Here's How to Get Dressed, Part 2

In our image-conscious world, people care deeply about their appearance. The colors we choose, the labels, and the coordination compel us to shop carefully. As a result, the clothing industry is big business. Well, today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll reminds us that God wants His children to look their very best by wearing a wardrobe that might surprise you.

We're in Ephesians chapter 4. To help you catch up with the teaching you may have missed on yesterday's program, we'll begin with helpful highlights. Chuck titled today's message, Here's How to Get Dressed. We were all raised with the statement, you never have a second chance to leave a first impression. And let's face it, the way you dress does impact the way the interview turns out, more often than not. But does it really do anything to the inside? That's the question, and it does not. Henry David Thoreau in his fine work, Economy, writes this, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes and not rather a new wearer of clothes. Now what does all of this have to do with our study in Ephesians? Well, when you get to the central section of Ephesians 4, the answer is in one word, everything. In fact, the Apostle Paul has a word picture that sort of subtly is dropped in on us and leaves us with the reality that it's about clothes, not the external, but the internal that he's writing.

It's not about what you put on your body, it's what you live out in your life that's important. In order to do that, two things have to happen. You have to discard the old and you have to have a shower.

You have to have a bath and get cleaned up before you can put on the new. If you like to mark your Bibles, drop down to 422 and make note of lay aside the old self. And then verse 24, Mark put on the new self. The Apostle is just simply talking about what's appropriate, but he doesn't have symphonies or ranches or working in yards in mind.

It's all about the inner person, it's never about the external, or rarely. Now Paul in Ephesians 4, 17 to 24, is addressing how to get the heart dressed, how to get the life dressed correctly. The Apostle says we're to put off, have our minds renewed like you would take a shower and then put on. Now you know the context. Remember basic rule of interpretation, always integrate the section you're looking at with its context. Never just plunge right into a verse, always see where you're coming from and look at where you're going.

What's been before them? Remember Paul's words, I urge you as a prisoner to walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called. So this is about walking the walk. And beginning at verse 1, down through verse 16, the emphasis has been on the unity of the body.

Unity, humility, and ultimately maturity. Here's how to grow up as the body of Christ, as the family of God. When you get to verse 17, it's about the purity of the believer, not the unity of the body. Verses 17 to 24, in fact they end with the words holiness of the truth, the end of verse 24. This is about dealing with the individual believer in your own life and I've called it here's how to get dressed. Verse 17, this is no insignificant subject that he sort of slides into he has the Lord standing alongside him saying, write this.

Look at the way he opens. So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord. Now see the word affirm, it's the word from which in the Greek, from which we get our word martyr, which interestingly means to witness. This is the Lord's witness. This is the Lord's testimony.

He's using my pen to communicate it to you. I take it that when Paul was caught up in the third heaven, 2 Corinthians chapter 12, where he received great revelations from God, especially regarding the body, the church, how the church was to live its life and carry out its responsibilities. A part of that truth he received from the Lord, that the Lord testified to him, was about this particular subject. So this is no idle matter.

This is no yawning concern. This is of crucial importance. That's why he begins, this I say and I affirm it with the Lord.

He's standing alongside me saying, write this. That you walk no longer as the Gentiles also walk. When you read Gentiles, you would normally think he has in mind all humanity that is not Jewish. That's how we use the word today. But Paul's use of the term is a lot more specific. More often than not, he has in mind the unregenerate person. Let me show you an example. Hold your place. Look at 1 Thessalonians chapter 4.

I'll give you an example of how this word is used with a little statement after it describing the meaning of the term. 1 Thessalonians 4 verse 3. This is the will of God, your sanctification. That is, that you abstain from sexual immorality. That each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor. That's the positive, the negative. Not in lustful passion like, look at that, the Gentiles who do not know God.

See the way that reads? Back in Ephesians 4 17, that's what he has in mind regarding the Gentiles. In other words, verse 17 chapter 4 of Ephesians, that you walk no longer as you walked in your unregenerate state. That you no longer live out the lifestyle of your lost condition before the cross.

Before you came to Christ in your unconverted state of mind and in your lifestyle of lostness, the way you walk then has nothing to do with the way you're now to walk. But before he gets to the positive, he drills and drives home the negative, the Gentile lifestyle. Let me give you four words.

I think they might help you appreciate what he's getting at. Four words I want to suggest in verses 17 through 19. Darkness, deadness, recklessness. But let's start with the word hardness. So we've got these four hardness, darkness, deadness, recklessness. Those aren't original with me.

John R. W. Stott in his fine work on Ephesians suggests them as a bit of an outline. It all starts with the hardness of the heart. See 18, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them.

And why is that? Because of the hardness of their heart. And they, having become callous, have given them over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. See the words hardness of heart?

That's at the heart, no pun intended, that's at the heart and center of the problem. The core of depravity is a hard heart. I'm attracted to the word hardness, word vulture that I am. I did a little work on the etymology and I learned that hardness comes from the word porosis, which comes from poros, two long o's, p-o-r-o-s. We got a word poros from it, as a rock may be porous. And it does mean something like a rock.

One man writes this, the word which Paul uses for the petrifying of their hearts is grim and terrible. Porosis comes from poros, a stone harder than marble. It came to have certain medical uses. It was used for the chalk stone that can form in the joints and completely paralyze action. It was used for the callus that forms where a bone has been broken and reset.

A callus which is harder than bone itself emerges. Finally the word came to mean the loss of all power of sensation. It describes something which had become so hardened, so petrified, that it no longer had the power to feel at all.

I pause so that you can let that scene sink in. That's hard. Mixing hardness of heart with the darkness of the mind you come to a pretty vivid image of depravity. No longer walk as Gentiles have walked or as you have walked in the hardness of your heart and in the darkness of your mind. See how he puts it excluded from the life of God. A darkened mind is a mind that exists apart from the light and the knowledge of God. This is not about the loss of intelligence in the sense of sheer technical academic intelligence. It is the loss of spiritual perception which explains how a person can be greatly intelligent and even sophisticated in technical knowledge and be absolutely at a loss.

Totally ignorant of spiritual things. Sometimes it comes out in the ignorance of biblical knowledge. Back in the days of Jimmy Carter there were all kinds of comments made about President Carter's Christian walk. While in the process of being elected into office a number of the commentators found it interesting that one of the verses he regularly quoted was the one from a second chronicle 714. If my people who were called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and I will hear from heaven forgive their sin heal their land. One of the news commentators presenting Mr. Carter in light of the scripture says as he's reading from the teleprompter and as we all have read in 11 Chronicles 7 14 and he quotes 11 Chronicles 7 4.

I smiled when I heard that not out of pride but he's a very intelligent commentator the name you would know if I called it but he doesn't know how many Chronicles there are. Very intelligent individuals who can do remarkably sophisticated things but totally blank when it comes to the things of God. Ray Stedman writes, why are we human beings ignorant? Because there is a part of our being that does not function. Our spiritual life. The human spirit is blank darkened and obscured in our natural state apart from God. There is a part of our being the part that God intended at creation to be the key to life where nothing takes place. The spirit of humanity lost in sin is dead.

As a result all human knowledge is broken unrelated incomplete. That is the picture Paul draws and then he adds we tend to take pride in our great civilization with its accomplishments knowledge and technological wonders but we have to ask ourselves what has this vaunted civilization really done for us? Do we feel safe on our streets at night? Have we solved the problems of crime, political corruption, racism, immorality, and war? Are we any happier as a society than the ancient Egyptians or the ancient Greeks? If so why are so many of us going to psychiatrists, taking drugs, getting drunk, getting divorced, battering spouses and children, and committing suicide?

Why are all these problems rising instead of declining? Great questions. It's because there is a hardness of heart and a darkness of mind which leads to a deadness of life. How else can you explain a Ted Bundy and his ilk of serial killers being able to talk about it as you would talk about what you had for breakfast without feeling? How else can you describe two teenagers shooting down in cold blood teacher and fellow students in a high school in Littleton Colorado and then themselves in the hardness and darkness and deadness of their lives? One of the most fascinating books I've read this year is a book entitled The Art of Pilgrimage which is a fine work on travel and how to get the most out of travel. Phil Cosineau is the author. I had not read him before though he is a published author and in his travels he takes you from one scene to another and he takes you ultimately to Cambodia where you watch the scene unfold before your eyes and you remember the popular title The Killing Fields.

Listen to his description and the closing word that reveals hardness. With every step through the ghostly glory of the ancient temple grounds it was impossible not to be reminded of the scourge of Pol Pot. The ever-present threat of landmines and the fragility of a site that had endured a thousand years of historical chaos. The maimed children and fierce soldiers we encountered everywhere were grim evidence of a never ending war. Once upon a time foreigners were spared the horrors of remote revolutions but no more.

In a local English language newspaper we read that Pol Pot had ordered the executions of three Australian tourists saying only crush them. Crush them. Those are the words from a hard heart and a darkened mind and a dead spirit. You know what it represents? The old clothes. The old garments and before any of us cluck our tongues and look down our noses at people I have named remember the nature within you is just as wicked as theirs. The darkness in which they have dwelt and acted out is the darkness to which you can turn at any time because you were born into it. Because when you act out you are stepping in step.

You are walking in step with a culture that has lost its way. Verse 19 is vivid and they having become callous there's the word have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. Greediness. More. More. It's never enough. That which drives the pornographer is the insatiable habit of those with a hunger for pornography never being quite satisfied. The greed goes deeper.

The boredom hits sooner and there has to be something more until finally there is such a recklessness of life. There is an absence of shame. And have you noticed we no longer blush. Isn't that an interesting characteristic of the 21st century? When is the last time you saw anyone blush?

You know how old I am? I'm old enough to remember that the use of a four-letter word in Gone with the Wind made the front page of the newspaper. They had the audacity to use the D word once in Gone with the Wind and it was splashed all across the front page of the Houston Chronicle. I remember my mother and dad just ranting and raving over this just thinking this is the worst thing that ever happened. And I must tell you that I can hardly listen to a news or sports or disc jockey on the radio without hearing a regular diet of four-letter words that come without any reluctance. I remember when they used to put them off the air.

Not now. Now it's tragic, but again I remind you it is a culture that has gotten its cues from the hardness and the darkness and the deadness and the recklessness of depravity. Few people put it better than Kent Hughes in one statement in his book, our culture is hell-bent in its cavalier reckless pursuit of sin.

It makes psychopaths its martyrs and drag queens its models. Paul portrays these horrible sights and rights of such. He saw hearts that were so hardened they weren't even aware they were sinning. He saw a mind so blinded by sin that shame was lost and decency forgotten.

He saw morals so debauched and at the reckless mercy of their own desires they did not care whose life they injured or whose innocence they destroyed. And remember you have the same nature within you they have within them. But you, verse 20, begins. I don't know if you've gone to a basketball game lately but one of the things that's more popular to do nowadays especially with umpires when they make a wrong call is half the crowd goes you, you, you, you, you.

I mean it's just like coming in all over you inside these closed arenas. This is sort of the way it is in verse 20. But you, you there, you, you believer, you child of God in Ephesus, you Christian in Frisco or Dallas, you, you did not learn Christ in this way.

You know what that means? You've come to the cross. You've walked from that unregenerate life into the resplendent light and presence of Christ and you've, you've seen what it means to be cleansed from within so that converted you now are able to put on or having put on the new garments you're able to walk a new kind of life. I love this word picture that he gives us.

It's a strong contrast. You have not so learned Christ. In fact, the way he goes after this almost sounds like the catechism of a school. Verse 21, if indeed you have heard him Christ speaking and have been taught in him just as truth is in Jesus.

I love that way, the way that reads. I don't know if you have been exposed to this kind of Christ focused teaching. Maybe in Bible study fellowship or through campus crusade for Christ or perhaps a home Bible class or a group of you friends got together.

Maybe if some of you at work and you came together and without concern for denomination or religious background, all of you together converted, focusing on Christ began to be taught of him. He not only was the subject of the teaching, he was, if you will, the teacher. And it so overwhelmed you that you were lost in the wonder of his person and it began to seep deep into your once hardened heart and darkened mind and it began to change you. It's gonna sound like a commercial and it's not meant that way but I have to tell you the setting that I first became familiar with in a time in my life that was most strategic was at Dallas Seminary. Here I was a young mid-twenties student, no children, a wife of just a couple of years or really by then four years and we came and we stepped into an environment that I had never before ever been exposed to.

Remember I came out of a marine barracks. This is a little bit of a contrast in the seminary classroom and I stepped away from that into this and I found myself surrounded by Christ. Teachers who modeled him, of scriptures who spoke of him, chapels that centered on him, songs that focused on him and I found myself hearing him and being taught in him as the truth is in Jesus and I loved it. Well we're midway through a message from Chuck Swindoll that concludes tomorrow. He's teaching from Ephesians chapter 4 about putting on the new self and this is Insight for Living. To learn more about this ministry visit us online at InsightWorld.org. Now our Canadian listeners celebrate Thanksgiving in October.

In the United States the holiday comes later this month. With this in mind we are spending our days at Insight for Living thanking God for his faithfulness even during these unsettling days of the global pandemic and social unrest. If you receive Chuck's letter every month at your home be on the lookout for an upcoming personal letter that's longer than normal. You'll see he's jotted down the outpouring of God's blessings in 2020 which one would never expect in light of the chaos in our culture. It's filled with thanksgiving to God and you'll enjoy reading through each blessing. To that end we're inviting friends like you to join us in the all-out effort to bring God's many blessings and his truth to all 195 countries of the world.

We're calling this mission Vision 195. Together we can implement the Great Commission of Jesus by making disciples through radio, our website, the mobile app, CDs, books, DVDs, the podcast, our live stream feed and more. Whatever amount he prompts you to invest will truly make a difference. Not long ago we received an encouraging note that said, Pastor Chuck, I am Nigerian.

I am 61. I loved listening to your radio program on radio ELWA before the station was destroyed by the local rebels. You sent me literature that blessed my life and I passed it on to my own children. God bless you. Keep up the good work of the ministry.

Well it's a word of thanksgiving like this one that motivates us to venture forward with Vision 195. To give a one-time contribution today, call us. If you're listening in the United States, dial 1-800-772-8888.

You can also give directly online at insight.org slash donate. Join us again Friday when Chuck Swindoll continues his message titled, Here's How to Get Dressed, right here on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Here's How to Get Dressed, was copyrighted in 2000, 2001, and 2009. And the sound recording was copyrighted in 2009 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.