The Seven Walks of Ephesians
I. The walk of obedience (Ephesians ii: 1-2).
“Without faith,” we read, “it is impossible to please God,” and without obedience it is impossible to please Him. You know that when you were a child and were disobedient to your parents you not only made them unhappy, but were unhappy yourself. There will be no peace in any soul until it is willing to obey the voice of God. I believe that the great reason there is so much trouble in this world is because we are living in disobedience to God’s laws, God’s commands, and God’s Word. Luther said, “I would rather obey than work miracles.”
Now, if we look around us, we see that our life is bounded by laws which bring suffering if we disobey them. We must obey the laws of digestion, or we shall become sick. A farmer must obey the laws oi nature, or he will not have a good crop. If the laws of shipbuilding are neglected the ship will become a wreck. So it is in the intellectual and in the spiritual world. God has set laws which must be obeyed, or else we must suffer the penalty.
We are obeying something or other all the time — either our own carnal nature or God. The essence of sin is obedience to our own lusts and desires, and disobedience to God. Did you ever notice that everything but man obeys God? In the beginning God said. “Let there be light,” and there was light. He said, “Let the sea bring forth abundantly,” and the sea instantly obeyed and brought forth abundantly. He said, “Let the earth bring forth grass,” and the earth instantly obeyed. When Christ was on earth He cursed the fig tree, and it instantly withered away. He spoke to the sea, and the sea instantly obeyed Him and was calm. He rebuked the wind, and the wind ceased immediately. But He spoke to man, and man would not obey. That is where all the trouble, and all the wretchedness, and misery, and woe came, and there will never be peace in your soul and mine until we are willing to obey God. -“What God wants is prompt, literal, and cheerful obedience, and nothing short of that will please Him. As some one has put it, “Do as God commands, and do all God commands.” Partial obedience is not enough. If the doctor’s prescription were changed only a little it might mean death.
God cannot trust a man unless he is obedient. Before Abraham was called to found a new dispensation he had to learn to obey, though he did not know where it would lead him (Heb. xi: 8). Over fifty times it is said of Moses that he did “as the Lord commanded him.” This is the secret of God’s confidence in Moses. Even Christ learned obedience in the things that He suffered, and being made perfect, became the author of eternal salvation to all hat obey him (Heb. v: 8-9).
Remember, also, that blessing comes by obedience. As old Matthew Henry said, “If you live by the Gospel precepts, you can count on the Gospel promises.” Not until Naaman had obeyed to the letter was his leprous flesh renewed. And we are told of the New Testament lepers that “as they went,” in obedience to Christ’s words, “they were cleansed.” The reason that men are not saved is just because they will not obey the voice of God.
II. Walk tvorthy of the vocation ichereicith ye are called (Eph. iv: i).
More depends upon nry walk than upon my talk. Don’t forget that. Talk is very cheap nowadays. “We talk cream, and live skim milk.” It is a good thing to live better than you talk. Some people talk like angels, and live like devJs. Some people, when they are away from home, are angelic, and yet they are like snapping-turtles at home. No one can get on with them. They snap at mother, brothers, and sisters, and if married, snap at their husbands. Every one around them has to walk very carefully for fear of offending them, they are so touchy.
We are called to a very high calling: “walk worthy7 of the vocation.” Called to be sons and daughters of God, remember that! Paul was called suddenly to represent Jesus Christ, and from that time what a different man he was! “When Lincoln was called to be President of the United States it was a very high call, and he walked differently from what he did before. “When General Grant was called to the head of the American army, and afterwards to the “White House, he walked wortlry of the positions which he held. I heard one person say that it would be impossible for Grant to do it, but he did do it. But your call and mine is very much higher than Lincoln’s, much higher than Grant’s, much higher than that of any king or potentate, for we are called to represent the “King cf Kings, and Lord of Lords.” Therefore let us walk worthy of our vocation.
III. Walk in love (Ephesians v: 2).
Jude says, “Keep yourselves in the love of God.” I believe that if the disciples of Jesus Christ would keep themselves in the love of God for thirty days their number would double in no time. If this world is ever to be conquered, it will be conquered by love, and there is no way to preach love like living it in our actions. If we are full of love, we will be full of forgiveness; we will be clothed with humility. “Keep yourselves in the love of God.”
The first thing that the Spirit of God does when He begins to deal with persons after they are willing to turn from their sins, is to shed abroad the love of God in their hearts. You will find that it will be the same kind of love in all. I remember in ’67 going to London, almost a stranger. I found the Christians there had the same kind of spirit and the same kind of love as in New York or Chicago. If I should go to China, or Africa, or the islands of the sea, I should find that every one born of the Spirit would have the same spirit of love. In the early church nothing astonished the pagans so much as the life of love lived by the Christians. “Behold, how they love one another,” they said; “they love each other without knowing each other.” If you have not that spirit of love y011 have not realty the Christ of the Bible in your heart, because God is love, and when we are born of God we get God’s Spirit. When we have that Spirit, it will be natural for us to love, just as it is the nature of the dove to be gentle. “If airy man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.”
Spurgeon once went into he country to visit a friend who had built a new barn, and on the barn was a cupola upon which they had put a weather vane with this text of Scripture on it: “God is love.”
Spurgeon said to the man: “What do you mean by putting that text of Scripture on the weather vane? Do you mean that God’s love is as changeable as the wind?”
“Oh, no,” was the reply; “I mean to say that God is love whichever way the wind blows.”
I pity any man’s religion that is affected by the climate: it is onhT skin deep. A man got up in one of our meetings some time ago and said that he had once been a Christian for about six months, but he spoke in prayer meeting and an old deacon got up and threw cold water on him, and then he gave the whole thing up. I said, “If a bucket of water took it out of you, your Christianity was not very deep.” True religion will strike deeper than that. It will take a good many buckets of water to take it out of you if you are filled with love.
Andrew Murray has said that most Christians are ready to pray for the Holy Ghost for power in service, but that we seldom pray for Him as the Spirit of love. We have almost forgotten that love is the first fruitage of the Spirit’s indwelling. Love is the fulfilling of the law. When sin entered, it broke the bands of love, and we find the spirit of hatred leading Cain to murder his brother. Oh, for a baptism of love, uniting us altogether in one Spirit!
The love of God taking possession of our hearts — that is what we want. Are you walking in love? If not, make up your mind that you will do it from now on. Move into the thirteenth chapter of First
The Seven “Walks” of Ephesians. ai
Corinthians. Many people take an occasional journey into that chapter, but few live there. Then you will be long-suffering and kind, free from envy and pride and selfishness and bad temper, thinking no evil. May God fill us all with love!
IV. Walk circumspectly (Ephesians v: 15).
The eyes of the world are upon us. They don’t read the Bible, but they read 3-011 and me, and we talk more by our walk than in any other way. We are “living epistles, known and read of all men.” I can walk a lie. I can walk dishonestly. I can walk crookedly, and make other people stumble over me. I said to some one the other day:
“That man must have been in the army or in a military school.”
He said, “Yes; how did you know?”
I said, “B3- the way he walks.”
There are some people that you can tell have been with j esus Christ by their walk.
An old divine, trying to illustrate this passage in Ephesians, “walking circumspectly,” describes a cat walking on a brick wall covered with sharp pieces of glass. The cat goes along, putting his feet down very cautiously, so as not to cut his feet. Let us keep in mind that the eyes ol the world are upon our acts, and let our alk be very circumspect.
A young man in our Bible Institute in Chicago got onto the grip car, and before the conductor came around to take the fare, he had reached the Institute, and jumped off without paying Ins fare. In thinking over that act, he said:
“That was not walking circumspectly; that was not
42 Short Talks by D. L. Moodj
just right. I had my ride, and I ought to pay that fare.”
He remembered the face of the conductor, and he went to the car barns and paid him the five cents.
“Well,” the conductor said, “you are a fool not to keep it.”
“No,” the young man said, “I am not. I got the ride, and I ought to have paid for it.”
“But it was niy business to collect it.”
“No, it was my business to hand it to you.”
The conductor said, “I think you must belong to that Bible Institute.”
I have not heard anything said of the Institute that pleased me so much as that one thing.
Not long after that the gripman came to the Institute, and asked the student to come to see him. A cottage meeting was started in his house; and not only the conductor, but a number of others around there were converted as a result of that one act.
Walk circumspectly, because you don’t know who will be influenced by your words and actions. I have heard of a canary that was taught to sing, “Home, Sweet Home,” by being placed in a room, when young, with a musical box that played only that tune. Moses’ face shone after he had been in the mount with God forty days. They took knowledge of the disciples “that they had been with Jesus.” And it is said of Lord Peterborough after spending a night With Fenelon, the great French preacher, he was so impressed with his holy character that he said to him on leaving:
“If I stajT here any longer, I shall become a Christian in spite of myself.”
Many a person who is engaged in active Christian work, or who takes a leading part in the prayer meeting, is so faulty in his daily walk as to be a stumbling-block to others. Sometimes the last people to be favorably impressed by professing Christians are those who know them in their home life. This is all wrong. Test yourselves, therefore, and see if you indulge in any questionable habit, anything in your example and influence that is likely to lead astray those who read your conduct.
V. Walk not as other Gentiles walk (Ephesians iv: 17).
God expects a difference when we become His. The world expects a difference, and the church of God expects a difference between one that professes to be a child of light and one that is a child of darkness; and if there is not a difference in your life since you have become a Christian, then I am afraid that you have not become a real one.
The course of this world is away from God; therefore I must go against the current of the world, if I’m a child of God. What we want to-day is separation. The church will have a convincing testimony and will become a power in the world when it is separated from the world; but as long as it is hand and glove with the world, it cannot have power. I believe that when we are told not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers, it means just what it says: and if I live just as the Gentiles, the ungodly, live, I shall have trouble.
It is said of Lot, “‘His righteous soul was vexed.” Of course it was. Righteousness can never be at peace with unrighteousness. And if I walk as other
Gentiles walk, as the world walks, I will be constantly getting into trouble, because I will go in the course of the world.
You say, “I will walk as I please.”
You can do it. You can take a course away from God, but it will bring you into bondage and darkness.
VI. Walk as children of light (Ephesians v: 8).
Put off the ways of darkness. Put off the works of darkness.
Now the question arises, “How am I going to get light.
“God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.* “The entrance of Thy word giveth light.” Are you in the dark? Let the Word of God into your heart, and it will dispel the darkness. “Thy “Word is a lamp unto my feet,” and if you want light, just take the Word. It is the privilege of every one of us to walk in an unclouded sun all our days, if we will. 1 don”t believe that it is the will of God that any child ol His shall be in the dark. We are children of the day, children of the light; we have been born ol His Spirit, and lie brings light and peace. I believe that nothing i-s going to light up the darkplaces of the world like the old Book. Men talk about the light of nature, but we do not find that civilization has made any progress where the light of Christ and the Bible has not come.
Let me give you a passage from H. L. Hastings:
“A friend of mine visited the Fiji Islands in 1844, and what do you suppose an infidel was worth there then? You could buy a man for a musket, or if you paid money, for seven dollars, and after 3-011 had bought him you could feed him, starve him, work him, whip him, or eat him — they generally ate them, unless they were so full of tobacco they could not stomach them! But if you go there to-day you could not buy a man for seven dollars nor for seven million dollars. There are no men there for sale now. What has made this difference in the price of humanity? The twelve hundred Christian chapels scattered over that island tell the story. The people have learned to read that Book which says, ‘Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ’; and since they learned that lesson, no man is for sale there.”
VII. Let us walk in good works (Ephesians ii: 1 0).
Now, I do not believe that you will find a day pass in your life but that you can do some good deed if you will. Some one has described this world as two great mountains: one is a mountain of sorrow, and trouble, and darkness, and gloom, and disappointment; .the other is a mountain of peace, and of joy, and of gladness; and if we can take a little from that mountain of darkness and put it over on that mountain of joy, and each one do a little, that mountain of darkness is going to grow smaller and smaller, and the other is going to grow larger and larger.
I learned a motto in England which I am going to pass on to you: “For our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, do all the good you can, to all the people you can, by all the means you can, in all the places you can, as long as ever you can.” Keep that in mind, and pass it on to others.
You know that very often one little act of kindness wiH live a good deal longer than a most magnificent sermon. There is a preacher in Edinburgh, but I never think of him as a preacher, although he is one of the finest preachers in Scotland. Just one act is associated with that man that I will carry in remembrance to the grave. There is a hospital for little children in Edinburgh, and that great minister, with a large parish and a large congregation, goes one afternoon every week and sits down and talks with those little children — a good many of them there for life; they are incurable.
One day he found a little boy only six years old who had been brought over from Fife. The little fellow was in great distress, because the doctors were coming to take off his leg. Think how you would feel, if you had a little brother six years old, and he was taken off to the hospital, and the doctor said that he was coming forty-eight hours afterwards to take off his leg! Well, that minister tried to comfort the boy, and said:
“Your father will come to be with you.”
“No,” he said, “my father is dead; he cannot be here.”
“Well, j’our mother will come.”
“My mother is over in Fife. She is sick, and cannot come.”
The minister himself could not come, so he said:
“Well, you know the matron here is a mother, she has got a great big heart.”
The little chin began to quiver as the boy said: “Perhaps Jesus will be with me.”
“Yes,” said the minister, “He will be with you, and D will this good woman.”
The minister went around after the time of the operation, but the cot was empty; Christ had taken the boy to Himself. Think of a leading minister just going every week into a children’s hospital, doing a thing like that!
Let us all walk the walk of good works. Find something to do, and do it every day, and you will never backslide, and you won’t be asking, “Have I got to give up this and that?” Christ will give you something better than anything you give up. Oh, may God baptize us all with the spirit of love and the spirit of work!