Five Moves the New Man Makes - Ephesians 4:25-32

Think about those times that you run into, a friend, you haven't seen that person in quite some time. You run into them, and what immediately your attention is drawn to as a transformation in that person's life. Now, it can be sometimes negative and sometimes positive. For example, I will run into old friends from high school or college and my immediate thought is, wow, you people are old. You know, you watch yourself gradually age in the mirror day by day. You don't notice it. You're running a friend who's your age. You say, wow, do I look like that? Is my hair that gray? Have I aged that much? You're so struck by the transformation that's happened? It also can be positive. Sometimes you're in a friend who maybe they've lost a lot of weight. And you say, wow, you look great. What did you do? What has been your approach to this? You've lost so much weight. You really look great. You really take good care of yourself. You're struck by that transformation you see in their life. I want to submit to you today that that ought to happen in our spiritual lives. People ought to be able to see us and say, you look so different than the last time I saw you. You should be able to run into people that knew you before you were following Christ, and they should say, your life has really changed. This has been a transformation in your life since I last knew you. Or as you grow in your faith in Christ, someone who maybe hasn't seen you a while and they spend time around you, and they should notice, wow, you were really a different person than you were the last time we hung out. I can see a transformation taking place in your life. That's our desire at Northland, is that people would experience a transforming encounter with God. It's part of our mission statement. We have four pillars of our mission statement. You hear those in the intro, and they're on the back wall when you leave. We talk about these a lot, but the 1st thing we want for people is that they would have a transforming encounter with God. Not that they would just start coming to our church. They'll start coming to our services, they'll participate in our activities, but their life would be radically changed by the good news of Jesus. Not that they would just start thinking the way we think or adhering to certain beliefs that we adhere to, but that there would be a transformation from the inside out in their life. There should be a transformation life. We're talk about that today. Is Jesus transforming you daily? Does your life look different today than it did before Jesus? Does your life look different today than it did a year ago or 2 years ago or 5 years ago because of your walk with Jesus Christ? Is there transformation in your life? Last week, Rustin preached, the passage is leading up to where... we're going to be today. The final verses of his text last week, Ephesians 4, 22 through 24. Say this. Put off your old self, which belongs to your former life. and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. The scripture said, take off your old self and put on your new self. Think about all those things that were part of your former life before you were following Christ. And before you got serious about walking with Christ. Before you begin to grow in him. All those things that were inconsistent with your life with Christ, you need to identify those and put those off and replace those with new things that are consistent with your new walk with Christ. Now that's a very general statement last week. Put off your old self, put on your new self. Today, as we continue in this text, we're going to see specific areas of our life that need to be addressed that need to be transformed by the power of the Gospel 5, specifically 5 areas of our life, that Jesus wants to transform as we follow him and grow in him. We're going to identify those this morning in the passage before us. Rusted read it earlier. We're going to walk through it slowly, here in a moment. I want you to notice, as we walk through this, a pattern. The pattern is, he's going to say, here, 5 areas of your life, here's the old behavior. Here's what you used to look like, and here's the new behavior. Here's what you need to put off. Here's what you need to put on, and then he's going to give us the reason, the motivation, the why. Quit doing this, start doing this, because that's going to be the format we're going to see as we walk through this. You're going to notice here that these old behaviors are what comes most natural to us. It's very natural to do the things he's going to tell us to quit doing. What Jesus changes here is he changes our heart. He changes our attitude, and we want to begin to follow him and do what's not natural as he transforms our lives. Now, here's the challenge. Five things here. It's gonna be a lot to get through very quickly. I don't expect anyone here to remember all five of these. I hope you'll take notes as we go through this. I don't expect you to remember all five, and it's a pretty daunting task to really focus on all five this week. So here's my challenge for you. As we talk about these 5 areas that Jesus wants to transform our life, I want you to pick out the one that you think you want to see God begin to transform the most this week. It's one thing, right? You tackle all five, but I want you to really say, God, what's the one thing, as we put these up on the screen, as we walk through the passage, ask the Lord, God, what's one area of my life that needs to be transformed by the gospel? Which one of these is what you most want to do in my life right now, taking off, what was old, putting on what is new in my walk with you? Let's jump in. The first is this, that we need to turn from lying to truth telling, because we are members of the same body. Look at verse 25. Therefore, having put away falsehood, each one of you should speak the truth with his brother, for we are members of one another. The first move is pretty straightforward. Stop lying, start telling the truth. Get rid of falsehood in your life, verse 25 says, and replace it with truthful speech. Now, there's a lot we could say about dishonest speech. What he's saying here at the surface is dishonest speech has no place in the life of the Christ follower. But the context here is talking specifically about the dishonesty we speak to one another within the body of Christ. Now, we should stop lying. You're lying to your boss, lying to your teacher, lying to your parents, lying. We need to get rid of all falsehood in our lives. But he's speaking specifically here within the context of the body of Christ. We need to begin to speak the truth to one another within the body. Now, the Paul, the writer here, has used the body metaphor in previous verses to speak of our unity in Christ, that we're united in Christ. He says, our union in Christ puts us in union with one another. We say a lot that your relationship with Jesus is a personal relationship, but it's not a private relationship. When you started following Jesus. You entered into the family of those who are following Jesus. And we do this in community with one another. And so we say it here, we need to stop doing things that harm the body. We're connected to each other, and our lying hurts each other, and our truthfulness builds up the body of Christ. A healthy person doesn't harm his or her own body. It's a problem. If one part of your body lies to another part of your body. If you're reaching for a pan in the oven, and your brain says it's probably not hot. And your hand touches it and it's hot, that's a problem for your hand, that your brain lied to your hand about that pan. Sometimes as I'm getting older, I realize that my brain lies to my body. And my brain will say, you can do this thing that you used to be able to do. And then you do it, and you say, ouch, that my knee, my knee says, cut it out. That's a lie. You just said I could do this and I can't do that. Sometimes you'll go somewhere to eat. And your nose, your sense of smell, and your taste buds will tell you, it's okay to eat this, and then your stomach says, that is a bad idea, to eat that, about every 10 years, for some reason, I say, White Castle sounds good. And then a couple hours later, my stomach said, that's a lie. You see, one part of your body lies to another part of your body is harmful to the body. What he's saying here is, when you lie to one another, When we lie to one another, it hurts us, it hurts the body. Think about your life. Are you being truthful? You mean truth? I spent a lot of time this week thinking about it. What does that look like? Because I think that when we tell an outright lie to someone, It's pretty obvious, but I think there are times that we are not completely truthful with one another within the body of Christ, and it hurts us, and it hurts one another. You have some examples. Sometimes we, out of pride, will stretch the truth a little bit. We'll exaggerate things about our own life. We wanna build ourselves up to look better. And we'll say things that just aren't entirely true because we're prideful people. That's not consistent with our walk with Christ. Sometimes we put on a facade to impress other people. We wear a mask. We want to present ourselves to be better than we really are. We're not really authentic with one another, transparent with one another. And when we lie to one another, by the facade that we present. It's hurting our own spiritual growth. It's hurting those around us. When we make false claims about other people, when we spread false information, when we spread exaggerated or misleading or unverified information in the form of gossip, it harms the body. So that's not consistent with your walk with Christ. When we go to make dishonest attempts to hide our own sin from others, We lie or fail to admit our own up to our own sin when confronted. We lie to one another. We hurt the body, we hurt each other by hiding our sin from one another. We fail to live with transparency when we betray a confidence that someone confided in us, when we break a promise, when we make fake excuses to get out of serving someone or helping someone. We were real honest, we realized, I'm dishonest a lot. I'm not always truthful. It was caused through the scripture, be completely honest with one another for the good of the body. And so by way of application, we ask ourselves, let me challenge you to ask the Lord, God, is there anything, any dishonesty in me that's harming my own spiritual growth or the growth of the body? Is there ways that I'm not truthful? I'm not authentic, I'm not transparent, and it's hurting one another. God, is there a way that I should be more transparent, more honest, for the sake of my own spiritual growth, for the health of my church that I'm a part of? Can I be honest, put away the line and the falsehood, and be truthful in how you approach one another, because it's healthy for the body, he's saying. Second, Turn from uncontrolled anger to self-control so we don't give opportunities to the devil. Turn from your uncontrolled anger to self-control because you're going to give Satan the opportunity, if you don't. Verse 26, be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. This is a quote, actually, from the Old Testament. Psalm 4/4 says this, be angry and do not sin. Ponder in your own hearts, on your beds and be silent. Now let's talk about anger. It is, to some degree, unrealistic to think that we'll ever have our lives completely rid of anger. There's a level in which anger is a natural emotion that we're going to spontaneously experience, and you're not going to really have a lot of control over the instant that anger hits your heart. I was talking to a guy recently, as a new believer, and he said, I'm really struggling with anger. I feel like I get angry at work, I get angry at home, I get angry, and I said, well, God's not going to take away all of your emotions when you begin to follow Jesus, but he's transformed the way you view them. And so what's happening in this man's life, it's bothering him now that he acts that way. Now God's not going to remove the anger, but God's going to put conviction in his life of how he deals with that. Let me give you an example. There are times where we will get angry just like we'll get sad or we'll laugh or we'll be afraid, right? If I hide around the corner, Josh, and jump out and scare you. In your initial reaction, you can't control that. I startled you. Now, you also aren't supposed to walk every day of your life constantly in fear, but you can't control that moment that it hits you. If something funny happens, and you laugh, you can't control that. If I fell down these stairs. Well, I guess, they said that's how you're getting old. If you fall down and they laugh, you're young. If you fall down and they all run to you, you're old. So I don't know. I'm about to fall sometime and see what you think of me. But if I, the other day, I'm just a terrible person. A little kid at Bible school walked into the glass between the 2 doors, just like bang. And I laughed. Now, this would wrong me, though, to follow the kid around all day and ridicule. And that's the boy that ran into the glass. We're going to play back the video of the security cameras for everyone to see. Now that's become wrong, right? If you're watching a movie and you tear up because something sad happens, there's a level of that that you didn't control the emotional response to that scene in that movie. But you can't walk around sad for the rest of the week because of that scene in that movie. See the point I'm making? There's an emotion that hits us. It's what we do with it that matters. So, if I'm driving in traffic, I'm sure this has never happened to anybody in this room, and somebody cuts you off all of a sudden, right? There is a hit of adrenaline of anger that just hits you because someone just about crashed into your car. That you cannot control. What you can control is what you do over the next few seconds and few minutes, right? You do not have to chase up and catch up with the person. And give hand gestures, or cut in front of them, or jump on Facebook and say, to the guy in the truck on 152, now we've taken that anger too far, right? You can't control the hit of the anger that hits you. You can control what you do with that, that's what he's saying here. Be angry, but don't sin, and don't let the sun go down on it. Don't dwell on it. Don't let this fester. Don't let this grow. Don't let this control you. Yeah, you're going to get angry. Don't stay angry. Yes, you're going to get angry. Don't sin in your anger. When the anger comes, and it will. Don't let it control you, don't let it grip you, don't let it fester inside of you. Why? Because he says, when you do that, you give an opportunity to the devil. Some translate this, you give a foothold to the devil. It's actually a military term. You surrender ground to the devil's side in the conflict. deal with it quickly. Get over it quickly, because it's going to grow, and the devil's going to get his foot in the door, and this is going to lead to problems for you, for your family, for your church if you let this control you. And so this week, we'll get cut off in traffic. We'll be treated rudely or unfairly. Something's not going to go our way. In that moment, what are we going to do? You can get mad, but you can't be mean. You're going to get mad. I mean, you get to be rude about it. Doesn't mean you have to lash out. It's something we always have to be mindful of to not do what comes natural to us. Anybody get hit by the hailstorm a few months ago. I had to deal with all that, if you have several people. I had our home and a rental property that I have that got hit. I deal with all the insurance stuff. And, you know, they send you the check at the beginning, and they send you another check later, and they put the mortgage company on it. You gotta go to the bank, get the mortgage company to sign it if you have a loan on it. It's a big hassle. So I go to 3 banks. That's to deal with. First two, in and out, they sign the check, sign the check, five minutes out the door, third bank. They say, Oh, there's only one lady who can do this, and she's not here today. You have to come back tomorrow. Come back tomorrow. Oh, she's here today, but she's in immediate. You have to come back later this afternoon. Finally, now I get frustrated. not cursing at the bank teller. don't get too carried away here, but I'm mad. And you could tell I'm mad. And I'm acting kind of like a jerk, because I'm mad about this situation. And I didn't handle it well. And I felt really convicted, that I was frustrated about this lady's side of this check, and I just didn't handle it in a way that glorified Jesus. So get the roof on, get the check back, the next check, I got to wreck that same bank. And I literally did this. This is what I'm going to challenge you to. I sat in my car and I said, Lord, that lady's probably not in there, is she? And they're going to tell me to come back, and God, I'm probably going to get mad. Would you help me not act like a jerk when I get mad when that lady's not there? And I walked in, and guess what? wasn't there? And I said, I'll come back. Y'all have a good day. And I walked out. I felt way different on the 2nd visit than the 1st visit. I got mad both times. It was what I did with my anger because I was worried. I don't want to go in here and act an unchry-like manner over a dumb signature on a check. And so let me challenge you this week. Think about your emotional, your sinful responses to the emotions that we experience. Ask the Lord. God, is there a way, a play area in my life or my anger is leading me to sin? I'm frustrated. I'm disappointed. I get angry. God help me to not let that turn to sin till that anger to give birth to sin. God, is there an area in my life where Satan has been given a tactical advantage in his war against me and my family. Because I've let my anger open the door to Satan's attack on my life. Satan's attack on my family. Satan's attack on my marriage. Satan's attack on my church. Be angry, but don't sin. God transforms our uncontrolled, natural, uncontrolled response to anger to a Christ-like, controlled, Christ honoring response to those moments in life where things don't go our way. Third, turn from theft to honest work. So you can show generosity to others. Verse 28. Let the thief no longer steal. But rather, let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Notice the pattern here. It's not just stop doing this, but it stop doing this and replace it with this. Everything we're told to get rid of, we're given something virtuous to replace it with. So he says, exchange your thievery for honest, hard work. Quit stealing and get an honest job and do honest work. And then when you do honest work, do good with the resources that God gives you. They're transformed from a selfish thief to a selfless, hardworking person of generosity. That's what Jesus does in our life. The ultimate goal is no longer selfish prophet. It's an opportunity for greater generosity as followers of Jesus. The purpose of getting is giving. And God gives us so we can gives to us so we can give it to others so we can help us. We can generous to others. So the Bible is very clear. I went on the time to go through, we could put, look at all kinds of scriptures this week, just stand down, put them up there. The Bible's very clear that we're called to hard, honest, diligent work. It's all over the scriptures. Work hard, whatever the Lord has set before you. Do it with all your heart, do it with all your strength, do it honestly. Don't cheat the system. Don't cut corners, don't defraud people. Don't look for little windows of opportunity to have the financial advantage in a situation. Do honest, hard work that gives glory to God. And when you do that, take the resources he gives you to be a blessing to other people. So we ask ourselves, God, am I guilty of this? How am I guilty of theft in any way? And I'd say, if you're thinking about, like, nobody, hopefully, no one here is going to rob a bank today or shoplift at Walmart. I hope that's not in your plans for the afternoon, but we're all guilty of cheating the system. We're all guilty of cutting corners. We're all guilty of not being completely honest in all of our financial practices. God, show me areas where I'm not being honest. You see it. I may be getting away with it, but God, you see it, convict me of where I'm not being honest here. God, am I doing an honest day's work with my hands? Am I giving my all for your glory? God convict me of any laziness that exists in my life and help me give you my awe. And then, Lord, am I being generous with what you've given me? Let me tell you something that I used to hear all that, you've heard it all the time, and I used to believe this, but I've come to not think this is true. And that's the phrase, money can't buy happiness. You ever hear that? Money can't buy happiness for that. I want to say, if you say money can't buy happiness, you're using money the wrong way. You're using money the wrong way. Because I found in my life when I use the money God gives me to bless my family and bless others, it actually makes me happy. I think there's happiness in a hard day's work, and then take the resources from that hard day's work, and using those resources to be a blessing to other people. There's happiness in that. So if you're not, if you're making money and not happy, uh, come see me, I'll show you some ways that you could use that money. Let me give you an example. We did a mission trip to Ecuador a couple weeks ago. I was out last Sunday. And when we were planning this trip, the people were working with said, you know what would be cool? The kids there don't have access to a lot of sports equipment. If we could give a soccer ball to every kid, that would be an amazing blessing, and kids will show up. And we found out during the camp, two of the days were World Cup matches. And which is not going to be a problem? And the pastor said, not if they know they got to come to get their soccer ball, and they showed up over 100 kids every day. At the end of the day, now you know why we were to buy the soccer balls. A family called me up and said, we want to support the Ecuador trip. What's something we can do to help you? And I said, they want us to buy soccer balls for all the kids? And the pastor found a place you could buy 120 soccer balls, and he gave me the price. I called this family, I gave them the price. They donated the money, and we went down to Ecuador, and we bought 120 soccer balls. And here's a picture of us crowded in the pastor's car with 120 soccer balls behind us. And a picture of all those kids holding up their soccer ball. Let me tell you, when those kids got that soccer ball, they were happy. money bought happiness, generosity bought happiness for those kids. And I took that picture, and I texted it to that family that donated the money, and I promise you they were happy. They were money, that picture bought happiness in their life, because they got to see, we, God blessed us, we pass on to bless others. And here's the response of that. Their hearts were filled with happiness because of their ability to bless other people. And so if you're approaching money honestly, if you're putting in a hard, honest day's work, and then you're using those resources to provide for your family and bless others, you're going to see the joy of what that looks like in your life. So stop stealing, stop being lazy, work hard, work on us, take what God's given you to bless other people. That's what a transformed life looks like. Fourth. Turn from harmful speech to gracious speech, so you can build up one another. Turn from harmful speech to gracious speech. Look at verse 29. Verse 29 says, let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth. Now, what is corrupting talk? Some translations of the Bible translate this foul language? Let no foul language come out of your mouth? The original word in the original language was often used to refer to like spoiled fish or rotten fruit. When the fish spoils, it was rotten. Don't let your words be like rotten fish. Now, what does that mean? I think there's a lot you could apply that to. But in this context, I think in the context, he's not talking about just general foul language we use. I think he's talking in this context about abusive, hurtful, harmful language we use toward one another. Look at the context of verse 29. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth. So get rid of the corrupting talk, and replace it with what? What is good for building up? As fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. So get rid of corrupting talk, replace it with talk that builds up. Some translate it, get rid of abusive language. It's a better translation in the context. It's not just bad words. It's hurtful words. It's that tear down other people. Anything that I say that hurts someone else, injures someone else, or stirs up division or dissension within the body, don't just stop saying wrong things, start saying right things. Get rid of hurtful language and speak words of grace to one another. The mouth and the heart are connected. What he's saying here is that Jesus changes your heart, he's going to change your words. He changes your heart, he's going to change what comes out of your mouth. And what comes out of your mouth is not reflecting what Jesus has done in your heart, that's a problem. Notice verse 30. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. That's heavy. Not what he's saying there? Our harmful speech grieves the spirit of God. God is grief. It causes God sorrow. When I use my words to tear down other people. That puts a heaviness on the words that we use. And so we should avoid the temptation, the natural temptation, to be critical. To be hurtful. to be judgmental. Stop tearing people down with our words, he says, start, stop spreading dissension and gossip, and instead look for ways to honor and encourage one another. I realize how natural it is, how our natural tendency is negativity. And what he's saying here is Jesus transforms that. There's something that men do. I don't know if women do it. I don't notice women do it. You want to tell me if y'all do this, but men are terrible about this. The critical sarcasm we use usually ingest, but we don't know how to turn it off. For example, you'll say, I'll meet someone and I'll say, hey, do you know someone will say, my friend Josh goes to your church, I think, is, yeah, he does go to my church, and they say, yeah, oh, Josh, he's a handful, isn't he? I bet he's a challenge. I bet he's hard to pastor. I bet he keeps you. I bet you pray a lot of prayers for him. That's our tendency, right? What they ought to say is, man, Josh is great. I bet he's a real hard worker at the church. He's always over helping our family. Is he like that at church? Yeah, he is. He's the one that puts up the Bible school sign all the time every year. We love what we don't do that, do we? We come with a sarcastic, critical snide comment. Someone today jokily said, but sarcasm is my spiritual gift. Yeah, we feel that way sometimes, don't we? But I was taught to Shannon Bradley. He was part of our church. He went with our launch team to the riverside campus, and we were talking about this. I said, yeah, it gets to be my pet peeve after all. You're around a bunch of men. It just every comment is like a jab, a jab, a jab. And it just kind of wears me out. And then a few weeks later, I met a guy and he said, hey, I think we have a mutual friend. I said, who's that? He said, Shannon Bradley. I said, yeah, I love Shan. He goes, oh, Shannon. And he just immediately went to, like, some sarcastic jazz. And I called Chin, I said, This guy just did it to you. The thing that I complain about. How ironic is that that we were just having this? What if we just said this week? I'm gonna dial back the sarcasm. And the criticism. and affirm people, encourage people. I ran into someone the other day. I know her dad well, and I had never met her. And I said, I know your dad. And what my natural tendency was is to make some joke about her dad. Instead, I said this. The Lord caught me and I said, your dad is so proud of you. Every time he talks about you, he brags on you about how awesome you're doing and how proud of you, you know, your dad just brags on you every chance he gets. And you could just see her sort of like light up with those affirming words. What do we say this week? God, get rid of the rotten criticism and judgment and negativity that pours out of me so often and replace it with speech that builds up, that affirms and encourages. Finally. Turn from bitter resentment to tender hearted forgiveness. Because we have experienced God's grace. This bitterness is illicit in verse 31. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander, be put away from you, along with all malice. Now you could spend a lot of time to break down this list, but you could see how these things come really natural to us, don't they? Bitterness, that smoldering resentment. Someone harmed you in some way and you just can't let go of that offense. to get rid of it. Wrath. That's an outburst of the moment. I let my anger burst forth in wrath and my words or my actions. He said, get rid of that. Clamor. That's shouting and harsh words. This is no place. This harsh words we speak, have no place in the life of a follower. of Jesus. I often think it would be embarrassing if Someone put cameras in all of our cars as we drove to church on Sunday and then we roll back the video for everyone. There's a lot of clamor in our vehicles before we jump out with a smile on our face and say, isn't it good to be in the house of the Lord, pastor? And we were just screaming at our wife for being late, getting out the door, yelling at our kids because they couldn't find their shoes or whatever it was. Let's get rid of the clamor. And the shouting and the anger and the wrath. All of it, he says, verse 31. All of it needs to be put away. And replace it, verse 32 with kindness to one another. Be tenderhearted, forgiving one another as Christ forgave you. We get rid of the resentment, and we replace it with forgiveness. Why? Because that's what God did for us. He forgave us and showed us his grace. We forgive because he forgave us. Colossians 3.13. Forgive each other as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. We think about the amazing ways God has forgiven us. It's shameful to withhold forgiveness from people who have wronged us. Jesus dealt with this in Matthew 18. He was asked this question. Peter said, Lord, how many times should I forgive my brother, is 7 times enough? And Jesus said, no? Not 7 times, 77 times, he says in that text, in other context, he says 70 times seven. You forgive an over and over again. then he tells a parable. He said, there was this king, and a lot of people owed the king money. And so the king said, I'd like to cash in on some of my debts. And so we called a man before him, and he said, you owe me 10,000 talents. And I want it back now. And the man said, king, I can't do that. And he fell on his knees, and he pleaded with the king, and he said, there's no way I could pay you back king. Would you please forgive me? And the king said, you know what? I'll forgive you. I'll forgive you. I won't throw you into prison. I'm going to just forgive the debt. The man leaves the presence of the king. He comes across the man who owes him a 100 dinari, a 100 dinari. And he sees this man, he starts choking this man, and he throws this man in debtors prison. Well, someone saw that happen, and they told the king, and they said, king, you know that man you forgave the 10,000 talent? He just beat up a guy in the streets who owed him 100 denari. And the king was furious. And the king says, you wicked servants, I forgave you all the debt, you owed me, yet you wouldn't forgive this man who owed you money and he threw the man in prison. Now, you get the general point of that story, right? Even without the historical background there. But the 1st one for reader, it would have hit them even harder. You know how much money that is, a denarius is a day's wage. So that second man who was thrown in prison, he owed about 100 days wages, about a third of your annual salary. That's what he owed. You know what 10,000 talents is? I look this up. A talent is equivalent to 6,000 denary. So what he was forgiven was 60 million denary. 60 million! He's forgiven, and he beats this guy up over 100. You see the numbers there? You see the math? The math is this. There's no way you could ever pay back 60 million. Now, you could pay back one third of your salary. You've probably been in debt to the tune of a third of your salary at some point in your life, and you can see, realistically, paying off one third of your salary. You cannot conceive of paying off millions of dollars. God has forgiven our mountain of debt. And then we want to go after someone for this little minuscule thing we think were owed by them. He said, God, think, consider all that God has forgiven. Our lives ought to be marked by kindness and compassion, grace and mercy. When we realize what all has been shown to us. John 13, 34, Jesus said, a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I've loved you. You also are to love one another. He changes it. Now our lives are by love, by compassion, by grace, by forgiveness, instead of bitterness, and anger, and wrath, and resentment. Are you withholding forgiveness from someone? I was sitting in church, 2 studies ago in Ecuador. The pastor's preaching, trying to follow along with my limited Spanish as I'm learning. And so I get my phone out. I open Google Translate. I put this, hit the subscribe button. And while he's preaching, I'm reading the sermon as he's preaching. He's in the book of Romans. He's preaching about the call of Christ to love one another in the church, to love one another in the body. And I don't know how this translates in Spanish. I'm gonna tell you what it said in Google Translate. He said this statement to his church. He said, this is a place where we're striving to love one another. And he said, if you're not going to try to love each other. When the service ends, I want you to find one of the pastors, and I want you to say, you want to withdraw your membership from this church. None of that was softer in Spanish. It may have been, but that's pretty bold in Google Translate. He said, if you're not gonna try to love each other. then this is not the place for you. Because this is a place where we recognize that we've been loved by God. We've been forgiven by God. And if people who have been loved by God and forgiven by God, are compelled to love and forgive other people, is there a place where you're withholding forgiveness? Is there a relationship? Where you need to forgive. In an Uber one time, the driver was an old man, older man. We got the talk, he told me he'd been married 50 years. I said, what's the key to 50 years of marriage? He said, simple forgiveness. Forgiveness And then he paused and he said, sooner or later, someone's gonna screw up and need to be forgiven. He said, that's how you make it 50 years. That's the key to the Christian life. Forgiveness when we fail each other. So what's the area you need to work on? Is it anger or truthfulness? generosity, love, forgiveness. What was the area? So you put these 5 on the screen? Don't call it out loud, but name it before the Lord. God, my life is not reflecting my walk with you in this area. Jesus, I want you to transform this. Now let me say one more thing before we close. Don't get confused by this. This is about the fruit that flows from the life of someone who's following Jesus. These are not 5 steps to be right with God. There's nothing we can do to be right with God, except turn to his son Jesus Christ, who die on the cross for our sins. It's not he would say, do these 5 things and then God will love you. Do these 5 things and then God will forgive you. Do these 5 things and then you get to go to heaven. We turn to Jesus. Our only hope is Jesus. And then Jesus changes our heart. And when Jesus changes our heart, then these 5 areas begin to be transformed as fruit of our relationship with Jesus. So maybe your step today is to turn to Jesus. To recognize your sinfulness and your need for a savior, to turn from your sin and say, Jesus, I want to repent of my sins and follow you and trust you. to give my life to you. What's your prayer today? Let's go to the Lord. If you're here today and you're not a follower of Jesus. Maybe your prayer is this. God, I know that I need Jesus in my life. I know that I'm a sinner. I know that I can't save myself. I know my only hope is Jesus, God. I want to turn right now from my sin to trust Jesus. to put my faith in Jesus and to follow him. God, change my heart, forgive me. Maybe you are a follower, Jesus. Your prayer is God. My words are harsh. Replace them with encouraging words. God, my heart is full of bitterness. Replace it with a heart of forgiveness and compassion. God, I'm always looking to cut corners and to be selfish. Make my heart, heart of honesty and generosity. It's the area of your life you need to submit. Take a moment, lay that before the Lord. Jesus, we know that you are our only hope for salvation. We, on our own, we see a list of things that we naturally do wrong. We need you to transform our hearts. I pray for people here who may not be followers of Jesus, that their heart would be open to their need for a savior. And for those who are following you, Jesus, convict us, search our hearts and show us, where our lives are not demonstrating the fruit of the new life you've called us to. Help us to lay aside the sins of our former life. And with your help and by your grace, put on these virtues of our new life. Motivated by the unity that we share. The grace that we've received. that our lives would honor you. We pray for your help. Only you can do this in us. We trust you, and we submit to you in Jesus' name. Amen.