I invite you to turn with me to Ephesians
chapter number four and verse number seventeen
.
We are moving to a new section today and
studying this next section is going to be
verses seventeen
to twenty-four and let's just begin by reading
that text. We won't get to all of it today,
but we'll get to some of it. Starting in verse
seventeen, the apostle Paul writes, "So this
I say and affirm together with the Lord that
you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also
walk
in the futility of their mind, being darkened
in their understanding, excluded from the life
of
God because of the ignorance that is in them,
because of the hardness of their heart, and
they,
having become callous, have given themselves
over to sensuality for the practice of every
kind of
impurity with greediness. But you did not
learn Christ in this way if indeed you have
heard
Him and have been taught in Him just as the
truth is in Jesus. That in reference to your
former manner of life, you lay aside the old
self which is being corrupted in accordance
with the
lust of deceit and that you be renewed in the
spirit of your mind and put on the new self
which
in the likeness of God has been created in
righteousness and holiness of the truth." Now,
I have concluded now at the age of 56 that it
appears that I will never, for the rest of my
life, get over the sheer amazement that I
still have to this day at the change that
regeneration
produced in my life. I still haven't gotten
over it. I still marvel at it. In fact, I
guess it's
primarily because of my past. It really is
hard for me to identify with anybody who is
not sure
as to whether or not they have been genuinely
regenerated. It's hard for me to identify with
a professing Christian who is like that. And I
'm not talking about those momentary lapses of
doubt that creep into your mind. "Boy, I did
that. Am I a Christian?" We all battle that
sometimes.
But even when you have those times, if you're
a Christian and you're truly regenerated, it
doesn't
take you long in prayer and forgiveness of sin
to get right back to the absolute certainty
that you
have experienced the most incredible, the most
significant thing that can ever happen to any
human being, which is to be drawn effectually
by the Father and have your dead spirit
regenerated
into spiritual life and have been granted the
gifts of repentance and faith and been saved.
There's nothing in all of the human experience
that comes close to that. And it's hard for me
to imagine that you would not be sure about
that, whether or not that has indeed happened
to you.
Because when you come to saving faith in
Christ, you become a totally different
individual.
That's exactly what happened to me. In fact,
think of this. The change that occurred in you
,
when you were regenerated and saved, is
actually more dramatic than the change that
will occur in
you when you die. You know why? Because you
already have right now your new nature,
Christian,
and right now the new you has already been rem
ade on the inside. And you're already in your
inner
man, and always as a caveat, inner man means
mankind, so that's you two ladies. Just always
feel
like I got to say that, but I don't, but I do.
You're already fitted for heaven, Christian.
Right
now you are all ready right now a citizen of
God's kingdom in your inner man. All that
death
does, physical death, is free up the new
nature that you have right now to enter into
the presence
of God in heaven, as I said earlier, not only
with no sin, but with a perfect righteousness.
The
righteousness of Jesus Christ cloaked in that
robe of His righteousness, so the greatest
change
has already happened to you when you were
saved. The only other thing we're waiting for,
along with
the saints who are in heaven right this moment
, are our glorified bodies, and that doesn't
happen
until Christ returns, and He has it yet,
because we're all still sitting in here, right
? Second
Corinthians chapter 5 verse 17, "Therefore, if
anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. The
old
things have passed away, behold, new things
have come." So Paul, as you know, works very
hard in
all of his epistles to make this point. In his
epistles he talks a lot about new, a new will,
a new mind, a new heart, a new power, a new
knowledge, a new wisdom, a new understanding,
a
new life, a new inheritance, a new
relationship, a new righteousness, a new
desire, a new citizenship.
He uses all of those words to describe new. In
fact, it can all be summed up in the biblical
phrase, "newness of life." That's what we have
. And you really need to grasp the fact that
your
new nature is not an addition to your old
sinful nature, so now you're walking around
with two
natures. That is not the biblical view. This
is not a matter of addition to your old nature
. It is a
matter of transformation of your original
nature, sinful nature, transformation of that
nature in
totality to a whole new nature. And the first
question that comes to mind in the area of
theology is, "Well, if I have a totally new
nature, why do I still sin?" Right? That's a
fair
question right there, right? And here is where
we run into the nuance of the makeup of every
believer in the world while we live out our
lives in this world until our very last breath
. We're
going to talk about that today. So, listen
carefully. You're my every genuine believer,
your inner man, the inner you, has been
totally, completely transformed into a new
nature. And
listen carefully. One totally new nature but
comma. We live out our lives with this totally
new
nature on the inside, which always desires to
do what is pleasing and right before God. John
McArthur
helpfully illustrates here. We have this
totally new nature, but on the outside we're
walking around
with an old stinky coat. And that old stinky
coat is what the Bible calls our flesh, our
humanness.
Okay? Paul says in Romans chapter 7 verse 17,
interesting how he phrases it. "So now no
longer
am I the one doing it, sinning, but sin which
dwells in me." He says the same exact basic
thing in
verse 20. And he's not shifting blame there.
No, that's not what he means. He's meaning
this.
It's not the inner redeemed spiritually alive
me that is sinning or even desiring to sin.
It's not the new nature that sins. And it's
not the old nature because as a Christian
again,
you don't have an old nature. You don't have
two natures. You only got one. You got one new
nature encased in this stinking old coat of
flesh in which dwells no good thing. The Apost
le Paul
also says your new nature has to endure and
struggle and fight with that stinking old coat
of flesh that you have on you and the sin that
dwells in it until it goes to heaven to be
with the
Lord. That, folks, you got to understand it
this way. That is the struggle that God
Almighty has
ordained for every Christian to live in every
single moment of every single day in this life
.
Why? He does that, makes that struggle happen,
ordains that fight between flesh and spirit
as a means to conform us all to the image of
Christ from Romans. That's why he does it.
That's why I stand. It's just not easy street
when you become a Christian as the fake preach
ers
will tell you. Now, are y'all all with me so
far? Because it's critical for you to
understand how
this works in order for you to properly live
out your Christian life in a way that brings
glory
to God. In other words, we're not a remodel
job here. We're not just something to which
something was added. Okay? We don't, again,
say it a hundred times, we don't have two nat
ures.
We don't. Some people teach that. We have one
new nature, a new spiritually alive, inner
redeemed
eye, daily, constantly struggling and fighting
to put off, to lay aside, as Scripture says,
that stinking old coat of our flesh, our hum
anness. Now, Paul is going to attack this issue
starting
right here in verse 17 of Ephesians 4. This
verse, until the end of the book, Paul is
going to
tell us, give us some tips, if you will, on
how to get that stinking old coat off of us.
Okay?
Because getting that old coat off of you is
something you go through every day.
You don't just get it off and it stays off.
You keep putting it back on. You and I do that
. Okay?
We learned all about the new man in the first
three chapters and now we're going to learn
how the new man lives in the last three
chapters and we've been doing that since we
started chapter
four. Putting on the new man, putting off the
old external stinking coat of the flesh of the
old man
every day is the goal here. Just like Paul,
look at Romans 6, 13. He says it well right
here.
And do not go on presenting the members of
your body to sin as instruments of unrighteous
ness,
but present yourselves to God as those alive
from the dead and your members as instruments
of righteousness. That right there is how to
put on a new suit on the outside instead of
that old
stinking coat of flesh for the new man on the
inside, because that new man on the inside
always
wants to do what's right. Always. That's why
the Bible is loaded with their force,
because God desires us to behave in accordance
with who we are in Christ.
Now, when you are balanced in your theological
thinking, and I bring up the subject of living
in obedience to the Word of God, when you hear
that rightly and you hear that in a balanced
way,
legalism never comes into your mind. Ever.
Ever. What comes into your mind when I say
that is that
obedience to Christ and his commands in the
Scripture is only the natural and the right
response of a totally changed new nature. That
's what it is. It's not a burdensome thing.
It's a new desire that you never had before
you came to Christ. You look at the commands
of Christ
and you don't say, have to. That's not what it
is. It's that you want to. It's the difference
between you have to and you want to. I have to
go to my secular job. Okay? All right? I am
great
people, my family, you know? It's great. I
have to go there if I want to eat, right? But
I want to
come here on Sunday. I want to come here on
Wednesday night and pray with the saints.
There's nothing that could stop me from coming
here unless I get hit by a bus and I die. Okay
?
So let's get down into this text. I'm going to
show you some of this further. If we do,
I want you to remember now. Paul started out
this fourth chapter, remember, imploring us to
walk in
a manner worthy of the calling with which you
have been called. So we've been doing that for
16
verses, looking at what that looks like. We're
still getting examples starting here in verse
17 of what that looks like. So look at it.
Myth me there, verse 17. So this I say. Now in
other
translations, that's translated, this I say,
therefore, which puts greater emphasis on it,
and affirmed together with the Lord that you
no longer, that you walk no longer just as the
Gentiles
walk in the futility of their mind. So here
Paul is saying directly, walking worthy is a
different
walk. He's telling us that we are to live,
daily living, differently than the world lives
.
And this therefore moment, if you will, is in
response to all that he said in the first 16
previous verses. I'm going to go back all over
that. You can go back and listen to it if you
want to
on the internet. It says, if he is saying big
picture, big picture, hey, God has created
this amazing, unique entity in the world that
is known as the church, the church of Jesus
Christ.
And because of this unique creation with a
unique lifestyle that it has of humility,
with a unique unity that we see in no other
institution that has a unique love for others.
And it's led by uniquely gifted men because of
this miraculous creation that God has designed
in
the world, which has spawned all of the
wonderful things have come in grace down
through history,
hospitals and schools and all the things that
we know. Because of what God has done and you
are
in the church, this is how you are to walk as
a member of his church. This is how you're to
live.
And in principle number one of your Christian
walk that he's giving us here, he's saying,
don't walk like the rest of the world walks.
This Christian life is a uniquely different
life, very different from every other
lifestyle that exists on the face of the earth
.
You church are a unique group. You are not
only in the local church here, you are in the
church of
Jesus Christ in the world adopted by grace
into God's family. The world is proud and full
of pride,
but you are humble. The world is hateful, but
you understand and practice love according to
God's
definition of love, not the world's definition
of love and certainly not Hollywood's
definition of
what love is. And consider this, the world
doesn't know absolute truth. The world doesn't
even understand
the big picture reality of who we are and who
God really is and why it is we exist as a race
of human
beings or any any aspect really of the reality
of the whole spiritual dimension. They have no
understanding of that, but you do. Through the
Word of God, through his bringing you to
spiritual life,
through one of the roles of the Holy Spirit,
illuminating the Word of God to you. From God
as
we learned a few verses back, ordaining and
giving to the church gifted men to be able to
teach you
the Word of God. And what Paul is getting at
is because of all these things and more and
because
of God's design of your uniqueness in the
world, this is how you are to live. This is
how you are
to walk. You walk differently than how the
Gentiles walk. He says specifically here, look
at verse
17 and let's get into the term Gentiles for
just a second. First, it's used in the New
Testament,
very simply to speak of all people who are not
Jews. That's every ethnicity on earth that is
not
Jewish. That's pretty easy to understand,
right? That covers everybody, right? But
further than that,
it has a religious meaning. I want you to look
over at first Thessalonians chapter 5 and
verse,
I'm sorry, chapter 4 and verse number 5 for an
example of what I mean. And how we are to not
walk like it says here, not in lustful passion
like the Gentiles walk, who do not know God.
So on the one hand, Gentile in the Greek, eth
nos, from where we get our word ethnic, refers
to all
non-Jews in that ethnic sense. But also, as we
see here in this verse in 1 Thessalonians 4 or
5,
it speaks of a people notice who do not know
God. And so back to Ephesians 4, 17. Paul is
saying,
do not live your daily manner of life as
people who do not know God. You know God.
So don't live like people who don't. That's
what he's saying. Let me tell you, this was a
challenge
for believers in Paul's day because the lif
estyles of the Gentile pagans in the city of
Ephesus
were extreme and they were right in front of
them every single day. And so many of them had
come
from that life. And for the Ephesians, it was
really very similar in a lot of ways
to how we have a society here in America today
, albeit in a very different way. Because think
about it, for us, we are constantly inundated,
especially through all forms of social media
with everything that this fallen world has to
offer. All that you can imagine and that you
don't want to imagine is in the palm of your
hand every day. We've never had a society like
this.
You can get to present things and see things
and hear things and read things on that little
device
in your hand that no other culture in the
history of the world has had that kind of
thing ever.
And I mean, there are atrocious things that
you, if you want to dig and find, there are
absolutely the worst elements of humanity
inside your phone if you want to pull that up.
But let me tell you a little bit about Ephesus
and it's going to give you some parallels
to what we have. This, of course, is the city
of the church at Paul's writing here too, Eph
esians
written to the city, the church in Ephesus.
And it was a very evil city. So I'm saying the
most
evil city in Asia Minor at that time. And it
was also a pagan religious center or Mecca,
if you will. There were multiple temples in
this giant city. There were idols,
but everything really was primarily and most
focused on the temple of Diana,
also known as Artemis, same God, little G God.
And if you are sitting there when I say that,
and you're thinking about a statue of Diana
that looked like Princess Diana in a statue,
let me tell you, because it was a big black,
horrific looking thing that scholars debate
that this statue either had multiple breast or
multiple sacrificial bull testicles on its
chest.
They can't figure out which one of the things
that it was. If you go Google it, you'll see
why.
I won't go into all the details of why they
had the debate. But it supposedly fell out of
heaven
and the pagans worshiped it. The temple of
Diana was the seventh wonder of the world.
And it had an art museum. We were talking
about art in sunny school this morning. It had
an art
museum that was with few equals in the world
at that time. And it was also an asylum for
criminals
because one quarter mile around the outside of
the temple was like what we have now stupidly,
the sanctuary cities for illegals, but they
had a sanctuary city for any kind of criminal
one quarter mile around the temple. So and
they were safe in that zone. So you can
imagine the
crowd that was collected around that temple.
At the same time, interestingly, I found that
the
temple itself was a good place for a bank
because security was hard to come by in those
days. But
putting a bank in the middle of the temple was
a great idea because all the people would be
afraid
to go in there and rob it, lest the God come
down on their head. So they would have temples
into
banks and there was a lot of money in these
temples. And the pilgrims, they would come
from miles and
miles around and droves to go to these temples
for worship. And there's no other way to say
it.
What was happening in the worship were orgies,
massive, with hundreds of people at one time.
I mean, if you invent a pagan religion that's
based on sect, you don't have a problem with
membership numbers in the Gentile pagan world.
Everybody's ready to sign up. And it was also
big business because including all these
little idols that they would sell. And you
could bring
the little idol God home and you could put it
on your shelf and the necklaces and jewelry. I
mean,
there was a lot of commerce and buying and
selling happening. So Diana was a goddess of
fertility
and sex. And so the temple was packed with
priestesses and prostitutes and singers and
dancers. And let me tell you something. It got
as wild and as literally anything goes
as you can possibly imagine in your mind
inside this temple worship. And I won't go
into detail because this is a family show. So
you can just get the gist here. The music
worked people up literally into frenzies. And
I have no doubt there was demonic
possession going on in these deals. But they
would engage in mutilation and self-mutilation
.
That's a sign of demonic activity. Heraclitus
of old said about this, about this temple.
It was the darkness of vileness. The morals
were lower than animals. And the inhabitants
of
Ephesus were fit only to be drowned, he said.
So you got all that going on. And imagine the
little church in Ephesus. It was on its own
little island in the middle of this virtual
cesspool of immorality. That's why Paul is
preaching so hard to these Ephesians about
these issues that we're looking at. And that's
why Paul says in verse 17, "Hey,
you have got to be different from what's going
on around you. You can't walk like they walk.
You can't do like they do. Living this new
life is not easy. Nobody's telling you that it
's easy,
but it is necessary. As you are representing
the church of Jesus Christ in the world here
in the city of Ephesus." Peter says this in
first Peter chapter 4 and verse 3. He's kind
of getting
at the same thing. "For the time already
passed is sufficient for you to have carried
out the desires
of the Gentiles." In other words, you got
enough of that stuff in your past life. That
time is gone.
And then he goes on to name some of those
behaviors lest they had forgotten. And of
course they hadn't.
Our society in general today is hostile to god
liness, right? And Christ's likeness because
why? It is dominated by pride. It is dominated
by carnal ambition. It is dominated big time
by
selfishness and greed and lust and evil. Its
opinions are wrong. Its aims are selfish. Its
pleasures are sinful. Its influence is
destructive. Its politics are corrupt. Its
honors are empty.
Its smiles are bony. Its love is fickle, but
we are to be different in that in this society
.
We are not to have anything to do with living
like that. Notice how Paul phrases this in
verse 17.
"So this I say and affirm together with the
Lord." He's saying, look, I'm passing this
information on
straight from God. This is God's standard that
is coming straight from him. And Paul's, of
course,
all of his New Testament words were inspired
by the Holy Spirit, but he's just emphasizing
and reminding you, hey, this isn't in my
opinion here. This is coming, what I'm saying
here is
coming straight from God Almighty. And what we
're going to see in verses 17 to 24 is a
contrast
between the old walk and the new walk, between
the old man lifestyle and the new man
lifestyle.
And first we're going to look at four
characteristics of the old walk. And this
is how he's going to lay it out. And one of
the things I want you to notice as we go
through
these verses, and if you have your Bible open,
you can scan through and see this,
how many times we see references to how we are
to think. Not feeling, not emotion,
but the use of our mind. Just in this small
text, we see words like the mind, the
understanding,
learned, taught, and the point is, first and
foremost, you have to think differently
than the unbelieving world. As a man thinks,
though is he, right? When we think differently
,
we will act differently. Salvation, first of
all, is a change of mind. It's a new thinking
process.
It's a thinking that draws us to God that we
didn't have before. Consider right now
how you think differently about sin than you
used to think before you came to cry.
I'm telling you, boy, I sure do. I didn't give
a rip about sin in my teens and early 20s.
Somebody come tell me, "Bah, you sinning." So
what? I mean, I do what I want, right?
After salvation, we think very differently
about sin. We think very differently about
God. We think very differently about Jesus. We
certainly think very differently about
death and about life and about heaven. I mean,
really, when you just boil it all down,
we think differently about all of the very
most important things of life than we used to
think.
That's really at the heart of what the word
repentance means, to change your mind. And in
changing your mind, you change direction to
having a new thinking process. So believers
think one way
and unbelievers think another way. And next
here in our text, Paul is going to give us
four
elements of the thinking of unbelievers. And
you know this one well. We've looked at it
before.
Number one is self-centered thinking. Look
again, verse 17, that you walk no longer just
as the
Gentiles walk in the futility of their mind.
The futility of their mind. Again, the mind is
the
issue. Whatever you think, whatever you want
in life, that's what governs your behavior.
And that
thinking, I don't know if you've noticed
living it here on earth, in the natural man,
that natural way of thinking is always self-
centered. How am I going to get ahead?
How am I going to be number one? How am I
going to get what I want? The Greek word for
futility
here means that which is empty, useless, fut
ile, and vain. Maybe the best word for it is
probably
useless. The thinking of the unbeliever is
useless. You know why? Big picture. I'm
talking big picture
because the thinking of the unbeliever is
going nowhere. It's where it's going. It
accomplishes
nothing. It gains nothing. Not in the big
picture, most important realities of life. It
's going
nowhere. Their thinking is going. I don't care
what they're thinking about or how complicated
it is
because it is therefore useless if it's going
nowhere, right? Would you agree? Think about
what
people talk about in the unbelieving world on
your job or wherever you are Monday through
Saturday
when you're around people who are not
believers. What is their discussion about?
Well, just listen
to it carefully. It's all the worldly things
that are out there that are going to pass away
.
It's always discussions about things that have
no meaning or even going to have an existence
at all in the kingdom of heaven. I mean, just
think about it. And not even necessarily
simple
things. Think about it. People talk about
restaurants that they eat at and movies that
they've seen, sports, the weather. We talk a
lot about the weather. The list is very long
about these things. And I'm not saying that it
's wrong to talk about those things even as a
Christian,
but I'm saying that when that's all you're
talking about, when that's all you've got to
talk about,
that's useless. Is any of that going to play
any role in your existence in heaven?
Everything that we used to think about and
engage our minds in our thinking
in our old, unregenerate life, think about it.
It was all useless from the eternal
perspective.
This can kind of be summarized in that old
saying you've probably all heard. You've never
seen a hearse pulling a U-Haul. You ever heard
that saying? Well, and let me tell you that
normally
people say that because they're talking about
the money or stuff that a person has. So all
that stuff doesn't mean anything. If you're in
the hearse, you don't have a U-Haul behind a
hearse,
can't take that stuff with you after you're
dead. But let me tell you something. That not
only means
your stuff, but it's all the things that are
of no eternal value that can fit into that U-
Haul
that you're not going to take with you. And
that's a long list of things. Uselessness can
categorize
all those things in the big picture. Paul says
in Romans 8 verse 20, "For the whole creation
was
subject to futility." Same Greek word that can
be translated, uselessness. Let me ask you.
Is the stock market going to matter one bit
when you get to heaven?
How about your 401k? Is that going to matter
an inch? How about who wins the Super Bowl? Is
that
going to matter in heaven? Let me tell you,
listen carefully to me. Be balanced. There's
nothing wrong
with having stocks in 401k. In fact, you
should. The younger of us, we're probably not
going to be
any social security. So you better have a
retirement plan. If you want to live
comfortably and eat,
instead of dog food, real food, when you get
to be an elderly person, you should think
about those
things. Isn't that wrong with watching the
Super Bowl? I'm going to watch every minute of
it when
the game comes on. I always do. That's not
what I'm saying. What I'm saying is in the big
picture,
if those kinds of things are all you ever
think about in your little simple box of this
life
outside of Christ, then I'm telling you that
your thinking is futile. Your thinking is
useless.
In fact, people don't like to hear it, but I'm
going to tell you, you are living a useless
life.
You are living a wasted life because all of
those things are going to pass away
and going to be no more one day when we get to
heaven. They won't exist.
That is what Paul is meaning here in verse 17.
But the Gentiles also walk in the futility of
their mind. They walk in the useless things.
It's all they ever think about. For most
people,
most days are like Groundhog Day. Y'all
remember that movie with Bill Murray? And
every morning,
he got up and it was the same day that it was
yesterday, over and over.
Most people who are outside of Christ and have
no relationship with Christ,
they get up and they do the same thing every
day. Get up, eat breakfast, go to work, come
home,
pay, watch TV, rinse, repeat. Weekend comes,
same thing. Go out to eat, da-da-da. Same
stuff,
cut to grass. Once a year, if you're fortunate
, go to vacation to the Redneck Riviera,
come home sunburnt, then do it again next year
. Then do it again next year, over and over,
with absolutely never, ever any thought of the
eternal. And don't talk to him about death.
He won't want to talk about that. I love
talking about death. I can't wait to be in the
presence
of Christ without any sin. I'm ready for it
whenever he wants to take me. Let's go. I'm
ready. Okay?
That should be your thinking as a Christian.
Not that you're saying, "Hey, right now, let's
go."
You know, okay. No, you know what it is for me
? Whenever you want me to, whenever you want me
to,
whatever is your preference, if you want me to
live to be 95, let's do it. If you don't want
me to
make it down Hopper Road to Blackwater Road,
let's do it because it's what you want. That's
how I
look at death. That's how you should look at
death as a Christian. And so, no matter what
even success,
worldly success that you achieve, you might be
an Elon Musk mind and have billions and
billions
of dollars. If you are outside of Christ, that
's a useless life. Think about King Solomon,
richest, wisest of men, the man with the most
prestige of his time, the most money,
the most women. He had everything that his
heart desired and he summed the whole deal up.
After having everything that he could possibly
want at the touch of his fingers,
he said, "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity." None
of that means anything to me, big picture.
Shakespeare said this, "Life is full of sound
and fury, signifying nothing."
That's an unregenerate perspective. The best
that man can do is temporarily entertain
himself
with his toys. And those toys aren't going to
mean anything when King Jesus comes back
to saying straight, big picture. They're all
temporary pleasures and they're all going to
come
to an end. When you sum it all up with the
thinking of the lives of all who reject the
Lord Jesus
Christ, again, their thinking is empty. It's
useless. It's going nowhere and it produces
absolutely nothing that has any real
significant eternal value. In fact, Jesus said
, "Apart from
me, you can do what? Nothing. I don't care how
philanthropic you are. I don't care how many
children homes you bring. If you don't do it
for the glory of God in Christ with that
motivation,
it's all going to burn up one day." Now, the
second thing here that characterizes a Gentile
pagan
lifestyle and the old man is, they are
ignorant of the truth. Not only are they self-
centered and
useless. Look at verse 18. "Being darkened in
their understanding, excluded from the life of
God because of the ignorance that is in them
because of the hardness of their heart." Now,
today, people take being called ignorant as an
insult, of course. I mean, somebody walks up
to
me and you're ignorant. You're going to take
it as an insult. But no society in the history
of mankind
has been more educated than we have. I mean,
we are filled with college graduates. And it's
like
kind of Sonny told Michael and the Godfather,
"Oh, would you go to college? You get stupid
if you
remember that part." And we got a lot of those
. But as the apostle said this, "They are ever
learning
but never able to come to the knowledge of the
truth." I don't care how much chemistry and
biomechanics that they know, all people have a
natural inability to understand the things of
God.
Natural man receives not the things of the
Spirit of God, but they are foolishness unto
him. Now,
as I said, they may acquire a whole lot of
worldly knowledge, a whole lot of stuff.
But in the things that count the most in the
human experience, no matter how much worldly
knowledge they have, big picture again, they
have a useless mind that cannot grasp absolute
truth.
Can't get it. Think it's stupid. Think it's
foolish. Think it's fairy tale. Look again at
verse 18,
being darkened in their understanding.
Literally means to make blind is what that
means. They are blind in their understanding.
Look next, excluded from the life of God.
Other
translations say alienated from the life of
God. Let me tell you, if you are alienated
from God,
you can't know the truth. Not if you're alien
ated from God, you are dead to God. You are
literally
the walking spiritually dead is what you are.
And if you are excluded from the life of God,
then there's no life of God in you. Look next
in verse 18, because of the ignorance that is
in them because of the hardness of their heart
. And that reminds me of what Paul says in
Romans
chapter 1, verses 21 and 22. "For even though
they knew God, they did not honor him as God,
or give thanks, but they became futile in the
speculations, and their foolish heart
was darkened." Same word, professing
themselves to be wise, they became fools. And
then he goes into,
"And God gave them over, and God gave them
over, and God gave them over." If you read the
rest of
that text in Romans 1, in other words, they
chose the way that they wanted to go. And then
God
confirmed them in their choice. "And then
every time that the pagan man acts against God
, every time
he takes another step of willful rejection of
God, another step of willful rejection of God
."
You know what he does? He pours more concrete
into the hardening of his heart. And as he
goes
through life, the heart gets harder and harder
, and he feels less and less guilt about the
things
that he's doing. And he feels less and less
remorse all the way to the point that they
become,
as it says in 1 Timothy chapter 4, verse 2,
all the way to the point of being seared
in their own conscious as with a branding ire.
And that's how verse 18 in our text in,
"Because of the hardness of their heart." You
think of serial killers who have no guilt
whatsoever.
It's slaughtering people. The demonic I am
certain is involved, but it's also the contin
ual
hardening of a heart that feels no remorse at
the pain it's inflicting. Now, there's a third
thing.
Look at verse 19. It starts out, "And they
have become callous." And when they get to
this point
in this progression, they have become
shameless. Callous here means you have become
numb and
desensitized to sin. The King James says, "Who
being past feeling?" They just don't feel
anymore.
They're completely apathetic. They're
completely insensitive. They don't care. They
have no standards.
They don't care what the consequences of their
behavior is. And they don't care and don't
mind
shocking people with their behavior. Have you
noticed any of that in our society today?
You don't have to look too hard. Shamelessness
. They can't be shamed. No matter what they do,
that's a terrible place for a person to be in
their life. And that leads us to our last
point.
A reprobate mind. Look next in verse 19. "H
aving given themselves over to sensuality for
the
practice of every kind of impurity with greed
iness." Shameless thinking leads to shameless
action.
First of all, you center on yourself as we go
through this progression. And then in that
useless,
purposeless existence without God, you turn
God off. Then that hardening of heart process
begins.
And that gets worse and worse until you point
that you have no sense of shame. And you will
do
anything you can get away with. That's how I
used to live. Anything I can get away with.
Let's go.
And after that point, praise God, He saved me
from this. God turns you over to a reprobate
mind.
Look again at verse 19. "They have given
themselves over." God does this, but they do
this too,
to sensuality for the practice of every kind
of impurity with greediness. In other words,
they can't get at it fast enough. They are
greedy to do evil. A reprobate mind, which we
also learn
about very well in Romans 1, folks, it's a
mind that is no mind. It's a mind that doesn't
think
straight. Do we not see that in our society
today? People that don't think straight?
And you can't even begin to understand how can
they think like that? How can they vote like
that?
People who think a man can change his gender
into being a woman? Those are people who have
reprobate
minds. People who think that the deviant
sexual preference of homosexuality is equal to
an identity
like an ethnicity. They have reprobate minds.
Homosexuality is not an identity like a people
group. It's a sexual deviancy that is an ab
omination to God. Our culture has millions of
these kinds
of people. And it's interesting in the Mac
Arthur study Bible that says this, that some
souls
may not reach the extremes of these verses, 17
through 19, is due only to God's common grace
and the restraining influence of his spirit.
In other words, not every person gets to this
extreme that we're talking about. But listen,
Paul here in this church at Ephesus is wanting
to
demonstrate the extreme because of the extreme
that was happening right in front of these
people
on display in Ephesus. And it's been happening
in world history ever since to different
degrees.
And we certainly have it in our world today.
And he's saying what part should the church of
Jesus
Christ ever have in listening to anything that
those people have to say? The previous
presidential
administration glorified for the whole four
years the thinking of reprobate minds. Don't
ever forget
that they had transgender visibility day on
Easter Sunday with she-men running all around
the White
House law. And some would fake breasts with
their shirts off and they paraded it on TV for
everybody
in order blasphemy with the rainbow flag
flying high. No shame those people had past
feeling.
And what I'm saying is what part should we as
the church ever play in accommodating that
in our society? We should call it out. We
should call it out for what it is. Now lastly,
Yonah got me worked up. Look at verse 20. Paul
turns to the church after saying these things,
but you did not learn Christ in this way. What
part do you have in all?
Put that old man off daily. Look at verse 22.
That in reference to your former manner of
life,
you lay aside the old self. Look at verse 24
and put on the new self which is in the liken
ess of
God as be created in righteousness and
holiness of the truth. Paul's point is this,
you are
different. You are to think differently. You
are to act differently. That is not our life
anymore.
So don't act anything like that. That's what
he's getting at here in this text. Now in the
second
half of this text, putting off the old, he's
going to turn and give us a little bit about
putting on the new. Get that old coat off and
putting on the new suit. But we'll get to that
next time. Let's pray. By the way, thank you
Lord. We read these and I'm sure if somebody
came in
here who was not familiar with Christianity,
they would most likely be horrified by hearing
all this
and rightly so because they don't think
straight. They haven't been given the illum
ination of the
Holy Spirit. They can't think straight. They
have no ability to do so, but God be praised.
These are words of life to us. We as
Christians hear these words and say, "Yes Lord
, amen. That's
right. That's the truth. I want to live that
way in order to bring you glory." How we
should be.
More thankful than anything we're thankful for
. For the reality of this amazing miracle of
regeneration
that causes us to think this new way that we
never thought before. We give you all the
honor and
the praise and the glory for it. In Jesus'
name we pray, amen.