Ephesians - Holy Living - Part 2 - Ephesians 4:28-29

Am I faithfully working as God enables me? Is my boss happy with my labor? And am I giving, or am I keeping it for myself? It is more blessed to give than to receive. 

Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus in Ephesians 4:28: "Let him who stole steal no more; but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give him who has need." Ephesians 4:28. The point Paul is making here is this: we have a right to private property. I have a right to own an automobile and you have no right to steal it. You have a right to carry your purse and your valuables in that purse, and nobody has a right to run by and push you down and steal that purse. Private property is something that God has said is good; in fact, it's a motivation for work and for investment. Now, there are only three ways of acquiring property, and Paul discusses all three of these in this one verse, Ephesians 4:28. You can get property by stealing: "let him who stole steal no longer." Or you can get property by laboring: "but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good." Or you can get property by somebody giving it to you: "that he may have something to give him who has need." 

So we have three themes today: working, receiving, and stealing. Let's start where Paul starts, with stealing. "Let him who stole steal no longer." It's interesting to note that there were people in the Ephesian fellowship who had been thieves. Isn't it good to know that the grace of God can save people and change people? By the Lord Jesus Christ, we can have a brand new beginning, even thieves. Now, apparently some of these thieves who had been saved were having a rough time overcoming their old habits. It's rather interesting that people get saved and their response is different. In my pastoral ministry, I've seen this. I recall one man who used to be a drunk. He was constantly getting drunk and I had the joy of leading him to the Lord, and it went away immediately. His taste for alcohol was gone immediately. On the other hand, I have led other people to Christ who have come and said, "Pastor, I'm just fighting such an awful battle." We're all different. Only God knows the difference and we can't always solve these problems. Don't be too hard on people. There are some people who, when they are converted, there is a remarkable change; there are others who have to fight battles against some of their old temptations. 

Paul wrote to the servants, to the slaves who were saved, in Titus 2:9-10: "Exhort servants to be obedient to their own masters, to be well pleasing in all things, not answering back, not pilfering"—not thieving is the literal word—"but showing all good fidelity" or honesty "that they may adorn" or beautify "the doctrine of God our Savior in all things." Now, how do we steal today? Well, you can steal by not paying your debts. You owe people money and don't pay it. You can steal by not paying your laborers a living wage. That's important, to be able to pay people that which they ought to be able to live on. In fact, in Deuteronomy 24:14-15, there is a special admonition that talks about paying the wages every day. Deuteronomy 24:15: "Each day you shall give him his wages, and not let the sun go down on it." If somebody's worked for you, pay him. James picked this same idea up in James 5:4: "Indeed the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out." And so we can steal by not paying people what we owe them. We can steal by not working faithfully, wasting time, borrowing things and not bringing them back. I think one of the worst examples of stealing is gambling. Gambling is just plain ordinary robbery, and a person who gets involved in gambling is a fool.

Now he tells us don't steal. Keep your life honest. Do your work faithfully. Pay your taxes. Pay your wages. Pay your bills. Now why do we do this? That's the negative. The positive is that we might be able to work. "Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good." The word labor here means to labor to the point of fatigue. Now life is not easy. Life demands that we labor. Everybody has to help carry the load. In the Bible, work is presented not as punishment but as privilege. The dignity of labor is taught throughout the Word of God. Now in the Greek world, they despised manual labor. You had to be a philosopher; you hired slaves to do the manual labor. But Adam before the fall was busy working, Genesis 2:15: "Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it." To cultivate and keep it. Adam had work to do but he was in paradise. We have the idea that paradise means there's no work to do. No, Adam was given a job to do. "Six days shalt thou labor," says the commandment. Jesus labored; He was a carpenter. The apostle Paul labored. The privilege of working. 

If there's one sin that the book of Proverbs condemns, it's the sin of laziness. "Go to the ant, you sluggard," says Proverbs 6:6. "Consider her ways and be wise, which, having no captain, overseer or ruler, provides her supplies in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest. How long will you slumber, O sluggard? When will you rise from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep—so shall your poverty come on you like a robber, and your need like an armed man." So we work in order to eat. We work that we might not lack anything for daily life. we work that we might be good witnesses to the lost. What do busy unsaved people think about lazy Christians? But Paul gives us a good reason for working: "that he may have something to give him who has need." Now you'd think Paul would have said you should work to pay your bills. That's right. You should work to keep up your daily needs. That's true. But he says you should work that you might be able to give to others. 

In other words, ownership means if I have something I should share it. Now Paul had said that, remember, Acts 20:33-35. He said, "I have coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel. I've worked to supply my necessities. I've shown you by laboring like this that you must support the weak." And then he quotes the Lord Jesus, a statement not found in the Gospels: "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Nothing wrong with saving, nothing wrong with preparing for the future so that we'll not become burdens to people. But what he's saying here is this: you have been saved and set free, now share. God shared with you, you share with others. That's why Jesus died. He died for us that we might be able to serve Him and share with others all that He has given to us. 2 Corinthians 5:15: "And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again." Faith without works is dead. "If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,' but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit?" James 2:15-16. Well, it doesn't profit anything. In fact, we are hurting the Lord and hurting the Lord's people when we are selfish.

Well, here we have three different ways to get property. By stealing, and the Word of God says don't steal. Don't take paper clips from the desk drawer. Don't take paper home that doesn't belong to you. Don't write personal letters on company stationery. Don't steal. Don't steal time away from your employer. Don't linger at the coffee machine. Do your work. Don't steal. Work. The dignity of work. And then giving. Now today, am I stealing? And I'd better quit it if I am. Am I faithfully working as God enables me? Is my boss happy with my labor? And am I giving, or am I keeping it for myself? It is more blessed to give than to receive.

Let's begin with the glorious privilege. Speech is the gift of God. Now animals communicate with one another in one way or another, but they don't have the gift of speech such as we have. Now God has built into us the ability to speak. When God made Adam, He let Adam name all the animals. That takes brains; that takes words; that takes thought. We think in images; words are symbols of things. And in order for Adam to be able to speak and name the animals, or even communicate with God, he had to understand language. The amazing thing is that children can speak long before they know there is such a thing as a noun or a verb or a participle or a dependent clause—they just open up their mouth and speak, and some of them never quit. Speech is a powerful privilege, and the words of our mouth can either build up or tear down. Paul says remember, you have a glorious privilege, don't waste it, don't abuse it. 

Secondly, he warns us about a great peril: "let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth." That word corrupt means foul, worthless, rotten. With the tongue, a person can be hurt. We can say hateful things. We can say corrupt things. We can pollute people. There are young people in this world who've had their minds and hearts polluted by the dirty speech of people around them—sometimes at home, sometimes from movies, television, video, sometimes at work. But somebody tells a dirty story, somebody gives a dirty phrase, and it sits in your mind and it starts to grow. Corruption always spreads.

You remember what Paul wrote in Ephesians 4:22: "that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts." Lusts are deceitful; they promise one thing and they produce something else. "And be renewed in the spirit of your mind, put on the new man." You've got to make a choice between the old corruption or the new creation. And how important it is that we make the right choice. Death and life are in the power of the tongue. Proverbs 10:11: "The mouth of the righteous is a well of life." But don't let that well get poisoned because people may drink at that well and get sick and perhaps be hurt for a long, long time. Proverbs 12:18: "There is one who speaks like the piercings of a sword, but the tongue of the wise promotes health." What a contrast. Proverbs 15:4: "A wholesome tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit." A tree of life. Look at these pictures now: a well of life, medicine of life, a tree of life. Why take speech that can be a pure well of life and make it a sewer? This tongue can be a beautiful tree of life; people can pluck fruit from that tree and be fed. Oh, I thank God for people who have fed my own soul by the correct use of speech, and yet we can turn that tree of life into a garbage dump. We can poison, we can cut. Oh, how important it is that we recognize the danger. 

Now, of course, all of this comes from the heart. The fault lies not with the mouth but with the heart. Jesus made that very clear, didn't He, in Matthew 12:33? He gives to us two alternatives: "Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for a tree is known by its fruit. Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." He says your life is like a tree and the fruit that comes out—that's the words that you speak. And if the tree is rotten, the fruit will be rotten. If the roots are down in the garbage dump, then the fruit is going to be poisoned because what we say from the mouth comes out of the heart. The heart is compared to a tree and the heart is compared to a treasure. "A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things." What do you treasure in your heart? I have met people who know all kinds of dirty stories; they are just loaded, their treasure of their heart is filled with that which is filthy. What do you remember? Do you remember good things to share with people, or dirty things? For by your words you will be justified and by your words you will be condemned. Why? Because our words reveal what is in our heart. 

When I think today of what music is saying to people's minds, especially young people—when I think of what entertainment is saying, when lustful things, sex, immorality, incest, all of these things are presented as entertainment, I wonder what's going to happen to our next generation. And it worries me that some people who ought to know better are spreading this sewage. There's a great peril that our speech would be corrupted and as a result we corrupt others. 

Finally, there is a gracious purpose. What is the purpose of speech? Godly edification. "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers." The purpose of speech is to help edify others, whether we're teaching or exhorting or warning or just conversing, whether we're encouraging, whether we are disciplining—we use the tongue not as a weapon to fight with, to hurt people, but as a tool to build with. This means obeying Ephesians 4:15, speaking the truth in love. Speaking the truth—now he's talked about that: "Therefore, putting away lying, each one speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another." Speaking the truth and doing it in love, and giving that word of encouragement—godly edification. 

So many times at the close of a conversation, when I've walked away from somebody or I've hung up the telephone, I've asked myself: did I say anything that was godly edification? Did I say anything that would help that person be a better Christian? Sometimes the best thing to do is keep your mouth shut. Our Lord Jesus had that marvelous gift of saying the right thing at the right time. Isaiah 50:4: "The Lord God has given Me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him who is weary. He awakens Me morning by morning, He awakens My ear to hear as the learned." You see, early in the morning the Lord Jesus would get up and pray. Mark 1 tells us that. He would talk to His Father and the Father would give Him that which He would share with us. Do you meet God in the morning and open the Word of God and let the truth of God's Word enter into your mind and heart so that during the day you have something to share with somebody else? 

You see, we work according to verse 28 that we might have something to give. According to verse 29, we learn from God and we use our words that we might have something to share—the promises of the Word, the truths of the Word. Notice he says necessary edification. A person who is led by the Holy Spirit has a sense of fitness in the Christian life. He knows just when to say what ought to be said. That's what Jesus said, didn't He? "He's given me the tongue of the learned that I should know how to speak a word in season."

Now we don't push edification on people; we don't cram it down their throats. Proverbs 10:32 says this: "The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable." Isn't that interesting? People who have the leading of the Holy Spirit of God know how to say the right thing at the right time. Proverbs 15:2 says: "The tongue of the wise uses knowledge rightly, but the mouth of fools pours forth foolishness." The more you talk, the worse it's going to get. So let the Holy Spirit show you how to have discernment. Speech that is necessary, knowing what to say and how to say it at the right time in the right place. Speech that is gracious and clean, that it may impart grace to the hearers. Colossians 4:6: "Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one." Notice that: if you look upon speech as food for the mind and the heart, it has to be seasoned properly. And that's when we have to be very, very conscious of the leading of the Holy Spirit of God. And of course, the only way to have that is through the Word of God within. "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly," says Colossians 3:16. Now this is serious. The purpose of speech is necessary edification, imparting grace to those who need it. We all need the grace of God. and we receive the grace of God through the Word of God, through the Spirit of grace, we come to the throne of grace—but oh, if each of us as God's children would just bring grace and salt in our speech, we all would grow to become more and more like the Lord Jesus Christ.