June 21, 2009, Father's Day, First Day of Summer

Lesson: Ephesians 4.17-24

Sermon Title: Something Old-Something New

(Back to Study Home Page)  (Back to Sermons 2008-2009)
(Back to Sermons Home Page)  (Back to Shultz Home Page)

INTRODUCTION

  1. Something Old Something New reminds us of a wedding.

    1. I did not have weddings in mind when I chose this title.

    2. It has to do with the Old Self and the New Self that you read in Ephesians, chapter 4, verses 22 through 24.

  2. Today is Father's Day so we ought to begin with some Father's Day humor that will help us get into the sermon.

    1. Applause at the Theater (1)

A famous football coach was on vacation with his family in Maine. When they walked into a movie theater and sat down, the handful of people there applauded. He thought to himself, "I can't believe it. People recognize me all the way up here."

Then a man came over to him and said, "Thanks for coming. They won't start the movie unless we have ten customers or more."

      1. That's good.

      2. It fits the theme.

    1. This one is just right.

At a wedding rehearsal, a pastor whispered to the father of the bride, 'As you give your daughter's hand to the bridegroom, you should say something nice to him."

The next day, during the wedding ceremony, the father, a grocery story manager, took the pastor's advice.

He placed the bride's hand on his son-in-law's arm and said, "No deposit. No return."

      1. Something Old, Something New.

      2. It is in the meaning of the terms.

(Top)  (Back to Study Home Page)  (Back to Sermons 2008-2009)
(Back to Sermons Home Page)  (Back to Shultz Home Page)

MAIN BODY:

  1. There are a number of old and new contrasts that Paul uses to teach us how to be the best possible Christian child of God.

    1. You could call them "Rules for the New Life.

    2. There are eight of them

    3. We do have time to deeply consider all eight, but we can at least mention and perhaps illustrate them

  2. 25So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.

Dad was driving with his young daughter.

Traffic was heavy, the weather was terrible and dad got just a bit frazzled and began commenting on the habits and flaws of all the other drivers on the road, and not favorably, either.

As they pulled into their driveway, the daughter spoke up.

"I have a question, Dad. When you're driving," she asked, "are you ever the idiot?"

    1. So are you going to speak the truth?

    2. If you do, don't you have to admit that you are one of the idiots.

      1. I would have to admit it.

      2. Simply ask my wife.

  1. 28Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy.

    1. You do not have to be guilty of breaking and entering.

    2. You can steal credit where credit is due.

In the days before motor driven or electronic organs, a talented organist gave a very magnificent concert in which the big pipes sent forth glorious, thunderous tones.

After people finished congratulating him, the little boy who had worked with all his might at the bellows remarked, "We did pretty well, don't you think?"

The organist scornfully replied, "And what did you do?" He gave the boy no credit at all.

A month later, during another concert, the organist came to a stormy passage that required all the wind of which the bellows were capable. Suddenly the organ began to fade away. The organist signaled for more wind.

Instead, the little lad pulled aside the curtain and said, "Is it I or is it we?"

    1. Is this laboring to have something to share with the needy?

    2. Of course it is also applicable to helping the destitute and the homeless.

(Top)  (Back to Study Home Page)  (Back to Sermons 2008-2009)
(Back to Sermons Home Page)  (Back to Shultz Home Page)

  1. 29Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.

    1. When Boston Red Sox player Wade Boggs played third base at Yankee Stadium, one of the Yankee fans made it a personal mission to harass him.

The man had a box seat close to the field and would torment Boggs with obscenities and insults for the duration of every game. Finally, Boggs decided he'd had enough.

As the man began his typical insult routine at the next game, Boggs walked directly over to the man, who was sitting with a group of friends.

"Are you the guy who's always yelling at me?" Boggs asked.

"Yeah, it's me. Whatcha gonna do about it?" responded the man belligerently.

Wade took a new baseball out of his pocket, autographed it, tossed it to the man, and went back to the field to continue his pre-game routine.

The man became one of Wade's biggest fans at Yankee Stadium.

    1. There is another way also where your words may give grace to the hearer.

      1. There's an old story of the Hasidic rabbi, Levi Yitzhak, who was once sitting in a Polish tavern.

      2. There he saw two peasants at a table.

Both were gloriously in their cups. Arms around each other, they were protesting how much each loved the other.

Suddenly Ivan said to Peter: "Peter, tell me, what hurts me?"

Bleary-eyed, Peter looked at Ivan: "How do I know what hurts you?"

Ivan's answer was swift: "If you don't know what hurts me, how can you say you love me?"

        1. That's a telling story.

        2. It really hits home, doesn't it.

  1. 30And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption.

    1. In The Poems of Coventry Patmore edited by Frederick Page (2) there is this poem:

Common Graces

Is nature in thee too spiritless,
Ignoble, impotent, and dead,
To prize her love and loveliness
The more for being thy daily bread?
And art thou one of that vile crew
Which see no splendor in the sun,
Praising alone the good that's new,
Or over, or not yet begun?
And has it dawn'd on thy dull wits
That love warms many as a soft nest,
That, though swathed round with benefits,
Thou art not singularly blest?
And fail thy thanks for gifts divine,
The common food of many a heart,
Because they are not only thine?
Beware lest in the end thou art
Cast for thy pride forth from the fold,
Too good to feel the common grace
Of blissful myriads who behold
For evermore the Father's face.

    1. The Spirit lives within.

      1. If you do not heed the Spirit's influence, you grieve the Spirit.

      2. If you do not follow the Spirit's leading, you grieve the Spirit.

(Top)  (Back to Study Home Page)  (Back to Sermons 2008-2009)
(Back to Sermons Home Page)  (Back to Shultz Home Page)

  1. 31Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice,

    1. This is obvious.

    2. We do or we do not do.

  2. One of the toughest tasks between the Old and the New is dealing with anger.

    1. I have taken the verse out of context.

      1. I have saved it until now so that we might work on it specifically.

      2. Anger is common to day and expressed in so many ways.

    2. The verse reads: 26Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27and do not make room for the devil.

      1. Anger, as I have defined it is my irrational response to external circumstances.

        1. I used to simply blow-up.

        2. Let the pieces fall where they may.

      2. I have learned that anger can be managed and used to communicate your emotions is a constructive and positive way.

  3. Let's illustrate anger this way:

    1. My Cousin Gerry sent me this story about Nails in the Fence

There once was a little boy who had a bad temper. His Father gave
him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he must
hammer a nail into the back of the fence.

The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Over the next
few weeks, as he learned to control his anger, the number of nails hammered
daily gradually dwindled down He discovered it was easier to hold his temper
than to drive those nails into the fence. Finally the day came when the boy didn't
lose his temper at all.

He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull
out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper.

The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the
nails were gone.

The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said,

'You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out. But It won't matter how many times you say I'm sorry, the wound will still be there. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one. Remember that friends are very rare jewels, indeed. They make you smile and encourage you to succeed. They lend an ear, they share words of praise and they always want to open their hearts to us.'

      1. The holes are still in the fence.

      2. The offended persons may be willing to forgive.

    1. The last use of anger is revealed in an incident that took place at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. (3)

A group of monks from the monastery of the Dalai Lama worked for nearly a month at the creation of a six-foot-wide mandala made of colored sand ground from gemstones. It was to be the centerpiece of an exhibit called Wisdom and Compassion: The Sacred Art of Tibet.

People from around San Francisco came each day to watch the monks work silently, bending over a low platform as they laid out the intricate patterns that were to symbolize the cosmos.

The day before the mandala was to be completed, a woman jumped across the barriers and began destroying the mandala, shuffling it to smithereens with her feet while shouting something about Buddhist death squads. A month's work by a whole community of monks was wiped out in a moment of insanity.

The reaction of the monks? We don't feel any anger, said one. We don't know how to judge her motivations. We are praying for her, for love and compassion.

As Gregg Levoy, who tells this story in The Sun (October 1992), puts it: The real teaching of the mandala has turned out to be not in its execution but in its demise, and its creators' response to its death. The monks have reminded me that although to forgive is indeed divine, ordinary people can do it.

(Top)  (Back to Study Home Page)  (Back to Sermons 2008-2009)
(Back to Sermons Home Page)  (Back to Shultz Home Page)

CONCLUSION:

  1. The lasts verse in this section reads 32...be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

    1. There you have it.

    2. Use it all wisely and well.

    3. It is excellent counsel.

Amen.

1. The Good, Clean Funnies List [gcfl-info@gcfl.net]

2. The Poems of Coventry Patmore edited by Frederick Page (NY: Oxford University Press, 1949), 112.

3. As reprinted in Utne Reader, January/February 1993, 135-36.

(Top)  (Back to Study Home Page)  (Back to Sermons 2008-2009)
(Back to Sermons Home Page)  (Back to Shultz Home Page)