Expounds on the Christian walk of worthiness, emphasizing the importance of lowliness, meekness, and long-suffering as foundational attitudes for unity and pleasing God. Drawing from Ephesians 4:2, it contrasts worldly self-confidence with divine approval, illustrating these virtues through biblical examples like Moses and Peter. The core lesson is that true Christian character is not about outward actions but inward humility and dependence on God, leading to patient and loving interactions with others. The message concludes by urging believers to pray for a hatred of their own sins as a shortcut to cultivating these essential Christ-like qualities.
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Chapter four we've been considering in general the theme the worthy walk and after a great prayer of asking great things from a great God in Ephesians four one the Apostle now makes an appeal I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation to which ye are called, with all loneliness and meekness, with long suffering, forbearing one another in love.
From these verses stem all the remainder of the practical instructions in the book of Ephesians. The attitudes that are called forth here are the attitudes that make God happy. We can do things without these attitudes, but if you read in First Corinthians thirteen, you find out that everything that has been done, that hasn't had as its underlying motivation, loves, is absolutely worthless.
Now this should be for each of us a tremendous warning because in first Corinthians thirteen the author will say even if you're a martyr you give your body over to be burned for the name of Christ and you don't have love it's been a wasted sacrifice If you have such gifts of utterance that you can expound the knowledge of the universe for the believers and you don't have love, it's of no value.
And the idea seems to be when he talks about tongues, he says, if you had all the languages known to man, and you could preach the gospel in every one of them if you didn't have love it'd be a gift that was wasted on you so underlying what we do is what we are there's the foundation but the things that God likes aren't the things that man likes the things that God the attitude that God approves of is not the attitude written about in how to win friends and influence people.
It's not the attitude of self-confidence. It's not the attitude of a sense of the rightness of myself. Rather, it's a different sense. And we looked at the first one here in verse two with all lowliness. There's an interesting, it says all lowliness. Every one of us undoubtedly has some area in which we feel somewhat humbled. Ask me to come to your house and help you put up shelves. You will find out that you have brought into your house a wrecker.
When I was young and worked at Pine Bush Bible Camp, there was an old man that was saved who was a cabinet maker. He was a cabinet maker in the area of Short Hills, New Jersey. He was from the Ukraine. And men worth hundreds of millions of dollars considered an honor to have Leon Colchisky put up cabinets in their houses. And he was a craftsman beyond craftsman, was saved relatively late in life. He was drunk on a Christmas Eve, laying on top of a bar, and some people came by singing carols. And his daughter, who had been saved, wanted him to be saved, and went out, and they sobered him up, and he became a Christian.
He didn't have even an Old Testament in Ukrainian. He didn't read English. But this man also had a vision for Pine Bush Bible Camp, and he expected you to build cabins and put roofs on the way he did cabinet work in the homes of multi-millionaires. He says, this is the Lord's job. And he was reduced to calling me a shoemaker. That was one of his greatest insults for craftsmanship. So I have lots of reason to be humble. when it comes to hammering nails and doing building. But that's not what it says here. It says with all lowliness, with all lowliness.
There's a basic attitude that God values. Turn with me, just keep your finger in Ephesians four to Isaiah chapter fifty seven. I consider this to be one of the great verses in the Bible, which means I like it. It's a verse that God has used to speak in loud, unmistakable terms to me. Isaiah fifty-seven, fifteen, for thus saith the High and Holy One, who inhabiteth eternity whose name is holy.
There's a tremendous concentration now on the greatness of God. I dwell in the high and holy place with who? Who does this God who is exalted in infinite majesty above all of his creatures? Who does this God who inhabits eternity who alone possesses immortality. He is the only one that can give unending life. He possesses it in himself. His name is holy. Who does he like to be with?
Who does he want to dwell with? Who does he want to fellowship with? Now you get a really nice description of that person. He says, I dwell in the high and holy place with him also who is of a contrite and humble spirit. I don't want to exegete this verse because I don't get off it too easily. With him also, the person that is fitted for living with God in the high and holy place is the person who is of a contrite and humble spirit. The world leader? Is that who God is? No, no. The person who really knows what to do and how to do it?
No. The person who is of a contrite or broken and humble spirit. The person who says to God, I do not work well. I'm not very capable. Now we're not talking here about pseudo humility. Oswald Chambers talks about having inferior misgivings about the ability of Jesus. And he talks about the woman at the well. And Jesus says to her now, you know, if you had the water that I give, you'll never thirst again.
And so she has these misgivings. She says, sir, the well is deep and you don't have anything to draw with. Her idea of what Jesus could do was severely limited. It improved fast. It really grew quickly. Well, we're not talking about those feelings of inferiority, which are a result of background. You know, we live in an age of endemic inferiority, feelings of inferiority. And we're not talking about those things. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about that lowliness of mind before God that typified the Lord Jesus. The dependent man.
The dependent woman. I know, God, that I am not going to make a mess of this. The man and woman who has come to a conviction that what Jesus says, without me, ye can do nothing, is really true. Not that you talk about it, but now you're coming quickly to believe that, that that's true. And so lowliness is one of those things that God values highly. It's one of those things without which you cannot have unity with the believers.
It's impossible. Because as soon as one believer thinks they're better than the other one, envy comes in and with envy comes strife. Comes in. Now the next one is meekness, with all lowliness and meekness. I have to move right ahead here. It's the idea of mildness and gentleness of character. If you remember from what we read in Matthew chapter eleven, you'll remember that the Lord Jesus says, I am meek. and lowly in heart. The word used here was used to describe an animal that was completely disciplined and controlled.
Now we had a cat for nineteen and a half years which died and was never under our control one second of the nineteen and a half years. My wife had named her Cleopatra. and she thought she was queen of the Nile that's one reason she lived so long because she was so feisty I used to take great amusement in my own thought that if Jesus came into the room Cleo would do exactly what Jesus wanted her to do she would she would know who was the master so we have another cat now I sort of thought we're a little too old to be trained by another cat but she's training us she's still ready to play long after my wife and I are done.
Meekness describes an animal that was completely disciplined and controlled. It has an attitude of submissiveness. It has this attitude of not asserting one's own importance or authority. The great example is the Lord Jesus. And the Lord Jesus draws our attention to Numbers chapter twelve. which I'd like you to turn to, when he talks about the meekest man in all the earth. And the meekest man in all the earth had had a great deal of education from God.
And it's Moses. Moses spent forty years in Pharaoh's court learning how to get everything done. Josephus is not a highly reliable historian, but he postulates Moses as being the captain of the armies of Pharaoh. He gives some historical evidence of him being a leading general, the leading general. And so Moses sees an Egyptian hurting one of his Jewish brethren, he kills them.
That's the opposite of Meek, understands. That's the very opposite. He just kills him. And he has to run. And he doesn't understand why these guys don't realize that he's the one to deliver Israel. We read that in Hebrews. And so then he spends forty years of graduate education as a shepherd. And when God is done with that forty years, Moses is not going around killing people. God says, now I want you to go back to Egypt and Moses says, who? Me? He's so humbled now.
He's had forty years of being humbled to the point where he has no confidence in himself and he has no confidence even in what God says to do. God says, I'm going to tell you what to say. Oh, send somebody else. I can't talk. So now he's had eighty years of education. And he took Aaron, God gave him Aaron to be the spokesman, and that was a source of no small problem. Aaron's the guy that leads the people to create this golden calf and other things. And then in the last forty years, Moses gets his postgraduate education.
He's surrounded by a proud and stiff-necked people that aggravated him every day. and it's now that the Lord can say he's the meekest man in all the earth he's a man that's really under control and we know that when Moses fell and disobeyed God and struck the rock the second time that he was revealing that he wasn't me he wasn't really as under control and he paid a high price he did not go into the land he spent all these years leading the people he's going to spend forty years leading the people through the wilderness to lead him into the land and for one act of sin he doesn't go into the land listen we should be very serious the more light the greater the responsibility all he did was hit the rock instead of speaking to it and he didn't go into the land we're talking about a serious serious thing well Moses is said to be the meekest man in all the earth and in Numbers chapter twelve his brother and sister are complaining about his
wife and then they they go further and they complain and say has the Lord spoke indeed spoken only by Moses Hathy not also spoken by us. There's a little verse here. There's a little phrase here now in verse two. Look at the end of verse two. It says, and the Lord heard it. Meekness is required among the believers. And meekness doesn't attack your brother or sister. And meekness does not respond to the attack. Moses doesn't defend himself.
The Lord heard it. It used to be a plaque or a sign that, you know, when I was younger, saw people's houses. And I haven't seen it recently. I haven't seen any of them. But it said, the Lord is the unseen listener to every conversation. Well, let me tell you. That's true. And the sins of the tongue do more to devour and break apart the unity of the believers than anything else. God hates it. Moses doesn't even respond.
Verse three, Now the man Moses was very meek above all the men who were upon the face of the earth. And so he doesn't respond. Here they're complaining about him. They're saying, you know, well, God's spoken by us and who do you think you are? He doesn't even respond to them. He is so meek. He is so under God's control that he doesn't even defend himself. But God defends him. And it was only through the prayers of Moses that Miriam gets away with her life. That's how much God didn't like Miriam saying something bad about her brother Moses. I'm just going to smite them with leprosy. I'm going to be done with them.
You know, you need some perspective on these things. We think that, you know, we said this or we talked about this and we blackballed this person and we backfit this person and we think it doesn't, you know, well, we know the Bible says it's not bad. We shouldn't do it. But God is not going to really hurt us. He would have hurt Miriam if Moses hadn't prayed for him. And so he's the meekest man on all the earth, and that means that he was a man that was really under God's control. Now, back to Ephesians four, we are instructed that we are to practice in our relationships with others all loneliness and meekness. This tremendous urgency to defend ourselves when attacked.
This tremendous unwillingness to quietly give a reason for something to somebody that asks us. We are to be meek. We are to be under God's control. And that does not mean that you sit at a table, and if you're under God's control, you don't begin to defame other believers, because then you're not under God's control. You don't begin to criticize and complain about these other believers. Oswald Chambers says this too. It's a wonderful statement. God gives discernment. Let us suppose that you see someone, and they're going down a road that really leads to severe difficulties.
Oswald Chambers says, God gives us discernment, not for criticism, but for intercession. I had an elder come to me a few months ago, and he was concerned. He said, Paul... Last night we had a meeting and we were discussing a difficult situation and we just went on and on in such detail that I started to think we were back fighting rather than sharing legitimate information. He says, how can I tell? I said to him, I'll tell you how you can tell.
It's what you do with the information. Has the information forced you to your knees about that situation? Has the information provoked you to go to a brother and warn him or a sister and counsel her? He says, no. I said, you were backbiting. You were backbiting is what you were doing. God gives discernment. Now, you may see wisdom may be given to you to say, now this is not the best path to follow. There's no time to illustrate it, but this is not the best path to follow. You haven't been given that enlightenment so that you can criticize.
You have been given that enlightenment so that you can intercede for them. If any man see his brother sin as sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and God will for him give life to them that sin not unto death. That's first John five. And you see this? And if you're meek, you take the information and run with it to God and not to somebody else. Do you understand? It's real clear. This is not hard to understand. This is really crystal clear. With all meekness and long suffering.
Of course, my life goes through the normal ups and downs. But I would say the last eight or nine months, the long suffering of God has been my favorite attribute. That shifts from time to time. What does it mean to be long suffering? A slowness in avenging, wrong, or retaliating when harmed by another. a slowness in revenging, avenging wrong, or retaliating when hurt by another. When God appears on the mountain to declare His glory before Moses in Exodus thirty-four, He says, The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, and the next word is long-suffering.
Long-suffering. And time after time, it's used of God's patience with men. When I open my eyes in the morning, I reflect on the fact that today is still the day of grace. And that somebody will take a course like Born to Win, or will take a course like what the Bible teaches, or somebody in some place in the world will open up an Emmaus course and because it's the day of God's long-suffering grace will come to faith in Jesus Christ I would like to have the Lord's return as much as I would like anything I also would like to see more people saved they have a mixed motive my wife has five brothers all married all with children, only one of whom is really a Christian, one other made a profession.
Her stepfather is not a Christian. Now, when I pray for him, he really is a very, very, very unpleasant man. And I always tell God that if you save Walter Nugent, it would be a feather in your cap. It would. If Walter Nugent got transformed, Everybody that knew I would have to say, oh, that's a great God. You'd have to say it. I really don't want them to go to hell. One of her brothers lived with us the first year we were married. Things were so bad at home. I love them almost like a son. I don't want them to go to hell. Long suffering is that characteristic of God in which he holds off.
the just judgment that he would pour upon this earth and keeps the door open for the day of grace now that is one of the things that should characterize our relationship with each other our relationship with each other this person has hurt you now we're not talking about imagined wrongs we're talking about a real wrong What are you going to do? What are you going to do? If you're smart, you're going to pray for them. You're going to suffer long.
You're not going to react. You're not going to retaliate. You're not going to take vengeance upon that person. You're not going to wait until you get them in some kind of difficult position. If you read the history of the exclusive brethren, It is, there are some very ugly things, there's some wonderful things too. But you know, as I read through the great two-volume series by Napoleon Noel, he was excommunicated the day it was printed because they said he was causing trouble. But he prints the letters that people sent back and forth as really, if you want to read something depressing, it's depressing.
But you know one of the things that I think I saw in the history was that often individuals would have a basic disagreement with somebody else and they waited and found an occasion when they did some little thing wrong and the exclusive meetings around the world were split over it. One case in point was a woman who felt that her father's partner, all in the same meeting, had not been fair to him. And she found him in a very tiny wrong in the business.
And she took that very tiny wrong and she wrote letters around the world and called on everybody to judge the question, which was a reference originally to the problems between Plymouth and Bethesda, to judge this question. that this man was wicked and should be put out of the fellowship and all the assemblies of exclusive brethren around the world split everybody had to take a side this woman took occasion long suffering doesn't lie in wait smiling at the person every time you see them waiting for a chance you know what it says in first Corinthians thirteen It says love keeps no account of wrongs suffered.
No account is kept. We are to be in our relationship to each other long suffering. We are to be willing to endure with real wrongheadedness, with real personal attacks, with real slanderous statements being made. We're to suffer long. Because that's what God is like. You know what it says in James? He that judges without mercy shall have judgment without mercy. If in this meeting you think you can afford to have God evaluate your life without mercy, you do not know the God of the Bible.
And you do not know yourself. I resolved early in my Christian life to try to be merciful. And I didn't understand that. It didn't mean just acting merciful or talking merciful. I understand now it's really having compassion upon somebody that's in deep trouble. And my theory was that if I was merciful to others, God would be merciful to me, and I had a feeling even then that I was going to need as much mercy as I could get. In my twenties, I just, I realized I was an outspoken, outrageous bulldozer that if you didn't do it my way, you were doing it wrong, and you would either get out of the way or get ground up in the machinery.
And that's the way I lived for many years. But God said, you've got to be more merciful. Now, everybody wasn't as wrong as I thought. But the fact is that we need to be characterized by this attitude of suffering long with our brothers, suffering long with our sisters. That doesn't mean you say that you think they're doing something wrong. You say, oh, I think that's right. No, no, we're not talking about that. We're talking about putting the best possible interpretation upon another man's actions. We have no way of knowing the heart. And so somebody does something, and we say, he did that because, and we give a good reason, which we know no more than we know anything else.
We do not even know. And yet we've got it all analyzed and down, and only God is the judge. He's the only one that knows the heart. And even Peter, if you were judging Peter as a result of his denial of Christ, you would say this man is a worthless louse this man is hopeless nothing will ever be done for this man this man has denied the faith and when the Lord Jesus seeks to restore Peter and he keeps saying to him do you love me do you love me Peter reveals in God's response in Christ's response to him a tremendous lesson The third time he's grieved in heart, and he says to the Lord, he says, Lord, you know I love you.
Long-suffering sees Peter, the wretch. He denied the Lord, it says, with oaths and curses. He's there sitting around the fire, and he reels off a string of oaths. Yeah, I never knew that guy. We would say, there's a man that's completely beyond redemption. But you know, that denial was not a true reflection of Peter's heart. He fell into that. It had been foretold, but he fell into it. And so when the Lord is seeking to restore, he finally says, Lord, you know everything.
He appeals in the Lord Jesus to his omniscience, the fact that he knows everything. He says, you really know my heart. And as much as I know my heart, I really do love you. That was the aberration. My love for you is the thing that's steady. And the Lord was satisfied with that. The appeal. You know everything, Lord. You know I really love you. Are you willing to give another brother the benefit? Another sister the benefit of that? They've done something really stupid. Something that's maybe even very sinful. Well, what do you think of the Lord in all this?
The person says, well, I really love the Lord more than this indicates. You willing to give anybody the benefit of the doubt? Jesus gives you the benefit of the doubt every day. Long suffering, patience, patience, a time of constant entreaty to bring them back. You know, one of the things that was true in the early days, I would hate to be an elder in like a place like Corinth. I could imagine nothing more exhausting. But you know, you didn't have any place else to go, and so you had to make it right.
You had to work on what you had. See, today you can go sometimes to another assembly or to a church. You know, you can escape certain unpleasant things. But in those days, there's no place to go. It sounds to me like an elder's nightmare. you'd have to work without relent to bring unity, to encourage people to be holy and all those things. We need to be long-suffering with each other. And then the Lord says through the Apostle, he says, with all loneliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love.
Now, forbearance is the practical outworking of long-suffering. It involves bearing with one another's weaknesses. No closing the door of love to those believers who are weak in the faith. To those who have faults. No closing the door of love to those who offend. and truly displease us. Long suffering produces forbearance in our relationships with each other.
And don't mistake this for a command to be placidly uninterested in wrong. We still need a semi-prophetic voice to warn us about certain things, trends. This is not an acquiescence to evil. This is an attitude of loving my brother even when he's wrong, or I think he's wrong.
forbearing. I am not going to cut him off. I am not going to stop speaking to him. I am not going to neglect him. I am not going to despise him. Now we come down to all the things in the heart. I'm not going to have an ugly heart toward him because he has done something that I know to be wrong. I am not going to treat him that way. I refuse to have a heart like that toward him. So now we have been told that we are to, this becomes the springboard for what follows in the book of Ephesians. These are the attitudes that God demands.
God is only satisfied with these heart attitudes. He's not satisfied with self-confidence. He dwells with the person of the contrite and humble spirit. It's not that he dwells with a person who talks like they're humble. Because God looks down and he sees the heart. And we need to ask ourselves, when God looks into my heart, what does he see? What does he see? What does he see is true of my relationship with my husband or wife, my parents or children, what is my relationship to the brother and sister who sits in the next seat from me on Sunday and Wednesday night or whenever?
And God looks down and he sees what's there. And you can't pretend because what's there is there. And God is not confused. You can't tell yourself, well, I'm going to act more humble. You can't act this way. Because these are conditions of the heart. And God is not looking at what you're saying and doing as much as he's looking at the heart that is the motivation of what you're saying and doing. And so it is only acceptable to God when our hearts are like this. with all lowliness and meekness with long suffering for bearing one another in love and I think of brother so-and-so and sister so-and-so and I think of this thing that happened I think of that happened and my heart should be as God's heart saddened by sin crushed by the terrible trials of life into which other believers fall And there should be that pliability of love toward others that that's the way I really feel.
That's what my heart really reflects. That's what I'm really like. Don't let yourself think more highly of yourself. Those scripture commands than you ought to think. Look not every man on his own things. We live in the day. I love the word. It's a difficult word. Narcissistic day. everybody's looking at the mirror Narcissus is supposed to be you know is it one of the Greek mythological characters that looked in the mirror and fell in love with himself whoo how beautiful that is but we live in that day the day in which we have been selfishness has turned from a vice to a virtue which is a major philosophical change I mean that it really was not an easy change to come about And so we look at ourselves and we look at things the way they relate to us.
Oh, and so and so said that. And I think that was a secret cut at me. And everything is looked at in the mirror, like we're looking in the mirror. And you know what the Bible says? Well, not every man looks on his own things. Our perspective is not to be through our eyes and seeing how it affects us. Rather, it's to look through our eyes and see how it affects the other person. Sin is terrible. It destroys your life. If God doesn't come in, in the hundred and third Psalm, the psalmist will say, He's delivered my life from destruction.
Before I was saved, I would go every Saturday night to a certain place. bar in Mannheim, Germany, and every Saturday night there would be a massive fight, and I loved it. And the MPs would close, this is during the occupation of Germany after World War II, the MPs would close it down, but there was some agreement, they closed it down for Monday through Thursday, and it was back in business every weekend. I am by nature a violent man with an absolutely outrageous temperament.
The fact that I never killed anybody in one of those fights, I now praise God for he kept my life from destruction. He kept my life from destruction. The fact that I never got killed, I got lots of nice scars. He kept me from destruction. That's what our attitude should be toward others. We should be seeking to keep them from destruction. Not looking at it how it pits me. What can I do for them? How can I bring them to greater maturity in Christ? How can I draw them to greater love for the Savior? And you rarely do well at that with a club. You do so much better with a nice velvet hand in which you entice people to come to greater love for the Lord Jesus.
Now how can you get these attitudes? I'm going to tell you in three minutes. How can you get all these attitudes? Don't ask God for the attitudes. I'll tell you a shortcut. Tomorrow morning, start praying this prayer. And don't stop praying it until... You're brought to lowliness of mind, meekness of spirit, long suffering of emotion, and forbearance of heart. Oh God, make me hate my sins.
It's the shortcut method. Oh God, make me hate my sins. It will not be long before you will come to recognize you have nothing to be proud of. Lowliness will become more typical. Recognizing your sins and seeing how detrimental they are, how antithetical they are to the greatness of Christ, it'll make you meek. You'll come to the point where you'll fear to speak too quickly because you're so sure of how wrong you can be. that you only want to say that thing, you only want to act in that way that is under the control of Christ, so you won't act in a fashion that isn't meek.
And as you say, Lord, make me hate my sins, you'll come to a sense of appreciation for His mercy and a sense of appreciation for His long suffering, and you'll find it much easier to put up with the offenses of your brothers and sisters when you come to realize how much God puts up with me. And so you'll become long-suffering. And you'll soon be forbearing. You'll be bearing others' burdens. It really works. I'm telling you, it really works.
Now, I hate to tell you that I have been praying that prayer for twenty-five years. Somehow, I don't know, I don't know whether I read it or somebody was speaking on it. I got a conviction that this is something that I should be asking God about. Because I knew that I thought I was a lot better than I really was. And so I needed some help. And so I began to pray.