Sins of the Spirit Series: Part 7 (Malice)

Sins of the Spirit Series: Part 7 (Malice)

Let's also take our Bibles this evening and turn to Ephesians chapter 4. Ephesians chapter 4. We were here last week on Sunday night looking at the sin of bitterness, the sin of the spirit, which is bitterness. We talked about that picric acid that is used in explosives and its various things that were used in the past. And how that bitterness is like a root, it builds up, it grows over time and it gets deeper and deeper in our spirit and our heart and it can eat away at us and spill over to other lives like an acid in the way that it not only affects our hearts but others. Ultimately, we must keep our heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life, as we saw last week.

I want to read these verses again that we saw last week but I also want to look at a couple of others before we begin to make commentary on this sin that we'll be looking at tonight. In Ephesians 4:31, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice and be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. Let's look as well at Colossians chapter 3, please. Colossians chapter 3, verse 8, but now ye also put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. And in 1 Peter chapter 2, let's look there as well, verse 1, wherefore laying aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisies and envies and all evil speaking, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word.

Malice is defined as a desire to cause pain, injury, or distress to another and implies a deep-seated, often unexplainable desire to see another suffer. The Greek word here is translated as malice six times. It's translated twice as maliciousness, once as evil, once as wickedness, and once as naughtiness. The word malice, we're told here tonight in Ephesians chapter 4, to put away all malice. Colossians said we were to put off all these, including malice. Peter told us laying aside all malice. I think it's pretty clear from the scriptures that malice is something that's to be put away from us.

In Romans 1:29, look over there with me, please. Romans chapter 1, verse 29, we're told over there. We certainly know the context there is of an unbelieving, rebellious world of unbelievers that have denied the obvious God that created them, that can be clearly seen in the visible things He made. The invisible God can be clearly seen in the things He's made. And yet rebels deny His existence and refuse to worship Him. Among those that do that, we're told in Romans chapter 1, verse number 29, where something very specific is said about those individuals that deny God and reject His desire for them to worship Him. It says that they are being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness. They are being filled with this maliciousness, full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, whisperers.

Interestingly enough, we are commanded to be being filled with the Spirit. We're to be filled with the Spirit and we saw recently that fruit of the Spirit that is to mark our lives as the children of God. The fruit of the Spirit is contrary to all those things we have formerly been full of, right? Titus 3 says we were hateful and hating one another. But now we are to be filled with the Spirit, not with maliciousness. This is what the Christ-denying, God-denying world that we live in is filled with.

But there is a word I've heard, this term, maligntent. Has anybody else heard that said at any point? Maligntent? It is considered a word though it's not commonly used in everyday language. It's even regarded as something that's more archaic from what I understand and looking it up. Because I thought, you know, as I was looking at the construction of this malice, even I think about the Spanish word, mal, MAL, bad. It's something bad, you know, maless. It's no bueno. And so when you hear that it's all related. But when I think about maligntent, I looked it up and it's actually the more common term, you know, in judicial and legal settings, legal terminology is we hear it as malicious intent, right? When you hear in a court of law, they're trying to determine the sentencing for this person. Is this a felony? Is this a misdemeanor? How severe is this, you know, is this first degree, second degree, whatever it is? I mean, we're talking about intent. And is it malicious intent? Was this premeditated? And in what manner was it carried out? So malicious intent refers to the intent without just cause or reason to commit a wrongful act that will result in harm to another. Is the intent to harm or do some evil purpose?

Sometimes we see extreme actions arising from malicious intent, unthinkable actions, unthinkable crimes, horrific things that are done to people. And we think, how could somebody do that? Sometimes we see parents, you know, how they treat their own children. Just the wicked things people could do that arise from and are the result of this malicious intent. Sometimes we use the word sadistic to describe the nature of these crimes that are committed with a malicious intent. Sadistic simply means delighting in or feeling pleasure from the pain of others. It's so egregious to look at, you know, some trial that's going on and you see the defendant just smiling, smirking, laughing about what they did. They have no remorse. They actually get some twisted sort of delight out of what they did.

So not only apart from God, a person can go so deep in bitterness and anger and hatred that they can actually come to the place where they think they get some twisted, perverted sense of enjoyment and thrill from malice, from being malicious. This is the absolute opposite of what God has, and it is very much the character of Satan himself. Satan gets delight out of death and destruction. He delights at the murder of unborn babies. He delights in the removal of innocence from children. He delights in the perversion of the genders, the destruction of the home, the destruction of marriages. He delights in it. He gets twisted joy out of all of those things because he is full of malice. He is the slanderer. He is the accuser. He is the epitome. If we think of Jesus Christ as the epitome of all that is good and pure, Jesus Christ is that; Satan is the epitome of all that is evil and wicked. He is the first rebel, and he empowers rebels. He empowers all which is done with disdain toward God.

So Martin Boyce Jones, I read you something he said about malice. He says malice means wicked desires with respect to others, a determination to harm others. Again, a kind of settled spirit which so hates others that it thinks of ways of harming them, plots such ways, gloats over them, and then proceeds to put them into practice. It is a kind of malignity. Well, that paints a very bad picture, doesn't it? But you know, malice doesn't necessarily, it can ultimately lead someone to murder another, but it doesn't always manifest itself in that format.

Malice, we're told in 1 Corinthians about this. Look in 1 Corinthians 5, verse number 8. It is such a love of self and pleasure that it is willing to go to some pretty low places in order to please self and doesn't care about hurting other people, right? We notice in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, verse number 8, we're told there the Apostle Paul says, therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. We're to love one another, aren't we? John told us about that. In First John, we've been looking at, you know, if we don't love our brethren that we have seen, how can we love God that we haven't seen? By this we know that we love the brethren when we love God to keep His commandments, and you know if a man, a woman, or a child is a child of God, they love the brethren. We love the brethren, right?

And we're told here that we are to keep the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. In 1 Corinthians 10, verse 17, before we say anything else about that, in chapter 10, verse 17, I want to remind you what Paul said there. He said, for we, in the context of the Lord's Supper, he says, for we being many are one bread and one body, for we are all partakers of that one bread. As believers, we are one bread, and we must be careful that this bread is not filled with leaven, right? That's why we are doing and what's in our heart and our spirit before God, there's nothing between my soul and the Savior, and there's nothing that's outstanding between me and the brethren. There's sincerity and there's truth and love, right? There is sincerity and truth in my relationship with God and my relationship with my brethren, and I have no malice towards my brethren. I have no malice. We shouldn't have malice towards the world either, but I'm just saying in the context of brethren, we should not have this malice.

We are, we've been told tonight to put it off, to put it away, to lay it aside, all of those terminologies we saw: put it away from you. Let it be put away from you and instead be kind one to another. Be tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. So we're one bread, and we're one bread in Christ because He is the one without leaven, right? He's the one without sin. If we name the name of Christ, let's depart from iniquity. Let us put aside that iniquity. Let's put aside any wicked way that is in us.

So Jesus said in John 6:51, I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat this bread, he shall live forever, and the bread which I will give is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world. We cannot say, like John tells us, we should not deceive ourselves and say we walk in the light but our deeds are evil. If we say that we walk in the light, then we must, if we say that we're eating of this bread and eating of His flesh and drinking of His blood, then let us not merely give the appearance of that, but may it be in truth. May we walk in truth, we walk in the light as His blood cleanses us from all sin.

Well, if we have, if we're walking with Christ, holy, humble, thankful, Christ-centered lives, then we'll be walking, inevitably we'll be walking and communing with each other, won't we? We'll have a right relationship with each other. But if we put away any and all leaven of malice in our lives, if we put that away, then our words will be right. Maybe we have to say, oops, I didn't say that quite right, forgive me, you know, but I'm just saying we won't. Our words and our actions will take care of themselves if our hearts are right toward God. And even if we don't say something as well as we intend to, it's not with malintent, right? It's not with malice.

If we have any anger, if we have any bitterness, what did we say last week? Bitterness is when it grows like a root and it gets deeper and it gets more entrenched into the soil of our heart. When we justify anger and we internalize anger and nurture its growth and justify, I have a right to be angry with this or about this. And it gets deeper and deeper in our hearts because we see, maybe we see something wrong in someone else and we say, well, I have a right to be this way. No, because what that's going to ultimately do, that bitterness is then going to grow into an ugly malice toward that, it's brewing, it's getting bolder, it's getting deeper, and then it's going to be this deep-seated malice, and we are going to find ourselves thinking maybe somebody crossed us wrong. You know, somebody didn't treat us right, and that bitterness could grow to the point where we say, I would be glad to see something bad happen to them, or I would be glad to see some misfortune happen to this person. You know, we're even told to love our enemies. We don't have to condone their sin and love their sin and participate in their sin and celebrate their sin. No, but our Lord said, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.

At the very least, He said to the Pharisees, woe unto you Pharisees, He told them the truth and said they needed to repent, but He is not willing. Our God is not willing that any perish, He does not have malice toward any. He's just, but He's also merciful. Thank God, He's merciful because if He was a God of malice, none of us would stand a chance, or if He was merely a God of justice alone and no mercy, you know, in us is something the sinful human nature of ours apart from God, we delight to see others suffer, especially those who have done us some wrong, to get even, to get back. We mentioned that this morning, didn't we? It somehow gets some enjoyment out of stepping on others and getting ahead of them and seeing ourselves promoted and them put down in some way or slighted in some way. This is what the scripture says, we were hateful and hating one another. Titus 3:3, I mentioned a moment ago. It says in that verse that we were living in malice and envy.

But James, look in James 1 if you will. James chapter 1, verse number 21. Wherefore, well it says the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. You know, we saw recently we can be angry and sin not, but anger must always become something else. It must be channeled or funneled or whatever word we'll use there into prayer. It must be directed by God into, you know, into some other energy rather than simply brewing and stewing and building up this hot, passionate, explosive kind of response to things that are going on. No, we must not dwell on anger. And in that sense, we see here, it says in verse 20 that the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Wherefore, here we have it again. This similar terminology, lay apart, put it aside, put it off, put away. Lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, what a term, overflowing or overabundance of wickedness. This is the same word for maliciousness and malice here, superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness instead, receive with meekness because it's not in us, we have to receive it, the engrafted word which is able to save your souls, be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

So lay it apart, lay apart all this malice, lay apart all this naughtiness that we are looking at here. Yes, we're going to, no doubt, rejoice at God's justice, and we should rejoice when God carries out justice, but we should not, like our God, we should not desire the destruction of anyone or the downfall of anyone. We should pray for and hope for repentance and restoration and forgiveness for those people. Isn't it interesting how we, by our own sinful tendencies, we want to see others judged, but we don't want to see that for ourselves, do we? We would rather people be merciful to us if we were, turn the tables around and we had wronged someone, and then we realized we were wrong, and what do we want them to do? We want them to forgive us, please forgive me, please forgive me, like the story of Matthew 18, the man says I can't pay my debt, please, and the man he owed the money to frankly just forgave him of the debt, and what did he do? He went and grabbed the other guy and said, you owe me a small amount, pay me now. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, right? Isn't that the mind of Christ? Isn't that how our Lord thinks? That certainly is not how the devil thinks. That certainly is not how our sinful nature is geared in its direction.

So what is the remedy? Put it off and receive with meekness the engrafted word. God has got to tell us what to do and enable us to do what He wills. Receive the grace that I have for you. Listen to these instructions. Step out in faith and just put away from you that malign thinking. I don't care, you know, the world justifies many times, sinners justify not becoming a Christian because they say, well look at so and so, look here, I've got all these reasons, these excuses why I'm not a Christian. You can stand before God one day, and you can give an answer for what have you done with Jesus. And that's Christians, we're going to stand before God one day no matter how many times we may have even been, you know, I hear about people, and they've been wronged, and legitimately many have been hurt by the church or somebody in the church. Some snake in the bushes, so to speak. There are snakes in the pulpit. There are people that have hurt, and you know, they get bitter, and they get malice, and they just leave the church. I know, and were they, some of them may truly be saved, some of them may not have ever been saved. I know Brother Pete asks us to pray for this man in Infield. Somebody hurt him, you know. And it's true. There are people, there are hypocrites in the churches, but nonetheless, we're going to answer to the Lord for what we've done with these passages one day, aren't we?

We've talked about things that we don't understand in scripture. This is very understandable. It's very understandable. We know what malice is. We've felt it. I know I felt it in my spirit. I know I've sensed it in my heart. Malice toward. Help me to put that away, Lord. Help me to put away all anger. Help me to obey you in putting away all this anger and this or any little bit of it. We might say it was just a little thing. It's just a little thing. No, put it away. The bitterness. The malice. And as we read in Ephesians chapter 4 tonight, let's look back over there in verse 32. We didn't really take any time on this last week, but Ephesians chapter 4, verse number 32 says, and be kind one to another, tenderhearted. Well, if we're meek in the reception of God's words, we'll be tenderhearted in our words and actions towards one another, won't we? Forgiving one another. Because if God's word dwells in us richly, the word of Christ dwells in us richly, we will not be able to help but be humbled by and amazed that He should love us as sinners condemned unclean. Oh, how marvelous. Oh, how wonderful is my Savior's love for me. Why should He love me so?

Well, be kind, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. It's a mystery, isn't it? How God could love us when we were unlovely? How He would stoop to save us from our hateful, hating one another, living in strife and confusion and all of this. And He steps into a world full of sinners, dies on a cruel cross, and says, Father, forgive them. What a contrast. There's never been a greater contrast in the history of the world than the sinful, hateful state that the Lord Jesus Christ stepped into to save us.

I can't help but think, I think I've mentioned this not too long ago, but the internet fuels and exposes the malice of sinful hearts. It exposes the reality of what is the human heart. Our world today is full of hatred. It's full of envy, it's full of malice, and people not treating others as they would want themselves to be treated. All the while, at the same time, there are some that try to maintain some sort of appearance of a form of godliness, but we see that the only thing that can make a real change in people's lives, a heart change, is the grace of God, and of all people, we should shine brightly as lights in this world. We should be models, we should be modeling, showing forth the praises of our Lord and Savior. We should be bearing that fruit we talked about the other week in our lives. And knowing if there's some wicked way in us, all we have to do is just put it away in obedience to the Lord's command. Just as straightforward as when the Lord said to someone who was crippled, rise up and walk, do it.

You know, there was a component there where they had a responsibility. They could just continue to lay there, or they could believe on the word of the Lord when He said rise and walk, He's going to give him the ability to stand up, right? Stand up, rise up, walk, take up your bed. And don't stay down there. Well, you know, when the waters are stirred, I have to have somebody help me get down there, and I just never get there in time. The Lord said, get up, you're healed. And this is the way the word is. It's not some series of hoops we have to jump through. The Lord says, if you acknowledge the problem, the sin, and you believe my command and obey it, then there's nothing for you to do. You just believe and receive what I tell you. The cure is there, isn't it? Even physically speaking, it's wonderful when we get some medicine or something that can help us, and we're like, if I don't get some help, I'm gonna be in a real bad situation here. And then it just clears up. It clears it up. That's the way the Lord is. That's the way His word is when we receive it with meekness, the engrafted word. It's able to save us, not only save us from the pits of hell and destruction, but also save us from our own sinful spirits, our sinful selves, our sinful ways and habits.

So may the Lord help us to truly look to Him. It's truly as we have been told a number of ways tonight to put off, to lay aside, to put away this malice and to be kind, to be tenderhearted. Let's pray. Father, thank you for these moments we've had in your words. Perhaps the sin we've seen tonight, it often manifests itself in a very extreme sort of way, but that's not always. Sometimes we could have, even as Christians, because you've obviously made a big deal about it in your word, we could have some hidden motive and secret sin in our life, Lord, of malice toward another that we may never verbalize it, but the thought is there. We may have allowed bitterness to fester to the point where we get some sort of twisted enjoyment out of seeing someone else put down or have some demotion of sorts or not do well, and we get ahead in some way that this is the wrong kind of thinking. This is the world's kind of thinking, Lord.

And if there's any way, even I think about siblings, Lord, I think about sometimes how we may get some sort of, at least at times these children, they could get some kind of enjoyment out of putting one of their siblings down. I don't think of any particular one at this moment, but Lord, I know how sometimes sibling rivalries can be. Lord, help us to just put away any of those kinds of thoughts from our minds and to love one another, to be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another. And we just pray these things now and ask them in Jesus' name, Amen.