Derrick Overholt: Good morning.
Derrick Overholt: It's so good to be with you guys.
Derrick Overholt: There's so many good areas of scripture.
Derrick Overholt: If you haven't uh had the chance yet, maybe this is your first few weeks here, and you're just catching up.
Derrick Overholt: We are in a Bible, um, walking through the Bible in Ephesians.
Derrick Overholt: We went through uh chapters one through three at the end of last year, and it was talking about identity.
Derrick Overholt: And then, of course, we've started back with this uh Bible uh sermon series called In Christ for Purpose.
Derrick Overholt: And so we are in the purpose section.
Derrick Overholt: Um really hope that you take it and look at the scripture as it was written and don't go to chapters four through six first and try to figure out what your purpose is without going back to chapters one through three and figure out who you actually are in Christ anyway.
Derrick Overholt: Right?
Derrick Overholt: So if you've missed any of these, we he was just talking, Joshua was just talking about doing our uh fast that's starting tonight, and we do have a service tonight to kick that off at six o'clock.
Derrick Overholt: This would be the perfect time to catch up with the sermon series.
Derrick Overholt: This has been such a good sermon series, and really need to understand what the first three chapters of Ephesians says about us.
Derrick Overholt: So this would be a great week to, as you're not eating lunch or as you're not eating breakfast, that you pop on to our website and find the sermon series that started back in, I think it was October of last year.
Derrick Overholt: You can go to any of the podcasts that you listen to, like any form of way that you watch or listen to a podcast, they're on there, and you can catch up with all of those and so that you can continue on as we step in to chapter four.
Derrick Overholt: So, uh number of years ago, I had heard a story about this lady who was like the richest person, the richest woman ever was in America.
Derrick Overholt: And so I looked it up this week.
Derrick Overholt: I wanted to bring back the facts of this lady, and her name was Hetty Green.
Derrick Overholt: She lived in the late 1800s, and honestly, probably one of the most successful women of all time.
Derrick Overholt: She at the time in 1916 was worth over like 200 million dollars in 1916, which is like hundreds of billions today.
Derrick Overholt: But yet she didn't actually live that way.
Derrick Overholt: Not because she was humble or anything, but because she liked her old life so much, she acted like she had no money.
Derrick Overholt: She ate oatmeal every day.
Derrick Overholt: She wore the same black dress for years and never changed it.
Derrick Overholt: She lived as if she was totally broke, so much so that her son, who uh had something happen to his leg, she refused to go pay a doctor to have him taken care of.
Derrick Overholt: Ultimately, it was an infection that got into his leg and he lost his leg.
Derrick Overholt: She died in the early 1900s worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but didn't spend any of it.
Derrick Overholt: Not taking care of her, not taking care of her family, nothing.
Derrick Overholt: And so that story brings us to uh where I want to go today in Ephesians chapter 4, where I feel like the Lord's bringing us.
Derrick Overholt: So we're going to just dive right into the scripture.
Derrick Overholt: If you want to turn in your word, or you can look here behind me.
Derrick Overholt: Now, this I say in testifying the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds.
Derrick Overholt: They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is within them, due to their hardness of heart.
Derrick Overholt: They have become callous and have given themselves up to all sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
Derrick Overholt: 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 the former manner of life and is corrupt through its 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.
Derrick Overholt: Let's pray.
Derrick Overholt: Father, I thank you so much that we have your word that has stood the test of time for thousands of years.
Derrick Overholt: God, that you gave these words to these men who put it down on paper for us to see two thousand years later.
Derrick Overholt: And God, I just pray right now that you help us to hear what you want us to hear this morning.
Derrick Overholt: God, we've already had a great word, Lord, talking about repentance, laying down the old life, Lord Jesus.
Derrick Overholt: And I know that that's where you're leading us today.
Derrick Overholt: And so we just pray right now across this room for open hearts, open minds to hear your gospel this morning so that our lives can change in the name of Jesus.
Derrick Overholt: Amen.
Derrick Overholt: So as I'm reading these scriptures, there's so much built into these verses.
Derrick Overholt: So I'm going to walk verse by verse through these because as I was reading it, there were some words that stuck out to me that maybe I didn't fully understand.
Derrick Overholt: That's the cool part about the Bible is we read the Bible and it's alive, and we read it yesterday and we read it today, and there's two totally different things, right?
Derrick Overholt: But God is so good like that.
Derrick Overholt: And we also have to realize that when we're reading the Bible, this was written in different languages than we speak.
Derrick Overholt: All right.
Derrick Overholt: And this one here is in Greek, and it's a more complex language than what we speak, and so it might take a sentence or two to describe one of their words because it was so complex.
Derrick Overholt: So then I was thinking about this, and I was looking at this scripture right here in verse 17.
Derrick Overholt: So he says, no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds.
Derrick Overholt: Well, I really wanted to know what futility meant to them.
Derrick Overholt: And the word is, I'm gonna butcher this word.
Derrick Overholt: You see it behind me, I think.
Derrick Overholt: Matoete's how do you say it, Neil?
Derrick Overholt: So you see it on the script.
Derrick Overholt: I don't know how you put that together, but its definition is emptiness, purposelessness, producing no real fruit.
Derrick Overholt: There's no truth or substance.
Derrick Overholt: Ultimately saying that when you're not connected in Christ, all of your thinking, all of our thinking before Christ is complete garbage and complete rubbish.
Derrick Overholt: Okay?
Derrick Overholt: All of our thinking has no meaning, it has no foundation, it has no setting because all of our hopes and dreams before we come to Christ are just built on sand.
Derrick Overholt: It's there's it's useless.
Derrick Overholt: So no longer walk with the useless mindsets of our old life.
Derrick Overholt: So a gentile, in case you don't know, those are us, right?
Derrick Overholt: It's anybody that's not a Jewish person.
Derrick Overholt: And then we get saved and we come into the life of Christ and we become adopted children of his.
Derrick Overholt: But before that we were called Gentiles.
Derrick Overholt: So you know, don't have this mindset any longer.
Derrick Overholt: So then we continue to go on, and I love how he broke this down because he he said that these people and us, and I say these people, us, our old life, we were darkened in our understanding.
Derrick Overholt: And when we were darkened in our understanding, it was again, we had no thoughts that were worth anything.
Derrick Overholt: Then we're darkened in our understanding because of our ignorance.
Derrick Overholt: And here's the thing today, in today's world, we think that ignorant is a bad word.
Derrick Overholt: It's not, it means untrained, right?
Derrick Overholt: So it's not bad that we're saying this, we're not calling somebody a bad word.
Derrick Overholt: So we're ignorant, which then caused our hearts to be calloused and hardened because we look at ourselves as God.
Derrick Overholt: All of us are all about ourselves.
Derrick Overholt: Before we come to Christ and realize that this life is all about him, it's all about us.
Derrick Overholt: And it's wild as he starts breaking into this because even in 17 through 19, I feel like I'm reading the newsletter of today of what's going on because nothing has changed.
Derrick Overholt: We're still the same.
Derrick Overholt: We're always trying to fulfill our own desires because all that matters is us.
Derrick Overholt: And so we get to this point when we're not saved, and the truth doesn't matter.
Derrick Overholt: How many people in the room have have talked to somebody and you're trying to walk them through something, and you feel like you just want to punch them because they just keep doing the same stuff, expecting different results.
Derrick Overholt: But it doesn't work.
Derrick Overholt: And you could tell them truth, truth could be standing in front of them, and they would run the opposite direction.
Derrick Overholt: That was most of us.
Derrick Overholt: Because we needed something to come inside of us and take our vision off of ourself to get the darkness out of our mind.
Derrick Overholt: There's only one that can do that, and that's the Holy Spirit.
Derrick Overholt: And I'm so thankful that God allows that and comes in.
Derrick Overholt: But how do we come to the place of knowing the Holy Spirit?
Derrick Overholt: How do we come to the place of the Holy Spirit coming inside of us?
Derrick Overholt: And we see in verse 20, it's not the way you learned Christ.
Derrick Overholt: So again, this is one of those places where I stopped again.
Derrick Overholt: And I says, What is learned?
Derrick Overholt: Because the truth is, is I could go read any car magazine and learn a few things about a car, and hey, it's great.
Derrick Overholt: Now I know a little bit about a car.
Derrick Overholt: Uh you could go read an owner's manual for half of us in the room.
Derrick Overholt: That'll never happen.
Derrick Overholt: But we can go and we can read a little bit about it, but it just goes back in the glove box, or it just goes back in the box as we're trying to build something and we throw it away and we're trying to figure out why this thing won't go together.
Derrick Overholt: It's because you missed step seven, right?
Derrick Overholt: So this is what we do.
Derrick Overholt: We go and we think we learned something, but this is not the learned that Paul is talking about.
Derrick Overholt: The learned here is, and I'm gonna try this word, mano.
Derrick Overholt: That makes the most sense.
Derrick Overholt: Manthano.
Derrick Overholt: But it's learning from a teacher in a way that shapes a student.
Derrick Overholt: Learning that changes the student.
Derrick Overholt: This is not you sit down and you hear some instruction.
Derrick Overholt: This is not some head knowledge where you go to college and you're sitting there in class and you're just trying to retain it for two weeks so that you can pass your final and forget it it ever happened.
Derrick Overholt: That was my whole high school experience.
Derrick Overholt: Get me through.
Derrick Overholt: But it's bringing it from the head knowledge into heart knowledge.
Derrick Overholt: Head knowledge is it's fine.
Derrick Overholt: But for eternity, it's useless.
Derrick Overholt: It's just a bunch of stuff up there.
Derrick Overholt: If it doesn't change, if it doesn't do something, it's useless.
Derrick Overholt: So the key distinction there is people who heard the gospel that just walked away.
Derrick Overholt: And we've seen that, and some of us have even done that.
Derrick Overholt: Some of us in the room right now are still trying to run so hard.
Derrick Overholt: Stop running.
Derrick Overholt: It's exhausting.
Derrick Overholt: But those who heard the gospel and allowed it to come in and transformed their mind.
Derrick Overholt: A couple of examples.
Derrick Overholt: Before I understood what abortion was, I just knew that it was something that people did if they didn't want to be pregnant.
Derrick Overholt: And then I came to know Jesus and my life changed.
Derrick Overholt: And then all of a sudden, I heard abortion and I learned what it meant by seeing a video of how it happens.
Derrick Overholt: And I'm gonna tell you right now, my whole life changed around learning what it meant to have an abortion.
Derrick Overholt: And now I know that it's wrong, and scripturally it's wrong.
Derrick Overholt: And so my whole life then changed around the thought of that.
Derrick Overholt: And what we're talking about is biblical worldview.
Derrick Overholt: It's allowing our lives to be what the Word of God says.
Derrick Overholt: If it says it's wrong, we know it's wrong, not believe, no, right?
Derrick Overholt: But the thing is, is you see the difference of when you have learned something, I'll go and I will fight against things and I will uh not literally fight, but I will push through and sign and uh vote, whatever needs to be done to make sure that this heinous action of abortion has to stop.
Derrick Overholt: It changed me because I learned it.
Derrick Overholt: Then another one that kind of shapes how I've done things as I was growing up, I didn't have a whole lot.
Derrick Overholt: So when I got the opportunity to spend money, I did previously, just all over the place.
Derrick Overholt: And I found this little plastic thing that would allow me to buy anything.
Derrick Overholt: And um, and I'd swipe it and swipe it and swipe it until I started getting these letters in the mail saying I had to pay that back at 28% interest.
Derrick Overholt: And wait, I don't understand, but it took like I'd heard, I knew what they were.
Derrick Overholt: I truthfully knew what was gonna happen when I swiped the credit card, but apparently I didn't learn its consequences.
Derrick Overholt: So when I learned what happened, my life changed, and I said, I'm gonna stop doing that.
Derrick Overholt: I'm no longer going to swipe a card and pay stupid interest for something.
Derrick Overholt: I'm going to get debt free.
Derrick Overholt: And my wife and I did, and we're debt-free today.
Derrick Overholt: Because you learn something, it changed the way I do things.
Derrick Overholt: That's the kind of learning that he's talking about.
Derrick Overholt: Not that you step into a classroom, but you come in and you learn by a teacher and he disciples you.
Derrick Overholt: We've been talking about discipling.
Derrick Overholt: We walk with one another.
Derrick Overholt: Iron sharpened iron doesn't mean that the two swords stay rusty.
Derrick Overholt: They scratch against one another to keep themselves shiny and bright, but that doesn't feel good for the sword because you see little red things that fly off.
Derrick Overholt: They're called sparks.
Derrick Overholt: Yellow sparks.
Derrick Overholt: I'm sure if it had feelings, it would hurt.
Derrick Overholt: But it's time that we have true learning, which is what 21 he says, assuming, he's making an assumption here, that you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus.
Derrick Overholt: This is a big part again.
Derrick Overholt: These scriptures are so deep, and the truth is we could sit here for a month of sermons and just one scripture at a time, because you're taught in him as the truth is in Jesus.
Derrick Overholt: How many know that truth is Jesus?
Derrick Overholt: He's the definition.
Derrick Overholt: If he said it, it's gonna happen.
Derrick Overholt: Truth is in him.
Derrick Overholt: Now the question is the truth that's in him that makes him up.
Derrick Overholt: I mean, he's the definition of truth.
Derrick Overholt: The way that the truth is in him, are we in Jesus?
Derrick Overholt: That same way.
Derrick Overholt: Right?
Derrick Overholt: So when we learn Jesus, we learn about, it's not learn about him.
Derrick Overholt: Nope.
Derrick Overholt: It's learn him.
Derrick Overholt: Because Paul never said learned about Jesus.
Derrick Overholt: He said you learned Jesus.
Derrick Overholt: So then the truth in us about him should be that same truth that's like Jesus.
Derrick Overholt: But yet we can't do that in ourselves.
Derrick Overholt: It goes back to the Holy Spirit again.
Derrick Overholt: When we learn Jesus and his life comes in and truly changes us, the Holy Spirit comes in.
Derrick Overholt: Because here's the truth, and we see this through other of Paul's letters.
Derrick Overholt: We cannot come to Jesus about the knowledge of Jesus without the Holy Spirit coming and revealing to us our need.
Derrick Overholt: So I thank God that God uses us to bring the gospel to people, but I also thank God that I'm not the one that has to change your heart.
Derrick Overholt: Because nothing would happen.
Derrick Overholt: I might be able to force you into a couple things.
Derrick Overholt: You'll just learn about it and you won't learn it.
Derrick Overholt: But the Holy Spirit comes into our life.
Derrick Overholt: That is how we can be in Jesus like the truth is in Jesus.
Derrick Overholt: Because Jesus Christ allows his spirit to come inside of us, and that's how we see lost lives change.
Derrick Overholt: That's how we see that the former manner of life was wrong.
Derrick Overholt: That's how we see that we need to allow something to change inside of us.
Derrick Overholt: It's learning that changes us.
Derrick Overholt: One of my favorite things that I found here in verse 22, he says, put off the old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through its deceitful desires.
Derrick Overholt: Mark already touched on this a little bit.
Derrick Overholt: Must mean that the Lord's really wanting us to hear it today.
Derrick Overholt: But what he's talking about when he says, put off the old clothes, he's uh in this scripture, he says put off the old self.
Derrick Overholt: He's talking about old clothes.
Derrick Overholt: All right, he uses a metaphor for clothing.
Derrick Overholt: Now, for us, it's not a big deal.
Derrick Overholt: My closet's full of clothes.
Derrick Overholt: If you have me throw away one of my old work shirts, it's fine.
Derrick Overholt: I got 15 more.
Derrick Overholt: If you tell me my jeans are too ripped up and they got too much paint on them, it's fine.
Derrick Overholt: I've got 12 more.
Derrick Overholt: And I'm sure as do most of us here.
Derrick Overholt: But in this time, they usually had about three items and they wore them daily, all three of them.
Derrick Overholt: So they didn't have closets to go to.
Derrick Overholt: Matter of fact, these clothes they would pass down from generation to generation.
Derrick Overholt: Right?
Derrick Overholt: And so if you were good enough and blessed enough to get a new set of clothing, you would pass that old clothing down to your son so that he could have some nicer clothes.
Derrick Overholt: They would never throw clothing away until it was filthy, too stained to wash, rotten, could no longer be repaired.
Derrick Overholt: Is it starting to sound like something?
Derrick Overholt: It's our life before Jesus.
Derrick Overholt: We tried over and over and over in our life to wash the sin out of our life because we want to do the right thing.
Derrick Overholt: Oh, because you know, that's just what everybody else is doing.
Derrick Overholt: It's moralism, right?
Derrick Overholt: So if I just do right enough, if I'm just nice enough, and if I can just clean up my outer garments just enough, then maybe I'll be accepted in.
Derrick Overholt: But that is totally against the word of God.
Derrick Overholt: These old clothes, we can't wash them clean.
Derrick Overholt: We can't repair them enough.
Derrick Overholt: They're too rotten already.
Derrick Overholt: They smell me coming from the front lot.
Derrick Overholt: We we can no longer wear these things.
Derrick Overholt: They're severely defiled, totally unrepairable.
Derrick Overholt: But there's awesome news.
Derrick Overholt: And it started in 23.
Derrick Overholt: But it says, to be renewed in the spirit of your minds brings me back to one of my favorite scriptures that I think about a lot, is Romans 12, 2.
Derrick Overholt: Be not conformed to the ways of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Derrick Overholt: And he says it again in, I think it was Romans 6, he's talking about the dead man.
Derrick Overholt: We'll talk about that in a second.
Derrick Overholt: There was another one in Colossians.
Derrick Overholt: So we really like to say this.
Derrick Overholt: But we need to allow the learning to actually come in and change us.
Derrick Overholt: No longer keep putting on these old clothes.
Derrick Overholt: He says, to put on the new clothes and the new self in verse 24, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Derrick Overholt: So we don't just get new clothes from Abercrombie, we get new robes of righteousness, like Jesus, like God, in the likeness of God.
Derrick Overholt: And I'm reminded to uh back in Genesis chapter one, when God says, Let us make man in our image to be like us.
Derrick Overholt: God always originally wanted us to be with him, like him, but yet we separated ourselves from him, and in his great righteousness and mercy, he brought us back in through the blood of Jesus, right?
Derrick Overholt: But he's always putting righteous clothing on us.
Derrick Overholt: Think about this.
Derrick Overholt: Jesus is given the parable of the uh rich man and the son, and the son takes off and goes off.
Derrick Overholt: And one of the last things we hear in the parable is before he comes back to the father, he's eaten in a pigsty, right?
Derrick Overholt: And he's like, Man, if I could just go back and be a servant in my father's house, it'll be much better.
Derrick Overholt: And he's running down the road.
Derrick Overholt: And what's one of the first things that the ruler did?
Derrick Overholt: Put a robe, put it the righteousness on him, the nice clothes, a ring on his finger, brought him back into the house.
Derrick Overholt: And so it wasn't about the old clothes anymore.
Derrick Overholt: Well, no, I've covered that's covered by my blood, right?
Derrick Overholt: And in this way of saying.
Derrick Overholt: So I love to hear that he's saying to us put on the new clothes, stop wearing the old, trash, broken, ripped, stinky, filthy clothes, and put on the news On the righteous outer garments that I've given you because you're now covered by my blood.
Derrick Overholt: You're in a new family, in a new way.
Derrick Overholt: It's a different way of living.
Derrick Overholt: He has made all of this possible.
Derrick Overholt: But so often we continue to try to hide things.
Derrick Overholt: He's talking about earlier, allowing the old self to be alive, to not letting the Lord change us.
Derrick Overholt: And so we feel really comfortable in our old clothes.
Derrick Overholt: Really comfortable.
Derrick Overholt: My wife years ago, now she's in the back work, and I'm probably going to get beat up for this, but she had this pair of sweatpants from high school.
Derrick Overholt: And she wore them to bed every night till about eight years ago.
Derrick Overholt: And they were torn to shreds.
Derrick Overholt: I don't know why.
Derrick Overholt: Like, I'm not sure how they made it through the washer each time.
Derrick Overholt: But she loved them.
Derrick Overholt: One day they disappeared.
Derrick Overholt: And in their place came some nice new sweatpants.
Derrick Overholt: Yeah, I threw them away.
Derrick Overholt: But she wanted to wear those old ones because they were comfortable.
Derrick Overholt: How many times in our life do we continue wearing the old clothes because they're comfortable?
Derrick Overholt: How many times are we trying to cherish our sin because it feels good and we don't know anything different because we've not tasted of the goodness and the righteousness of God?
Derrick Overholt: Some of us are too afraid to lay it down because it's been so good.
Derrick Overholt: It's felt right.
Derrick Overholt: It's the way that I've done it for so many years.
Derrick Overholt: It's the only way I know.
Derrick Overholt: And the Lord's saying, it stinks, it's filthy, it's trash, it's torn up.
Derrick Overholt: Throw it in the trash because it no longer belongs on your body.
Derrick Overholt: And that's what Paul's reminding us of is that the old clothes don't have any right to be in your home.
Derrick Overholt: None.
Derrick Overholt: We must throw them out.
Derrick Overholt: I'm gonna do something here.
Derrick Overholt: If everybody would stay seated for just a second, Timothy, would you turn out all the lights?
Derrick Overholt: Okay, but I want you to look around.
Derrick Overholt: You can still see clearly, right?
Derrick Overholt: Why can you still see clearly?
Derrick Overholt: Somebody say it.
Derrick Overholt: Light.
Derrick Overholt: Alright, turn them back on, Timothy.
Derrick Overholt: Light.
Derrick Overholt: When Jesus comes into your life, light enters into your heart.
Derrick Overholt: This room could not go dark because light is infiltrating it.
Derrick Overholt: When you bring light into a dark place, it will never stay dark.
Derrick Overholt: It can't.
Derrick Overholt: So you're telling me this morning, but I've got Jesus in my life, and I'm trying to live this way, but I'm gonna hold on to the one thing: the darkness.
Derrick Overholt: You're fighting to hold on to some darkness in your life.
Derrick Overholt: But we're supposed to cast those darkness out.
Derrick Overholt: And the light already does it.
Derrick Overholt: This is not something you have to do.
Derrick Overholt: You have to allow it.
Derrick Overholt: My wife could have gone to the garbage can that day and pulled them back out.
Derrick Overholt: But she decided to leave it there because she knew after she put on the new ones they were much more comfortable.
Derrick Overholt: And she was okay with it after that.
Derrick Overholt: But it took actually trying on the new clothes.
Derrick Overholt: And that's what we have to do.
Derrick Overholt: We have to stop putting on the old stuff.
Derrick Overholt: We have to stop making excuses for our sin.
Derrick Overholt: We have to stop saying, but oh, this is okay.
Derrick Overholt: It doesn't cause me any problems.
Derrick Overholt: It's all right if I wear it.
Derrick Overholt: No, it has no right to be in your life.
Derrick Overholt: None.
Derrick Overholt: And the light's trying to dispel it, and you're wondering why you're still walking through hell, and it's because you're sitting there literally fighting with hell to keep it there.
Derrick Overholt: When the light's trying to push it out.
Derrick Overholt: Sometimes we fight ourselves when we could just let the Lord take it out.
Derrick Overholt: Well, I don't know what my life would be like if I didn't go to the bar anymore and hang out.
Derrick Overholt: I don't know what my life would be like anymore if I didn't go to that party.
Derrick Overholt: I don't know what my life would be like anymore if I didn't watch those videos I shouldn't watch.
Derrick Overholt: I don't know what it would be like because it's just something I've done for so many years.
Derrick Overholt: When we come to Jesus, we should give it all up.
Derrick Overholt: 100%.
Derrick Overholt: The clothes don't belong in the closet no more.
Derrick Overholt: They need to be out in the trash can getting burned.
Derrick Overholt: And that's what we need to be doing every morning.
Derrick Overholt: Deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him.
Derrick Overholt: And allow the righteous wear of God to come inside.
Derrick Overholt: Allow that righteous wear to be put on.
Derrick Overholt: Because he doesn't want you to walk around in filthy rags anymore.
Derrick Overholt: He doesn't want you to stink from seven miles down the road.
Derrick Overholt: He wants you to smell good to people when you come around them.
Derrick Overholt: Maybe your attitude still sucks and it's trash.
Derrick Overholt: And you need to allow the Lord to come in and change that.
Derrick Overholt: Because here's the truth: when we come in and we allow the dead man to be alive, the Holy Spirit comes inside of us and begins to transform us with repentance, with kindness, with grace, with love, with mercy, with generosity, and so on and so on.
Derrick Overholt: Those things will become of us when we just allow Him to do it.
Derrick Overholt: But we can no longer put on new clothes if the old clothes stench and everything is still right there.
Derrick Overholt: You know, you've got one sleeve in the nice new righteous robe and one sleeve in the falling apart robe.
Derrick Overholt: That's not, that doesn't work.
Derrick Overholt: So we need to allow the Holy Spirit to come inside of us and change us because the gospel doesn't change, but yet people are teaching that it does.
Derrick Overholt: And what we're seeing on Facebook and what we're seeing on TikTok and Twitter and Instagram, I don't know what all's out there still.
Derrick Overholt: But there's a lot of them.
Derrick Overholt: And it's a lot of terrible news and a lot of lies.
Derrick Overholt: There's a false gospel that's floating around saying that it's alright to live in sin and wear the old clothes.
Derrick Overholt: It's alright to do that because, oh no, that's not what the scripture says.
Derrick Overholt: It's alright to live with your boyfriend or your girlfriend for six years before you get married.
Derrick Overholt: It's totally fine to be sleeping around with multiple people.
Derrick Overholt: It's fine to get drunk three times a month.
Derrick Overholt: It's totally fine as long as you just say a prayer once in a while.
Derrick Overholt: That's a false gospel.
Derrick Overholt: That is nothing that's been in the scripture.
Derrick Overholt: That is not what we should live like.
Derrick Overholt: The old should be gone.
Derrick Overholt: It should be gone.
Derrick Overholt: It's not an option to wear the new clothes that Christ has given you of righteousness in the likeness of God.
Derrick Overholt: The old clothes have to be burned.
Derrick Overholt: The old clothes have to go away.
Derrick Overholt: Now we're starting our fast this evening.
Derrick Overholt: And what a time it would be to take the time while we're fasting to pray.
Derrick Overholt: As Mark prayed a minute ago, Lord, reveal in me any wicked way.
Derrick Overholt: That was David's prayer.
Derrick Overholt: Because if we want good and real fruit to come out of us, then we gotta be planted in good soil.
Derrick Overholt: If you take a beautiful plant down here at Lowe's and you take it home and you stick it in really bad soil, it's gonna die.
Derrick Overholt: And yet we think daily that we can take our life and keep planting in trash soil with all of this stuff coming in our mind, all these terrible things that we watch, our mouth, our talk, and hanging out, listening to nasty stuff with the boys, and all of this gossip that's going on, and we think we're gonna grow well.
Derrick Overholt: This would be the perfect time to stop and say, Lord, I want to be like you.
Derrick Overholt: When I wear my righteous robes that you gave to me, I want to be in the likeness of God, in the holiness of God, because you have allowed me to step into that.
Derrick Overholt: I didn't earn my way there, but you gave it to me and say that I can stand boldly in the throne room with you, God.
Derrick Overholt: You, Lord, give us that opportunity.
Derrick Overholt: But we can't step in because we keep wearing the nasty clothes.
Derrick Overholt: And God's saying to us this morning, throw them off.
Derrick Overholt: Throw them off, for you are in Christ if you've learned Him.
Derrick Overholt: And that's what our sermon series is about.
Derrick Overholt: In Christ.
Derrick Overholt: So, Father, we just pray right now that there be any wicked way within us, Lord, that we would cast it off.
Derrick Overholt: Lord, that we would forcefully throw it in the garbage, that we would want nothing of our old life, nothing because it feels good, nothing because we know what really feels good is to have your robe of righteousness in the likeness of God placed onto us.
Derrick Overholt: God, and in the areas that we have not learned truly in our heart who you are, that you would reveal to us even as we start to fast and pray, Lord, that you would come in and change us from the inside, Lord.
Derrick Overholt: That we would no longer wear the trash robes, that we would no longer stink to the world.
Derrick Overholt: God, that we would no longer keep trying to put this stuff on and claim that the light has come into us, even though we're trying to hide little dark pockets and make a little shelter for our dark pockets.
Derrick Overholt: That you would break through your light through them, Lord, and that they would burn them out of our life so that we can have that robe that looks like you, that smells like you, that lives a life like you want us to live, Father.
Derrick Overholt: We thank you for it in Jesus' name.