Providence Church of San Diego

06/15/2026

Sermon Follow Up: Ephesians 4:25-32
"The Court That Never Adjourns"

You know the conversation. You have had it a hundred times, and the other person was never in the room.

It usually starts at night, after the lights are off, when nothing is left to distract you. You replay what they did and sharpen what you should have said. You build the case, present the evidence, and deliver the verdict. Guilty…again! The court is always in session, the offender is always convicted, and you are always the wronged one. You wake up tired and can’t say why.

Paul knew that bed. "Do not let the sun go down on your anger," he says, and almost in the same breath, "give no opportunity to the devil" (Ephesians 4:30). He is not being poetic. Unresolved anger is a door. The enemy does not need to invent anything new in you, he just walks through the one you prop open every night.

Here is the question Paul forces, and it cuts deeper than "are you angry." Why won't you put it down? You will tell yourself it is about justice then sit with it longer. The grudge is giving you something. It lets you feel righteous while you feel furious. It hands you a weapon to pick up the next time you feel small. It keeps you on the moral high ground without ever having to climb down and face the person. We do not hold bitterness because we love justice, we hold it because it pays us.

And it is the worst wage you will ever earn. Bitterness does not make them pay. They are asleep; they’ve moved on. Meanwhile the thing you keep gnawing on, certain it will finally satisfy you, was never their bone. It was your own. You are the one it is hollowing out.

You cannot fix this by staring harder at the wound. The longer you study what they did, the larger it grows and the smaller God's mercy looks. The only way out is the one that feels like losing. You look away from the offense and back to a cross, and you stay there until the debt that was cancelled for you grows larger than the debt you are holding against them.

That is why Paul does not end Ephesians 4 with "forgive." He ends with "as God in Christ forgave you." Your forgiveness was not God shrugging. He did not decide your sin was small or pretend it never happened. He named it, weighed it, and laid the full weight of it on His own Son. The mercy you are being asked to extend cost Him blood. That’s what you held in your hands at the Table of Communion yesterday. The bread and the cup are where forgiveness comes from. You can’t give what you have not received, and you have received far more than you will ever be asked to give.

Please hear me carefully, because some of you were not wounded by a passing rudeness. You were betrayed and abused; robbed of something you cannot get back. Forgiveness does not mean pretending it did not happen, or handing trust back to someone who will use it as a weapon again, or calling evil good. You may need time and you may need help. You definitely need wise people around you and probably some firm walls in place. What you may not do is build a shrine to your resentment and call it justice. You can lay down the right to make them pay without ever pretending they did nothing.

So tonight, when the court reconvenes, do not present your case. Bring it to the One who already bore the sentence. Let the sun go down on the anger, and not on you.

He has not let go of you. He never will.

Humbled to be your pastor,
Brian

06/14/2026

Sunday Worship - June 14, 2026

06/13/2026

This Sunday, Pastor Brian will be preaching on Ephesians 4:25-32. Please read and pray on this passage in preparation for Sunday worship.

Let's also pray for Pastor Brian as he prepares to deliver God's Word.

"Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you."

Ephesians 4:25-32 (ESV)

06/10/2026

How can we pray for you? Share in the comments or reach out on messenger.

"Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you."

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (ESV)

06/08/2026

Sermon follow-up: Ephesians 4:17-24
“Put off the Old; Put on the New”

My son needs new shoes… again.

It seems like we just bought him new shoes, but his feet won’t stop growing. So, he needs new shoes again.

Sometimes I wish my kids would stop growing. Sometimes I wish they would stop growing because they outgrow their clothes so quickly. Sometimes I wish they would stop growing because I enjoy the stage of life they are in, and I want things to stay the same. But I understand they are supposed to grow up. That’s how life works.

In our text this week, Paul told the believers in Ephesus to “put off” the fleshly thoughts and actions that dominated their lives before their conversion and to pursue true righteousness and holiness.

This call to mortify sin and strive for holiness is a part of the process of sanctification. The Westminster Shorter Catechism defines sanctification as “the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.”

Sanctification refers to the spiritual growth that takes place in the believer’s life after salvation. Paul already told the church they had been adopted (Ephesians 1:5), redeemed (Ephesians 1:7), saved by grace (Ephesians 2:8), and made alive together with Christ (Ephesians 2:4). Now that they are saved and given new life, Paul calls the church to “walk worthy” of the new life they have been given.

It’s normal for my son to outgrow his shoes at this age. And as much as I might sometimes like my kids to remain their current age, I know if they were to stop growing and maturing it would be a sign that something is wrong.

Just like there is the expectation of growth in our physical lives, there is the expectation of growth in our spiritual lives.

There are clear and specific things God has called His people to do in order to grow and mature spiritually. We will see more as we continue through the book of Ephesians, but in our text this week, the call is to “put off the old man.” Just like one would remove filthy clothing, Paul tells the church to remove the old way of thinking and living that is inappropriate for adopted children of the one true God.

True sanctification cannot take place until the believer is willing to evaluate his life through the lens of Scripture and ruthlessly mortify the sinful thoughts and actions that harm themselves and others. Pastor Alan Redpath says we must also target our “favorite sins:” those we secretly adore and want to hold tight, especially our selfishness and pride.

Sanctification is not just about sins we must remove, but is also about godly virtues we should pursue. The pursuit of godliness begins with a renewal of the mind. Unfortunately, many believers minimize their spiritual growth because their worldview reflects the culture more than Scripture. It is imperative that believers make conscious efforts to ensure their thoughts are in line with God’s will as recorded in Scripture.

It doesn’t make sense to have new life in Christ without growing in Christlikeness. Sanctification is a lifelong process that continues until God calls us home. Though our growth may be slower than we want, it must constantly be our desire. We must fight against any complacency that creeps into our flesh, remembering that the powerful God who created us and redeemed us is working in us to conform us into the image of His Son (Romans 8:29).

I will leave you with Paul’s powerful prayer from Ephesians 3, reminding us that the God who gave us life listens lovingly to the prayers of His children.

For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:14-21)

Serving together in His kingdom,
-Pastor David

06/08/2026

Sunday Worship - June 7, 2026

06/06/2026

This Sunday, Pastor David will be preaching on Ephesians 4:17-24. Please read and pray on this passage in preparation for Sunday worship.

Let's also pray for Pastor David as he prepares to deliver God's Word.

"Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness."

Ephesians 4:17-24 (ESV)

06/01/2026

It was good to be with you yesterday as we worshiped our Lord outdoors on a beautiful morning. Walking through Ephesians 4:7-16 reminded me again why Paul writes the way he does. He never gives us a doctrine without also showing us a life. And he never sets a glorious goal before us without telling us how the Lord intends to graciously bring us there.

The big picture was that the ascended Christ, the same Christ who descended all the way down for us, gives gifts to His church so that the body might grow up into Himself. He gives gifted leaders; they equip the saints. The saints minister; the body matures. And the whole organism, joined and held together by every joint, grows into Christ in love.

That is the architecture of the passage. And its center of gravity sits in verse 15: "Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ."

There may be no verse in the New Testament more often pulled out of its context, and perhaps no verse that has done more pastoral damage when it is. We have all heard it deployed as a velvet glove around an iron fist ("I'm just speaking the truth in love") followed by something that was neither true nor loving. And we have all watched the opposite move, where "love" gets stretched until it covers a multitude of sins by simply refusing to name any. Both are deformities of the Christian life. Both, in different ways, will eat a church alive.

Paul has something far better in mind. The contrast he draws in verse 14 is not between "speaking truth bluntly" and "speaking truth politely." The contrast is between error advanced by deceit and truth held in love. The deceivers do not love the people they are deceiving. If they did, they would tell them the truth. The mature Christian, Paul says, is the one who holds the truth, and holds it for the good of the one he holds it to.

That is the difference between truth held in love and truth wielded as a weapon. The weapon-wielder cares about being right. The lover cares about being redemptive. The weapon-wielder wants to win. The lover wants to help. Same words, sometimes. Same verse, even. But two utterly different hearts.

And the danger runs in both directions.

There is a way to use love as a cover for cowardice, refusing to speak the hard thing because we are afraid of how it will land, dressing up our timidity in spiritual language and calling it "grace" when really it is just "fear." The one who has the truth but will not bring it to bear because they are afraid of losing the relationship is not loving the other person. They are loving themselves. The cost of speaking has felt too high, so they have offered silence and called it kindness. It is not kindness. It is abandonment dressed in better clothes.

R.C. Sproul put his finger on it: "We can defend a contentious spirit by pretending to hide behind a zeal for the truth of God. It can work both ways." The combatant hides his contentiousness behind talk of truth. The compromiser hides his cowardice behind talk of love. And only the Lord, who searches the heart, can finally tell us which of the two we are most prone to be.

Most of us are prone to one or the other. Some of us were raised in environments where the truth was wielded like a hammer, and we have spent the rest of our lives recovering and overcorrecting. Others of us watched our parents' generation lose its nerve, and we have spent our lives recovering the lost courage. We were going to be the brave ones. We did not notice we were also becoming the harsh ones.

Both groups need this verse badly. Because truth held in love is not a tone or a technique. It is a Christ-shaped posture toward another human being whom Christ died to save.

And so ask yourself this week: Is there a conversation you have been avoiding because the truth feels too costly to bring? Is there a relationship where the loving thing would be to say the hard thing, and you have chosen the silence and called it peace?

Or is the question running the other direction? Are you carrying a sharp word about someone in your heart, true perhaps, but unsoftened, unhumbled, unwilling to count the cost of speaking it well? Have you confused your sense that you are right with God's call to speak? Is there a confrontation you are eager to have, but the eagerness itself should tell you the time is not yet?

Truth without love is brutality and love without truth is sentimentality. Christ is neither. He is full of grace and truth. And the church He is building looks more like Him every year in this exact respect. We become a people who say the hard things tenderly and the tender things firmly. A people in whose mouths the truth does not bruise and the love does not deceive.

None of us are there yet. But this is what we are growing into, by His Word, His Table, His people, and His patience with our slow progress.

Christ does not hold the truth of who we are at arm's length. He has come close, named the worst of us, and loved us anyway. He has spoken the hard word, "you were dead in trespasses and sins," and He has spoken it in the costliest possible love, "but God, being rich in mercy, made us alive together with Christ." He did not soften the truth, and He did not soften the love. He held both for us.

May we, by His Spirit, grow into a people who can do the same, for one another, for our families, and for the world He is still calling to Himself.

Grateful to be your pastor,
Brian

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05/31/2026

Sunday Worship - May 31, 2026

05/30/2026

This Sunday, Pastor Brian will be preaching on Ephesians 4:7-16. Please read and pray on this passage in preparation for Sunday worship.

Let's also pray for Pastor Brian as he prepares to deliver God's word.

"But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore it says,

'When he ascended on high he led a host of captives,
and he gave gifts to men.'

(In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love."

Ephesians 4:7-16, ESV