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, and 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 different things. It was used anyway in the past.

And how that bitterness is like a root. It builds up or it grows over time and it gets deeper and deeper in our spirit, in our heart, and it can eat away at us and spill over to other lives like an acid in the way that it affects not only our hearts but others. Ultimately we must keep our hearts with all diligence.

For out of it are the issues of life 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.

Be ye 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. Colossians 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 please. 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 speakings,

as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word that ye may grow thereby.

Noah Webster defines malice as a desire to cause pain, injury or distress to another and implies a deep-seated, often unexplainable desire to see another suffer.

So it's 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're 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.

Well we certainly know the context there is 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. Refuse to worship him.

And among those that do that we're told in Romans chapter 1 and 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 filled, 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. And the fruit of the Spirit is contrary to all those things we have formally 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 used before. It's not very commonplace, I've not heard it on a regular basis, but I have heard the term malintent. Has anybody else heard that said at any point? Malintent. 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, M-A-L, bad, something bad, you know, malice. It's no bueno. And so when you hear that, it's all related.

But when I think about malintent, I looked it up and it's actually the more common term in a judicial and a legal setting. Legal terminology is we hear it 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? Is this how severe is the, you know, is this first degree, second degree? Whatever it is, I mean, we're talking about intent. Is it malicious intent? Was this premeditated? And 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? I just looked up the definition on the internet. I didn't write down the exact source for that. It was some legal terminology page that I looked it up on.

Sometimes we see extreme actions arising from this 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 is 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 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 Lloyd 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.

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 chapter 5, verse number 8. It is such a love of self and pleasure and 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. 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 all about that. 1 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 and keep His commandments. You know, if a man, woman, boy or girl 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.

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 observe the Lord's Supper, right? We are saying by partaking of this that what we're 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've been told tonight to put it off, to put it away, to lay it aside, all that terminology 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 651, I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat this bread, he shall live forever, and the bread that 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. May we walk in the light as he's in the light, and 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 will inevitably be walking in communion with each other, won't we? We'll have a right relationship with each other. And 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, whoop, 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 intended 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, that bitterness is when we, it grows like a root and it gets deeper and it gets more entrenched in 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 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, that bitterness is going then 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, maybe we wouldn't say we want them to die, but I would be cheering inside if so-and-so happened 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 did not, He's not willing. Our God is not willing that any should 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 just, a God of justice alone and no mercy.

You know, isn't it something? The sinful human nature of ours, apart from God, it delights to see others suffer, especially those who have done us some wrong, right? 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 serving divers, lusts, and pleasures. We were living in malice and envy.

But James, look in James 1, if you will. James chapter 1, please. Here's this word again. James chapter 1, verse number 21. James 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 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 in 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? Wherefore? Here we have it again. This similar terminology, lay apart. Put it aside, put 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 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 are going to no doubt rejoice at God's justice and we should rejoice at 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 to turn the tables around and we had wronged someone and then we realized that we had wronged them. What do we want them to do? We want them to forgive us, right? Please forgive me. Please forgive me. Like the story in 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 cried to the other guy and said, you owe me. A smaller amount, but you owe me. No. Do unto others as you would that they would do unto you, right? Isn't that the mind of Christ? Isn't that how our Lord thinks? That's certainly not how the devil thinks. That's certainly not how our sinful nature is geared. It's 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 tells us to do. He's got to tell us how to think. He's got to tell us, first of all, if you're going to receive the grace that I have for you, listen to these instructions. Step out in faith and just put away from you that manner of 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 and look at here. I've got all these reasons and excuses why I'm not a Christian. You're going to stand before God one day and you're going to give an answer for what have you done with Jesus. And as 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, you know, in the bushes, so to speak. There's snakes in the pulpit. There's people that have hurt and, you know, they get bitter and they get malice and they just leave the church, you know, and some of them may truly be saved, some of them may not have ever been saved. I know Brother Pete asked us to pray for this man in Enfield. 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 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, isn't it? It's very understandable. We know what malice is. We felt it. I know I felt it in my spirit. I know I sensed it in my heart, malice toward. Help me to put that away, Lord. Help me to put away all anger. Help me to put away. Help me to obey you in putting away all this anger or any little bit of it. We might say it was just a little thing. It's just a little here. 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 32. What does it say there again? Ephesians chapter 4 and verse number 32 says, And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted. Well, if we're meek in the reception of God's word, we'll be tenderhearted in our words and actions toward 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 sinner 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 malice and envy, 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 this sinful, hateful scene 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, is full of envy, is 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 that 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 up and walk. He's going to give them the ability to stand up, right? Stand up, rise up, walk, take up your bed, and don't stay down there. Well, you know, whenever the waters are stirred, I have to have somebody to 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, isn't it wonderful when we get some medicine or something that can help us and we feel like, if I don't get some help, I'm going to 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, to 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 can have, even as Christians, because you've obviously made a big deal about it in your word, we can 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. 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.