In an old sermon entitled "Follow the Money," that I listened to driving from Chicago to Dayton, Ohio, Preacher Richard Jordan discussed 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 his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.
Jordan told the congregation, "We're going to be truth-tellers. We're going to speak the truth in love but it's going to be truth that we talk. We're going to take the doctrine of the truth of God's Word and that's what we're going to communicate because we're members one of another. We're going to live in truth.
"Verse 26 is not like what most people tell you. It's not saying, 'You know, if you get mad with your husband or wife, be sure to settle it before the day's over because you don't want to carry it into the next day.' That's a bunch of psychobabble, but that's not what the verse is talking about.
"Paul is saying, 'Don't quit being angry with sin. Don't sunset your anger at sin.' A 'sunset law' in the government says, 'It's going to end at a certain point; it only lasts for a certain time.' When you don't tolerate sin you're not going to be passive about it.
"In the next verse he says, 'Neither give place to the devil.' Don't let the devil have a place. Satan wants to attack your life, so frustrate him and don't give him a place in your life.
"Verse 28 means you're going to become a giver; a complete transformation of your attitude and lifestyle. All of a sudden, you're not just a truth-speaker and someone who doesn't put up with sin and seeks to frustrate the Adversary, you're going to live a life that expresses the giving nature and heart and thinking process of grace.
*****
"God's mandate to man is in Genesis 1:26: [26] And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
"If you're made in the image of God, you're going to be His representative, and if you're made in His likeness, you're going to be God-like, which is what godliness is. It's god-likeness.
"When you're like God, you understand why God created you, what creation is for, what's going on, and you're going to be able to labor WITH God in like manner. You're going to work like God would work.
"Godliness is not just knowing what God's doing, and it's not even just laboring with Him in it, it's having the delight in it that He has.
"That verse in Jeremiah says, [24] But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD.
"God is saying, 'Don't glory in your wisdom, your money, your pomp and all the other stuff. Glory in this, that you know what I delight in!'
"In Hebrews 10, quoting Psalm 40, Jesus said, '[7] Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God.'
"The psalmist says, 'I delight to do thy will.' When the Lord Jesus Christ came, He came delighting in what the Father's will was. The verse says, 'For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame.'
"You understand His will and then it consumes your heart and becomes the joy of your own heart. That's God's plan for Adam and for Eve.
"God designed for them to be the ruler of creation and He equipped man to do that. He gave him a world. I love chapter 2:1: '[1] Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.'
"God took Adam and Eve and placed them in a finished work. Do you know of another finished work? Calvary? He took you and me and put us in the finished work of His Son. That's a fascinating thing. It starts right there in chapter 2 of Genesis; God thinking about FINISHING a work."
(new article tomorrow)
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