SPEAKER_00: Ephesians 4 verses 17 through 24 is their text for this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Let me read it.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says this.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: They've 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.
SPEAKER_00: 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, to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God, in true righteousness and holiness.
SPEAKER_00: This is the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: When I was fresh out of high school, 18 years old, a freshman in college, I was hired as the soccer coach at the high school that I had just graduated from.
SPEAKER_00: And uh the AD took me aside, the athletic director took me aside when they hired me and gave me a firm talking to.
SPEAKER_00: I was no longer to act like I was a student.
SPEAKER_00: I uh there's some practical implications for this.
SPEAKER_00: I could no longer park in the student parking lot, which was unfortunate because it was right next to the soccer field.
SPEAKER_00: I had to park in the staff parking lot, which is like on the other side of the earth from the soccer field, but that's where I had to park.
SPEAKER_00: I was no longer allowed to hang out with the kids in the hallway.
SPEAKER_00: I was an authority figure.
SPEAKER_00: If I saw a kid in violation of dress code, I was supposed to enforce that.
SPEAKER_00: I was no longer allowed to use the, this is an obvious thing to say, but the student locker room, which I had used for four years as a soccer coach.
SPEAKER_00: Now I was banished to the staff locker room with old people and everything.
SPEAKER_00: I was no longer to act like a student.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I had a motivation for this.
SPEAKER_00: If I failed to comply, I would be the shortest-lived coach in school history.
SPEAKER_00: This is the kind of language that Paul is using in Ephesians chapter 4.
SPEAKER_00: He's making an appeal to you to no longer walk like the Gentiles do.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Gentiles in Ephesians chapter 4 is just a broad term.
SPEAKER_00: And for our purposes this morning, it means those people who are outside of Christ no longer live like non-believers.
SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, the word Gentiles used in verse 17, it's not every nonbeliever.
SPEAKER_00: There are Jewish non-believers as well, and the Gentiles were very different than the Jews were, even the Jews in Israel, although they were immoral in 10,000 ways.
SPEAKER_00: The Gentiles of the world are immoral differently.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't really need to spend a lot of time describing that except to say that the immorality of the Gentiles was largely seen in the area of sexual immorality, in the area of greed, in the area of idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: And that's certainly what Paul has in mind.
SPEAKER_00: He used languages, the language he uses in this passage is words that are usually used in the Bible about sexual immorality.
SPEAKER_00: And he's making an appeal to you to no longer live in the sexually immoral way that the people in the world live.
SPEAKER_00: Christians are supposed to live differently than the worlds, which is hard to do.
SPEAKER_00: There's an expression, win in Rome, act like a I mean, that's the way the world thinks.
SPEAKER_00: There's even that kind of pressure inside of churches to what people call contextualize the message, to make the church fit better in the culture that is around it.
SPEAKER_00: But this is uh contrary to the appeal of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible appeals to you to no longer walk like the Gentiles, to stand out from the world.
SPEAKER_00: When in Rome, don't live like a Roman.
SPEAKER_00: When he was with the Gentiles, he acted like the Gentiles for the sake of winning them.
SPEAKER_00: When you are familiar with 1 Corinthians 9 and even Paul's example in the book of Acts, you understand what he means by that.
SPEAKER_00: He was seeking to guard unnecessary offenses.
SPEAKER_00: But he was not participating in the ungodly actions associated with those cultures.
SPEAKER_00: This is so imperative for Christians to understand today.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible, and specifically in this passage right here, makes a very clear appeal to you to not walk, not live, not act like the world.
SPEAKER_00: Christians are supposed to live differently than the world.
SPEAKER_00: He's not talking about culture wars here.
SPEAKER_00: He's not talking about politics.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking very specifically.
SPEAKER_00: You, as an individual, are supposed to live differently than the world around you.
SPEAKER_00: And the word walk here is a generic word.
SPEAKER_00: It's an idiom in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: It just means the way you conduct yourselves, the paths you make.
SPEAKER_00: You have a path that you wear out in the grass, and it's obviously a metaphor.
SPEAKER_00: You live your life in certain patterns.
SPEAKER_00: The world follows certain patterns.
SPEAKER_00: They walk in certain ways, they conduct themselves in certain ways, and you as a believer should walk and act differently.
SPEAKER_00: Again, this is not talking about the politics of the thing, although I understand the goal of politics is to create a better world for you and for your family.
SPEAKER_00: That's outside of what Paul's talking about here in Ephesians 4.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about the goal of the Christian life being that of personal change that makes you stand out from the world.
SPEAKER_00: You are a light, you're supposed to be on a hill.
SPEAKER_00: You don't darken your light, you don't hide your illumination for fear of frightening people that are walking in the dark.
SPEAKER_00: You let your light shine.
SPEAKER_00: You want to act like salt, which runs contrary to the substance that it's on.
SPEAKER_00: You want to be distinct, different.
SPEAKER_00: You want to stand out from the world.
SPEAKER_00: This is the call of the Christian life.
SPEAKER_00: And we've been talking about this the last few weeks.
SPEAKER_00: We'll talk about this next week as well.
SPEAKER_00: There's basically two tasks given to Christians in the Christian life.
SPEAKER_00: One is external, one is internal.
SPEAKER_00: Externally, Christians are given the Great Commission.
SPEAKER_00: They're supposed to go into all the world making disciples.
SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to evangelize, you're supposed to support missions.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the global task of every Christian.
SPEAKER_00: You have an externally facing task, namely go into all the world and make disciples.
SPEAKER_00: That's not the only task Christians are given to do.
SPEAKER_00: The other thing we're called to do is internally focused, where we are transformed, where we become more and more like Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And the function of the church is to raise up missionaries and raise up evangelists for the externally facing mission and to help you in your sanctification for the internally facing mission, that you are transformed more and more into the image of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And it's that second calling that is so prominent in Ephesians chapter 4.
SPEAKER_00: That God gifts the church body so that we can encourage one another in godliness.
SPEAKER_00: The goal of the Christian life, as I said last week, is change.
SPEAKER_00: You are supposed to change to be less like you are now and more like Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So hold on to yourself less, hold on to Christ more, grow more and more into the image of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's the calling here.
SPEAKER_00: And in this paragraph, I love this paragraph, Ephesians 4, 17 through 24, it basically gives you two practical, basic steps for sanctification: put off, put on.
SPEAKER_00: And that's language we'll look at more in depth next week.
SPEAKER_00: Next week, when we come back to it, we'll have very practical examples of what it means to put off and put on.
SPEAKER_00: But here in this first paragraph where Paul introduces this language, it's not immediately practical.
SPEAKER_00: It's very broad and general.
SPEAKER_00: Put off, put on.
SPEAKER_00: Put off the old self, put on the new self.
SPEAKER_00: These are your two basic steps for sanctification.
SPEAKER_00: I'll even give you that as an outline this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Two basic steps in sanctification.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, they're put off and put on.
SPEAKER_00: But as you look at the words Paul uses here in putting off and putting on, something should jump out at you.
SPEAKER_00: What he is predominantly concerned about in this initial put off put on is not, you know, all the actions that he'll get into next week.
SPEAKER_00: We'll see, you know, if you're stealing, put that off and put on giving.
SPEAKER_00: If you're angry, put that off and put on kindness.
SPEAKER_00: If you are drunk, put that off and put on being filled with the Spirit comes up in Ephesians 5.
SPEAKER_00: If you're rebellious, put that off and put on submission.
SPEAKER_00: There's all these very practical put-off and put-ons.
SPEAKER_00: But in this first introduction, what Paul is concerned about is mental.
SPEAKER_00: It's all in the mind.
SPEAKER_00: It's not even the external conduct, it's how you think about sin, how you think about God, how you think about the world, how you think about your culture, how you think about yourself.
SPEAKER_00: The put off and put-on that Paul introduces this whole concept to is mental.
SPEAKER_00: This is a head game.
SPEAKER_00: It's very interesting to think about it in that term.
SPEAKER_00: That your sanctification starts in your head.
SPEAKER_00: Now, obviously, the ground zero of your sanctification is your heart, what you love.
SPEAKER_00: You are what you love.
SPEAKER_00: You choose according to your desires.
SPEAKER_00: We'll even see desire language in this passage as well.
SPEAKER_00: The heart is here.
SPEAKER_00: Last week we looked at love.
SPEAKER_00: Last week's passage was all about love.
SPEAKER_00: And I talked about before we get to the mind, we talked about what we love.
SPEAKER_00: But you understand that the mind feeds your heart.
SPEAKER_00: The mind shapes how you feel.
SPEAKER_00: The mind is feeding food for the affections to your heart.
SPEAKER_00: And so when Paul talks about putting off and putting on, coming more into the image of Christ, he goes right to the mind.
SPEAKER_00: Right to the mind.
SPEAKER_00: And he's talking about growing in holiness.
SPEAKER_00: So the first step here is you put off ignorance.
SPEAKER_00: You put off ignorance.
SPEAKER_00: A few weeks ago I misspelled knowledge on the slide.
SPEAKER_00: I kind of wanted to misspell ignorance this week, just so it had a symmetrical irony to it, but I think it's spelled correctly.
SPEAKER_00: You put off ignorance, Paul calls you to do.
SPEAKER_00: Put it away.
SPEAKER_00: And ignorance is the word that I chose, is a word Paul uses in verse 18 because of the ignorance that is in them.
SPEAKER_00: But it's a very generic and broad word.
SPEAKER_00: I struggled with whether or not that's the best word to use because ignorance can almost imply a lack of culpability or an innocence to it, and that's not the way Paul's using it here.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's using it here in terms of an intentional ignorance.
SPEAKER_00: You're not naively ignorant, you are intentionally and belligerently ignorant.
SPEAKER_00: You're the kid that runs away from his parents when they are instructing him, runs away out of the room so you don't get to finish hearing your tasks, so you can plead ignorance later.
SPEAKER_00: Dad comes home.
SPEAKER_00: Did you hear what your mom told you to do?
SPEAKER_00: No, I didn't because I ran away when she started talking to me.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm ignorant of what I was called to do.
SPEAKER_00: That's not an excuse that should work in your household.
SPEAKER_00: That's this kind of ignorance right here.
SPEAKER_00: These people, namely the Gentiles, are darkened in their understanding.
SPEAKER_00: Now, as I mentioned, the Romans, the Gentiles, those in Ephesus, lived very differently than the Jews did.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why Paul uses the word Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: The Ephesian church is largely Gentile converts, although there's certainly Jewish converts there as well.
SPEAKER_00: The Romans lived differently than Jews.
SPEAKER_00: They dressed differently than the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: They wore different kinds of togas versus the Jewish robes that they and tunics that the Jews wore.
SPEAKER_00: They ate different food, of course.
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, they followed a different calendar.
SPEAKER_00: They had different whole weeks operated differently.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't have Saturday as a Sabbath day, which is what the Jewish world revolved around.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't have the feast days the Jews did.
SPEAKER_00: They had instead in Ephesus the temple of Artemis.
SPEAKER_00: If you remember, before we started the book of Ephesians, we spent, uh Pastor Ryan and I spent maybe three or four weeks in the book of Acts looking at what Ephesus was like.
SPEAKER_00: I don't expect you to remember that because it was so long ago, but if you the main part of Ephesus was the temple of Artemis or the temple of Diana, and these people worshiped in sexual immorality.
SPEAKER_00: They uh would throw themselves into that lifestyle.
SPEAKER_00: Homosexuality was rampant, uh, child abuse was rampant, adultery, they didn't even have a concept for adultery because it was pagan prostitution in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: That's how they worshiped at the temple.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have stats on what percentage of the Ephesian population worshipped in sexually immoral ways at the temple.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, you know, if it was everybody or half of the population or 10% of the population.
SPEAKER_00: No real way of finding out, but it is certainly what Ephesus was known for.
SPEAKER_00: It is what defined their culture.
SPEAKER_00: It's what defined their culture.
SPEAKER_00: They acted differently in sexual immorality.
SPEAKER_00: Homosexuality, as I mentioned, was a very common practice.
SPEAKER_00: And for the Greeks, homosexuality is different than it is in our even our American culture.
SPEAKER_00: For the Greeks, it wasn't like an exclusive thing, like you're either homosexual or you're not, like it tends to in the American culture.
SPEAKER_00: For the Greeks, it was just one of your options in sexual practice, particularly in temple worship.
SPEAKER_00: And so they're very sexually immoral people.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what their culture was known by.
SPEAKER_00: It would be, you would say, the norm in their culture.
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul is reminding them of that to the Ephesians, that you're not to walk like that.
SPEAKER_00: You're not to walk like the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds.
SPEAKER_00: And he's going to go through, talking about ignorance here, he's going to use different words to describe the way the mind is that is given over to sexual sin.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm telling you, there are so many similarities between the Greek culture and the American culture.
SPEAKER_00: I mentioned that you don't know what percentage of the population it is.
SPEAKER_00: My wife and I were walking through Georgetown, shopping in Georgetown, uh last week.
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, without exaggeration, every single store has a sign on it about pride or born this way, or I mean, just it was over the top.
SPEAKER_00: I went to buy a uh a running shirt in this running store in Georgetown, uh, if you can believe it.
SPEAKER_00: And there was not a single shirt for sale that didn't have a rainbow on it in some place.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and this is just a normal, you know, a normal store.
SPEAKER_00: Uh uh they had a cool rabbit logo.
SPEAKER_00: I wanted a rabbit on a running shirt.
SPEAKER_00: I thought that would be cool.
SPEAKER_00: No, all the rabbits were colored like rainbows.
SPEAKER_00: If you know anything about rabbits, it's particularly moronic.
SPEAKER_00: But that was the status there.
SPEAKER_00: You know, and what percentage of our population would buy into that lifestyle.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't even matter.
SPEAKER_00: That's not the point.
SPEAKER_00: The point is that it marks our culture, it marks the American culture.
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a big debate in the Southern Baptist world right now about whether or not, you know, God is angrier at the idolatry of, you know, Hindus and Indians in India than he is at the homosexuality of Americans, and it's just a weird debate to have.
SPEAKER_00: I think any reader of the Bible should be able to take a step back and say, listen, God is angry at the homosexuality of the American culture and he's angry at the idolatry of the Indian culture.
SPEAKER_00: Both are evil and sinful.
SPEAKER_00: And God condemns both.
SPEAKER_00: You don't need to pit them against each other.
SPEAKER_00: We're different cultures.
SPEAKER_00: Our culture, of course, is not just defined by homosexuality, but homosexuality and all forms of sexual immorality.
SPEAKER_00: That's the point.
SPEAKER_00: Pornography being so rampant in our culture, immoral things on the phone and the computer.
SPEAKER_00: And it's so easy to excuse that in your own mind and say, yeah, but you know, I'm not a practicing homosexual.
SPEAKER_00: That's the real sin in this world.
SPEAKER_00: No, when you're participating in that kind of sin, you're participating in the sexual immorality of our own culture.
SPEAKER_00: That's the problem.
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul appeals to you, do not walk like the Gentiles do.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just laying that all out there for you so that when you see, when Paul's talking about the Ephesian culture in their temple worship, it has so many overlaps with the American culture that participates in immoral things online and adultery and divorce, immoral divorces, and all the things that are celebrated in our culture.
SPEAKER_00: And now, just in light of that, this is how Paul is describing the American culture.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the words he uses.
SPEAKER_00: First, the futility of their minds.
SPEAKER_00: That word futility is a great word, it means spinning the wheels.
SPEAKER_00: And to really bring out what that word means, you can look at the way it's used elsewhere in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: It's the Greek word that's used to translate in the Old Testament all through the book of Ecclesiastes, the word for vanity.
SPEAKER_00: It's the soap bubble word.
SPEAKER_00: You know, have you ever heard a sermon on the book of Ecclesiastes?
SPEAKER_00: You've always heard that, you know, that word means soap bubbles.
SPEAKER_00: It's something ephemeral.
SPEAKER_00: It's there for a second and then it's gone.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the meaning of life in Ecclesiastes.
SPEAKER_00: That you pursue the value of life in pleasure, in money, in, you know, Solomon built a zoo in nature.
SPEAKER_00: You pursue the value of life in all those things.
SPEAKER_00: It is meaningless.
SPEAKER_00: It's like chasing a soap bubble.
SPEAKER_00: It has no value to it.
SPEAKER_00: That's this word here in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: The mind that is given over to sexual immorality is meaningless.
SPEAKER_00: It's not capable of substantial thought.
SPEAKER_00: That's the point.
SPEAKER_00: Futility is a great word for that.
SPEAKER_00: When the mind tries to engage in serious thought, when it's given over to sexual immorality, it can't do so.
SPEAKER_00: The transmission in my minivan went out a couple weeks ago.
SPEAKER_00: We were on vacation down in uh South Carolina, and I was at a stop sign and I pulled forward and you could hear it give out.
SPEAKER_00: I've never been in a car where this happened before, but that is exactly what it was like thunk, thunk.
SPEAKER_00: And there were people outside, we were kind of in a parking lot.
SPEAKER_00: There were people outside, and they all turn around and go, whoa, like in one voice.
SPEAKER_00: That didn't sound good.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay.
SPEAKER_00: It's bad when these like dudes in monster pickup trucks and everything are looking at you, going, man, you're in trouble.
SPEAKER_00: Me and my little minivan.
SPEAKER_00: Yikes.
SPEAKER_00: And so I could rev it, I could, you know, turn it on and run it, and I could rev it, and the RPM would go up and everything, but it is not moving a muscle.
SPEAKER_00: Thing is not going anywhere.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter how much gas I give it or whatever, its transmission is broke, it's done.
SPEAKER_00: That's the word futility.
SPEAKER_00: Push the gas all you want, it's not going anywhere.
SPEAKER_00: That is the mind that is given over to sexual immorality.
SPEAKER_00: It can think all it wants, its thoughts don't mean anything.
SPEAKER_00: It's spinning its wheels.
SPEAKER_00: This is would not be a politically correct thing to say today, would it?
SPEAKER_00: The person who's given over to sexual immorality, you're not capable of rational thought.
SPEAKER_00: That leads to a hopeless life.
SPEAKER_00: You know, and spinning your wheels, it's a hopeless scenario.
SPEAKER_00: You can't make progress.
SPEAKER_00: I remember sharing the gospel uh maybe a couple months ago with somebody at the in the neighborhood at the bus stop right here.
SPEAKER_00: He was sitting on the curb and had his head in his hands, and I stopped to talk to him.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, this is the kid was 18 years old.
SPEAKER_00: And he tells me how hopeless his life is because he moved in with his girlfriend, he was in an immoral relationship with his girlfriend, and then he caught his girlfriend with some other guy at the gym or something like that.
SPEAKER_00: And here's this kid who's 18 years old, and he's describing the hopeless situation of his life because his girlfriend that he's living with is cheating on him.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what a picture of the hopelessness of the sexually immoral lifestyle.
SPEAKER_00: There's no hope there.
SPEAKER_00: There's no joy there.
SPEAKER_00: There's no, I mean, what would a functioning, healthy relationship with two unmarried 18-year-olds living together even look like?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, God designed marriage for a purpose to bring you the kind of intimacy and joy and relationship that He wants four people to have.
SPEAKER_00: But when you're living in immorality, when you're living with your girlfriend, you're robbed of that whole purpose.
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, on its best day, it's a hopeless scenario.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the word that Paul uses here.
SPEAKER_00: It's just their mind has been given over to immorality.
SPEAKER_00: Which is not the way God designed the mind to work.
SPEAKER_00: The futility of their minds, God gave you a mind so that you could think about his word, so you could think about his glory, so you could rightly perceive the world you're in.
SPEAKER_00: That's how God designed your mind to work.
SPEAKER_00: He made it so you can understand him.
SPEAKER_00: But the person who gives himself over to the immorality of the world has futility in their minds.
SPEAKER_00: And the words keep going on.
SPEAKER_00: Futility was the nice one.
SPEAKER_00: We get to worse words in a second.
SPEAKER_00: They're darkened in their understanding.
SPEAKER_00: So listen, if this is if this is you, if you're living a sexually immoral life, if you're walking like the Gentiles do, Paul's not calling you dumb.
SPEAKER_00: When he says, people get confused about that in the Bible, like, oh, the b as if the Bible is saying I have a low IQ because I'm leading an immoral life.
SPEAKER_00: It's not about it's not about IQ.
SPEAKER_00: He's not saying intellectually you're dumb.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying your mind is not capable of working because of your sin.
SPEAKER_00: Anymore than if I were to put you in a room and remove all the lights, like in a, you know, a constructed room where no light gets in, and I turn out the lights and you're stuck in there.
SPEAKER_00: There's no cracks or crevices anywhere, I could refer to you as blind.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying your eyes don't work, like you're actually biologically blind.
SPEAKER_00: I'm saying you're in a room that is darkened and you can't see.
SPEAKER_00: That's the image that Ephesians 4 is using here.
SPEAKER_00: That their mind is stuck in futility and they're because it's darkened in their understanding.
SPEAKER_00: They can't see.
SPEAKER_00: There's no light where they are.
SPEAKER_00: They are darkened.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a weird passive.
SPEAKER_00: Tense there, they are darkened.
SPEAKER_00: Darkened by who?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's darkened in one sense by their sin, in another sense by the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord has handed them over to these desires.
SPEAKER_00: When your mind is turned over to immorality, it's at cross-purposes with what God designed it to do.
SPEAKER_00: It's not capable of the kind it's not capable of thinking like God wanted it to think, which is to glorify him.
SPEAKER_00: When you're given over to sexually immoral thoughts, it's like trying to fly a car.
SPEAKER_00: Your car wasn't made for the air.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't work like that.
SPEAKER_00: This word that he uses, and we're going to get back to a parallel word if we if we do get there this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I see time just running out of here.
SPEAKER_00: But it's a word that means sphere.
SPEAKER_00: You're in this sphere, this room, this circle of darkness is where you are when you're trying to think.
SPEAKER_00: Because of that, you're alienated from the life of God.
SPEAKER_00: You're outside.
SPEAKER_00: This sphere of darkness is separated from the eternal life of God.
SPEAKER_00: And they're not even next-door neighbors.
SPEAKER_00: There's a gulf fixed between them.
SPEAKER_00: You're an alien from the world of there's a sphere of eternal life over here, the mind that is given over to sexually immoral practices is over here.
SPEAKER_00: And you can't shift between the two.
SPEAKER_00: There's life and separation, and then the darkness where the immoral mind is trapped.
SPEAKER_00: That's the sphere of darkness.
SPEAKER_00: Not enough light to see, not enough conviction of sin to repent.
SPEAKER_00: You're alienated from the life of God.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Romans 1 means, where they exchange the truth about God for a lie.
SPEAKER_00: The truth about God, which Paul says in Romans 1, is available to all.
SPEAKER_00: There's common grace in the world.
SPEAKER_00: Nature proclaims the way that God made people.
SPEAKER_00: Your conscience convicts you about sexual immorality, about lying, about stealing, about idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: You suppress that, you reject what your conscience says, your mind becomes darkened.
SPEAKER_00: It becomes darkened.
SPEAKER_00: This is the language Paul used in Ephesians chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: That before Christ, you were aliens to the commonwealth of Israel, aliens to the promises of God.
SPEAKER_00: That's from the theological perspective.
SPEAKER_00: The first half of Ephesians, remember, 1 through 3, is the theological perspective.
SPEAKER_00: Theologically, before Christ, you were an alien to the promises of God because that wasn't your citizenship.
SPEAKER_00: The citizenship came through Abraham, down through Christ, you're alienated.
SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, in Christ, you're adopted into the promises.
SPEAKER_00: Well, in Ephesians 4 through 6, we're not talking about it from that theological perspective, but more from the practical experiential perspective, where now it's your sin that has separated you from it.
SPEAKER_00: So you see, that's a one-to punch.
SPEAKER_00: Outside of Christ, you don't have access to the eternal life of God because it's not for you.
SPEAKER_00: Also, your mind has darkened you.
SPEAKER_00: This is why John writes this, 1 John 1, verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and don't practice the truth.
SPEAKER_00: If you say you have eternal life while you're walking in darkness, you are a liar.
SPEAKER_00: In Paul's language, that was John's language, Paul's language in verse 18, you're alienated from the life of God.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what alienates you in verse 18?
SPEAKER_00: The ignorance that is in them.
SPEAKER_00: They don't know.
SPEAKER_00: And remember, this is a moral term.
SPEAKER_00: This is the kid, maybe this was me in college, I make an appeal to a professor, a sociology professor at the end of my like sophomore year in college, who said, Can I not take the final this week?
SPEAKER_00: Because I missed the last few weeks of class.
SPEAKER_00: Why did you miss the last few weeks of class?
SPEAKER_00: Skiing.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm not ready for the final because I went, you know, it sounds worse when you say it like that.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm ignorant about what's going to be in the exam, but that's not an excuse to avoid the exam, I was informed.
SPEAKER_00: This is what the word ignorance means here.
SPEAKER_00: The person is ignorant about what God requires of them.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a statement of their innocence, it's a statement that they have ditched class.
SPEAKER_00: That leads to a hardness of heart, is the next phrase there.
SPEAKER_00: Their heart is hardened.
SPEAKER_00: Again, it's this weird middle, passive kind of voice.
SPEAKER_00: They harden it themselves, it's God that's hardening it also.
SPEAKER_00: The same phrase is used in John chapter 12, verse 40, where Jesus says that God has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts so they would not see with their eyes and they would not understand with their heart.
SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, they'd repent and God would have saved them.
SPEAKER_00: This is John chapter 12, verse 40.
SPEAKER_00: And remember, Jesus is answering the question how come there can be so many people that see your miracles and don't believe?
SPEAKER_00: That was the question in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: All the bread and the walking in water and all that.
SPEAKER_00: Why doesn't everybody believe?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, because God has darkened their eyes and hardened their heart.
SPEAKER_00: That's a big boy verse right there.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you have to have a big God and kind of robust theology to have that verse in your Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And it should remind you of Pharaoh.
SPEAKER_00: Back in Exodus.
SPEAKER_00: Pharaoh's heart was hardened.
SPEAKER_00: That's Exodus 7, verse 13.
SPEAKER_00: It's the first use of that phrase.
SPEAKER_00: Pharaoh's heart was hardened.
SPEAKER_00: Now you keep reading through Exodus 7, Pharaoh hardens his own heart, God hardens Pharaoh's heart ultimately, but the first introduction of the phrase, 7 verse 13 of Exodus, is that Pharaoh's heart passive was hardened.
SPEAKER_00: That's what sin does to you.
SPEAKER_00: You can reverse engineer this chain here in verse 18 back to verse 17.
SPEAKER_00: You have a hardness of heart that flows out of ignorance, that flows out of being alienated from God.
SPEAKER_00: That makes sense, right?
SPEAKER_00: If you run from God, it's because you're separated from him, you're alienated from him.
SPEAKER_00: Because you're away from him now, your mind is darkened.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's darkened, it's spinning its wheels.
SPEAKER_00: There's the futility of the mind.
SPEAKER_00: The list keeps going, by the way, verse 19, they've become callous.
SPEAKER_00: That's a Greek word that means to have loss of feeling.
SPEAKER_00: You're no longer able to feel pain.
SPEAKER_00: This is what it means in Romans 1, to sear your conscience.
SPEAKER_00: Your conscience no longer afflicts you.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the first few times you sin in those wicked ways, your conscience condemns you.
SPEAKER_00: You feel guilty about it.
SPEAKER_00: You sit on the street on Braddock with your head in your hands and you're hopeless and you feel guilty about the whole thing.
SPEAKER_00: That's originally.
SPEAKER_00: But you keep on in that life of sin, and that pain will go away.
SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't mean it's gone away because you now have hope and joy in life.
SPEAKER_00: Of course not.
SPEAKER_00: It just means you've deadened yourself to you no longer feel the pain.
SPEAKER_00: It's calloused.
SPEAKER_00: That's his word.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 19, they've given themselves up to sensuality.
SPEAKER_00: Why don't they feel pain?
SPEAKER_00: Because they've thrown themselves into it.
SPEAKER_00: They've given themselves up to sensuality.
SPEAKER_00: It's the experience of going in a cold pool.
SPEAKER_00: You know, at first you're like, I can't go one inch more into the your toe is in, you're like, I will die.
SPEAKER_00: My toe is falling off, frostbite, etc.
SPEAKER_00: Then once you you kind of man up and get all the way in, now you're you're freezing, and after a few minutes, you're like, ah, actually, I can I can hang in here.
SPEAKER_00: If I get out, I'll be super cold.
SPEAKER_00: And it's so reversed now.
SPEAKER_00: You know, and somebody from the pool will be shouting it.
SPEAKER_00: My kids will shout at me, you know, it's not so cold once you get in.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, that's an argument against getting in.
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm 0% cold right now.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't want to go through all that pain and suffering and then be stuck in there like it's so cold out there, but it's not that cold once you get used to it.
SPEAKER_00: That is this is this.
SPEAKER_00: You give yourself up to sin and you no longer feel the pain.
SPEAKER_00: You're immersed in it.
SPEAKER_00: All your friends are swimming in the same water, and you think, man, it would be so hard if I got out of this lifestyle.
SPEAKER_00: It would be so hard.
SPEAKER_00: It would be so painful to me if I got out of the lifestyle.
SPEAKER_00: Do you not see what the Bible says about that?
SPEAKER_00: Don't get in.
SPEAKER_00: And then he uses a different word.
SPEAKER_00: Greedy.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, but I skipped over the word sensuality, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: They've given this sensuality.
SPEAKER_00: That word sensuality is also a crazy Greek word.
SPEAKER_00: It's a word reserved for somebody who does something so flagrantly immoral designed just to produce outrage.
SPEAKER_00: There's an example that most Greek dictionaries use of somebody finding the town patriarch, like the wise scholar who sits by the Greek fountain in the middle of the town plaza, and the teenager walks up and punches him in the face, knocks him into the fountain.
SPEAKER_00: For no reason, not even the joy derived from punching him, he actually gets the joy from the anger everybody has about how could such a thing be allowed to take place.
SPEAKER_00: That's where he gets his joy from, is the anger over the act.
SPEAKER_00: That's a dysfunctional personality.
SPEAKER_00: That's a dysfunctional person.
SPEAKER_00: That's not right in the head.
SPEAKER_00: There's a word for that, and that word is what's used here.
SPEAKER_00: That's the person who gives themselves over to sensuality.
SPEAKER_00: They're only pursuing what they desire, and the more outrage that goes with it, the better.
SPEAKER_00: That's what they like, in fact.
SPEAKER_00: And finally, he just says they're greedy.
SPEAKER_00: They're greedy for what?
SPEAKER_00: For sin.
SPEAKER_00: Every kind of impurity.
SPEAKER_00: They're materialistic.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not even about wanting the newest phone here.
SPEAKER_00: And these words, it's implying that they're they're they're wanting the next experience.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever their sin demands, whatever their heart desires, that's what they want to feed.
SPEAKER_00: That's what they want to feed.
SPEAKER_00: I came across one commentator that made just this great observation.
SPEAKER_00: A more recent commentator, of course, is this is the person who texts while they're driving.
SPEAKER_00: They think it's okay if they hit the pedestrian in front of them because they want to see their next text message so badly.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, if that pedestrian knew how important my curiosity was about my next text message, they would stay off the road.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make any sense.
SPEAKER_00: It's greedy for whatever you want to hold, and if you run over somebody, that's probably his fault anyway.
SPEAKER_00: He's getting in the way of my text message.
SPEAKER_00: That's a great illustration of this.
SPEAKER_00: Greedy for the next desire.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care if I hit people.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever, that's on them.
SPEAKER_00: Don't they know how important this is to me?
SPEAKER_00: That's our world.
SPEAKER_00: Totally given over to sexual immorality.
SPEAKER_00: Totally given over to just embracing whatever materialistic, narcissistic, consumed by self, consumed by pleasure, desire pops up next in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: This is our world that says if your heart desires it, it must be good.
SPEAKER_00: This is our world that says if you're born that way, it must be justified.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's just upside-down ethics right there.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says you're born that way.
SPEAKER_00: That's why it's a problem.
SPEAKER_00: You're born into sin, you're born into darkness.
SPEAKER_00: And you think, man, if I desire it, then it's gotta be good for me.
SPEAKER_00: When you think like that, uh a culture that thinks like that makes debt a virtue, adultery acceptable, sexual immorality normal, and if you desire something, it's fine to have it.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's this world.
SPEAKER_00: And that is a life of pain, pain, and pain.
SPEAKER_00: It's the darkness that you run into things, you hit your leg on things, and you hurt yourself because there's no light in the room, there's no wisdom there, there's no hope there.
SPEAKER_00: So, where can there be hope found?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the hope, of course, is found in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: That is not the way you learned Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Salvation is letting the light in.
SPEAKER_00: Notice even the language, he's still using mental language.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see this?
SPEAKER_00: That's not the way you learned Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You had to learn in your head something about Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And how did you learn that?
SPEAKER_00: Did you learn about Christ because of the darkness?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is no.
SPEAKER_00: You learned about Christ in a fundamentally different way than the way you were living your life.
SPEAKER_00: Because this was you.
SPEAKER_00: You were all in this category.
SPEAKER_00: You were living your lives like this.
SPEAKER_00: You were part of this culture, you were born in fallenness, and then at some point you learned about Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Christ broke into your darkness, in the darkness of your head, Christ got into your head and revealed himself to you.
SPEAKER_00: And you went from darkness and ignorance now to learning and hearing.
SPEAKER_00: That's the words in verse 21.
SPEAKER_00: Assuming that you have heard about him, assuming that you were taught in him.
SPEAKER_00: If you were taught in him, you were taught the truth that is in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So the big command here for sanctification is put off your old self.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're listening to this and you say, that describes my life.
SPEAKER_00: I'm living the sexually immoral life.
SPEAKER_00: I'm living the greedy life, the sensual life.
SPEAKER_00: Then Paul just has a very basic question for you.
SPEAKER_00: This is his question, not mine, it's his.
SPEAKER_00: Have you learned about Christ?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, let's just start there.
SPEAKER_00: Have you learned about Christ?
SPEAKER_00: Have you given your life to Christ?
SPEAKER_00: Because if you feel drowning in sin, and if you feel hopeless and fighting sin, this is a great place to start.
SPEAKER_00: Do you believe the gospel?
SPEAKER_00: Now, assuming that you do, then put off your old self.
SPEAKER_00: Because he says in verse 22, that old self belongs to your former manner of life.
SPEAKER_00: It was corrupt and deceitful desires.
SPEAKER_00: Your fountain is your heart is a fountain of deceitful desires.
SPEAKER_00: Notice he's saying this is you've gone from the mind to the heart now.
SPEAKER_00: Your heart is spewing forth all these lies that are corrupt.
SPEAKER_00: That's the way you used to live.
SPEAKER_00: So put that off.
SPEAKER_00: Second point, is you put on knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: You put off the old self and you put on and you put off the ignorance and the darkness and you put on the knowledge of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: This is seen in verse, well, verse 20, that you've learned about Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 21, that you have heard about him, that you were taught in him.
SPEAKER_00: You see these intellectual words?
SPEAKER_00: You heard about him, you were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the truth, he is the way, the truth, the life, he is the truth.
SPEAKER_00: When you come to Christ, you're now taught by Jesus about the truth.
SPEAKER_00: And so you've put off your old self, which is your former way of life, and you've now been renewed.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 23 says, in the spirit of your minds.
SPEAKER_00: Your mind is you're a spiritual being, of course.
SPEAKER_00: You have a spirit, and the spirit interacts with your mind.
SPEAKER_00: Who knows the secrets of a man's mind, except the spirit that is in him, Paul tells the Corinthians.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same principle here.
SPEAKER_00: You've now come to faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The light has broken into your darkness.
SPEAKER_00: There's now a big window there.
SPEAKER_00: You see the light, you see Christ, you put your faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You've heard about him, you've learned about him, you're repenting of your sins now.
SPEAKER_00: You're a new creation.
SPEAKER_00: The ignorance has gone away, the futility of your mind has gone away, the darkness has gone away, the callousness is going away, and it's replaced with a new mind and a new nature.
SPEAKER_00: You have in verse 23 the renewing of the spirit of your mind.
SPEAKER_00: Your heart has been regenerated by faith.
SPEAKER_00: You have a love of Christ in your heart, you have a new mind that is capable of understanding spiritual things, and you're putting on the new self.
SPEAKER_00: You're now a new person.
SPEAKER_00: And this is a present progressive here, meaning you keep on putting on the new self.
SPEAKER_00: It's a new walk, in other words.
SPEAKER_00: The old you was walking in darkness, the new you is walking in light.
SPEAKER_00: You are a new creation with a new self, and you're going to keep on putting on the new self.
SPEAKER_00: Over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: You were taught now about Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And that phrase, you were taught about him, that's that sphere word again.
SPEAKER_00: And what a contrast.
SPEAKER_00: The first place it's used, you were taught in darkness and ignorance.
SPEAKER_00: The second place it's used, you're taught in Jesus and truth and life.
SPEAKER_00: What a contrast.
SPEAKER_00: Lies give way to truth, darkness gives way to light, death gives way to life, ignorance gives way to knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: The old gives way to the new.
SPEAKER_00: You're a new creation because you believe in Jesus, who is the truth, and you put him on.
SPEAKER_00: If you maybe you had this experience, what, Thursday, where you weren't expecting rain, and you're outside and you get drenched.
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking like the kind of drench where your socks are wet and stuck to you, and your shirt is wet and stuck to you, and you didn't have an umbrella or a rain jacket.
SPEAKER_00: You were soaked all the way.
SPEAKER_00: Every thread of fabric in your body is soaking wet.
SPEAKER_00: You're now freezing, and you come inside and you take off all your wet clothes, you take a shower, and then you do not put on your old wet clothes.
SPEAKER_00: That defeats the whole process.
SPEAKER_00: Speaking particularly to children here, you don't put back on the wet clothes.
SPEAKER_00: I know it was a cute outfit.
SPEAKER_00: Don't put it back on.
SPEAKER_00: You put back on new clothes.
SPEAKER_00: Like, hey, if you get home from work and you're soaking wet, it's 5:30, throw on some sweatpants.
SPEAKER_00: Get comfortable now because you're not going back to work.
SPEAKER_00: Put on things that are fitting what you're going to do.
SPEAKER_00: Hang out at home.
SPEAKER_00: It's different clothes.
SPEAKER_00: That's the image Paul's using here.
SPEAKER_00: The old you, the way the Gentiles, you're soaking wet.
SPEAKER_00: Strip that off.
SPEAKER_00: And keep putting on the new clothes, the renewal of the mind.
SPEAKER_00: This doesn't mean that you never sin anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Because the old you is gone, but some of your habits are hard to break, some of your thinking is hard to change.
SPEAKER_00: This is the process of sanctification.
SPEAKER_00: You'll be changing the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_00: It definitely means you do not have two natures, though.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have an old you and a new you duking it out inside of you.
SPEAKER_00: And when you come to faith in Christ, you have a new you.
SPEAKER_00: The old is dead and gone.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, the new is come.
SPEAKER_00: So I don't buy that you can have these two natures.
SPEAKER_00: You can have a Christian nature and an unchristian nature at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: You can be a Christian and not a Christian simultaneously.
SPEAKER_00: There's a new you with love for Christ, a new mind, a new spirit, a new heart, new loves, new affections, new desires, new habits, new friends, new people, new culture, new paths, new ways.
SPEAKER_00: You'll still sin.
SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned, because you're a work in progress.
SPEAKER_00: There's an ongoing process of sanctification that will take you the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_00: You're being renewed.
SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned, it's a continual verb.
SPEAKER_00: It will happen the rest of your days.
SPEAKER_00: Some practical examples of putting off and putting on next week.
SPEAKER_00: One of the first things I had to do as I was a coach back at this high school is I was informed by our school security officers that uh one of the players was after school walking from the high school over to the middle school, which is like a couple blocks away, and riding the middle school bus home.
SPEAKER_00: That's weird, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: And you're not allowed to do that.
SPEAKER_00: And he was he was lying to the bus driver.
SPEAKER_00: He's telling the bus driver he's like a seventh grader or something that gets in high school.
SPEAKER_00: But he's walking to the middle school to ride the middle school bus home.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm now tasked to go talk to him, and I go, like, hey, what are you doing?
SPEAKER_00: And the bottom line is he had friends in middle school and he liked the middle school friends, and he didn't have friends in high school.
SPEAKER_00: He was gonna walk over to the middle school and take the bus.
SPEAKER_00: And I didn't have like any profound adult wisdom to him.
SPEAKER_00: I just had like, hey man, you gotta grow up.
SPEAKER_00: You're not in middle school anymore.
SPEAKER_00: You don't get to ride the middle school bus anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Not allowed, my friends, man.
SPEAKER_00: Grow up, make friends in high school.
SPEAKER_00: You can't go back.
SPEAKER_00: This is the same thing I would appeal to some of you.
SPEAKER_00: You have a love for Christ in your life, you have faith in Christ, but you find yourself still walking over to live in the former life and to take the middle school bus.
SPEAKER_00: Grow up.
SPEAKER_00: Don't go back.
SPEAKER_00: Recognize that sin you're entertaining in your mind, that's ignorance, that's darkness, it leads to callousness, it defiles you.
SPEAKER_00: Grow up.
SPEAKER_00: Repent of it.
SPEAKER_00: And put on the new self and walk in newness of life.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we're thankful for the freedom we have in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel brings us the freedom that Jesus brings when He rescues us from sin.
SPEAKER_00: The freedom we have is a new nature to walk in a new life and serve you with a new heart.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for those listening to this sermon.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for anyone who has never given you their life, that is still trapped in the immoral life, the walking the ways the Gentiles walked, I pray that they would surrender their life to you this morning, that they would believe in their heart that you, Jesus Christ, your God made man, who led a sinless life and died on the cross, bearing the penalty first, and resurrected from the grave.
SPEAKER_00: Show that whoever believes in you can also conquer the grave.
SPEAKER_00: The physical grave in our future, we will all die.
SPEAKER_00: But the spiritual grave now, the spiritual death we're living out, the callousnesses of our hearts and the futility of our mind, you can free us from that through faith in you and your resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for anyone here today who has never done that.
SPEAKER_00: I pray today that we believe in the hope that comes of the resurrection, their hope would be in Christ, that they would learn about Christ today.
SPEAKER_00: For the rest of us, Lord, I pray that you would give us the courage to put off sin.
SPEAKER_00: You would give us the boldness and the faith to believe that we have a new, uh, that we are a new creation, that we're new creatures with a new mind, and that you give us the courage to walk that way.
SPEAKER_00: We ask this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us today.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, I would love to meet you personally at Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our service times and other church information is on our website at ibc.church.
SPEAKER_00: If you want information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to tms.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been an encouragement to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.
SPEAKER_00: May the Lord bless you.