Sermon Tone Analysis

Tad Wychopen

 

Sermon Type: /Expository/

 

Title: /Be Imitators of God/                                               

 

Passage: /Ephesians 5:1-2/

 

Theme of Ephesians: /Believers need to have unity by loving God and one another./

Proposition: */We must walk in love and be true imitators of God./*

Prepare Your Hearts to Worship the Lord in the Listening of this message.

/Psalm 73:25–28/ Acknowledge your dependence upon God.

Praise God for his goodness to you.

25     Whom have I in heaven but You?

And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You.

26     My flesh and my heart fail;

But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

27     For indeed, those who are far from You shall perish;

You have destroyed all those who desert You for harlotry.

28     But it is good for me to draw near to God;

I have put my trust in the Lord God,

That I may declare all Your works.

/Psalm 139:23–24/- Ask God to search your heart and mold you to be like him.

23     Search me, O God, and know my heart;

     Try me, and know my anxieties;

24     And see if there is any wicked way in me,

     And lead me in the way everlasting.

*/ /*

*/Introduction/*

 

Open your Bibles to Ephesians 5. Ephesians is probably my favorite book in the New Testament.

It is divided into two major sections: chapters 1-3 are doctrinal and 4-6 are practical.

That is not to say that the doctrinal and practical do not intermix, because doctrine is really seen throughout the book.

Practical teaching can never be separated from doctrinal truth.

If one ignores doctrine, you will notice it in their practical walk; likewise, doctrine cannot be left alone by itself either.

These two must always accompany each other.

A central theme of the book of Ephesians is unity.

Throughout the book, Paul talks about unity: unity under Christ as the churches head, unity in the church, unity with each other, unity in the Godhead, and unity in Christ.

Unity is mentioned more times in this book than anywhere else in the New Testament, but I would say that unity is not the main theme in Ephesians.

The theme book of Ephesians is love.

Paul mentions love in the verb and noun form twenty times.

Almost one fifth of all of Paul’s mentions of Love are in Ephesians.

It occurs twice as many times as it does in all the other Pauline letters.

Apparent in this book are both God’s love for people and the believer’s love for one another.

Hoehner says that “Unity without love is possible, but love with out unity is not.

Love is the central ingredient for true unity.”

The purpose of Ephesians is to promote a love for one another that has the love of God and Christ as the basis.

This makes sense they are reprimanded in Revelation 2:2-6 for losing their first love.

With this background, lets read our text for today.

*/Ephesians 5:1-2/*

/Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; 2 And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour./

I would like to submit that we read this more like a compound sentence without the period between verse 1 and 2. The NASB, NIV, and KJV do not put the period between the two verses.

It is not a huge difference, but I tend to see these two verses as parallel.

We will get into this more as we go on.

/Therefore, be imitators of God, as dear children; and walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.

/

/ /

/Illustration: /Have you ever heard someone say, “You really are your father’s son!” What do they mean by that?

I have heard that so many times throughout the years.

Sometimes I am really amazed that people actually say that about me and my dad.

My dad is a lot taller than me (6’2”), he is a lot bigger than me (I’m pretty puny, Hannah is helping me get bigger, but not in a good way- she is too good of a cook.),

my dad has straight black hair, and he is very wise.

Just by listing these things off, you would think that we are not alike at all and that no one would really say that we are truly alike.

Despite all this, people constantly say that we are alike in so many ways!

/I want you to realize that/:*/ We must walk in love as true imitators of God./*

*1.     **Be Becoming imitators of God.  5:1*

* *

Our text today contains one of the most interesting and most difficult verses in the New Testament, Eph.

5:1-2.

These verses say that we are to be imitators of God.

This command seems almost crazy when you first read it.

I have read this verse many times and have honestly thought, “How exactly am I to imitate God?” I mean this really seems like something that is impossible!

After some study, it does not seem so odd for Paul to write this, for he has used language like this before.

There are other places that Paul told his readers that they should become imitators of him or his ministry (/I Cor.

4:16/; 11:1; I Thess.

1:6; II Thess.

3:7-9).

He also has used this in reference to believers imitating other believers (I Thess.

2:14; Heb.

6:12).

Now I think where this is hard to understand is that Paul says to imitate God and when we think of that, we know that we cannot imitate God in every way.

I think what Paul was probably talking about imitating was God’s communicable attributes.

God’s communicable attributes are those qualities of God for which at least a part can be found in human creations, such as: love, holiness, righteousness, justice, faithfulness, grace, mercy, ect.

The incommunicable attributes would be immutability, omnipresence, omnipotence, ect.- these are probably not what Paul had in mind here.

The actual word comes from the Greek word “μιμηται” “mimetie.”

It means an “imitator, copier, or an actor who impersonates.”

It can also mean an imposter; the word counterfeit comes from that same Greek root.

A good counterfeit is very close to the original.

/ /

/Illustration:/ This is the idea behind the flies that some use for trout fishing.

A good fly or lure will imitate, copy, or impersonate some sort of baitfish or bug.

It really looks like the original.

/Application/: We can be assured that our God is completely worthy to be imitated.

He is not like the unjust, unloving, immoral, and wicked “gods” that other religions seek to follow.

The readers of this epistle would be very familiar with these types of gods since they were the gods that they formerly served.

We can completely trust our God!

He is always faithful to us!

He is worthy to be imitated...but how.

*a.

**In Holiness I Peter 1:13-16;   (Lev.

11:44-45; 19:2; 20:7)*

 

 In just a few verses prior, Eph.

4:24, Paul talks about putting on the new man that is created after God and is true in holiness.

Throughout the Bible, we not only see that God is holy and set apart from everything else, but we see that God wants us as believers to be holy.

For instance, I Peter 1:13-16 is a quote from Lev. 11:44-45.

Peter wants believers to realize that we are to be Holy!

/13 Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; 14 As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance: 15 But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; 16 Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.

/

 

This is the only attribute of God that is repeated three times: this shows how greatly God wants this emphasized.

Obviously, God is very concerned with protecting His holiness (Isaiah 6 demonstrates this).

He also wants all his children to be holy.

Holiness is being “set apart” from sin and really “set apart” to God.

The great hope of believers is, “We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is” (1 John 3:2).

/Application:/ It is amazing what we let into our lives that God considers sin, but we consider it something minor.

We think that God will simply overlook our little sins or our sinful habits, but we should realize that God wants his children to be holy- free from even the little sins.