Teaching Tuesday: What Are We Doing Here? - Christian Living

Series: What Are We Doing Here?
Sermon: Christian Living (Ephesians 4:17-5:20)
Watch the messages HERE. 

We’ve all had those frustrating experiences with a customer service representative or a retail clerk who just seems unable to solve our problem or help get us to the information we need to access.

When it’s important enough, we ask if we can speak to a manager or supervisor, hoping that escalating the issue to someone higher up the ladder will do the trick. Even when it does, it often becomes clear that the reason the original person was unable to help was because he or she is being so poorly led. The source of the problem isn’t the bad follower, but the bad leader. Only by confronting (calmly, kindly!) the leader directly are we able to sort everything out and get things right.

Our text this past week was Ephesians 4:17-5:20, where Paul moves into the practical application of what it looks like to take our belief in the gospel message and apply it to our gospel relationships. 

When we begin to recognize what it looks like to steer away from the wrong (“old” - Ephesians 4:22) way to live life and steer into the right (“new” - 4:23-34) way to live life, it’s no good starting with the entry-level employees. We have to take the issue straight to the leader.

We can sometimes make the mistake of thinking that Christian living is simply a matter of getting our bodies to do certain good things and not do certain bad things. But that’s like us trying to solve a complicated problem with the poorly-led follower, with the assistants rather than dealing directly with the incompetent manager.

Paul makes it clear in this passage of Ephesians that we have to go about it the other way around. And the leader of our behavior isn’t our hands and feet, it’s our heart and mind.

A whole lot about our faith is about what’s going on in our minds and our hearts because that controls our hands and feet. Our actions are about our heart posture.

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. - Proverbs 4:23

So when our minds are focused on right belief of who God and our hearts are filled with what God is in Spirit form, our mouths and our hands will reflect his goodness and love. When our relationship with God is good and growing, our relationships with God’s people will also be good and growing because we’ll feel his love and act out of his love and that kind of life can’t help loving and serving others.

Go ahead and read Ephesians 4:17-5:20 carefully and slowly, then answer the following questions by yourself or with your family.

• How does Paul describe the pagan mind and heart? (4:17-18)
• What behavior resulted from that thinking? (4:19) 
• How is this thinking and behavior similar to our culture today? 
• In contrast, what teaching did the believers receive? (4:20-24)
• How can we be “renewed in the spirit of our mind”? (4:23)
• What are the sins Paul says we are to put off? 
• What new behaviors are we to put on instead, and what reason does Paul give for each?
• How prevalent are these “new behaviors” in our culture today? Why do you think that is?
• What’s the overriding reason to change our thinking in order to change our behavior? (4:30)
• Which of these old ways of thinking and behaving do you need to put off?
• Paul says we should imitate God (5:1-2). How can we do that?
• What should our attitude be toward the “works of darkness”? (5:11)
• What is one practical way you can live out each of Paul’s commands?
• Scan through the “new behaviors” again, but this time read them as a description of how God acts toward us. How does that make you think and feel differently about the whole passage? 

Pray: Ask God to fill your heart, mind, and imagination with his truth, so you can live in a way that is pleasing to him.  

TO KNOW HIM AND TO MAKE HIM KNOWN!

- Pastor Brady