note of a thousand dollars, as a reward for your honesty, and a lesson to me to be more careful in future.’ ‘No’, said the girl, ‘I cannot take it. I have been taught at Sunday school not to keep what is not mine, and my parents would not be pleased if I took the note home; they might suppose I had stolen it.’ ‘Well, then, my girl, show me where your parents live.’ The girl took him to a humble place in an obscure street, rude but cleanly. He informed the parents of the case. They told him their child had acted correctly.”
The girl’s family was poor, it was true, but their pastor had always told them not to set their hearts on rich gifts. The gentlemen told them they must take it, and he was convinced they would make a good use of it, from the principle they had professed. The pious parents then blessed their benefactor. They paid their debts, which had disturbed their peace, and the benevolent giver furnished the husband and father employment in his occupation as a carpenter, enabling him to rear an industrious family in comparative happiness. This little girl became the wife of a respectable tradesman of New York, and had reason to rejoice that she was taught aright in early life and practiced what she learned.
He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure, is himself a false deceitful fellow. Cicero believed that nothing is useful that is not honest when he said, ‘He that walketh uprightly, walketh surely; but he that perverteth his ways shall be known.’ Another worthy advice from a godly man, ‘In all your dealings with your neighbour treat him generously – ‘good measure, pressed down and running over’ – and you will not lose by it at the end.’”
Honesty is a fine jewel, but much out of fashion. The Lord grant His people the passion of being truthful.
26 Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:
Anger, the Apostle Paul teach need not be sinful. It is ascribed even to God and to Christ.[1]
1 Kings 11:9-10 And the LORD was angry with Solomon, because his heart was turned from the LORD God of Israel, which had appeared unto him twice, And had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods: but he kept not that which the LORD commanded.
2 Kings 17:18 Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight: there was none left but the tribe of Judah only.
Psalm 7:11 God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wickedevery day.
Psalm 79:5 How long, LORD? wilt thou be angry for ever? shall thy jealousy burn like fire?
Psalm 80:4-5 O LORD God of hosts, how long wilt thou be angry against the prayer of thy people? 5 Thou feedest them with the bread of tears; and givest them tears to drink in great measure.
Hebrews 12:29 For our God isa consuming fire.
Be careful, be aroused against sin. The Lord Jesus was provoked, emotional and “angry” when He dealt with the Pharisees in Matthew 23.
Matthew 23:1-39 Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, thatobserve and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not. For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay themon men’s shoulders; but they themselveswill not move them with one of their fingers. But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments, And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, evenChrist; and all ye are brethren. And call no manyour father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, evenChrist.
But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted. But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. Woe unto you, yeblind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor! Yefools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold? And, Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever sweareth by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty. Yefools and blind: for whether isgreater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift? Whoso therefore shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it, and by all things thereon. And whoso shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it, and by him that dwelleth therein. And he that shall swear by heaven, sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth thereon. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier mattersof the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Yeblind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Thoublind Pharisee, cleanse first that which iswithin the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’sbones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.Yeserpents, yegeneration of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and someof them ye shall kill and crucify; and someof them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute themfrom city to city: That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thouthat killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under herwings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed ishe that cometh in the name of the Lord.
He calls them names. He called them “whited sepulchers.” (Matthew 23:27). He was “angry” when He cleansed the temple of the wicked moneychangers who were selling doves for profit (Matthew 21:12). He was “angry” against sin. Some people say that we should never be angry or never be emotional about anything. God says, “Be ye angry and sin not”. That verb for “sin” is in the present tense as a negative prohibition. It means to stop an action already going on. It means to “stop sinning”. They were angry, and they were sinning. They let their anger get to the sinning stage. This says, “Stop your sinning when you are angry.” Be very careful. Do not cross the line.[2]
The last part of this verse is a third stop sign. The first word for “anger” means “to be provoked to anger, be angry, be wroth.” The word used here for “wrath” means “indignation, exasperation”. This is “extreme uncontrolled wrath.” Do not let the sun go down on that kind of wrath. Cool down before you sleep. Stop letting the sun go down on this kind of wrath. That is what they are doing.[3]
27 Neither give place to the devil.
The sinful anger of the Christian comes with the devil’s provocation. The verb “give place” refer to a territory, land, a defined place, an area (“District,” “town,” “dwelling-place”). In short, the word can refer to an area of any size depending on the context. As used figuratively here to refer a place, opportunity or occasion.
We are to be on guard all the time. We are to be vigilant lest the devil got a foothold, an opportunity to disrupt your walk with God. This is the sense of the negative prohibition in the present tense.
“Stop giving the devil a foothold or base for his nefarious, destructive, corrupting operations!”
William MacDonald observed well, “The reason is that the devil would like to intensify a Christian’s righteous anger against sin, causing it to become sin itself. This then gives the devil a foothold (lit., “a place”), an opportunity for leading that Christian into further sin. Then anger begins to control the believer rather than the believer controlling his anger.”
D.A. Waite also observed well, “Do not give Satan any wiggle-room. Do not let Satan in through the eye-gate, the ear-gate, the mouth-gate, the foot-gate, the hand-gate, and by no means the heart-gate. Do not let Satan in at all. If you do, you will be in trouble. Do not let his foot get into the door because when his foot gets in the door, his whole body will come through. Do not give any “place to the devil.” He doesn’t belong in your life if you are saved by Christ.”
Dwight Pentecost illustrated well, “When a mountain climber scales a mountain, he does not need a four-lane highway to allow him to get to the top. If you have watched a climber in a documentary you can see that he or she can use the smallest foothold and inch-by-inch has victory over the mountain. In your life, Satan does not need a huge opening, and you are not safe if there is the slightest foothold for him to begin inching his way to your defeat. (Pentecost, Your Adversary the Devil, p. 99-100)
28 Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with hishands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.
There was lying and there was lying present in the Ephesian church. The Apostle Paul by a command instructed to thieves to stop stealing.
This is the eighth commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.”
God’s order has been since the fall of man that man labour for his needs – God ordained work for wages
Genesis 3:19“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”
This is first principle for sound personal finance that God ordained work. This is a consequence of the fall of man recorded in Genesis 3:19. Man is to work in order to sustain his physical life. So human labour is that which is ordained of God to feed or sustain man physically till the day he dies. From his effort, man shall receive the fruit of his labour to feed and sustain himself physically. This is grace to man as it keeps him away from indulging in further sin as a consequence of idleness.
We need to labour instead of stealing so that we can “give” to others who are in need.[4]
This truth is repeated in the New Testament.
Paul tells us in 2 Thessalonians 3:11-12 that we are to receive our provisions through diligent labour. “For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies. Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread.”
Of course, we acknowledge that it is God who provides and sustains us by blessing us with jobs and wages for our labour. We are to acknowledge that He is sovereign in giving jobs to us and we are to “with quietness work and eat our own bread” (2 Thessalonians 3:12).
Money is so much a part of our daily life. The Bible tells us that the love of money is the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10). Money itself is not evil. But the love of money is a grievous sin. The Apostle Paul warns, “…which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows” (1 Timothy 6:10). This is a warn against the lure of a materialistic lifestyle that enslaves God’s people. The covenant family is under siege today.
Have you ever wondered how money should be defined? This is a pertinent question to help us understand this money-abusing world that we live in.
The Bible tells us in Genesis 3:19 the purpose of human labour — “in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread”. Human labour is that which is ordained of God whereby man feeds or sustains himself physically till the day he dies. Money has been used to quantify this labour. Thus, money is a unit measure of a man’s labour whereby he can use now, or store and ration out in the future, to feed himself till the day he dies. Savings is the accumulated or stored value of human labour whereas debt is the obligation to serve human labour. This is the biblical concept of honest money.
The Bible teaches that man can enjoy the fruit of his labour. Such fruit is given to him by God who has enabled him to work (Deuteronomy 8:18). And “there is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This … was from the hand of God” (Ecclesiastes 2:24). “And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God” (Ecclesiastes 3:13; 5:19).
Vincent van Gogh The Potato Eaters, 1885 Coarse but honest-to-goodness
Van Gogh said he wanted to depict peasants as they really were. He deliberately chose coarse and ugly models, thinking that they would be natural and unspoiled in his finished work: “You see, I really have wanted to make it so that people get the idea that these folk, who are eating their potatoes by the light of their little lamp, have tilled the earth themselves with these hands they are putting in the dish, and so it speaks of manual labor and — that they have thus honestly earned their food. I wanted it to give the idea of a wholly different way of life from ours — civilized people. So I certainly don’t want everyone just to admire it or approve of it without knowing why.”[5]
For the last 40 years, representative money has been replaced by fiat money. The change came in 1971 — the start of the intriguing story of deception that violates God’s order for mankind given in Genesis 3:19, which was the concept of honest money. With the introduction of fiat money, honest money has been replaced by dishonest money.
On 15 August 1971, the US unilaterally terminated the convertibility of the dollar to gold. With this change, the US dollar no longer had any intrinsic value.12 This action, referred to as the Nixon Shock, created a situation in which the US dollar became the sole backing of currencies and a reserve currency for the nations of the world. Every currency became pegged to the US dollar. Thus also began 40 years of lawlessness in the unrestrained printing of money by the US from 1971 to the present day. Earlier on we said that, in the observable history of mankind, every paper currency that undergoes uncontrolled printing does not last more than 50 years. We are at the tail end of this 50-year lawlessness cycle. The day of reckoning is coming.
Clearly, some world leaders have felt uncomfortable about a world awash in dollars. Nicolas Sarkozy, then French president, who was in Washington in the week of 10 November 2007 told Congressmen that the US must stop dumping dollars on the rest of the world or risk a global financial crisis.
More than 40 years ago in 1969, his predecessor President Charles de Gaulle believed in more than just rhetoric. De Gaulle was more successful in demanding the exchange of his dollars for a real, tangible asset — physical gold bullion — at the Federal Reserve. But this was before 1971 when the US dollar was still exchangeable for gold.
Today, the first-world nations of the US, Europe and Japan that account for 50% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are in great debt. These nations which have led the world since the end of World War II in 1945 are suffering 65 years later, economically speaking, because they have lived wantonly and carelessly since 1971.
We are living in the biggest debt bubble of all time. How much red ink is there? A simple totting up of the external debt of the top 50 borrowing nations out of the World Factbook’s more than 200 listed countries reveals that the total loan size was more than US$67 trillion in 2011.
Debt is enslavement. It is an obligation to fulfil future labour. We earlier defined debt as the obligation to provide human labour and savings as the accumulated or stored value of human labour.
The Bible tells us in Proverbs 22:7, “The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.” Borrowing lands a person in debt such that he becomes a servant to the lender. Sadly, this enslavement binds the borrower in spiritual as well as economic bondage. Matthew 6:24 says, “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”
What does debt enslavement mean to the average Singaporean? Today, he takes out a 30-year mortgage to buy a house, and a seven-year loan to buy a car. Each month, he also has to pay his credit card bills, and meet other repayments for study loans, renovation loans or for the hire- purchase of furniture. He has fallen into the trap of the capitalist economy. Even with a full-time job, his wages can barely help him service his many debts. When he loses his job, the roof caves in on him and his family. He is obliged to provide human labour for many years to come to pay off his debts. Servicing these debts is serving mammon. This is the modern man’s enslavement.
Fiat currency creates an illusion of prosperity. It makes people feel good and secure with the value of their inflated wealth. America, for example, has been able to create wealth by cranking up the money printing machine, instead of by providing goods and services through the labour of their hands.
The Bible warns against this in Proverbs 23:4-5. “Labour not to be rich: cease from thine own wisdom. Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.” This world’s prosperity today is created by debt. It is a make-believe prosperity — an illusion, a deception!
[1] William Hendriksen, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon, Baker Books, 2002, 219.
[2 ] D.A. Waite, Ephesians – Preaching Verse by Verse, The Bible for Today Press, 2002, 125.
[3] Ibid.
[4] D.A. Waite, Ephesians – Preaching Verse by Verse, The Bible for Today Press, 2002, 125.