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“DO AS I SAY. DO AS I DO.”

There’s been a little project going on here at the Voice of Prophecy which arouses in my heart the deepest feelings of sympathy! One of our staff members, who’s heading over to Thailand is laboriously inputting Thai PowerPoint into his computer to illustrate evangelistic sermons.

Now, he tells me that his own mastery of the Thai language is woefully minimal. He can say, pang mahk, which tells a Bangkok merchant that a souvenir is too expensive. And he can say, rohn dja dhai, which, roughly translated, means, “Man, it’s so hot here I’m about to die.” (That’s going to be useful.) And he has a smattering of knowledge about the Thai alphabet, which has something like 42 consonants, a bunch of vowels and diphthongs, and five tones with accompanying markings. So what he has to do is to take a Bible verse like John 3:16 in the English Bible, somehow find in a Thai Bible where the same verse is found, and then, consulting a keyboard chart for where the various characters are in a Thai font — which he downloaded off the Internet — painstakingly insert the verses one letter at a time. Ouch! And some of these beautiful sermons in the New Beginnings multimedia DVD series a number of us are using these days have 50, 60, 70 verses per sermon – some from the book of Deuteronomy! So it’s no easy task.

One thing he’s used to help him is a booklet with two cassettes where you listen in English and then hear a national speaker say the same phrase in the Thai language. And of course, Thai very often has different expressions for male and female, so you hear everything twice, once with the man saying krahp at the end, and the woman adding the feminine greeting, kah. The narrators’ names, by the way, are Namfon Raksasap and Wiboon Nakornjarupong, so you get an idea of the degree of difficulty! It’s hard, mind-bending work, but the point we want to make here in our Monday study is this: We often learn to do the hard things of life BY IMITATING. By listening to someone else’s Thai or Spanish and then repeating. By seeing someone else use a calculus formula on the blackboard with the power rule and the chain rule and then “going thou and doing likewise.” By attending a marriage seminar — speaking of PowerPoint — and taking notes when the lecturer says, “Here are six things I’ve found are great at adding romance to a stale relationship.”

Well, friend, let me tell you something. The Word of God really ups the ante here in Ephesians chapter five, because God invites us to practice the art of imitation in the highest language-study course of all time. Here’s Paul’s opening verse:

“Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children.”

That makes sense for any Christian, although the idea of imitating isn’t exactly explicit there. Notice the New International Version, though:

“Be IMITATORS of God, therefore, as dearly loved children.”

We’ve been getting some “insider” tidbits of truth from the wonderful Bible study commentary put out by Tyndale, and author Francis Foulkes gives us a Greek tutorial (without PowerPoint) which is still very helpful. Actually, we’re getting ahead of ourselves, because the context of Ephesians 4, which leads INTO chapter 5, is the mandate that we should forgive each other. “Forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” is what Paul has just said. And now, “Be ye therefore imitators.” Here’s the Tyndale comment:

“In this matter of forgiving, the calling of Christians is to be followers of God.” That would be “King James.” He continues: “In fact mimetai is more than followers. It is ‘imitators,’ a word used a number of times in the New Testament. . . . Those who by grace are made children of God are by constant perseverance, and imitation of the divine copy, to become more like the heavenly Father.”

I Peter 2:21 has this same idea; we’re invited to “follow in the footsteps of Jesus,” suffering as He suffered, “because He’s our example,” Peter writes. And of course, he, Peter, was willing to be crucified just as his beloved Master was.

Back now to Ephesians 5:1, and just for interest’s sake, let’s also read the great Message paraphrase version by Eugene Peterson.

“Watch what God does, and then YOU do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents.”

Those of you who are moms and dads probably already picked up this family scenario from the apostle Paul. “Be followers, be imitators, ‘as dearly loved children.’” Isn’t that how it always is? Fifty years ago parents held onto to the seat of a two-wheeled bicycle, after taking off those training wheels, and said to the kid: “Now remember how I showed you. Keep pedaling. Keep the handle bars straight. Don’t run into the neighbors’ houses.” Today good parents are probably saying to the child, “Now I showed you how to log on. Then you type in ‘Yahoo.com’ for a search engine and click on that icon over there. See? Just like Daddy!” In reading, you spell it out: “There’s a ‘B.’ ‘B’ — then ‘AT.’ ‘Buh - AT. BAT! Cat. Hat. Fat.” And your child imitates. He learns to read. He learns to tie his shoelaces. He learns to talk to Jesus at bedtime and give his offering at church because that’s what Mommy and Daddy do.

But of course, forgiving our enemies is harder than riding a bike or even inputting Thai PowerPoint into a sermon file. We know God forgives. But that doesn’t mean that WE want to! In that case, we have to simply look at the facts. God is a forgiver. His kingdom is built on forgiveness. There is stability and peace and joy only because there IS forgiveness. What havoc there would be, what hopelessness for the universe, if God refused to forgive. And when we look at those stubborn realities, we slowly begin to understand that imitating our heavenly Father in forgiving is the only way we too can have stability and peace and joy. In the Adventist commentary for Ephesians 1 there’s a great little essay about all this. Notice:

“The apostle has been urging,” they write, “that the example of God be followed, particularly in the spirit of forgiveness. God is the pattern, the ideal to which we strive to attain, in this case with special reference to the spirit of forgiveness. Surely the earnest believer, by God’s own grace, can learn to forgive even as God forgave.”

All through Ephesians we’re reminded that love — God’s for us and ours for others — is the motivation we have to do this hard thing, to do like Christ in plunging into the deep end of the swimming pool of forgiveness. Here’s a bit more from that Adventist commentary:

“The knowledge that God loves us is the first source of the ability to imitate Him. The realization of His Fatherhood encourages us to love one another. Those who sincerely call God their Father must inevitably regard other human beings as brothers and sisters.”

Isn’t it true that we tend to imitate people whom we know love us? And people whom we admire? It’s always been that way, right down to the Tom Cruise and Brittany Spears T shirts and backpack decals kids buy. And when we see this wonderful God, this great Father, as a forgiver, slowly but surely we’re going to say: “I can see now that this is the only way. Because Dad does it this way, and I want to be like Him.”

Once we get that question settled, then imitating departs entirely from the realm of “I don’t want to. I don’t feel like it.” Most of the time we WON’T feel like forgiving or like copying Christ in lifestyle and attitude. So what? When did feelings ever have anything to do with anything, especially in determining how a Christian ought to act? C. S. Lewis had a great little bit of writing on that in an essay called “Charity,” part of his book, Mere Christianity. Listen to this:

“The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor.” We could add “forgive” right here, couldn’t we? “ACT as if you did [love and forgive him.] As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently COME to love him.” Just one page later is Part Two of this concept: “[People] are told they ought to love God.” Yes, and imitate Him. “They cannot find any such feelings in themselves. What are they to do? The answer is the same as before. ACT as if you did. Do not sit trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, ‘If I were sure that I loved God, what would I do?’ When you have found the answer, go and do it.”

You talk about easy . . . and hard. Inviting . . . and impossible. But here it is. “Imitate God.” Not because it’s easy or natural or instinctive. It probably is none of those things, although it can grow to be gloriously all of them. After a while, you can ride a bike and type in Thai PowerPoint and love doing it. But until the joy comes along, you just keep doing it because in your heart you know you’re copying from the right source, from a loving and perfect Original.