And I want to invite you to turn in your Bibles to Ephesians 4. And as you're turning there, let me just say, in our culture today, there is understandably in some ways kind of an anti-institutional bent that most young people have, that we fear being tied down, we fear structures, we fear established denominations, we fear anything that could kind of hinder us. And so that's why you end up with lots and lots of churches that are essentially just independent by themselves, and even Christians that are independent and kind of living life by themselves. And yet I've heard it said well that if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together. And what we aim to do, by God's grace, at Cross of Grace and in our partnership, is to go far going together.
And so if you're new here and you're wondering, okay, well, why do these people seem so relentlessly committed to spending every Sunday morning together. Don't they know that the NFL season is in session? And I know that everybody in the 11:00 AM service, they've given up on their teams or they don't have an early game. So welcome to you. I'm really tempted to list a number of teams, but I will not.
And we're committed to doing this thing together. So one of the things we're committed to doing together is sitting under the preached word of God together.
So Ephesians chapter 4, verse 1, we're gonna be reading just one single verse, but as you'll see, this verse is really the hinge at the center of the book of Ephesians, and it plays a— it represents a critical connection that must be made in our Christian lives if we're to have any freedom and any progress. So Ephesians 4, verse 1, this is God's Word.
I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. This is God's Word.
Lord, may you give us ears to hear and eyes to see. Lord, may we, as we gather together, place ourselves together under the Word of God this morning. Amen.
Well, recently I attempted to repair our dryer at home, and anybody who knows me should find that concerning. Not a wise choice. Our dryer began making a screeching sound, and so I thought, "Listen, how hard could this be? You know, people do this." I've seen people do this on TV, and I will— I'm sure I can investigate it and find how to fix the dryer. So first I took the back of the dryer off, only to discover that's not how you get into the dryer.
So I screwed the back back on, and then I took the front of the dryer off. My wife is becoming increasingly concerned. There's metal sounds, screeching more now. And I discovered something. I made a discovery that I'm going to put in technical terms for you laypeople who may not be as experienced with dryer or home repairs.
Here's what I observed about the dryer. There is a motor thingy in there that powers it, okay? And then there's sort of a drum round thingy that your clothes spin around in. You guys tracking so far? And in the middle, there is like a little connector thingy.
You know what I'm saying? And so this is the extent of my observations. Hmm. My wife's asking me, how's it going? And my report is very well.
It's going very well. Now, I was actually not able to immediately determine— it took a lot of trial and error to figure out what was going on. But here's what I observed. Here's what I observed. I observed that this motor that's really very powerful, I mean, it's got a very, like, super intense looking electrical outlet, and this dryer drum that also is super intense looking, if that connection between the two of them, between the motor and the drum, is not intact or is not working, nothing works.
The dryer, by that one little component, can stop working altogether. But if you've got that component and it is working right, you take all the energy of the engine and attach it to all the work that needs to be done.
And that is Ephesians 4:1, if I could sum it up that way. It's taking the power of the gospel in Ephesians 1 through 3 and attaching it to the life of the Christian in chapters 4 through 6. Here's the simple connection that I think is being made here.
God calls his people to do all of life differently in light of what he's done. He calls his people to do all of life differently in light of what he's done.
And Paul has been building this from the very beginning of the letter. He's been working in this understanding that, listen, I'm gonna tell you all of these true, good, amazing things that are theologically true, that are the heart of the gospel, But I want you to see where we're going. He's been saying that all along.
Chapter 1, he says, God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, right? That's all the stuff that God's done. Then he says, he's done that, that we should be holy and blameless before him, meaning we are to do do something in light of that. Or again, in Ephesians 2, perhaps the most famous section of this letter, to verse 8, "For by grace you've been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." Right?
That's all that God has done. That's all about what God's done. Verse 10, "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. So he's connecting what God has done to what we are to do.
6 · The pastor isolates the word 'therefore' as the structural hinge and explains its function: it carries the weight of chapters 1-3 forward into chapters 4-6
So two big sections today. The first one is the foundation, what God has done. Now, this foundation rests on a single word. In English, it's a little bit out of the order in the original language, but that word, therefore. And I've heard one pastor quip the following: Whenever you see the word therefore in your Bible, you should pause and ask what it's there for. That is terrible, terrible, but very effective because hopefully it'll stick in your mind.
Any time you see the word therefore, you'll think, what is that there for? Right. So what is that therefore doing? Well, it is a call to walk according to a calling in light of everything that Paul has said in verses 1— chapters 1 through 3. So chapters 1 through 3 is all about the instruction of Paul in terms of what God has done for us, and chapters 4 through 6 are what we are to do in light of that.
7 · The pastor uses his pastoral research in El Paso to diagnose the default works-righteousness assumption in both non-Christians and Christians
And here is why that connection and that order in particular are so important. A number of years ago, I wanted to— I had become a pastor here and I wanted to get a better feel for what the average El Pasoan thinks. And so most of my church experience had been growing up here in this church that I grew up in or going to Mass with my grandparents and aunts and uncles all the time. There's always a Mass for somebody or something when you have a big extended Hispanic family. So I ended up going— those are my two reference points.
And so I thought, well, I'm going to get out and just talk to random people and see if I can figure out, get a feel for the community. And so I remember talking to a bunch of folks, and I'm gonna simplify it this way. Out of about, say, every 10 people I would talk to, about 7 of them had the same response to this question. Do you think you'll go to heaven when you die? Right?
And 1 out of the 10 would kinda say, nope. You're like, okay, well, there you go. 2 would say, yes, I think I will. But most of them, say 7 out of the 10, would say some variation of, "Man, well, I sure hope so." And then I'd ask them, "Okay, well, what do you mean? What does that mean?" And they said some variation of the following, "Well, you know, I try to live a good life.
I try to do the right thing. You know, I try to do more good than bad, and I'm sure God sees that. And I really helped—" You know, and then they would list something they've done. "I really helped take care of my mom when she was passing." I really try to, you know, be a good dad for my kids. I really try to, you know, I try to pay my taxes the way I'm supposed to and, you know, not cheat and, you know, doing that stuff.
And yet there was this uneasiness you could feel with them. And the feeling I began to pick up with the majority of the folks I talked to, and I think this is true of the majority of people in El Paso that believe in a God and that believe that there is a heaven and a hell, I think most of them default to thinking Man, I hope I can do enough good things that in the end God helps me and saves me and kind of comes through for me on that last day. I do this stuff for God and then he'll come through for me. I'm hoping that's the way it works. And a lot of Christians who would say confessionally, well, I don't know if that's right, often live their life this same way.
They're constantly worried, for example, about whether God loves them and what his disposition toward them is. Or if they do a bad thing during the day, they'll feel like, "Man, I got to do 2 good things before I go to bed so I can pray." Or if they see something bad in their life, they think, "Okay, listen, God must be punishing me. I got to do more good things to outweigh that and try to get back into God's good graces."
8 · The pastor returns to Ephesians 1-2 to demonstrate the radical prioritization of grace: God acts while we are still dead in sin, not after we produce obedience
Now, surely, the Bible does talk about the fact that we're We're dead in our sins, that we've sinned and rebelled against God, and that his justice is coming to warn us. But when it comes to the gospel itself, the gospel is not that we do enough good things to turn God's frown upside down and that he's like, "Oh, great. Here's the gift of the gospel for you now." No. In fact, what Paul has been telling us is that the gospel and the offer of the gospel and Christ's coming comes before we do anything to obey or earn his favor.
This is the pattern in Ephesians, right? Just review this with me. Chapter 1 in Ephesians is an epic run-on sentence of all the spiritual blessings toward those of us who are in Christ, that we are chosen, we are adopted, we are redeemed, we are forgiven, we are purposed, we are made inheritors, we are sealed with the Spirit. So how did we get all of that stuff kind of poured out on us? Was it that we, in fact, lived perfect Christian marriages or parented well or never said a bad word about somebody or never were sinfully angry?
No. What's the thing that poured this out on us? The grace of God, meaning his unmerited favor. In fact, Ephesians 1 says that God chose to give that gift to us before we ever did a single Christian good deed. In fact, as chapter 2 will say, when all we had done was evil.
Right? Chapter 2 talks about how we are rebels and enemies and sinners and dead men because of our pursuit of sin. And dead people cannot bring themselves back to life. They cannot do enough to win God's favor, nor do Christians who are following Satan and the flesh and the world, nor do they want to please the Lord. So what's the hinge?
What changes for us in Ephesians 2? It is not that somehow dead men raise themselves to life or realize, "Man, I really don't want to follow the devil. I really am listening to my flesh and my sin. I should listen to God." Instead, no, none of that changes. That's not what causes the change.
Instead, it is Ephesians 2:4, "But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together in Christ." And then he says resoundingly, "By grace you have been saved." God's grace is what inclines him toward people inclined away from him, people inclined only in rebellion and evil.
9 · The first piano teacher story vivifies the works-based theology diagnosed earlier
The feeling, if I could describe it this way, the feeling that I think a lot of people have about God's disposition to them was— is something like, the disposition of my first piano teacher, Mrs. A. Mrs. A is not her real name. I've changed the name to protect the— well, the guilty. This wasn't her intention, I don't think.
I think she was a nice lady. She was trying to do good. But from the moment that I arrived at my piano lesson, the impression I got was— I still remember where she lives because I so dreaded driving to my piano lesson. Getting out of the circular driveway, getting into her home, and seeing her face.
And I felt as though from the very beginning, before I even sat down at the piano, she was scowling at me. And from when I sat down and began to try to play at age 6 or 7 or whatever, the notes were wrong. The way I held my hand was wrong. The dynamics were wrong. The rhythm was wrong.
And I'm not even exaggerating. I remember her talking about the The way I was using the pads of my fingers was wrong. My posture was wrong. The way I held my head was wrong. The way I bobbed my head back and forth, also wrong.
And so my goal was to survive every piano lesson by trying to do enough good things to placate her. And my goal wasn't even to get to a smile at the end. My goal was to get to neutral, okay? My goal was to get to a, not frown, like a, hmm. You know, that's the best I was going for.
And I think for many people, that's the feeling they have when they think about God, that God's posture toward humanity, toward them, is arms crossed, waiting for people to try to do something to impress him, and then maybe, maybe he'll do something nice for them.
10 · The pastor moves to Romans 12:1 to demonstrate that the 'therefore' pattern is not unique to Ephesians but characteristic of Paul's theology
Now, this pattern is not just in Ephesians. I want you to flip back in your Bibles with me to the book of Romans, look at chapter 12. I want you to see this for yourself. It's important to me that you see this for yourself in scripture and that this becomes a conviction in your heart for how God relates to his people. Romans chapter 12.
And if you know anything about Romans, Romans 1 through 11 is this tour de force of gospel theology, chapter after chapter after chapter of what God has done and his grace being poured out on his people. Chapters 12 through 15 then talk about a little bit about how we are to live differently. What's the hinge? The hinge is 12:1. Paul says this, "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God," or you could translate that, "in view of God's mercy, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship." worship.
He's taking all that he talked about, all the gospel theology of chapters 1 through 11, and says, in light of that, then obey.
11 · Colossians 3:1 extends the pattern further: being raised with Christ (indicative) grounds the call to seek heavenly things (imperative)
Flip over to the right now just a bit to the book of Colossians, if you can find that. You're looking for Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians. Look at Colossians 3:1.
Now again, same pattern. It's all about— chapters 1 and 2 are all about being raised with Christ, about how we are raised up from from death with Christ. And now look at Colossians 3:1. It says this: If then you have been raised with Christ, meaning if everything I've told you is true, and it is true, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Meaning if you've been raised with Christ, don't go back down into the depths.
Pursue the things of Christ. If because you've been raised, Live as a raised person.
12 · The pastor traces the pattern back to the Old Testament, showing that even the Ten Commandments follow redemption rather than preceding it
Now, you may think that this is just a New Testament pattern. I want you to flip then all the way back to Exodus chapter 20. Now, we're very familiar with the Ten Commandments.
Perhaps you've seen the Ten Commandments in a courthouse or something like that. And it can feel very stark, this, "Thou shalt not murder. Thou shalt not commit adultery." Have no other gods before me. And it can feel— some people get the impression that God drops the Ten Commandments down in a vacuum because he sees people on the earth having fun and enjoying themselves. And so he's like, well, I'll fix that.
Bam! Here's the Ten Commandments. Or even perhaps that the Ten Commandments are the way to get back to God if you keep them. Then you'll be brought near to God, then you'll be rescued from, well, from your slavery. No, Exodus chapter 20, I want you to notice the 2 verses that precede the Ten Commandments.
And what's so interesting to me is often when I see the Ten Commandments written out in somebody's house or in a courtroom or whatever, these 2 verses are not included. It's just the list. But what precedes the list? Exodus chapter 20, verse 1, says this, "And God spoke all these words, saying, 'I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.'" Do you see the connection there? God does not drop the Ten Commandments in at the beginning of Exodus and say, "These are the conditions that I require in order to bring you out of slavery." No, God comes to them.
He rescues them. He brings them out of Egypt, out of slavery with a mighty hand. And then he rescues them from slavery and says, "Now you're free. Live as free people." And the rest of the law then is how free people are meant to live. Look, this is the pattern through all Scripture.
13 · The pastor cites Chappell to distill the theological pattern into a memorable formulation: obedience is response, not purchase
You can go back to Ephesians 4, if you would. Brian Chappell summarizes the pattern this way. What Christians do is based on who we are in Christ. We obey because God has loved us and united us to himself by his Son. We are not united to God, nor do we make him love us because we have obeyed him.
Our obedience is a response to his love, not a purchase of it.
14 · The pastor shifts to direct evangelistic address, contrasting the gospel with the transactional religion most hearers assume
And look, if you are not a Christian, I really hope you understand today the heart of the gospel, the heart of the Christian message. It's so easy to get the impression, because there are many commands in the Bible, and it's easy to get the impression if you're not a Christian that, okay, the commands are what it— keeping the commands is what it means to be a Christian. So you start keeping the commands and then eventually you kind of work your way up to get close to God. And listen, I understand you thinking that way because I would say almost every world religion is based on some variation of do all of these things and then God or gods or spirits or whatever will then either give you what you want, anything from, you know, a healthy life to a successful career.
You do those things and you get what you want, or you just avoid punishment. You won't get burned. Some variation of that. And I want you to see this book, this gospel is not that. The gospel is this, that God holds out mercy, love, and grace to sinners who do not deserve it.
Not that he holds out mercy, love, and grace to sinners who deserve it, who do enough good things to get his favor. Grace means God's unmerited favor. If it's merited, it's not grace. And Ephesians 2 says, "It is by grace you have been saved." So here, here's what I want you to see. I want you to see the open arms of God today for you.
See him and his disposition not as a frowning music teacher waiting for you to mess up, but a father holding his arms open to the prodigal to return. And you today can return.
15 · The pastor applies the theological pattern to the Christian's self-awareness, diagnosing the loss of gospel-centeredness by the shift from 'what God has done' to 'what I must do
And Christians, I want you to ask this question of yourself. Do you live under the resounding "done" of Christ? In your Christian life?
Are you— let me ask you this— are you more aware of the pile of to-dos that you have as a Christian or more aware of what God has done for you? And when you begin to be only or primarily aware of all the to-dos, I think you've lost sight of the thread. You've lost the thread of the gospel.
Paul unloads the gospel truth over and over, chapter after chapter. So that we might then see, savor the grace of God. And then by the time we get to 4:1, we go, "All right, man, let's go." And if your Christian life doesn't feel like that, I would say something's off.
16 · Structural pivot from the foundation (what God has done) to the call (how Christians are to respond)
So that's section 1. Section 2, the call.
17 · The pastor expounds the force of Paul's exhortation in 4:1, unpacking the language of 'urge' and 'walk' to show that obedience is not optional or casual
The call is to do all of life differently. Paul says, "I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called." called. Now, having established God's grace given to sinners in Christ, Paul exhorts the church. He doesn't suggest to the church. This is not Ephesians chapter 4 through 6 is not kind of like a, hey, listen, if you get a chance, you know, listen, man, I don't want to cramp your style, but if you— here's a few things maybe to think about.
I don't know, maybe think about it. That's not what he does. This is strong language, this urging. In the original language is an urging of a superior officer to a junior officer, from a person in authority to a person not under authority.
Paul is laying a claim on the lives of his hearers. He urges them, look at this language, to walk differently. This language is intentional. In chapter 2, he talks about how they walked in the pattern of the world, the flesh, and the devil, right? Meaning, so you were once on this path and it goes down there, and what's down there?
Death and destruction. So you used to be on this path, and then through grace, God grabs you, restores you, saves you, and turns you around. And basically Ephesians 2:10 says this, "We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." Here's the death path, don't do that. This is the life path, walk that way now. And so Paul is urging them kind of right in the middle, don't go back there, go here.
Follow Christ, walk differently.
18 · Brief transitional statement reiterating the dryer metaphor: without the connection, power and work remain separated
Now, this is so important because if this is not there, we will miss the connection between the power for the Christian life and the actual Christian life.
19 · The second music teacher story illustrates the opposite error: affirmation without instruction produces joy but no growth
Let me tell you about my second music teacher that I had. This is kind of a semi-autobiographical confessional message for me in some ways. Mr. B. Mr. B, I encountered Mr. B because my parents made me a deal that if I kept taking piano lessons, which I hated, then they would allow me to also take electric guitar lessons which I was psyched about.
And so I show up with my electric guitar to my first lesson, and immediately I realized Mr. B's totally different than Mrs. A. There's a big smile on his face. He was kind of like a jazzy, kind of bluesy kind of guitar player, real like, "Yeah, whatever, man. All right, cool. That's great." And so he gives me, you know, a big handshake.
It's like, "All right, man, you ready to play some music?" And I'm just like, What is this? Like, don't you want to berate me first before I begin to play? And he's just like, nah, man. Like, all right. So he's like, you know any chords?
And I'd learned like 2 chords, obviously the G and C, right? So that's all you need. And D if you're really advanced. And so you get— 3 chords and the truth, man. That's all you need.
And so I showed him. And he's like, all right, that's pretty good, man. That's pretty good. He's like, all right, how about this? Play this.
Chunka chunka And I'm like, okay, I can do that. Yeah, I'm playing it. He's like, all right, you just hang out right there, man, and I'm going to take a solo if that's okay. And I'm like, sure. He's like, all right, here we go.
And I'm like, I'm jamming. He's like, yeah, you're jamming, man. I'm jamming. I am jamming, right? He's like, all right.
And then later in the lesson, he's like, all right, you take a solo. And I'm like, me? He's like, yeah, just let it go, man. Here's my solo. And he's like, "Oh, so good, man." And I'm like, "Yeah, it is so good.
I am doing a great job." And I just left that lesson, you know, just over the moon. I'm just like, "Man, I'm going to— within mere weeks, I will be playing in a rock and roll band professionally." Probably everyone will be like, wow, you started wearing black a lot. Like, yeah, no, you know, like.
And yet, spoiler. I am not an electric guitar virtuoso, as anybody who's played with me on the worship team has encountered, because anytime John's like, can you do kind of a lead here? I'm like, awesome. I got it. Ready?
It's. That's what I got. That's what I Bring to every song.
20 · The pastor draws the theological lesson from the Mr
So, and here was the problem. Mr. B provided something good, a love for music, but no direction about how to improve.
He never gave me any scales. He never gave me any exercises. My fingers were just as, like, kludgy as I started out with, and I never really made a a lot of progress despite the fact that I had a ton of fun. But after about a year, I thought, "What am I doing with this? I don't need to take these lessons anymore.
I can do this in my house," you know? And eventually I found some other ways to begin to make progress. And here's what I want you to see. If God did that, he would not be kind to us. If he were to save us from the path of deadness, the path of sin, the path of the flesh, the path of the devil, and say, "Listen, all right, well, just do whatever now." That would not be kind.
Instead, his kindness is revealed in the fact that he says, "Walk this path. There's life down here. There's hope down here. There's marriage transformation down here. There's parenting transformation.
There's reconciliation. There's peacemaking down here. It's a hard path. You take up your cross and you follow me, but at the end of it, in the midst of it is life, and at the end of it is eternal life." life. Choose which path you wanna walk.
And so Ephesians 4 through 6 is him walking us down that path, helping us down that path.
21 · The pastor unpacks the language of 'calling' in Ephesians 4:1, tying it back to the electing love of God in Ephesians 1
And notice the connection there. He says, listen, he talks about our calling, walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. He goes all the way back to Ephesians 1 and says, listen, God called you, he saved you, he grabbed you, he set his love on you before the foundation of the earth. That's his calling.
And in light of all of that, live differently.
22 · The pastor applies the pattern to sexual sin, showing how the indicative of being loved by God empowers the imperative to turn from sexual idolatry
One example, live like someone who is loved by God. Rather than going, listen, I gotta keep hooking up with people. I just have to feast on porn. I gotta find all this, I gotta look everywhere in kind of my sexual identity to try to find someone who will care about me and love me.
He says, no, you are loved by God. Therefore, you don't need to do that. Therefore, you can turn away from that and pursue loving others in all of your relationships instead of taking from them. You see the transformation that happens when you get this connection?
23 · The pastor expounds Paul's self-description as 'a prisoner for the Lord,' revealing the ironic reversal: Paul is most free in chains because his true bondage—to sin—has been broken
And last thing here, I just love that Paul brings up the fact that he says, "I therefore, as a prisoner for the Lord." That when he says that, that's actually a play on words.
He, one, is pointing out, listen, I'm in chains right now, Because of Jesus, I preached him. Look where it landed me, in chains. But he actually is using it ironically, because what he's saying is this: look, I'm a prisoner of Jesus much more importantly than I am for Jesus. Meaning this: God has freed me from my slavery to sin, so I'm the most free prisoner in the world. And now if I'm going to be chained to anything or anyone, I'm going to be chained to Christ.
And if I'm gonna be held captive by anything or anyone, I'm gonna be held captive by Christ. This is the path of life. And I can tell you from a jail cell that I would rather be here than out there in freedom of slavery. I'd rather be chained to my Lord and Savior who's taken me to eternal life any day.
24 · Transitional questions directing the congregation forward to the ethical content of Ephesians 4-6
So friend, do you hear a resounding call to live differently after being called?
Is your Christian life changing after being called? Do you feel the calling of God calling you to live differently in Christ? Look, this is what Paul is going to lay out in chapters 4 through 6.
25 · A rapid survey of the ethical transformations Paul will address in Ephesians 4-6
Our thinking needs to be renewed. Our minds need to be changed, according to Ephesians 4:23.
Our relationship to other Christians is going to change, Ephesians 4:29. No more— our relationship to speech is going to change. We just don't say anything. We say only what builds people up, that we don't wanna corrupt others. Our relationship to sin changes.
Rather than just being okay with it or embracing it, we put it off, Ephesians 4:22. Our relationship to our sexuality changes. Our relationship to lust or desire changes according to Ephesians 5:3. Our relationship to dating and marriage and singleness changes according to Ephesians chapter 5.
26 · Transitional statement preparing the congregation for a diagnostic moment
And this is where I really do feel I have to provide something of a gut check at this point in the message and say this:
27 · The gut-check application: lack of transformation indicates either false conversion or a broken connection between gospel truth and Christian living
if your Christian life is not you changing to look more like Jesus, you're not obeying God and something is wrong.
And one of two things may be wrong. The first one may be that you're not a Christian. And I say that in love, knowing that it's possible to believe many true things about God in your head, But unless you have seen and embraced Jesus as both Savior and Lord in your heart, all the head knowledge about who Jesus is is not gonna do anything.
It's when you begin to see him as beautiful and valuable and worth following with everything in you, that's when you know you truly understand who Jesus is. If he's not worth sacrificing everything in your life for, I don't think you've seen him. But you can today. You can follow him today as Savior and Lord. Or if you're a Christian, let me just say, it may also be that you have a disconnection in between your— the motor and the engine of kind of gospel truth and the actual kind of drum and work of your Christian life.
And that connection is you haven't put them together. That truth is not powering your life.
28 · Transitional moment using humor to defuse tension before introducing the third music teacher
So let me just end with this, a couple notes of application. Let me tell you about my— because I talked to a brother from the first service and he was like, man, you're pretty hard on music teachers today. So I'm going to— we love all of our music teachers.
I just want to say that categorically, especially because of my last music teacher in high school, Mrs. Garman. And I can say her name because it's going to be positive.
29 · The third music teacher story resolves the dialectic: Mrs
In my mid-teens, I'd had those two opposite kinds of teachers until I finally switched, and my last kind of couple years I did with Mrs. Garman, and she was just different. She was a joyful, joyous presence, was happy to see you, excited to see you, and she did— she brought together two things that I hadn't seen brought together. First, she taught me to love the the music that I was learning. She made me listen to it and understand the intricacies of it and understand the beauty of it to the point where I got to the point where I said, I wanna learn that song. I remember one piece in particular I learned for my senior recital.
I still think about the song and the beauty in the song. And there was something in me that was like, I wanna get there. I wanna be able to play this well. And so then she said, all right, good. Now you gotta work.
Now you gotta learn the scales. Now there's one song in particular I had to do like this crossing hand thing that I was never able to get the technique right for, but I had to work on it again and again and again to be able to have the fluidity and fluency to play the music the way that it was intended to be played. And for the first time, I learned to love both the music and the craft of playing music.
30 · The third teacher illustration is mapped onto Ephesians' structure: chapters 1-3 are the beautiful music (the gospel), chapters 4-6 are the sheet music (the ethics)
That is what Paul is doing in Ephesians. He is playing in chapters 1 through 3, the song of the gospel so that we would see it and love it, so that it would thrill our hearts, so that we'd get the music down in our soul to the point where we say, "That is it.
That's the most exquisite, beautiful thing I've ever heard in my life." And then chapters 4 through 6, he's gonna say, "Now here's the sheet music. Here's how you learn to play it." Here's how you as a husband and wife begin to play the music of the gospel in your marriage.
31 · Transitional statement signaling the shift to closing applications directed specifically to the church community
So a few specific things I want to say in closing to the church. I'm gonna hit these briefly and move on, but I feel like this is a foundational thing for us as a church.
I don't want to lose this opportunity.
32 · First application: the ongoing necessity of hearing the gospel corporately
First, we never move beyond our need to hear what Christ has done. We never move beyond our need to hear what Christ has done as a church.
33 · The pastor supports the first application with 1 Corinthians 15, showing Paul's relentless return to the gospel even after extensive theological instruction
1 Corinthians 15, which we have put on that wall so nobody ignores it, Now it says this, "Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you." You're thinking, "What have you been doing for 14 chapters so far, Paul? You've been preaching the gospel." He goes, "No, no, no, no, no, I'm gonna do it one more time. Let me remind you of the gospel you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved." We never move beyond our need for it.
34 · Second application: the discipline of preaching the gospel to oneself daily
Second, we must daily preach what Christ has done to ourselves. Paul Tripp has this great observation that nobody is more influential in your life than you are because no one talks to yourself as much as you do.
So if that is true, what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 needs to be connected to our self-talk in our daily life. So when you talk to yourself, what do you tell yourself? Is there a proactive telling of the gospel, showing the beauty of the gospel to yourself? Whether that's reading Scripture, reading other books, or listening to worship music, or being present as the church community gathers, are you feeding your soul with that?
35 · The pastor illustrates reactive gospel self-preaching through his own anxiety, modeling how to counter anxious thoughts with gospel truth
And then, in reaction, is there an element of, "Man, how do I connect the gospel to this part of my life in terms of what I'm saying?" One example, if you're anxious— listen, I'm an anxious person by nature, and so there's always 50 things I could be anxious about.
That could be, you know, this could be typhoid or the plague. It's the Black Plague, it's back, this is it, I have it. Starting with me, I'm patient zero. That's what I think.
But in those moments, do you also tell yourself, if Jesus died for you, how will he now forget you? He does not forget the names of those he's died for. He will bring them safely home. We talk to ourselves, we preach the gospel to ourselves daily.
36 · Third application: the dual-ditch warning against legalism and license
We must reject calls to embrace what Christ has done without a call to change.
Right? It's been well summed up that there are dual ditches on the side of the Christian life. There is a ditch of legalism that's always do more, try harder, do more, try harder. God is never satisfied. But the other ditch on the other side is license where it's only talking about what God's done, only that God loves you.
He never calls you to live differently or think differently or act differently. Differently. And what, what ends up happening is that people are okay with their sin, they dishonor God, and then become enslaved to their sin all over again. They begin to walk back that path that Christ has saved them from. We must not do this.
37 · Fourth application: the necessity of explicitly connecting gospel indicatives to Christian imperatives
Fourth, we must intentionally connect what Christ has done to power our doing. Just two examples here. We gotta make sure that little connector thingy is helping the motor thingy and the drum thingy, to use technical language. Ephesians 4:32 says this: "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another." That could be it, period. Now it goes on: "Forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you." Do you see that?
The motor of the gospel and your life begin to be connected. Another example, Ephesians 5:25: "Husbands, love your wives and stop being the literal worst." I'm sorry, that's a typo there. Husbands— yeah, and Paul could have stopped there. He could have just stopped. Husbands, love your wives.
Don't do this. Here's a list of stupid things you do. But instead, there's a comma, and the comma leads to this: Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. That's both the model and the motivation for doing that sacrificially.
38 · Fifth application: the call for gospel saturation in the church's ministries
And fifth and last, we must thread the gospel through all Christian ministry in our church. Let me just say this, I'll say it this way, that the gospel cannot for us as Cross of Grace become the coat of paint that we add to all of our groups and ministries and things we do at the church. That's like, oh, listen, we also have to— and sometimes I think gospel centrality in the church in the last decade has become that. We're going to have a gospel-centered donut ministry. We're going to have a gospel-centered kids and worship and, you know, everything. And it's almost like it becomes the coat of paint you just put on at the end.
The kind of design your ministry the way you want. And then also, well, of course, it's also a gospel-centered barbecue club. You know, there— As it's the coat of paint that just goes on at the end.
Instead, we want the opposite kind of church. There's gonna be 1,000 variations of ministry across dozens of groups in our church, right? Every community group's gonna be a little bit different. Every discipleship relationship's gonna be a little bit different. Every message is gonna be a little bit different, right?
But underneath all of them, we should, as a church, be able to discern the hum of the gospel engine underneath it all, such that the gospel is what motivates our ministry to kids. The gospel is what motivates our singing. The gospel, in a real sense, 'cause I just made fun of the donut ministry, I didn't intentionally do that, the gospel is what motivates people to wake up early and hand out donuts because they've received the welcome of Christ. And now all these weird strangers, they're like, you know what I would love to do is wake up early and hand out donuts to strangers. That's the gospel.
That's what the gospel does in our hearts.
39 · The conclusion transitions from application to corporate confession
So with that, here's what we're going to do. We are going to end by confessing a creed of the gospel that's one of the oldest creeds of the Christian church. This dates back to the 3rd or 4th century. And as we say this, we're using the updated language today, but as we say this, I want you to understand that 2,000 years of Christians have confessed this truth as the thing that's at the forefront of our faith.
And may we today in 2022 receive it and resolve to carry it forward as well. Amen. Would you stand and let's say this together?
It's called the Apostles' Creed. If you know it, we've updated the language just a little bit. So watch the words behind me. And we're going to say this together as we join with 1,000 generations of the church confessing it together. Let's say this: I believe in God, the Father Almighty.