Laying aside falsehood, Eph, 4:25-28
Ephesians 4:25-28 · Vern Peterman · May 8, 2005
Ephesians & Colossians, No. 64
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262325583087

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. We get to welcome you this morning to the imperatives. Today we begin in earnest in the imperatives. We're going to immerse ourselves into these imperatives. Now, one of the things to point out here as we start into the passage is that these imperatives are positive, some of them.

Some of them are negative. Now, don't think that the negative imperatives are negative in the sense of being bad. but they're a not. The positive imperatives are saying, you must. Sometimes that doesn't come across real clearly in the English translation, but we'll point those out when the Greek has them. The negative imperatives are going to say, you must not, in some fashion or another.

Now, we want to be sure that we don't get the cart before the horse, or the heart before the course, as it sometimes goes. The reason we want to point this out, the imperatives are there because of our eternal position in Christ. We will see imperative after imperative, but they are there because of our position. Otherwise, Paul would not have spent three chapters plus telling us about our position before laying out a single imperative. We are not told to hold to some moral standard. by these imperatives in order to earn or prove our worthiness for the position that we have in Christ. He tells these believers that he's going to tell them, stop stealing, you who are stealing! He tells them, you saints, you've been blessed with every spiritual blessing. Then he tells them to stop stealing.

Okay? Sequence is important. But, there are also those people who just don't get it Stop really does mean stop. It's intentional. When he does say that this is not to take place or this is supposed to happen, he does mean it. He's not just giving some guidelines or giving you some general ideas for your consideration. There's also, and I don't expect you because this is not in your handout, to write real quick and get this down. If you're interested in digging into the Greek a little bit on the cabinet to the right as you exit, those are available. Let me know if you run out.

Okay, this first word, therefore, now we've seen some therefores before, and this is no different. Paul has been drawing logical conclusions, and he's doing that with his imperatives. He doesn't just start off, okay, guys, stop, start. He says, therefore, based on all the things that we've had before, That's one of the reasons why we tell you explicitly these are not moral imperatives that would draw condemnation and judgment if you were to fail them. They are logical imperatives. How do we know that? He keeps making the point. He's made it all along and he does it here again.

Therefore, he's about to say that the believer's outward behavior follows logically from what is true of his position. That's the way he's going to spell it out. So we've had all these so's, for's, therefore's, wherefore's, so that's, and so them's, as he spelled out here. He is not telling the believers to set logic and reason aside. Not doing that. He does here, as he does in numerous places in his writings, appeal to logic. This, therefore this.

He will ask logical questions. He will make logical if-then statements. He will make statements that begin with if, not to question something's truth, but to get people to think through the logic as he is doing, to involve them in the logical thought process. All the logic that he is using, this included, is built upon a foundation of assumptions. By the way, logic, if you don't have assumptions to operate, a foundation, has nowhere to go.

It has to have that. But he has done that for us. He's laid out, here is the logical foundation for the imperatives I'm about to present to you. Laying aside falsehood. Now, so we want to make clear, is this what Paul means by laying aside a falsehood? If you don't like that picture of a falsehood, try that one. Or try that one. Or you might like that one. Whatever you like. Okay.

Laying aside falsehood. The verb has the same character we saw in the previous passage where what appears to be some sort of a mushy imperative is actually a statement of what's already taken place. We saw in the previous passage, it's really a having laid aside. It's a done deal. It's not something you do along or have yet to do.

You have already laid aside falsehood, he says. And this phrase literally has this idea. Having laid aside, and it's interesting, laying aside sounds like it's something you're supposed to be in the process of doing, or have done, but in fact, having laid aside the lie. It's a done deal, and explicitly and literally, it's the lie. Paul has been contrasting, as we've seen in this passage, truth and falsehood. He's been alternating back and forth consistently.

He says to the believers there, speak, and this is an imperative, speak the truth. Speak truth. We must speak truth, he says, based on our position. He's been bringing up the truth several times, and we want to address it here this morning and make sure we have a good, solid understanding of it. When he says, speak truth, what does that mean?

He's been talking about truth. He introduced the idea in chapter one. Now that he's into verse 24, he's already introduced the idea of truth several times. He is going to continue that, and he's going to write about truth as he continues to talk to the believers there. It's because of who they are in Christ that he talks and continues to talk about truth. Now, he's not done talking about truth.

We've seen this one here in 425. We're going to see it in chapter 5 again and in chapter 6. He's going to keep coming back to truth. Truth is not an incidental issue. Why does he keep talking about truth? I mean, couldn't he just kind of lay it down and just go on to the next thing? He keeps harping on it. Why?

The sin nature. Deceit is basic. It's one of the things, as you look throughout the New Testament, there is a continual discussion of deceit, falsehood, being characteristic of the sin nature. It is the character of the sin nature to lie to itself, the character of the sin nature to communicate falsehood to others. It also has a progression, and that's why we've illustrated it here with this cascade. We think of a cascade as something beautiful and attractive. In the physical setting, it is. But there's a cascade of sin, a progression that sin takes.

There's also a cultural reason. Here is Ephesus, a main center in the eastern Mediterranean of the Greco-Roman culture. The Greco-Roman religion had a variety of different religious and philosophical beliefs. But what's interesting is there was no connection between religion in that culture and morality. None whatsoever. We think of religion and we connect it with morality. None in this culture.

People would pray to their God and make sacrifices. Oh, Apollo, please help me to steal better. Please help me to lie really good to this guy so that I'll get away with it. Their prayers were even to be more immoral. There was no connection between a belief in a deity, a religion, if you will, and morality. None whatsoever, even to the contrary. The very accounts and stories of the gods and goddesses were immoral.

The chief god would make a cloud about himself so that his wife did not know that he was committing adultery. Those kinds of accounts did not communicate morality, so there was therefore no reason to be immoral, and no reason to be concerned about truth, because the gods didn't care if you told the truth or not.

So what Paul is telling them is now radically different. God has told us, in Scripture, in contrast to this, absolute truth. He's conveyed that and made it clear. What God has told us in the way of truth isn't different from one person to the next. That is, of course, quite different from our own culture and what our culture communicates to us.

You see, natural man likes relative truth. There's a gravitation towards relative truth. Adam abhors absolute truth because absolute truth makes God the standard. Relative truth makes me the standard. That's easy. It makes me more comfortable. So the natural man is there gravitationally, magnetically attracted to relative truth.

So that's why some folks like their truth blurry. Some folks like to keep things kind of fuzzy around the edges or around the whole thing. Some folks like to select their truth from the buffet of truth table. Pick and choose and put on their plate whatever they like and pass on whatever they'd rather not.

God is the only absolute. Otherwise, people have a chance to pick. So it's quite common in our culture and in other cultures to either have God be one of your own choosing or a God of no morality whatsoever. However, the God of Scripture is the definition of truth. He is absolute truth. His qualities are not finite, but infinite. It is that infinite absolute truth, God, that has chosen to reveal to us the absolute truth.

Truth with a capital T. It doesn't depend on us like relative truth does. You see, we've got one truth revealed to us because God is a singular God. Through scripture we have truth with a capital T. There is one intended meaning for each passage. That being said, there are many applications those truths, but one intended meaning. God has revealed the truth for us, absolute truth, for our spiritual benefit.

By the way, what we're presenting here this morning in the way of absolute truth is not popular at all. One recent survey of church youth groups, and by recent I mean four years ago so it may have gotten worse, nine percent of kids in church youth groups believe in absolute moral truth. You're looking at better than 90% of them at the youth groups that don't believe in absolute moral truth. How about that?

God has told us the absolute truth. It's not different from one person to the next. What God has told us is absolute, but is not exhaustive. We have a couple of passages, Deuteronomy and Revelation 10.4, as examples. God has spelled out absolute truth for us. He has not spelled out every truth.

But there is great value in knowing what He has revealed. We're told that repeatedly. Scripture has great value and purpose. There is spiritual profitability in what He's revealed. God has given us what is spiritually profitable because He knows what's profitable.

It isn't designed, however, that we get every single possible answer to every possible question from Scripture. We know that from Scripture itself. In some cases, there are passages, and we gave a couple of them there, that reveal that God said, no, this is something we're not going to spell out. Not now. We looked at one we're going through Ephesians.

Ephesians 2.7 says it's going to take eternity to reveal all of God's grace. Guess what? That means we don't get it all here.

The Lord is just giving us a glimpse of His grace now, because it's too amazing. We also have to be careful not to superimpose meaning upon scripture because it is precisely what God's revealed. The truth. What God has revealed is knowable with certainty. That's a key point. If that is not true, then all the rest of it is for naught. We can know what God had revealed for our benefit. We don't need to throw up our hands and say, who knows what this thing means? Great book, real inspiring, but I have the foggiest idea what it says. Or, so many people have so many ideas I can't sort it out. We don't need to do that.

God has intended that we know the Truth, Truth with a capital T, because He's chosen to reveal it to us in that way. Ultimately, the ultimate knowability is Christ Himself. Paul says that I may know Him. Jesus Himself claimed to be the Truth. or as we saw in the previous passage, truth as it is in Jesus. The Lord Himself claimed to be the truth and to have revealed the truth. He claims that those who are His hear the truth. Truth isn't incidental to the Lord, He is Himself the very definition of it.

Now Paul says, each one of you, Paul uses language here that he uses similarly throughout other parts of the letter, and other letters for that matter. He focuses, notice, on each individual person. This is one passage. He has continued to do that. He is wanting to make clear, because remember, these are people who like to pick and choose their gods. So they'll say, I like this one and that one.

So far as we know in Ephesus, and they have a record, 50 different gods, and people would mix and match. Also add to that the other philosophies, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and others on top of that. The newer philosophy that was filtering in, Gnosticism. All these were things from which people could pick and choose and mix and match. Customize it. An eclectic philosophy and religion, if you like.

But what does he do? He keeps coming on telling them, now that we're in chapter 4 and we're going to continue to see this, each one, each individual, Speak the truth, and notice he didn't say, you in general. Speak the truth, you who feel like it. Speak the truth, you who have picked out truth as a god or a goddess. Speak the truth, each one of you. He's going to continue with that message in chapter 5 and chapter 6.

In the Greek and Roman culture, people could just mix and match. It was the norm. He wanted to be very clear with them. I am not giving you generalizations. So he continued to harp on this, each one, each person. When he says, I mean, speak the truth, I'm not talking about except you, you, you, and you. Each and every believer.

Even in Paul's day, in order to assure you covered all the bases, as well as admitting the ambiguity, they had to alter to the unknown God. Just so, in case you were worried about that, you could have the bases covered. But you didn't have to pick that one. What you didn't know was something that was openly admitted. These altars to an unknown god are found in multiple places throughout the Roman Empire. We have in our own culture that same thing.

One of the things that you may have noticed, some of the shows will show very mixed morality. Those who are involved in law enforcement having their own moral tensions as bad as those they arrest. Some shows the Cop's morality is highly questionable as a key feature of the show. We even have those who are called lost. And people watch it every week.

Very good description, don't you think? Notice this. In our own culture, in order to make sure we don't have any basis for absolutes, look at this. It's got flags. It's got pictures of the Founding Fathers. It looks highly patriotic, but look more closely at the words. What's there and what's not there? Do you see it? What's missing? This is what's being pushed right now. It has all the things to stroke our harp strings about being patriotic, but the basis of absolute truth has been stripped out as a part of a trend within our culture. each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members one of another."

Paul notices how he puts this. He says, neighbors are the person close. He says, let me give you some definition. That starts with those within the body of Christ. Those who are members one of another. Think of it this way. He's been telling them about this one another thing. Not only each one of you, but also the one another.

Here he spells it out here in 425. We're going to continue to see that through the rest of the book, and we're going to draw upon verses in Colossians that keep mentioning the one and others. As you go through the New Testament letters, you'll see multiple references to one and others.

Why? The relationship between Christians is the key test point for the life of Christ and believers. A person here is a believer, and if this person over here is a believer, and they're interacting with each other, God's designed that it be Christ's life dealing with Christ's life. If that's the case, what does that look like? That's why all the one and others. That's why repeatedly, again, this is the example that he lays forth, if there is morality of this kind, if there is the life of Christ of this kind between believers, then certainly expressed among unbelievers. But at home is where it starts. At home meaning the body of Christ. Think about it this way.

The human body tells us the truth or we get real concerned, don't we? If your body is lying to you about certain things, that really gets to you. You're probably going to get some kind of professional help to figure out what's going on. Why is my body not telling me the truth?

Some years ago, my dad had an interesting experience. There was a fellow who developed a combination headset and glasses that took everything in front of you and reversed it, mirror image. Dynamically, not like this with a picture, but as you were looking at things, everything was reversed. You wore this thing on your head, and so what he did, he had my dad get in the passenger side of the car, and they pulled up in an intersection like this. And here, everything's fine, you got the stop sign there.

But what did my dad see? This. And then the guy asked the question, because there was nobody behind him. He says, now, think about this a minute. Do you want to turn left or right? Now, what are your eyes going to tell you when you begin to make the turn? Think about when you're sitting in the seat, what is your body going to tell you is happening? The opposite. My dad said that the first thing that happened when he made the turn, I forget whether he told him to turn left or right, is he fell over in the seat.

Because the body is lying to you. So when Paul makes the analogy of the body, he's drawing upon that very thing. We consider our body communicating consistently with us as the norm. If it does not, we say something's wrong. either a false input of information or no information is alarming.

Some 13 years ago, when I got the Lyme disease that I mentioned previously, the feeling dropped out on the inside of this forearm. And so I was working on the car and using a blowtorch, and somebody asked me a question. I turned. And I was torching my forearm and had no idea. There was no input. My body was lying by not telling me anything at all. It was only the stench that finally got my attention.

Anyway, we can easily see things wrong and our senses can lie to us, but we think, you know, hey, something is wrong and we want to get it checked out. That's not the normal. We're used to seeing things the way they really are, right? We're used to looking at things and seeing them normally, okay? And so that's the usual, okay? We're used to seeing things that way.

Anyway, enough about that backward stuff. Let's get back to our passage. Okay. Okay. We're members one of another, okay? Just look at this one another thing just a little bit more. All believers are therefore a part of the body of Christ. And these one-anothers are then telling us about the normal relationships with each other. The normal relationship between believers should be one of truth.

Because God's holding a sword over us and saying, you do this or I'm just going to cut you to pieces? No. Because that's characteristic of your position in Christ. The life of Christ lived through you because of your eternally fixed position looks this way.

That's why. Similar are the each others, and we'll see those as well. Now, here's an interesting surprise. It says in some of our English translations, New American Standard being one of them, be angry. And believe it or not, this is an imperative. Now, some folks have tried to tap dance around that thinking, heaven sakes, man, what kind of an imperative is that? So is this Paul's model Christian? I've got to be angry because God says so. Is the model Christian some version of the Hulk? Get really ticked and then show some sort of superpower executing this anger. Is that what Paul has in mind? I would suggest not.

Be angry, but there is a proper anger based on our position in Christ. Notice a few things. We've already brought up the point that the context before we even got here made multiple references to the truth. So one thing is If we're going to be angry based upon our position, just the question, have we got the facts? Have we got the truth? Have you ever been in a situation where you start to feel your blood pressure go up and your temper is about to pop through the top and then you got the facts?

Ever had that happen? Yeah. I can remember one time when I was just about ready to cream some store detectives out when I got the story of what had happened with my younger sister. And I just about had their brains splattered on the walls when I suddenly was told it's all been dealt with. When we have all the facts, and that's one thing to ask the question about. Do I have the truth? Do I know what's really going on before I begin reacting here?

Be angry, but do not let the sun go down. You've seen that. And that's an imperative, by the way. Do not let the sun go down. Now, isn't it good to know? I mean, you can smile about this. To know exactly what your obligation is as a Christian? It's abundantly clear. I mean, he's made it really simple. It's as simple as this. Just don't let the sun go down. That's it. That's all you've got to do. There's the imperative for you. Go for it, folks. Give it a try. Don't let the sun go down on your anger.

What's he doing? He's setting some parameters. He says, be angry. There is a righteous anger. Be angry, but set a short time frame on resolving this. It's one of the parameters, and he's going to give us three here. So here's a negative imperative, if you will. It's a parameter on the kind of anger that is the life of Christ. It deals with things in short time frames. It doesn't let it turn into something else, okay? It's one of those things that doesn't improve with time. Anger doesn't get better over time.

When we were on the farm, you know, we would take several gallons of milk and we'd pour it into a vat and we'd drop a little tiny tablet of rennet in there and we'd get this stuff curdling and we'd get the curdles and put it into a cheese mold and we'd make jack cheese. But we didn't just eat it right there. We'd let it set in this pantry for several months before we'd even start into it. It got better with age.

Anger doesn't. And that's part of what Paul's laying out here. One parameter, it doesn't ripen well. It gets rotten rather than ripe. So, about the anger. The anger that we must have comes from the life of Christ. Mark 3.5 would be an example of the Lord himself being angry. Notice that his anger was not about defending himself. His anger had to do with an injustice that was shorting the opportunity for healing another. The anger that we have must be solidly founded in the truth. That's righteous anger. The anger has a definite character limit. It must not originate in sin, or the sin nature, or turn sinful. You can have anger that starts off right and becomes wrong. The anger must be resolved in a timely manner. We're looking at a short time to resolution, not a short fuse. See the difference there? A resolution, not an explosion. Different.

And notice here, there are two words for anger, and in the Greek, they're slightly different Greek words. The second word points to an anger that gets to the point of provocation, irritation, or exasperation. It is either overtly ready to blow up, or covertly boiling and simmering. That's that second anger there. Some people like to explode volcanically upon others. You may have encountered folks like that yourself. Some other folks, however, like a slow boil. A low simmer is their preference.

Paul says, neither one. If it goes outside of these parameters, a righteous anger won't come to a place of turning into sin. It won't come to a place of lasting way beyond its time of resolution. And finally, third parameter, do not. Here's our third negative imperative. do not give the devil an opportunity. The King James there has neither give place to the devil, which is actually a more literal translation.

The Greek word is topos, where we get our word like topographic map, which is like a map having to do with a place. And it has the idea of giving the devil a base of operations, a place from which to launch. Some translations will carry this across with the idea of don't give him a foothold. Don't give him a place from which he can gain some leverage or advantage or inroad. Don't give the devil an opportunity. That's the way he puts it. The third negative parameter. Think about it.

There's only one reason for an enemy to seek to establish a base of operations. They come in and they try to go to a place and establish a base of operations where they haven't been before. Why are they doing it? It isn't just a hobby. They don't just do it because they'd like to. They do it because there's an intent to widen influence and impact, establish a broader base of operations, and cause even more damage. Isn't that true?

That's what an enemy would come in for. That's what he's warning against. You have an adversary, and we'll be taking a look at greater detail at this adversary. You have an adversary and he would like to do that. That's his desire and intent. He's saying, you as a believer, he doesn't suggest that you not do that. He doesn't say, it would be awful nice if you thought about not doing it.

He says you must not give him an opportunity. Why? It's not because Paul's going to bring in the righteousness police, but because it's based on the life of Christ. The life of Christ does not provide the devil opportunities. The life of Christ does not give the devil evasive operations. Now there are those Because we need to look at the biblical balance here.

There are those who would favor aggressively attacking Satan. I'm going to bind Satan! I don't know who lets him loose, but I'm going to bind him. Okay? They go rebuking and doing spiritual mappings. I had a lady one time come to me and she says, I need a map of Carson City, where we're living at. And I said, well, what do you need it for? You know, it depends on what kind of map you're going to get. She said, well, I need to map out where the demons are. I said, have you looked at Scripture for that? See if there's any basis for that? Well, no. Scripture doesn't exhort us in that direction. Paul doesn't say, go and attack Satan.

Go after him! What we do see, and we'll get into that in greater detail in Ephesians 6, Paul addresses it by saying, stand your ground. Take on your position in Christ. Scripture teaches that our best defense against Satan is to stand in our position. So, we're not to be ignorant of the devil. Paul makes that very clear himself.

But where we have our focus does matter. And that's why it actually becomes a problem if we're constantly on the lookout for the devil. There are those, and I've encountered them face-to-face, where they're constantly looking for the devil, constantly blaming the devil for this or that problem. And they've got far more focus on the devil than on the Lord himself. We're told to behold Christ, to be looking at him. Looking away, as Hebrews 12 puts it, looking away from everything that will distract unto Jesus.

As for the devil, we've got some clear direction. We're going to see it in detail in chapter 6. Stand, resist, and as we saw in this passage, give him no place. Those are the three basic directions. We've seen the give him no place. Look briefly at the other ones. The Ephesians 6-10, when we get there, is going to say, stand firm.

Why? You're going to do this in order to be able to resist, in order to stand firm. Here's James, another New Testament author, what does he say? Resist. Here's 1 Peter, resist them, firm in your faith. Consistent message among the apostles, isn't it? Stand firm, resist, don't give them a foothold. In a way, it's very simple. And you're not taking any ground. The Lord has already taken it. You're just standing the ground He already won. That's where we go.

Do not give the devil an opportunity. As for the devil, we stand against him, but there's no defense, there's no growth in looking to him. Beholding Him isn't going to get us anywhere. Looking out for Him and searching Him from here and there isn't going to help us either. We have every reason to gaze upon the Lord through His Word. You see, we're seated with Christ in the heavenlies now, positionally, right? Come into eternity, we won't be looking at the devil or even looking for him or even thinking about him. He won't be on our radar screen, so to speak.

Paul started off with asking the believers to reject falsehood, to stand on the truth. He here says, don't give any opportunity to this father of lies, the one who is the originator of falsehood. These imperatives are not to be done by focusing on the devil, but by focusing upon Christ, putting our watchful gaze upon him. But right now, in him, eternally, that's going to be the case. Satan will drop off the scene. Notice in the passage you looked at last time, the direction we had was intimacy with him. That's how he proceeded this.

Learn Christ. You have heard him. Notice it's not learn about him or heard about him. It's intimacy with him. Notice the next things that he has are both in him. You've been taught in him. The truth is in Jesus. There is intimacy because truth is right where he's at. Right where we are at because we've been placed in him.

I'll leave the expanded and explained for you to take a look at and examine on your own. But isn't it wonderful as we look at this passage we can See, the Lord has laid out these imperatives, not that we now are starting a Christian list of do's and don'ts, but it's all about Christ. It's all about because we've learned Him. It's all about because we've heard Him. It's all about because we're in Him, who is Himself the truth.

Let's pray. Lord, thank you that the one that we are called to behold, Lord of glory, is indeed the one who we can behold now, and with whom we'll be occupied for eternity, ever to be occupied, Lord, with your marvelous glory. Never to be waiting for the coffee break, looking at the clock, at the watch, waiting until we do something different, but instead to be so eternally enthralled and amazed at your amazing grace, at your fantastic and wonderful glory. We pray that our hearts would be drawn and occupied with that now. With you now, in Jesus name, Amen.