Old vs. New (Ephesians 4:17-24)

Ephesians chapter four verses seventeen through twenty-four.

Says, Therefore, I say this and testify in the Lord, you should no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thoughts.

They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, and because of the hardness of their hearts.

They became callous and gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity, with a desire for more and more.

But that is not how you came to know Christ, assuming you heard about him and were taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus, to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires, to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, the one created according to God's likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.

Let's pray.

Lord, I thank you so much for your word.

I thank you that we have the ability to hold it in our hands right now.

The word of God.

That we're able to study it like this out in the open and public, that we're able to, many of us own many different Bibles, many different translations, and have such free access and the ability to be able to open it and speak about it so freely in public.

So we thank you for all of those privileges that you've given us.

Lord, help us to take advantage of those privileges, to take your word and to take it seriously, to realize that your word changes us, that the one truth of who you are in Jesus Christ is found in your word.

So I pray as we open it this morning that you would do a work in our hearts like only you can.

That you would mold us and that you would shape us into the people that you desire us to be through the blood of Jesus Christ.

Lord, do that work now.

Help us to come before you with open eyes and open ears and open mind and open heart or our whole being to what you have for us.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

So if you've ever watched a home renovation show, which I assume probably most of us have, it's all about the before and after shots in those shows, isn't it?

They show you this horrible, worn down home, you know, that's not been taken care of, where the previous owners did some head scratching stuff, you know, they're just they like to go through and what were they thinking?

Oh my gosh, this is so bad.

Our first home in Vertura actually had cheap lath that was glued to the wall in a herringbone pattern, and then they painted it later colors.

That's what we walked into.

We pulled it all down to ruin the drywall because all the glue behind it was just one of those head scratching moments.

Like, what were they thinking?

The rooms look horrible.

But when you talk about these home renovation shows, the whole show, it's a build-up to the aftershots, isn't it?

Of what this is going to look like after the renovation is done.

The whole reason that you stick around and you watch the show and the in-between of the before and after shots is to see how it all comes together in the end.

And they always show you at the end a view of, say it's the kitchen, you know, beforehand, and then they show you a shot from that same angle of that same room of what the kitchen looks like afterwards.

And you just sit there like, wow, I can't believe that's the same space.

You know, the ceiling looks so much higher.

You know, the room looks so much brighter with that extra natural light that's coming.

The functionality of this makes so much more sense the way that they renovated this space.

The whole thing, though, is about the before and after.

And maybe picking up some tricks in between, of maybe some things you could do in your home.

Today, Paul's going to paint a bleak before picture of us before Christ and of people that don't currently have Christ, of what we looked like before we came to Christ.

And then he's going to get into in the second half of this passage the work that God desires to take place in us while we're still on this earth as we move toward that action, that after picture that God has for us.

And I just want to say this from the get-go, so it's clear as day.

What's coming today, it's not about salvation.

It's not about earning salvation, it's not about works towards salvation, because we can't do any of those things on our own.

That's all through Jesus Christ.

You know, when we come to Christ, Scripture tells us we're a new creation.

The old has passed away, and behold, all things are made new.

You know, when we come to Christ, God looks at us and he sees Jesus.

He sees the finished work of Jesus, he sees us as pure and holy and righteous.

That's not what we're talking about today.

Because while we're on this earth, while we're stuck kind of in this middle ground, this middle ground, we're stuck in our old man.

We're stuck in this physical flesh that we're in, in our bodies, and all of the fleshly desires that come with it.

But God wants to do a work in us.

That's what we're talking about today.

That work that's taking place as we're in this in-between of coming to salvation in Christ, but before we graduate to heaven and before we get to experience that perfection.

Maybe you remember when we were going through chapter 3, starting in verse 16 of chapter 3, Paul prayed for the Ephesian believers, and he said he prayed for them to be strengthened with power in your inner being through his spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

And we talked about that word dwell and how it means to settle, how dwell means to make a home specifically in our hearts.

We talked about letting Jesus move into our hearts and really clean house and renovate and even decorate to make our hearts exactly as he desires them to be.

We talked about how we can't have rooms, we can't have places in our heart where he's off limits, that we don't allow him to go.

And we talked about this being the process of sanctification.

Do you remember that word?

Sanctification, that process that we're going through right now here on this earth of becoming more like Jesus.

You know, today Paul's going to talk about the before of our heart and the work that Jesus wants to do in our heart to give us the after pictures that God desires for us to have at the end of our life.

Again, not to make us more saved, but to make us more like Him.

For some of you, you're still the before picture, and Jesus hasn't even moved in to your heart yet.

For some of you that have maybe recently come to faith in Jesus Christ, you're still in demo day.

Whes is just coming in and he's wanting to remove a lot of those things from your old life.

For some of you, the kitchen may be done, but some of the rooms haven't been touched yet.

For some, you may be getting close to the grand reveal.

And Jesus is doing some finishing touches in your life before he takes you home to heaven.

But this side of eternity, he's not finished with us yet.

No one on this side of eternity can say, Jesus is done with me.

Everybody take a look.

We're talking about a lifelong process here that Jesus wants to do in our life to become more and more like him.

Now, look at verse 17.

It starts with the word therefore.

Meaning you need to go back and see what it's there for, right?

Everything to come today is in regards to what has already previously been said by Paul.

You're having a firm foundation in God's word for yourself so that you're not tossed around by every wind of doctrine that floats around this earth.

We talked a lot about growing in the body of Christ with Christ as the head and functioning as individual parts in unity as one body.

So Paul says here in verse 17, therefore, in light of that maturing in the faith, I say this and I testify in the Lord, you should no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thoughts.

You know, before coming to Christ, these Gentiles in Ephesus that he's writing to, they were pagans.

They were living in the middle of idol worship central, the huge temple of Diana and all that came with it, and all the other temples that were in Ephesus.

And it's the same as us before coming to Christ.

Living in the middle of idol worship central.

And what do we have before Christ?

Paul says right here, the futility of our own thoughts.

You see, if we don't know the truth and we're trying to find answers to this life, we're just guessing, aren't we?

And if we don't believe in one universal truth that is God and that comes from his word, then we just start to make stuff up.

You know, we see this in the world all the time.

It's a wild goose chase and there's no goose.

You'll hear people all the time, well, that might be your truth, but that's not my truth.

Have you heard that before?

People will say, you know, life doesn't begin at conception, it's at birth.

But where did that truth come from?

When the psalmist says, For it was you who created my inward parts, you knit me together in my mother's womb.

And Jeremiah, God says, I chose you before I formed you in the womb, I set you apart before you were born.

We don't get to make up truth about life.

God tells us what life is.

You'll hear all the time, well, there aren't only two genders, and we can switch genders whenever we want, or we can even become another gender.

When God says he created man in his own image, he created him in the image of God, he created them male and female.

Or people will say, you know, there's multiple roads to heaven.

Just be good and don't harm anything, and God, how could he reject you if you're living that life?

When Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and nobody comes to the Father except through me.

You see, when we don't have one truth to believe in that's based in God's word, we can start to go down some crazy philosophical roads about what life is, about what truth is, about what your truth is, whatever that means.

I'm still trying to figure that out.

Paul is simply telling this Ephesian church don't live like you used to.

Don't think like you used to in the futility of your thoughts.

You know, don't get me wrong.

There's some brilliant thinkers that are not followers of Jesus Christ.

But when it comes to truth and when it comes to life, there's only one source of truth, and that's God's word.

That's God Himself.

Therefore, when we come to Christ, our thinking should change.

It should change drastically, actually.

Which we're going to dive into here in a little bit, but first I want to look at verse 18.

As we look at Gentiles living outside of God's truth.

It says here in verse 18, they are darkened in their understanding.

You know, often in Scripture we see truth and life and light all going hand in hand with each other.

And then darkness being associated with not knowing, or the immorality of this world, or the influence of the enemy.

Those are always tied to darkness.

You know, in the next chapter, this is really where we're heading in Ephesians, in chapter 5, verses 8 through 9, Paul's going to come out and say, For you were once darkness, but you are now light in the Lord.

Walk as children of light.

This is what all of this is about, and this is where it's heading.

And he continues in 18.

He says, excluded from the life of God.

Jesus is life.

He's the way, the truth, the life, as we just read.

You know, we were excluded from all of that before coming to Jesus.

But Jesus said, I have come so that you may have life and have it abundantly.

And for those excluded from the abundant life, here's why they're excluded.

Look at the end of 18.

It says, Because of the ignorance that is in them, and because of the hardness of their hearts.

You know, I want to make sure as we're reading this that we don't read this and think, oh, those poor Gentiles.

They didn't know.

Look at the very end of 18.

It says, because of the hardness of their hearts.

That means they didn't want to be enlightened.

And ignorance was actually a choice that they were choosing.

Hardness of heart is a process.

We're talking a lot about processes today, aren't we?

And if you want to see the process of a hardness of heart, we can just look at Pharaoh in Exodus.

Hardness of heart is a choice that is made over and over again as the heart becomes harder and harder.

Until, look at verse 19, they became callous and gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more.

Becoming callous is scary.

The King James Version actually says, being past feeling.

You know, one summer in high school, one of my jobs was putting in a barbed wire fence around this property for cattle.

It was over a half mile in length.

There's no tractors, hills, brush.

I mean, it was it was kind of an gnarly job that summer, but it was a five-wire barbed wire fence that I was building.

Every T-post was driven by hand.

Every post hole was dug by hand.

Every railroad tie fence brace that I was making was done by hand.

Stretching the barbed wire was done with a come-along.

Even with gloves on, by the end of that summer, my hands were so thick with calluses, all the way up and down the fingers, all over the palms.

It's our body's response to make that part of our body impenetrable to a certain extent.

It's a natural response that our body has to make us past feeling in that area.

The Gentiles refer to you here, which Paul's using as a term of non-believers, just in general, their hearts became hard to the things of God.

You know, whether that was hardening to what they knew or what they heard about God, or hardening that happened by simply not listening to their conscience that God gave them.

And not listening to that conscience over and over and over again.

You know, God gave us all a conscience that we're born with that tells us right from wrong.

We all have the law written on our hearts in the form of a conscience.

You can look that up in Romans 2.15 if you want to.

But after repeatedly rejecting God and ignoring our conscience, we can become hardened and even callous to those things that we once felt and once knew were wrong.

And we can become so hardened and so callous to where we don't even feel those things anymore, and then our conscience becomes silenced.

That's the state of the non-believers in Ephesus that Paul is writing about.

And that's the same state of non-believers here in Atascadero as well.

Look at verse 19 again.

They became callous and gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more.

They not only participated in promiscuity and impurity, but notice it says here, they gave themselves over to those things.

You know, this word gave, it means to give into the hands of another, to give over into one's power or use.

This is what their God has become.

Their God became promiscuity in every kind of impurity.

That's what they gave themselves over to.

That was their idol, that's what they were worshiping.

And I'm hoping you can see the progression here.

It went from futility of thought to darkened understanding, excluded from the fullness of life found in Jesus, to a hardening of the heart, then callousness, then full-on worshiping evil.

You see that progression we just went through?

This is a process.

This is like a home that's left alone and it just keeps on deteriorating until that home is rat infested.

The before pictures of this home just keep getting worse and worse and worse before Jesus moves in.

You know, as Christians, you know, we're talking about non-believers in Ephesus at this point, but as Christians, we have to be so careful of the hardness of our own hearts as well.

Toward God, toward his people, toward his word, whatever it might be, we have to be careful of that hardness turning into calluses as well.

You know, when you think of a callus, it usually starts with a blister, doesn't it?

It usually starts with a wound.

It's very sensitive.

And the body's reaction is to take that wound, to take that heightened sensitivity, and to callus it.

In order to avoid pain, in order to avoid another wound in that same spot in the future.

It's similar with us as believers, you know, we'll get wounded.

And our natural man wants to harden and go from that hardening to then callusing, so we don't ever feel that same pain again.

You know, you'll hear all the time from people I was hurt by the church in the past, so I'm never going back to any church.

I was hurt by a pastor, so I'm never letting another pastor get close to me.

I was hurt while serving in a ministry, so I'm never serving in that ministry again.

Or I was hurt after opening up to somebody about my struggles.

And that person hurt me, so I'm never opening up again to anybody else.

Because we don't want to feel that pain again.

So we put up walls, we put up protective mechanisms that are just like calluses.

But what ends up happening is we miss out on so much of the good that God wants us to experience.

In our church body, in our ministry, in our relationships with brothers and sisters in Christ.

Calluses on our heart are not only protective mechanisms that we form, they're also shields that keep God from penetrating those areas in us as well.

Now I can't think of a single situation where as a child of God it's a good thing to have a callus on our heart.

Thick skin?

Absolutely, yes.

We need thick skin.

Callloused heart?

Absolutely not.

I can't tell you how many times I've prayed to God for a soft heart and a thick skin as a believer.

That's a prayer I pray often.

And a thick skin, I think a great way to think of it is not being easily offended.

You know, we're actually instructed to have a thick skin.

If you remember the love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13, you probably heard at a wedding.

A few of the things that Paul mentions, he says, love is not rude, not irritable, does not keep a record of wrong, it bears all things, it endures all things.

You know, these are all things that require a thick skin, aren't they?

And a soft heart.

It doesn't mean you open yourself up to abuse and become somebody's doormat.

That's not at all what we're talking about here this morning.

It means not becoming callous to the things the Lord wants to do in you now because of wounds that have happened to you in the past.

You know, like I said, admittedly, Paul's speaking to the fate of Gentiles here in verses 18 and 19.

But we need to be careful too, as Christians, to not allow our hearts to become hardened and callous.

Because what it's doing is keeping us from the fullness of life that Jesus wants us to have here on this earth right now.

Now, before we get to the work God wants to do in us that Paul's setting up here, the phrasing of the next verses are a bit hard to sort out.

In different translations, we'll take different routes here.

But they all end up in the same place, so we're going to do our best to sort this out as we go.

But look at verse 20.

But that is not how you came to know Christ.

Assuming you heard about him and were taught by him as the truth is in Jesus.

Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

The truth that we keep talking about here today, it's the truth of God.

It's the truth of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit that's found in his word.

And the way we come to that truth is through Jesus, because he is truth.

He is the revelation of God.

And that truth of Jesus demands for us, look at verse 22, to take off, your translation may say, lay aside, your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires.

This is what the truth of Jesus does.

This is the effect it should have on us in direct contrast to what we saw in verses 17 through 19.

Realizing that everything we had in ourselves and in this world before Jesus was corrupted and was dead in trespasses.

Colossians 3, 9 through 10 tells us in Christ we have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of God who created him.

We can't keep our former life and have Jesus at the same time.

Just like you don't put a suit or a dress over your work in the yard clothes after you've been working in the yard all Saturday, do you?

There's no Jesus and anything else.

You see, Jesus wants to circumcise our hearts, as we've been talking about throughout Ephesians.

He wants to cut out the flesh.

He wants to cut out the old man and the fleshly desires that we have.

And he wants to do that completely.

Again, something that we can never completely accomplish this side of eternity, but something we daily should strive for in this process of sanctification that we're talking about.

In this daily battle that we are engaged in between our spirit and our flesh.

You know, it'd be so nice to come to Christ, and then the heart is circumcised, and we no longer have to deal with the old man and its desires.

Wouldn't that be nice?

We come to Christ and then that battle's over.

We don't have to worry about the old man anymore.

That's what we get to look forward to in heaven.

That's why I'm looking so forward to being in heaven.

But for right now, we're kind of stuck in this middle ground as we've been talking about.

And again, this has nothing to do with earning God's approval, earning salvation.

We're saved by grace in Christ Jesus.

We've taken on the righteousness of Jesus.

We've been made holy by his blood.

We're accepted, we're approved, and we're loved by God before we even ever made or had a chance to do a single good work in our new life in Jesus Christ.

But he desires us to daily become like Jesus because that is what's best for us.

That's what's best for his kingdom as well.

Because the more we become like Jesus, the less we hurt ourselves.

The more that we become like Jesus, the less we hurt others with our sin and the consequences of that sin.

And the more people can witness Jesus in and through us.

So we take off the former self, and instead we are to look at verse 23.

To be renewed in the spirit of your minds.

This is not the Holy Spirit that's being referred to here.

This is our spirit.

Now, another way to look at this would be to be renewed in your mental and spiritual attitude.

Now, our old way was to walk in the futility of our mind.

Remember we just saw that?

Corrupted by evil and deceitful desires.

The contrast here is to be renewed in our mind.

Just like our heart needs to be transformed from fleshly desires of the old man.

Our mind also needs to be transformed from the thinking of the old man into having the mind of Christ.

Again, another process.

It's going to take a while.

We don't come to Christ and then bam, you know.

I think just like him.

Another thing that would be really nice.

It takes discipline and a desire to think like Christ, and we can only do it through the Holy Spirit working in us.

2 Corinthians 10, 4 through 5 says, we demolish arguments in every proud thing that is raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ.

We have to demolish arguments in our own heads sometimes, don't we?

Actually, often we have to do that.

To not believe the lies of the enemy.

To not believe the fear of the old man that wants to paralyze us.

To not believe that we are in control and therefore need to worry about every possible outcome of every possible situation.

Taking thoughts captive is really hard work, isn't it?

Anybody else agree with that?

Having the desire to take them captive, I think, is half the battle.

Worry gives us the illusion that we're in control.

And letting go of worry and trusting God is hard work.

And I'm speaking from experience here.

But if we're going to become like Christ as his disciples, it means our mind needs to become like his.

And to become like him in our mind, guess what?

That means we really need to get to know him in order to know how he thinks.

That's what his disciples had to do for three years.

They followed him around, just trying to get to know him, trying to be like him, trying to figure out how he thinks and how he approached every situation.

For us, though, God's word is truth.

And it's filled with how God thinks.

You know, if your mind starts running wild with fear or worry or lust or anger or whatever it might be, just saying, you know, stop thinking about that, stop thinking about that, stop thinking about.

What are you thinking about?

The thing that you're trying not to think about.

You have to have God's truth ready to replace those thoughts of fear and worry and what if, thoughts of lust and anger and jealousy, whatever it might be that you're battling with, you have to have God's truth ready to replace it.

Philippians 4.8 says this, and I want to share it with you.

It says, Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever's true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any moral excellence, and if there is anything praiseworthy, dwell on these things.

We need to have a game plan, really.

And have those things, those things that are true and pure and honorable, ready.

We need to have the truth of God's word ready in our mind.

You know, if you struggle with your thought life, we need to bombard ourselves with truth and renew the spirit of the mind and have those things ready.

So we're not just saying, stop thinking about it, stop thinking about it, but actually taking our thoughts and saying, I'm not going to think about this anymore.

Instead, I'm going to dwell on this truth until I can take comfort in those things, until I can realize how big God really is, and dwell on those things until my heart calms down and I begin to trust the Lord with those things and realize that my worry does nothing to advance whatever it is that I'm worried about.

Paul goes on in verse 24.

He says, and to put on the new self, the one created according to God's likeness, in righteousness and purity of the truth.

If we take off the old man, we have to put something back on.

And we're to put on the new self.

That one that is being renewed in the spirit of the mind.

Really, we need to put on Jesus Christ.

You know, we're a new creation, as we're talking about when we come to Christ.

And now God wants us to act like it.

That's where this is going.

You know, and it starts with the heart, starts with the mind, and it should permeate every part of our being.

All the way from the inside out, all the way to what people begin to see in us, which should be Jesus Christ.

There's action here that we're looking at on our part.

It says to put on.

You see, we have to desire this change and take action to deny the flesh and renew the mind.

And it takes discipline to put on the new self whose identity is in Jesus Christ.

You see, God loves us way too much to leave us living in the depravity of the world, to leave us living in the futility of our minds, to leave us in the darkness with hardened and callous hearts.

He loves us too much to leave us really in a rat-infested house whose foundation was built on the sand.

But we have to want it.

We have to put on Christ.

And the Holy Spirit helps us with this, but we have to let him.

He never forces himself upon us.

You know, I like to think about it as, you know, he never forces us to put on Christ, but he sure wants to help us get dressed.

He wants to help us be transformed in our whole being, inside and out, to become like Jesus.

But I think the question then becomes, how do we allow the Holy Spirit to do this work in our life?

Well, next week, Paul will give us some very practical ways that we can put on Christ.

Really, what the after pictures should look like in Jesus Christ.

But what really what I want to leave us with here today is we have a Savior that loves us unconditionally.

And loved us before we accepted him.

And loves us no less even when we fail.

But he loved us too much to leave us in that condition that he found us in.

To leave us in a place where we were drowning in the darkness of this world, where we were drowning in pain and drowning in sorrow.

He loved us enough to offer us his fullness of life right now through the life of Jesus Christ.

He loved us so much that he offers to change us now into his likeness.

Not just let us flounder in this world until we die and get to heaven.

But to start to do that work in us right now.

As I said earlier, becoming like Jesus is for our benefit.

Just as it is for the benefit of God's kingdom.

And we should never obey because we think we're earning something.

Or because we think we're gonna lose God's love or he's gonna love us less if we don't do it.

We should obey because we trust him so much.

Trust him so much that we want what he wants for us because we know what he wants is actually what's best for us.

So wherever you are in this process of transformation, I think the encouragement today is just let him continue to do that work.

Just continue to surrender to him, continue to surrender to the work of the Holy Spirit, to the truth of God's word, and bombard yourself with the truth of God's word.

Whatever it takes, have that truth ready in your heart to combat whatever thoughts may be coming in for the renewing of our mind.

And daily put off the old man and put on the truth that is Jesus Christ.

Will you please pray with me?

God, we thank you for your goodness.

We thank you for your love and how much you care so deeply for each and every one of us.

That you loved us so much that you didn't want to leave us in the rags that we were dressed in before.

You didn't want to leave us in the darkness of this world, the depravity of this world.

You loved us so much that you sent your Son Jesus Christ to save us, to give us his righteousness and his right standing before you, to die the death that we deserve so that we can be made pure and holy by the blood of Jesus Christ.

We thank you so much for that work, and we thank you so much that you didn't leave us in that dark world.

That you are transforming us right now to be more and more like Jesus.

And Lord, help us to want to be a part of that process, to want to have a heart that makes a home for Jesus, that gives him access to every part of our life.

Lord, help us to walk and be more like Jesus.

Help us to desire the Holy Spirit to help in that process of making us more like Jesus.

So, Lord, more than anything, help us to surrender to your will and then to actively participate in the changes that you want to make in our life.

Give us that desire.

Show us how to remove our minds.

Lord, I think one of the biggest struggles in our society with sin is fear and worry.

We struggle with that, Lord.

Would you show us how to have the mind of Christ, how to renew our minds with Jesus and the truth of your word.

Lord, help us to have those truths readily available to take the place of the fear and the worry of the old man that's inside of us, that makes us think that we actually have control of a situation, that worry is going to change the outcome.

Help us to replace those thoughts with truth and move to a place of trusting you with all of the things that might cause fear and worry in our lives.

Forgive us of that sin, Lord, and show us how to come out of that.

Give us a desire to come out of that place of fear and worry, we pray.

In Jesus' name.