October 20, 2002

Service Theme – "Our God is Holy"

Ephesians 4:25-32

Getting Rid of the Rats in Our Hearts and Our Relationships

1. Introduction

1. Illustration – When my parents were first married, they didn’t have much money. They lived in Cleveland, Ohio in one of the poorer sections of town. Mom told me once about a time when she was coming home from work. She usually went down the alley and up the back stairs to their apartment because it was shorter. But when she turned down the alley, there in front of her was a huge rat, big as a large cat. So instead of going her usual way, she went around to the front.
2. Context – Why do I tell this story? Because in our relationships, we often try to find an unusual way around working out our differences. We will go along and come across a rat, a bad attitude or a lack of forgiveness, so instead of taking on the rat, we go around the other way. We circumvent the work of the Holy Spirit, who wants to heal our relationships. So how do we stop doing that? The passage we’re looking at, Ephesians 4:25-32, will help us learn how to get rid of the rats in our hearts and in our relationships.

1. Scripture Passage

1. Ephesians 4:25-32 – Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body. ²⁶ "In your anger do not sin": Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, ²⁷ and do not give the devil a foothold. ²⁸ He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need. ²⁹ Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. ³⁰ And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. ³¹ Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. ³² Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
2. There are four steps Paul describes in this passage that we need to take if we’re going to get rid of those rats and move on to where God wants us to be. Pastor Dave Engbrecht said, "The key to success is just showing up where God is." God is in the relationship business, so we need to be too. He wants us to work out heart holiness in our interpersonal relationships, so let’s look at those four steps to find out how.

1. The Real Rat Patrol

1. First step - you must get real. Verse twenty-five says, Therefore each of you must put off falsehood. Paul’s saying, "Stop pretending you’re something you’re not!" And God is calling us to stop being fake, to stop putting on an illusion, to stop acting like everything is great when it’s not. We tend to make it hard to do that! If someone shares a struggle, we as Christians have a tendency to speak condescendingly to them and belittle them in our thoughts. It’s tough not to do that, because their struggle very often brings to mind an area in our own lives where we’re struggling but don’t want to deal with! I want you to know that I’m not condemning anyone by saying that, because I have the tendency to do the same thing! We all need to put on the reality of allowing God to do something in our life, and the only way we can do that is by being vulnerable. Yes, we have to be more than transparent; we have to be vulnerable to each other. What’s the difference? To be transparent is to allow others to see who we really are inside. To be vulnerable is to allow mature and loving believers to do something about what they see, to share with us areas within us where they see a need for the transforming power of the blood of Jesus Christ. Think of it this way: a while ago I watched a show about the search of the wreckage of the Titanic. These researchers went down several thousand feet in a special kind of submersible. It had these dome-shaped ports made of Plexiglas that was several inches thick. It was transparent, but practically indestructible. That’s the way we tend to be. We sometimes allow others to see what’s going on inside but don’t allow them to touch it. We must put off falsehood and allow each other the freedom to be vulnerable if we want to see those rats in our relationships get killed off.
2. Second step – speak truthfully to each other with grace. Again in verse twenty-five - Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body. Often we are in one of two camps when it comes to speaking the truth. Either we say it like it is with no consideration for the feelings of the other person, or we don’t say it like it is because we love them too much. There has to be a balance. We have to speak the truth with grace. We have to say the things that are hard to say with Christlikeness. That means first and foremost we have to look at our own motives in saying those hard things. We have to make sure we’re not saying them just to make ourselves look good. We have to make sure we’re not just saying them because we have an axe to grind. We have to make sure that the Spirit of God is moving us to say them, and that we are so compassionate toward the other person in saying them that we hurt just as much as they do in saying those things that are so hard to take. Look at verse twenty-nine - Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. It’s not helpful to others and to meeting their needs if our motives are wrong. It’s also not helpful or beneficial if we don’t speak the truth. We have to speak the truth with right motives and season it with grace if we’re going to kill off those relational rats that are making our lives miserable.
3. Third step – quickly resolve your differences. Verse twenty-six - "In your anger do not sin": Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, ²⁷ and do not give the devil a foothold. I like how the New Living puts it: And don’t sin by letting anger gain control over you. Many of us have deep hurts that are from deep wounds that have been festering for years. Someone has said something or done something that has hurt us. They’ve abused us or embarrassed us or maybe even spoken the truth and we haven’t received it. And we allow that hurt to fester until it becomes an open wound in our souls. The principle here is simple: if you’re wounded, take care of it right away. We get caught in traps of hurt by the smallest of things. In Romans 12:18, Paul writes, If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. He’s saying, "Do whatever you can to resolve the differences. The other party may not cooperate, but you’ve done what God called you to do." Paul is recognizing that the other parry may not want to resolve the conflict in an acceptable manner, and that there are some areas where it is impossible to compromise. Compromising the truth in order to keep relationships intact was what the Corinthian church was doing when they allowed the man who was sleeping with his step-mother to stay in the church. Paul, 1 Corinthians 5:1, addresses the issue: It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans: A man has his father’s wife. He says that the kind of compromise they’ve committed in order to keep the relationships intact doesn’t even happen in the orgies of the pagan religious festivals. The next phrase tells their attitude about it: And you are proud! Our attitude can’t be the same as theirs! Yes, we have to answer the biblical call to resolve our differences quickly in order to get rid of the rats in our relationships, but we’ve also got to realize that some folks will not allow reconciliation to take place because their hearts are not right with God. But let’s be sure the problem is not from our end. Let’s do everything we can to resolve our differences quickly, before they become festering wounds.
4. Fourth step - forgive when you’ve been hurt. Verses thirty-one and thirty-two: Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. ³² Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. If we have any bitterness, rage, anger, thoughts of physical violence, slander, or malice in our hearts, they are rats that are caused by unforgiveness. Dave Engbrecht shared the image of the monkey trap. You simply find a gourd with a neck that is narrower than it’s body, then hollow it out with a small opening at the top. Then tie it or chain it to a tree and put a banana inside. The monkey will reach inside and grab the banana, put his clenched fist is too big to get out back through the hole in the gourd. He will not let go, because it’s his banana and he wants it, and he is quite easily taken captive. Lack of forgiveness diseases our soul and gives the devil a foothold, making us his captive. Lack of forgiveness can only hurt us and poison our soul. There is no good whatsoever that can come from it. Pastor Dave Engbrecht says, "It is always to my advantage to forgive when I’ve been hurt." And if we don’t want to be kept captive by Satan like that monkey was by his greed, we’ve got to forgive those who’ve hurt us. We have to release those hurts by the power of the Holy Spirit if we’re going to get rid of the rats in our hearts that poison our relationships.
5. But how do we release those hurts and forgive those who have hurt us? The first step is to recognize that we need to release those hurts. The next step is to acknowledge to God that we have sinned by holding onto those hurts, and to repent of our sin and ask for His forgiveness. Then, every single solitary time Satan tries to bring that hurt back to our minds, we have to say, "I have forgiven this person or this hurt by the power of the blood of Jesus Christ. I refuse to dwell on it or to hold on to it any longer. Satan, I rebuke you by the power of the blood of Jesus Christ." You have to say that, to yourself or out loud, every single solitary time the hurt comes to mind or it will regain the foothold it once held in your life. The emotions will come later, but the action has to come now. Finally, you may need to talk to the person who hurt you and, speaking the truth in love, share the pain they’ve caused you. Then extend your forgiveness to them. Don’t rely on their reaction to decide whether or not you are going to forgive them.
6. Let’s say that you have hurt someone and haven’t apologized or asked them for forgiveness. You may need to do that. But if you’ve done everything you can to reconcile without compromising the word of God, then you can forgive them in your hearts and move on. You can’t decide whether or not they are going to choose to respond appropriately or choose to turn back to God if they’ve turned away from Him. But you can decide how you are going to deal with those rats in your heart and in your relationships. You can choose to deal with them by the power of the blood of Jesus. Or you can choose to let them keep eating you away inside. Dave Engbrecht says that we’ve got to step out on the edge where God comes through or we look like fools if we want to see Him move. Relationships are one of those areas where we’ve got to step out in faith. As Engbrecht puts it, "could it be that the only thing that has been holding back the Spirit of God is the rats that we allow in our relationships?" What are we going to do?
7. Illustration – (from PreachingToday.com) Erwin Lutzer said, I know a young woman who got married but found she could not relate to her husband. As a child, her step-father sexually molested her for a number of years. That experience had made it difficult to have any kind of physical love. A molested child may not like to be touched, even though the thing that they need the most is to be touched and to be hugged. But this young woman was transferring all of the revulsion and the hatred for her step-father toward her husband because of the depths of her shame and bitterness. She came to a pastor, and he pointed her to (Luke 6). He said, "What does the Bible say that you should do to your enemies?" She looked at verse 27 and said, "Love them, do good, bless them, and pray for them." The pastor said, "That's what you have to do about your stepfather. Until you release all of the feelings of bitterness and you are free in your relationship with him, you will never be free to love your husband." Every fiber of her being revolted against such advice. She thought to herself, Why should I forgive him? Why should I love him when all of those awful things were done to me? Yet this young woman decided to apply this text of Scripture. She decided to bake her step-father a birthday cake. Rather than speaking evil of him, she decided to speak well of him. Upon further reflection, she realized that there were many good things she could say about him. In spite of this horrible sin against her, the fact was that in many other ways he was a good father. She began to think about those ways and speak well of him rather than evil. She decided that she would pray for him three times a day, that God would bless him, and that's what she did. Several weeks went by as she continued to obey the Scriptures and to forgive the man who had so severely wronged her. She told the pastor later that she saw her step-father leave a supermarket and walk across the parking lot with a bag of groceries in his arms. For the first time in all those years, there were actually feelings of love toward him rather than revulsion. She said that except for their previous relationship, she could have gone and put her arms around him. Then she made the crucial statement that was very important to the survival of her marriage: "Now I'm free to love my husband." Do you need to be set free from the bondage of unforgiveness?

1. Conclusion

1. With every head bowed and every eye closed, how are your relationships? Are there deep, deep wounds that, whether or not you’ve realized it, have been poisoning your soul and keeping you in bondage? Are there fresh hurts that are just about to start to fester? Let’s spend just a moment allowing the Holy Spirit to show us any relationships where there are rats of falsehood, untruthful speech, pettiness, or unforgiveness nesting.
2. If you’ve seen some rats within your soul, you can begin the process of healing right now. You can take a step in the right direction by coming forward and stand now as a way of saying, "Today by the grace of God I’m going to release that hurt." You may have to make some apologies or verbally extend forgiveness later on, but by coming forward right now you are saying, "Today by the grace of God I’m going to release that hurt." If that’s you, come forward and stand now.