Put on the New Self
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Spencer Carey. I'm a pastor in training here with Mill City Church. We're going to be in Ephesians 4, verses 17 through 24 today. So you can go ahead and turn there in your blue Bibles.
It should be on page 569. If you don't have a blue Bible, please take that home. That is our gift to you. So growing up, I grew up in the lake, and one of the things my brother and I love to do is we love to go to this bridge. It's called Jake Knott's Bridge. It's on 378 going towards Saluda from Lexington.
And we love to go to that bridge and jump off of it. It was one of the best bridges on the lake to do it. It was like 35, 40 feet, but once the water went down, because they repaired the dam for like seven years, it was a 55-foot jump. And it was a lot of fun. You'd go, and you'd get there, and you'd climb the rocks. You'd come up the side of the bridge, and then you'd look over the edge.
It's a highway. It's 378, so cars are going 55, 60, 70 miles an hour. You had to wait until you found a solid gap of cars, and then you'd jump the fence. You'd run straight in the middle of the bridge, jump up on the ledge, look down, and jump. I mean, it was a thrill. And we probably jumped off that bridge, no doubt, like 200-plus times.
And you'd go, and you'd get as many jumps in as you could, because at some point somebody was going to call the cops or DNR, and it was over. So you had to get a bunch of jumps in really quickly and then hit the road. The last time that I jumped, I was getting ready to go to college, and we got one of our friends. Her name is Sarah, and she never did anything wrong. She followed all the rules, and we somehow convinced her to do it with us. So we take her out there, and we look over the ledge.
We see the gap, and we jump over, help her get over that fence, run to the center of the bridge. It took a little longer to get to the center of the bridge, and all of a sudden, the car is getting closer and closer and closer, and that car has lights on it. We step up on the ledge. I'm like, Sarah, that's a cop. We've got to jump. And I did the honorable thing.
I jumped and left her behind. And she wouldn't jump, so the police officer pulled over. He was really kind and let us off and said, just go home. But we had so much fun doing that as kids. And it wasn't until years later that I realized something. We did all those jumps, and not once did we ever have a spotter.
We never had anybody looking at below the bridge because this is how the bridge looked. It's a four-lane bridge, the open lake, and there was a cove behind it. And in this cove, there were boats, and there were docks, and there were people that lived there. And it was also a big fishing cove. So there are boats coming underneath that bridge all the time.
Not once did we think about, maybe we should put somebody at the bottom of the bridge to give us the go-ahead. We never thought about that, not realizing that one of those days, we're going to time it horribly, jump off the bridge as a boat comes underneath and crash into the boat. Did not think about that one time in our entire time of jumping. And you don't think about that kind of stuff when you're kids. You don't. You don't think about the consequences for your actions.
You just live in the moment, and you do what feels right. The foolishness and ignorance of that is a picture of all of us outside of the grace of God. Just looking for momentary fun, not realizing the consequences for our actions. And today, in our text, we're going to see a clear picture that Paul paints of the old self and the new self. The old self outside of life with God and the new self that has been transformed with Christ. And as we walk through this, I want us to be honest.
I want us to sit back. I don't care if you've been walking with the Lord for 30 plus years or if you're just now starting to explore Christianity. I want us to approach today and just be honest and ask ourselves, where are we in light of these two pictures? Where do we fall? So as we walk through this, verse 17 through 24.
Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 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. They have 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, assuming that you've heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus. To put off your old self, which belongs to your form and manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful practices, deceitful desires.
And to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God and true righteousness and holiness. Let's pray and we'll dive in. God, thank you for your word. I pray that we would be present this morning. You would show us who we are in light of this text and you would let the word pierce our hearts. We ask this in Jesus' name.
Amen. Alright, so this passage bridges the beginning of chapter 4. So we started off Ephesians 4 and we talked about how the call is God wants to unify his church. And then out of that, last week, Raph talked about how he has raised up leaders in the church to equip the saints, to equip the church for the work of ministry, for the building up the body, to grow into maturity. This comes right after that. And what Paul's doing, he's giving a clear picture of the old and new before he starts issuing commands.
What follows after this is going to be clear commands for the church and how to live this out. And he starts by giving a vivid picture of the old self. He says, verse 17, Now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. 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. Now, we're to understand what Paul's doing here. You have to work through his logic.
And to do that, you have to work backwards. You have to get to the end here where he says the hardness of heart. All right, so what he's saying there, hardness is a hardened heart is a dead heart. It is cold. It is unable to love God. And out of that, out of a hardened heart, flows those descriptions he gives when he says ignorant, alienated, darkened in understanding, futile in mind.
So out of a hardness of heart flows those descriptions. And that's true for anything. If you are hardened towards anything, there's going to be a lot of baggage that comes with it. Like if you are hardened towards trying new, really good foods. Like my toddler, Ellie, she, the first time that she, that I ever put bacon in front of her. I was like, you, I was like, Ellie, you need to try this.
And she says, mm-mm. I was like, no, no, no, no. That's for me and my household. We eat bacon. So I did the most PETA-approved thing in the world.
And I forced it into her mouth. And she tasted it. And her eyes just lit up. And it's one of her favorite foods. And she would have never known. I had to push a little bit.
But as a toddler, she's growing. And hopefully one day she's going to continue to try new foods and expand her understanding of the food universe and what is so great out there. Some people never grow out of that. One of my wife's friends, her husband doesn't eat hardly anything. He's a grown man with two kids. I think he eats steak, chicken, french fries.
And that's about it. Like we went to a Mexican restaurant one time. And you could tell he was nervous. He didn't want to eat it. I think he might have even ordered chicken figures. And I was like, what, what's going on there?
He just, I don't eat anything. He has a hardened attitude towards food. And if you have a hardened attitude towards trying new food, you are ignorant of all the amazing flavors that you're missing out. You are alienated yourself. You alienate yourself from all the different categories of food, from Mexican food. And I know in Colombia, that's the only Latin food we have that we know about.
But there's more. There's Cuban and there's Ecuadorian. There's Peruvian. There's all kinds of flavors out there. You've alienated yourself from Chinese food and Thai food and all these other things that you could experience. And you live in the dark, not knowing what else is out there.
And your palate is futile. It's futile. It's worthless. And the same way, hardened hearts are ignorant to what is good, alienated from God, walking in darkness with no purpose in mind. That is the logic that Paul works through. So now that we have the logic, let's work through the top going down.
He says that you no longer walk as Gentiles do. So Gentiles being anyone who's not Jewish. And for this context, that's many people. And the way that New Testament uses Gentile even broadens it out to say that anyone who's outside of Christ. So that picture for those who are hearing this letter read is going to bring up all the memories of who they used to be when they were formerly outside of the family of God.
And that's a helpful picture for us because for many of us, we can remember what it was like to not know Christ and how we used to live before them. Some of you became Christians at a young age. My wife, she became a Christian at seven. She doesn't really remember a whole lot beforehand. But she's been walking in obedience and growing ever since.
And that's the kind of testimony we want for our kids. But others of you, if you're like me, you remember clearly what the old life used to look like. Like I can clearly remember some of the most fallen moments before I became a Christian when I was 17. I remember in high school, my brother called me. And he called me and he said, hey man, I need you to come home. I just left for school.
And I was like, why? He said, I need you to come pee in a cup. And I was like, what? He's like, I'm getting drug tested this morning. Mom and Norm, my stepdad, Mom and Norm are taking me to get drug tested. I need you to come home.
I said, Mikey, that will not do you any good because you and I both know we would both fail that test. So I was like, I did see on TV that if you put bleach in it, like you just take a little bottle of bleach, it'll kill the test. You'll pass it. You'll be good. He said, all right. All day, I'm waiting.
I get home. I can tell the mood is not well. My mom sits me down and she says, I have something to tell you. We took your brother to get drug tested. And he failed. I mean, he failed after like four attempts.
He kept putting, what we found out was bleach in it. I don't know where he got that idea. But he ran out of bleach and he finally failed the last test. And I don't know what we're going to do with you boys. I thought we knew what was going on. I feel like I need to get you drug tested too.
And I said, Mom, I understand. I understand. Like if you feel like you need to do that, then we can do that. I mean, it's going to mess with our trust. But if you want me to do this, just name the place.
I'll go and do it. So my first thing was manipulate. Manipulate lie. Get through the situation. The next day, I went to GNC. I got a drink that's supposed to cleanse out all the toxins.
Drank it. Puked my guts out. Ended up the lie worked. I got through it all. And then years later when I became a Christian, I was trying to explain to my mom, no, clearly there was an old life and I was explaining it to her. And I used that example and she was floored.
And I was like, yeah, I used to enjoy the world. I would lie and manipulate to get out of things. That's who I was. And some of you, you can clearly remember pictures of your old self. Maybe you were like me and there were weekends of heavy drinking. The next drink and the next drink and the next drink to drown out the world.
Maybe your story is before being changed by the gospel, sex in and of itself was just a means to an end. It was just meant to be enjoyed. It wasn't how God had created in the confines of marriage to be joy between man and woman. No, like it was just a means to an end. And it was the next person, the next person, and the next person. Maybe you were also like me and you didn't just tell lies.
You were a liar and you manipulated. Ephesians 5.25. We're going to get to that next week. He's going to address that. Maybe you didn't just struggle with anger now and then. You were an angry person.
Like a wrath-filled, angry, maybe even violent person. And that's who you were. And Paul's going to address that next week as well. Fill in the blank with whatever that picture is. He's trying to draw out an image of who you used to be as Gentiles. It's who you were outside the family of God.
And then he gives the picture. And then he kind of goes behind the picture explaining what's going on. In the same way that every year my wife and I, we do a Christmas photo with our kids. In the past few years, we've crushed it. We've like nailed the Christmas photo. Partly because my sister-in-law is a professional photographer.
She's really good. But the other part of it is, is that we do a lot of work to get that one photo that we send out. Because my daughter, while she is cute as a button, she's not photogenic. Because when you tell her to smile, she sneers. She's like, nobody tells me what to do. I'm like, we're working on that obedience stuff later.
But for right now, we've got to get this picture done. And we run around being silly, going around in circles, and then finally crash together for the one moment of a good snapshot. There's a whole lot that goes in behind the picture. And that's what Paul is explaining as he keeps going. When he says, in the futility of their minds. Futility means without purpose.
Without meaning. That your mind is not grounded in purpose. It's not grounded in meaning. And this comes off the heels of last week. When the call was for the church to grow into maturity. That we might stand firm.
Not being driven to and fro. Not being driven to and fro by the winds of false doctrine. Know that we'd stand firm, rooted in the gospel. Because our minds are rooted in purpose and meaning. And man, the futility of our minds. Like that is the picture of America right now.
Like I feel like America is like the kids. We're like the kids from Ricky Bobby and Talladega Nights. Like running around the house screaming, anarchy, anarchy. And the other kid goes, what's that? I don't know. We're just screaming stuff and jumping on the bandwagon of whatever trend comes up.
Like there's been a lot of protests that have happened over the past six, seven years. I remember back to the Occupy Wall Street protests. And not making a statement on protests. I'm for them when they're what they're supposed to be. But just interviewing the people at protests has been hilarious.
They interviewed people at the Occupy Wall Street protests years ago. And it's like some of them had no idea what was going on. They were clueless. They just jumped on board because that was the next trend. There's a guy who lectures around the country. He's Jewish.
He's an intellectual. And he lectures at different colleges. And people will protest his stuff because he can be inflammatory at times. And people will literally show up these protests and they will scream Nazi at him. And I'm like, aside from the fact that, no, none of what he's saying is actually Nazism. He's Jewish.
Like what? And it's like we jump on every single trend, jump on the bandwagon. And it's kind of humorous and sad when it's stuff like that. But it's so much less humorous when our culture is jumping on the bandwagon of completely redefining entire categories of gender. And making gender so fluid that we don't even know what it is by having so many different categories of sexuality. It's a whole lot less humor when that kind of utility shows up.
And we as the church are called to stay grounded and rooted in the gospel. Rooted our minds. Rooted in his word. So that when those trends come, we don't jump on the bandwagon. And we might get called every name in the book. You might be called backward and bigots and archaic and old or whatever.
But no, we stand firm because we're rooted in purpose. Rooted in truth. And it also means that we think through stuff. We actually use our minds. We don't mindlessly, here's one, we don't mindlessly share things on Facebook. Like sometimes I see Christians and they share things on Facebook that are blatantly not true.
It's either from a fake website or whatever. And it's like, no, that kills your testimony when you share things. It's actually lying when you're sharing things that are false. Like we are called to be rooted in truth. Rooted in the gospel. Having minds that are rooted in purpose.
Because hardened hearts are ignorant to what is good. Alienated from God. Walking in darkness with no purpose in mind. So then Paul, he makes the shift to the next picture. He says darkened and understanding. Now this is similar to the futility of the mind.
It's just a little more descriptive in the reasoning process. And how the understanding process is darkened by sin. On a large scale level, what does that look like? One of the biggest pictures we have of this is the Holocaust. Like historians will ask consistently. Like they'll ask how did the Holocaust happen?
How did six million Jews get murdered in an attempt to exterminate an entire race of people? Well it started because darkened minds began to reason together. If you look at German history leading up to the rise of Hitler. There were philosophers. There were political people. There were even some theologians.
That were stained by the prejudice against Jewish people. And that grew and it grew and it grew. And until finally someone came along. And when Hitler came along with his rise. The spread of Nazism spread throughout Europe. Which I didn't.
I thought honestly. I thought that Nazism was just a German thing. I didn't realize how far it had spread. But my wife and I were watching The Crown recently. The Crown is a Netflix series on Queen Elizabeth and the monarchy. And I didn't realize that her uncle.
The former king of the British Empire. That he was a Nazi sympathizer. There are pictures of him at concentration camps. With Hitler. And there are statements of him saying all kinds of stuff about Jewish people. And that sentiment grew and darkened minds began to justify themselves and reason more and reason more.
To where Jewish businesses started getting destroyed. And people started getting shipped off to Auschwitz. Darkened minds justify every step along the way. Anything from yeah I think it's reasonable that the Jews caused our problems. To I was just following my orders when I put them in the gas chamber. Darkened minds will reason every step along the way.
The Holocaust and anti-Semitism. That's a large scale picture of that. Well how does that happen on a practical level? On an everyday level? How do darkened minds justify anything else? It looks like when you worship success.
Like if you worship success. And you idolize and you make it a false God. You will do anything to get it. You will backstab. You will manipulate. You will lie.
There are entire TV shows and movies and books dedicated to this. When success is God. You will do anything. You will justify every step along the way. Same thing happens with our kids. I love my kids.
Kids are awesome. Kids are terrible gods. They are terrible idols. And when you worship your kid. You will do anything and everything for their comfort. For their peace.
For their happiness. For their joy. And it shows up at football games. Like I told my wife. We will not be that family. I will not be that dad.
That verbally and physically assaults coaches and referees. Like I'm fairly athletic. There's a lot of the rest of my family that's not. There's probably a good chance that our kids are just not going to be that great. And when the coach puts them on second string. They put them on second string.
And I'll try to support them as much as I can. But I'm not going to go punch a coach out. I'm not going to go scream at a referee. When you elevate your kids to the level of worship. They are terrible idols. And you will justify every step along the way.
It looks like when God has given us gifts. Like common gifts. Like beer and wine. Alcohol is a gift that he's given to creation. I know that some of you are going to push back on that. And try to point to the Bible.
You're going to have a really tough time. Explaining that from the scriptures. But God has given us a good gift. And what happens is we take that good gift and we want to abuse it. With the next drink. And the next weekend.
And the next party. And the next sip. All the way down the line. We will justify ourselves to drunkenness. That's how loneliness makes its way all the way down to pornography. And every click along the way can get darker and darker.
And every justification. Every step of justification will lead you down that path. That's how the pursuit of power has resulted in a sexual harassment and assault epidemic. I mean not every single story that has come out of the Me Too movement has been legit. I recognize that. But it has shown us a ton.
A ton of destruction in women's lives. In some men's lives. Because people worship power. And when you worship power. One of the darkest ways that shows up. Is I will use you for my sexual benefit.
And I will show my power and dominance over you. All of this and so much more happens. Because hardened hearts are ignorant to what is good. Alienated from God. Walking in darkness. With no purpose in mind.
And Paul he keeps moving. He gives two more pictures. He says alienated from the life of God. Because of the ignorance that is in them. So this first picture.
Alienated from the life of God. That is those who are outside of the family of God. They are outsiders. They are foreigners. Which honestly I feel like is one of the sadder pictures that we have here. Because of what you are missing out on.
Outside of Christ. You are missing out on a relationship. With a good heavenly father. We are like the kids in Home Alone. In the very beginning of Home Alone. Kevin.
Played by Macaulay Cogan. He is at the window. And his brother comes in with a friend. And he says. See that old man. Remember this?
See that old man. He goes. That is the South Bend Shovel Slayer. And he makes up this whole back story. For this old man. He is like.
Yeah. He murdered his whole family. With a shovel. And he buried them in salt. And he goes around. Shoveling the sidewalks.
Remembering. As a kid. When I watched it. It is terrifying. The whole movie. As Kevin is dodging this old man.
His neighbor. You are terrified too. And then. At the end of the movie. Kevin is at a Christmas Eve. Church service.
And the old man shows up. And there is that moment of tension. And then he sits down beside him. And what you quickly realize. Is that all those stories. Are a lie.
He is actually. A really sweet old man. Who loves his family. He can kill his family. His granddaughter is on stage. Singing in the choir.
And he loves his family. And he is a good man. At the end of the movie. The South Bend Shovel Slayer. Comes in. And he knocks out the wet bandits.
And saves the day. Right? In the same way. In the same way. When you are alienated from the world. You believe lies about who God is.
Because the world makes God to be. An angry. Violent. Old man. When in fact. We know through belief in Jesus.
Our God is not. Angry and violent. In the picture. That is so negatively. Pam. By the world.
That while he does. Have justice. He also is a God. Who cares deeply for us. And defends us. From evil.
And many. Miss out on that relationship. Because of the ignorance. That is in them. When you are ignorant. You don't know any better.
You don't know. What you are missing out on. Recently. My wife and I. We got. My brother.
My brother got us a reservation. At the private opening. Of Allo Diaz. I don't know if you know. Allo Diaz. It is a restaurant.
In Ballantyne. It is an Italian restaurant. It is a finer Italian restaurant. They just open up a location. In Lexington. And they do private openings.
So that you can. Basically go. And you eat for free. And they get to work out. All the kinks. Before they actually open.
The restaurant. So we got to go. And we. I mean. We. We enjoyed it man.
We ordered. Appetizer. We got two of the more expensive. Entrees. We got two. Really good desserts.
And man. We. Enjoyed. This great Italian meal. Ignorance. Would be like.
If I had a table for four. And I got to invite. Some of you. And I said. Listen. We got a table for four.
A free meal. Whatever you want. At Allodias. It's going to be amazing. And you come back and say. Allodias.
No. No. Allodias. It's Italian. Oh. I don't like Italian.
Oh. Did you have like a bad experience? Like. There's always. What's going on? No.
I had a hot pocket. I had Italian sausage. And I hated it. So I hate Italian food. And I'm like. No.
No. No. No. No. No. No.
This is not the same. The hot pocket is not Allodias. They're completely different. And you are just standing firm. Saying. No.
No. No. I'm not having it. It's like you're ignorant to what you're missing out on. You're missing out on a free feast. That is amazing.
And the same way you are missing out. On a free life with God. That begins right now. through belief in Him and extends into eternity and gets better because at the end we're in the presence of a holy and perfect and good God. What's worse is that you are also ignorant of some of the pitfalls that come with that and some of the dangers that lie in that when you're missing out on. And the picture is that you're like ignorant teenagers jumping off a bridge not realizing that one day you will not land safely in the water. Eventually sin is going to catch up to you it will destroy you and you will miss out on what God has to offer because hardened hearts are ignorant to what is good alienated from God walking in darkness with no purpose in mind.
And Paul he keeps going he shows the hardened hearts towards God and then he moves through that and he gives another picture of heart and he says callous callous which is also hardness and when you are callous you're given into sensuality greedy to practice every kind of impurity. Now the way that Paul uses sensuality and greedy to practice every kind of impurity in other texts one of the pictures it brings up for this culture specifically is sexuality and how that it can be greedy to practice every type of that and that's the first image that comes up when these words are being used but it's also broadened out to mean every other kind of impurity every other type of sin that a callous and hardened heart will try to fill that void with whatever you can you will pursue every type of impurity to bring fleeting happiness that will never actually satisfy. So that's the picture that Paul gives us on the front end and you might be wondering like why does he go so descriptive on the negative? Like why does he use such strong descriptive turns?
The reason he does this I think the reason he does this is because we need to feel the weight of hopelessness that comes with our former life.
