The New Way

All right. Take your Bibles, if you would, this morning. Turn in them to Ephesians chapter 4.

Now, I will tell you: this morning is our final message until the fall in Ephesians.

So, we're going to pick back up in Ephesians in the fall. We're going to do a summer series, a little breakout, something a little different, and we'll be studying the letters to the churches in Revelation.

So, we'll be studying Revelation 1 through 3 this summer. That will start next week. But we're going to get into a section. Actually, it's going to sort of whet your appetite for a much longer section. And so, in Ephesians, we saw Ephesians 4:1 through 16 that dealt with unity, and we looked at that over four messages and broke that up.

But it rallied around unity, which is, in a sense, the larger theme of the entire study of Ephesians.

Now, in 4:17. There's a kick into a new section that runs all the way through chapter 5, verse 20.

So it's a long section. We'll have a bunch of messages in that. We're going to actually have a bite off a sizable portion of that, 17 through 24, and then we'll chip our way real slow in the fall through some individual portions that are exhortations that are born out of what we're going to look at in this text, which is just a sketch of the old way versus the new way of what it means to be a Christian. Um You guys live your lives. In spaces and places that are unique to you.

And so what that means And it's stating the obvious, but it's worth a reminder, is that you've heard the phrase, it's cliché, like that you're the only Jesus some people ever see. But clichés, as I've said often, usually are true. They're just said too much and usually said shallowly. But we should feel the weight of that. we should feel this uh a sense of uh sober mindedness that it's true that we may literally be the only vision of Christ that people will see.

So if you think that all that matters is your heart, you're just wrong. It's not just your heart that matters. Of course, your heart matters. It's out of your heart that your life, your mouth speaks. It's out of your heart, Proverbs tells us, that the issues of your life spring forth.

Your heart's like a wellspring of life.

So it matters as the ground. But actually, what people see, it does matter.

So if you're of the mindset that you don't care what anybody thinks about you, you should actually change that. It doesn't mean that you govern your life based upon people's perceptions back, but there's nothing heroic about saying, and there's nothing somehow libertarian about saying, that your life somehow is inconsequential to the people around you and you can live your life how you'd like to live your life. The Christian life is exactly the opposite. The Christian life is, by definition, a glass house wherein the blinds are up and you're inviting everybody to watch. I hope that makes you feel wonderful, but that's the truth.

I was teaching up at Ecola with these students. This was, actually, I wasn't teaching, I take it back. We were up on a summer. sabbatical I think it was. This was a number of years ago.

And something about my life is my life is sort of like that, remember the little Snickers commercials where the person would be like acting like somebody they weren't, and then they would be thrown the Snickers bar, they'd eat it, and then they would return to themselves, remember that? That's kind of me before coffee in the morning. My wife would say that's kind of, she can look at me and go, You haven't had coffee yet, have you? No, I haven't. Why?

You know, so. We, I got up this particular morning. We were staying at a cabin in Cannon Beach, Oregon, and there's this local coffee shop called Insomnia that I love to go to. And so I make my way over there. And this was a number of years ago.

There was a girl working at the counter who doesn't work there anymore, but she had worked there for years. And so I didn't know her well, but she'd seen me over time enough, and we were up there for a little extended stay.

So I make my way over, and I walk in, and it kind of walking is being generous. I'm kind of staggering in. And I stand in front of the counter and I look at her and I said, I I need some coffee. And she kind of looks at me. Kind of turns her head, she kind of looks at me up and down, and she goes, yes, you do.

And I thought, oh, she's just making a joke, right? No big deal.

So I get the coffee. I was like, oh, okay. I guess is it that obvious, you know?

So I get my coffee, I make my way back to the cabin, and I walk in, and my wife looks at me and she goes, What in the world is wrong with you? I had toothpaste all down my shirt. My clothes were on inside out. And I hadn't done my hair. And I didn't realize any of it until I got back.

Okay. You know, I was betraying on the outside. What was really going on on the inside, and I couldn't help it. All right. The kind of person you are externally is a forensic observation.

And people are CSI and they're looking at your life and they're seeing. What happened? Has there been, so to speak, a spiritual act? that has rendered your life distinct. in the everydayness of who you are.

In the relationships that you have, in how you handle yourself, and how you process, particularly the moral and ethical frame of your life. And that's what we're going to talk about because that's what the text talks about.

So I want you to look with me in verse 17. I'm going to read from 17 down. Through 24, so you see our whole text. And it's a simple outline this morning. It's not rocket science.

Now, this I say, verse 17. And testify in the Lord that you must no longer... Walk. as the Gentiles do. in the futility of their minds.

They're 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 Yeah. They've given themselves up to sensuality, greedy. to practice every kind. of impurity.

But That is not. The way You learned Christ. That's a really important we're gonna we we've gotta think deeply about that phrase. That's such an important verse for us this morning. Sure.

Assuming you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus. By the way, how would they know that you've heard of him?

Well, because you look kinda like him. To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life. and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness. And holiness. We're going to just look as we begin at the old way, then we'll look at the new way, characteristics of the old way.

We'll look at some characteristics of the new way and content and so forth. Uh the the list is right there, right? When you look, beginning at the end of verse 17, you can trace down through 19 and you'll see six characteristics. And I'll put them up here progressively, but I want you just to see the beginning in verse 17. Where he says that you must no longer walk.

That word walk is used like six or seven times in Ephesians. It's a metaphor. It's used by Paul predominantly as a metaphor for living your life.

So when he uses the language of walk, which he uses exclusively in the last half of Ephesians, it's because the first half has been establishing the doctrine of salvation in particular and its effects more generalized.

So a wholesale life that's been baked in the gospel and now four through six turns and pivots. And he says, now in light of that, here's what you ought to do. Or, and this is what happens here in this text, a little bit of a middling text. He'll get to what you ought to do, but to get that, it's a reminder, sort of a step back to say, here's what's happened to you. And that's an important thing to note, and we'll talk more about that in a little bit.

But you have to be rightly ordered and oriented in terms of who you are in your life if you're going to be able to walk something out. You can't get imperatives ahead of indicatives if you like English grammar. You can't get the command out ahead of the condition because you're always functioning from a way of being, and you're always going to be acting in concert with that.

So that's the reason why you live in a glass house necessarily. That is, what people see you doing. is telling a story. About the nature of your heart. That's true, even if you're a hypocrite, because if we watch you long enough, if you watch me long enough, right, the house of cards will come down.

It's just a matter of time. You can't walk it out in perpetuity.

So here he says you must no longer walk the old way, get rid of that, shed that, because it has been shed in Christ. And he's going to give six characteristics. Of the way of the life, of the old way. Here's the first one. I'm phrasing it this way.

You see it worded in your text. No longer walks as Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. Nous is the Greek word for mind. It's important because when the next phrase comes and it says darkened understanding, it's using a word that is built off of that term. But here it's beyond just cognitive thinking.

It's not that, A, you can't solve math problems. It's not that you can't do science well. It's not just about cognition, that that's futile. Although there's something that's true about that in one sense, not that you can't solve math problems, but that in general our thinking has been clouded because of the fall. In theology, we call that the noetic, the mental, coming from the word nous, the noetic effects of the fall.

That is, we don't think as clearly as we do. We can't always recall things and remember things. And sometimes we bump up and we feel like we're thinking and we come up into the clouds and we can't put it all together. That's part of the noetic effects of the fall. But those noetic effects extend out beyond just our cognition.

Mind here is broader, and that's why I use the word disposition. And futility is the idea, it's often used in the Old Testament Greek text, the Septuagint, for the Hebrew word hevel, which means vanity. Vanity. It's used in Ecclesiastes a bunch. The vanity of disposition.

You used to live. in a way where life didn't make sense. And where, if you step back and considered your life as its own little essay disconnected from the larger narrative. It actually just seemed utterly Vain. Utterly vain.

I don't know if any of you have seen the story that has come along and it kind of came to roost just Last week. There was a woman named Zariah Terbeek. who is a Dutch woman. She was 28, had just turned 29 years old. And she was healthy in terms of her physical life.

She was living with her boyfriend who was 40 years old and was an IT specialist and she had two cats and they lived in their home. And she had decided because of Her psychological challenges, anxiety and depression, and the personality disorder that she was dealing with. That she had a psychiatrist tell her, There's nothing left that we can do for you, which is highly likely not the case. But nonetheless, that's what she was told. And so she decided that she wanted to be euthanized.

And so she wrote about it. She applied to the Dutch government for it, and last Wednesday she sat on her couch. And she was injected. And she killed herself. with the government's approval.

in a context where over the last 15 years since that became legalized, it's now become as one person who sits on the board of review in the Netherlands for euthanasia, assessing each of these for the sake of the government. No longer, the person stepped off the board. The reason why they stepped off the board is because they realized this has moved from this, what was supposed to be a last-ditch sort of thing. to the default mechanism now for people even who are struggling psychologically. I wanted to read to you something that she Uh said.

I'll read to you just a portion of this article, and then you'll see here a quote from her about a tattoo that she had on her shoulder that was, you've seen, you ever seen the tree of life tattoo? But it was the tree of life in reverse. And the leaves are dying. She recalled her psychiatrist telling her that they tried everything, there's nothing more we can do for you, it's never going to get any better. At that point, she said she decided to die.

Quote, I was always very clear that if it doesn't get better, I can't do this anymore. As if to advertise her hopelessness, Terbik has a tattoo of a tree of life on her upper arm, but in reverse. Quote. Where the tree of life stands for growth and new beginnings, she texted, my tree is the opposite. It's losing its leaves.

It's dying. and once the tree has died the bird flew out of it. I don't see it as my soul leaving, but more as myself being freed from life. being freed from life. Um I want you to think about two things when I share that.

So anything first about What kind of situation and what kind of condition in life does an individual arrive at? where they invite someone in. as she would describe, to have a cup of coffee, to settle the nerves and then sit on a sofa, and be injected to her death. While her boyfriend sits next to her. and holds her hand.

And I want you to think about what kind of culture. Says That's good. That's good. Those two questions have to be really thought about. Because the moment we think about what kind of culture says yes to that, we can step back and go, Can you believe the culture?

Can you believe the culture? Can you believe the culture? And I often find us talking about culture the way people in a troubled marriage talk about their marriage. Like there's another entity in the room called the marriage that's somehow scapegoated. It's just the addition of two souls.

The culture is just the collection of people. It's individuals who live in despair. It's individuals who live in brokenness. It's individuals who are grappling with the futility of their Minds.

So As a Christian, you wake up. And you are to wake up with purpose. Doesn't mean life isn't hard, doesn't mean it's not challenging. But it does mean that you could have not woken up because God could have taken your breath in the middle of the night. Because he's sovereign over it, but he woke you up for a reason and a purpose.

So to feel purposeless. It is to sort of be distanced from your identity. That's really important.

Okay. Because one of the things we're going to talk about is that Paul is always calling us back, not to be somebody we're not, not to effort to become a particular kind of person, but rather to allow through the power of the gospel, our actions to simply speak accurately about who we actually are. That is, that we are a particular kind of people, so now we're supposed to be it. We move from identity to an imperative. I'll look at your text.

Secondly, and we'll move quicker through these, they're darkened in their understanding. Dia noia is the Greek word there for understanding. It's noia, the last part of the word is connected to the word nous. Think dia means through.

So think the etymology of the term is through your mind. Through your mind.

So it's properly rendered understanding how your reasoning. and processing life.

So this moves from the general scope of disposition a little more toward how you're thinking about things. What are the reasoning processes that you have and those that clouded reasoning? that you have. is a result of The fall, but as a result of you looking like your old self, not your new self. Doesn't mean you're supposed to think perfectly, doesn't mean you're supposed to figure out all math problems or all science issues.

It means that when you look at life, you will, as a believer, look at it in terms of wisdom. In terms of discernment, in terms of the qualitative aspects of making decisions in a different way than you used to look at it. The old way was characterized by a clouded mind, alienated from eternal life, alienated from the life of God. And then you get the explanation of it: alienated from the life of God, pulled away from His life. Because of the ignorance that is in them, that is the lack of knowledge that they have, ah, and it couples the alpha privative it's called, the negation of knowledge, the lacking of knowledge.

Think agnostic is what the Greek word is the basis of. That because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hard heart. They've hardened their own hearts. And they're they're no longer able, it's going to relate right to the next term. But they're no longer able to feel.

Like they once felt, or maybe have never felt in their life. And that lack of feeling causes them to wall off then. The proddings and prickings and impetus of God in their life, God poking at their heart, the Spirit pressing in upon them is resisted. And the resistance is because they're immersed in this particular condition of the old way. And they walk that out, and as a result, they're demonstrating the alienation of their life.

Now, go back to chapter 2 for a second. Just let your eyes go back to verse 12. Remember. That you were at that time, this is when you were an unbeliever, separated from Christ, and then you get the description with the same word used for alienated, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise. And we talked back then about the fact that it had to do with your citizenship as members of God's people.

And that you were alienated from being in this community of people like-minded with a mind for the new way that he'll articulate in a moment. Instead, you were or used to be characterized by alienation from eternal life. But please, when I use that term, I'm trying to use that in the most accurate way, not the way we often use it. We use it as life that goes on forever, which it includes, but theologically speaking, it is first and foremost a kind of life, a quality of life, before it's a quantity. It is a quantity of life.

But it's particularly focused on a quality of life. That is, eternal life isn't something that you get when you die if you're a believer. It is something you have now as a believer. You have eternal life. You possess it because the quality of life that you're experiencing in his kingdom is a harbinger of greater things to come that will cash itself out quantitatively in perpetuity.

You're alienated, he says, from that life. Look back at your text. They have become callous. They have become callous. Now In Greek, the beginning of verse 19 has the word hoitines.

And how we should read this is. this way of they have become should be something like they are the kind of people who are. And that's important. Because again, he's talking about a condition. Not just an action.

It's a condition that precedes conduct. And they are the kind of people. who are callous. The kind of person who has uh callus in this sense implies something like moral apathy. They're they're not moved anymore.

Maybe they never were moved. by seeing the world through a lens that would be that for which they were designed to see the world. And so they're not moved by the plights of others. They're not moved particularly by their own plights. They become a bit desireless.

They're callous. They keep getting poked and prodded. It's building on this idea of a hardness of heart and have given themselves up to sensuality. We'll use the word they're indecent. That's what the word means when it says sensuality.

Given themselves over. is the idea.

Now interestingly in Romans, and don't take the time to look at this, but in Romans chapter 1, you'll see three times that God talking about immoral people in an immoral culture, it actually says God has given them over. And here it's reflexive, they have given themselves over.

So here's what you should understand when you put these things together, is that people certainly of their own wills have yielded themselves over to immorality. And as they have done that, The Lord has has said, okay. If that's the way you want it, Then that's the way. you can have it. It's not merely that God is passive.

It's not that He is the perpetrator of their evil. In fact, probably the best way to visualize this is something like if you have a boat that is tied off to a dock, and the boat is tied there. The s the river is running down. What happens if you untie the boat?

Well, it goes the way of the river, but you would have the added piece that you might be there, and you might put your foot on it and the rivers and say, that's what you'd like?

Okay. and you give it a shove. That's the sense that's going on. They have chosen to live a particular way, and in that rebellion, God has said, okay, if that's what you want. You can have that.

And now They spiral down into, it says, indecency.

Now, this word. Uh that shows up here sensuality. Um Think of it as this. The best way to define this is something like freedom that has no boundaries. Freedom that has Josephus used the term for a guy who went out and publicly exposed his genitals.

Okay, you got an ancient flasher. Running around.

Okay. Plutarch. Of a guy who goes up to another guy and looks at him and just punches him in the face just for fun.

Okay? Just just to do it. It's that kind of thinking. It's somebody who revels in that which is contrary to God's character.

Now Do you Know or have you ever witnessed a culture that does this? That's intended to be ironic. Are you all awake? Are you living and breathing in the same country that I'm living in? I just want to make sure that we're all on a page.

Of course, we are. We're in a world where We have Drag Queen Story Hour. Do you understand can you think of how Otherworldly?

Something like that actually is. You might be sanitized, so I'm going to help you. You might not understand the origins of Where a drag queen comes from. You might think that it's like cosplay. It's not cosplay story hour.

Okay. It starts in the sexually deviant BDSM movements in the underworld of San Francisco, if you want to go back into the middle of the 20th century. And it comes out of that underworld and has a complete and utter agenda. And it's actually not just funny, jokey, dance around playing cosplay. It actually is a protest against what people would call heteronormativity, which is some of the stupidest language you've ever imagined.

It sounds really smart. It's let me say it's a protest against the idea that there's just a man and a woman.

Okay. And it's a cultural protest. Over against that.

Now, imagine that you're an adult and you want to protest that, so you walk down the street. I can remember years ago driving through, I was actually driving through San Francisco, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a great pair of legs, and they were very tall, and they were walking on red heels. And I saw the individual whip their hair and turn back, and I thought, my. Goodness, the legs were only bested by the Adam's apple. This individual was walking down, and this was back before this was like, oh, okay, no, we're going to celebrate this.

This is a wonderful thing.

Now imagine that we're going to not just celebrate it culturally on the streets, but we're going to invite kids into local bookstores and we're going to sit down in front of them and we're going to open it up and now we're going to talk about this and then we're going to invite them to come sit on our laps. This is what's happening. This is not like weird. This is what's going on in our culture. I want to read to you something from an article.

And it quotes a particular writer who writes in endorsement. of this. The author of the article is about to quote the writer Hannah Dyer. Hannah Dyer has written, and this is not a quote from Hannah Dyer, I'll tell you when it gets to the quote. has written queer pedagogy that is teaching about non-binary lifestyles.

And by extension, drag pedagogy, teaching about dressing up as someone of the sex you're not. Seek to expose the very concept of childhood innocence. As in all predators, now listen to the language.

Okay, because it sounds super smart, but it's really archaic and dumb. As an oppressive, heteropatriarchical illusion.

So, it's going to expose the concept of childhood in innocence. as this illusion foisted down from a society where a bunch of men dominate women and enforce the binary. And we've got to liberate them from that nonsense.

So, how do we liberate them from that nonsense? Here's the quote from Hannah Dyer: Applying queer methods of analysis to studies of childhood can help to queer the rhetoric of innocence. that constrains all children. And help to refuse attempts to calculate the child's future before it, the child, has the opportunity to explore desire. Do you you hear that quote?

We have to use this kind of deconstruction of heteronormativity in such a way that we can get rid of the tyranny of childhood innocence. Blasted that those kids would grow up in innocence. We need to expose them to all modes of aberrant desire so that now they can chase their true selves throughout the world. God help us. While bookstores say, that's a great idea.

Let's do that in a children's book story hour. I decided to be depressing this morning. Let me give you another. Shazia Sikandar is a sculpture. Can I say sculpture rests?

How about that? A sculpture. She Is provocatively done to. sculptures that have been highlighted in our present culture. One is called Witness and the other is called Now.

They were on display in two different places in New York City. Um the prompting Of particularly the the one called Witness was in response. To the overturning of Roe v. Wade. And they were celebrating.

A woman's right. to a border child. Here's a quote from her in a link in a in about a four-page paper that she put out explaining why these sculptures were so important. The recent focus on reproductive rights in the United States after the Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed the constitutional right to abortion, comes to the forefront.

In the process is the dismissal, too, of the indefatigable spirit of women. Who have been collectively fighting for their right to their own bodies over generations.

However, the enduring power lies with the people who step into and remain in the fight for equality. That spirit and grit is what I want to capture in both these sculptures.

Now, this is what I want you to see. You can talk about heteronormativity. If you want to, that's fine. You can talk in some lofty terms of sexual development and wow people with your rhetoric. You can talk about women's rights and equality and sound like you're mapping on to some women's suffrage unit from the women's suffrage exercise from the early 20th century, if you'd like.

But let's just step back and let's step outside the bubble of complete and utter cultural insanity just for a moment. And let's recognize what's actually happening. Let's recognize That that which is literally the most basic thing in material existence, that there's a man and a woman. That propagate a species. There's nothing more biologically foundational to reality than that.

is now literally up for question. And literally being celebrated as we expose children to invite them into aberrant sexual desire to run after it for the sake of self-expression. And let's recognize that now we want to have statues that say, you are a woman and you are so free. That you can kill the child in your womb, and we call it equality and rights. And if that sounds sane, to you.

I'm confident you also think the earth might be flat. It's insanity. It's insanity. It's not a matter of morality. It's literally a matter of stepping back and saying, what on, like we have to be a rational people who can step back from the cultural zeitgeist and like say the emperor is wearing no clothes, guys.

Dime anything on?

Okay. So many things on. and follow the moral impulse. for the life that we are called. 2.

Only a culture with no shame has such convictions. It's a callous, indecent culture. Finally, now that we're all depressed, we'll give you one more: greedy for immoral impurity. It's not just that we have it, but we go, that's it, that's the culture we want. We're greedy for it.

We're pulling it close to us. We're p pulling close to us. We're going to protect The right. to do those things. We're going to create social benefits.

For doing those things. We're going to create protected status. for doing those things. We're going to set aside particular times of the year where we celebrate. those things.

And if you don't do that. Then You're the one. Who doesn't get it?

Okay, you're the one who doesn't get it.

So let me say this to you. How you view these things And how you stand in regard to these things is quite important. For whether or not The world is going to look at you. One way or the other. One way or the other.

So With all that said... Let's look. At verse 20 in this transition. But that is not the way you learned Christ.

Now, I don't know if you noticed or paid attention to the graphic that was up for the sermon, but Eric Hoffman, who does these, did a great job this week in particular. I really liked the graphic he used. He had developed a graphic, and at the end of my message, you'll see it up again. And it shows this crazy chaotic line on the left side, and it's chaos, and it's making its way through the brain, and the first half of the brain is chaos, and then the second side of the brain, it starts to level out and become normal, and then the line comes straight out the other side. It's this picture that we're moving from a chaotic way of seeing the world.

into something that actually makes sense of how God longs for us to interface.

So How does that get its start? Verse 20, but that is not the way. You learned Christ. What is it? That is should be the thing that grounds the moral compass of a Christian.

It is not your politics. Perish the thought. They were tempted. And we are. We're tempted, we're enticed to adopt moral platforms based upon categories that themselves were grounded in firmly in nowhere.

It is not your social grouping. It's not. It's not your culture. It's not even your family of origin. But rather It is looking at Christ.

It's looking at Christ.

So it it doesn't actually matter in that sense where you've come from. Or who you might align to in different spheres of your life. The key is. Looking to Christ, and he says, here's the problem: that way of thinking about life is just not the way you learn Jesus. Assuming Look at the text.

He says it right here. Assuming that you've heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus. I love that he says that. That's not who Jesus is. Do you know Jesus?

Do you know what it would be like to look like him?

So Dallas Willard I used to talk about being an apprentice to Jesus. I love that language. Love that language. You know, that's how kids used to learn, right? I mean, you go way back, go back into the 19th century, pre-industrial revolution.

How is it that kids are learning? They're learning through family trades. They're learning dad or mom's knee. And they're being bequeathed something. It's like a baton pass.

And they end up walking out, the family. Trade. It's the reason why there are names like the Smiths. Right? No nobody one day thought, you know what's a cool name?

The Smiths, because that was a great 70s rock band and we liked the Smiths. eighties, you know, Smiths. Yeah. It was because that's what the family did. The family did, right?

They were smiths. And if you grew up there, you might have been a blacksmith, you might have been a coppersmith, but you were a smith. And so you just got pulled into that because it was bequeathed. You were apprenticed. That is, you learned not just informationally what to do, listen carefully, but you learned how.

to do it. By being with mom or being with dad.

So when he uses the term here, Mantano, learned Christ, is related to the word mathetes, which means disciple. You are the kind of person who is seeing, you read the pages of scripture and you're seeing how Jesus was. Did Jesus face people that were rude to him? The answer is yes. How was he?

Did Jesus face people Who Given all things, they just as soon take him out. Yeah, they did take 'em out. Attempt to. How was he? Did Jesus see broken people who had made their own bed and were lying in it?

How was he? Did Jesus get in conversations with people who just didn't seem to quite get it? How was he? And what we're to do is to read scripture and go, Oh. That's how we're to be.

We're to have his kind of life. I love this quote from Willard. As an apprentice of Christ, I may be saved by grace, but I still have years of habitual anger. materialism, lust, and many other things to be dealt with. They're not just going to go away.

Like someone who has a bad golf swing and always slices off to the right, I'm going to have to practice hitting the ball in a different way to make it go straight. The slice is in my body. That's important. He highlights in his writings, by the way, in his teaching. He did a great job of this when he was alive, how our habituations are actually embodied.

It's why Job can say regarding lust, I made a covenant with my eyes. It's not that he talks it, hey eyes, are you listening? And the eyes said, yeah, I got you. It's that he uses that metaphorically to say, I made an agreement to habituate an action in my body. To do something repetitively, so then I could do something without thinking.

It's how I've been formed. The disciplines, spiritual disciplines, help transform my habitual actions. The disciplines are not a substitute for grace, but receptacles. For it. I love that.

Why do I have to read my Bible? Am I a Christian if I don't read my Bible? I don't know. The fact that you asked it makes me wonder. Are you serious?

Yeah. Oh, I gotta kiss her to show her I love her. If you ask that question, you're dope. I'm sorry, but like, yeah, yeah, you do. That's what you do.

It's called being in a relationship. There are just things you do because you actually want to. It's intrinsic to being in the relationship. You understand? That's the way it is with Jesus That's the way it is.

There's just things that are part of us. that map on to who we are. And so it doesn't mean we do them perfectly or flawlessly. That's why they're disciplines. But they're necessarily things that we do.

Because as Christian people, we quest to keep going in the war against the baser urges of our nature, which we call the flesh.

So when you look at this and he says, But that's not the way you learn Christ, assuming you heard about him or taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, it's coming straight out of here, right? Jesus talking about heaven says, Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, I would have told you that I go to prepare a place for you.

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I'll come again. I'll take you to myself, that where I am, you may also be. And you know the way to where I'm going. And then Thomas says to him, Lord, we don't know where you're going. How can we know the way?

And then Jesus. Like Thomas is thinking, okay, you're going somewhere. Tell us the way. You've not pinned your location for us? You haven't sent us a Google Map?

What do you mean? We don't know where to go. And Jesus said to him, No, no, it's right here in front of you. I am. The way.

I am the truth. I am the love. life. And no one comes to the Father except through me. We take this, reduce it to the notion of this: He's the only way to salvation, he's the only way to get to heaven.

Oh, yeah. That's not really the focus of his response as much. His response is, how do we get to heaven? And he doesn't say, here's the map. He says, look at me.

Look at me. Right now, let's not think about going there. Let's think about bringing here. The sp thing about bringing that here. What does it look like for you to live heavenly right now?

It means you look and you say, What would Jesus do? What is truth according to him? What kind of life does he have? And you ask those questions, and you begin to map your life on... To that.

So to that end You get three. statements. In verse 22 through 24.

Okay. And a little bit unfortunately, the SV has translated this a way that I don't think is the best way, so we'll help this. To put off your old self, the reason why it's not the best way is it's an infinitive in Greek, and it's reading here when you read it in English like an imperative, like this is what you're supposed to do.

So put off your old life. Put off your old life. But that's not the best way to read it.

Now, I'll show you why that's the case. There's three characteristics of the new way of life. I'll put all three up here. There's a removal, you put off. There's a renewal, and then there's a put-on, a replacement.

Okay. But first, he addresses this putting off. And I think. We would be better off reading it something like you you you have Put off You have put off.

So it's an aorist. Infinitive. And an aorist is like a think of a Polaroid picture when you think of an Aorist verb. It's most common that it's like a snapshot of something that's happened. And it's this thing that's taken place in your life.

And That it's taken place is to make a difference. You've put off, and the metaphor here probably is something like changing your clothes. You've taken off the old garments. When did you do that? when you came to Christ.

When you came to Christ, you took off the old garments and you set them down. And when you set them down, you said, I wanna. wear those anymore. I gotta be a different kind of person. And so now you are walking out something that is not constituted by the old garments, because what's that constituted by?

Well, he tells you in verse 22, it belongs to your former manner of life. The way of life that you had before at the first, the word is the word that we get like a word like prototypical or prototype from, something like that, the first edition of your life. You used to live like that. And it was corrupt. Through deceitful desires.

That's what you wanted to do. Essentially, he's saying you used to be like verses 17. Through nineteen. But now you you you you had thrown that away. Here's the parallel, and it helps us understand this more clearly.

Colossians 3 written. Likely from the same time in prison that he wrote Ephesians, do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off. That's the language. It's a parallel passage to this, the old self with its practices. And have put on the new self.

It's not what you're doing to acquire. It's what's happened to you because God afforded it. in your life. which is being renewed. in the knowledge After the image.

of its creator.

So we come back to these three. to put off your old self or having put off your old self. Which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires. And it says to be renewed, which again should be read as an indicative. It's passive.

It's the idea that it's happening to you, but it's a present. idea. Meaning it's happening over and over and over again. The putting off was a one-time deal that happened with ongoing effects. This is not that.

This is a present having been renewed. God is at work in you, renewing, refashioning, reforming, reframing. Yeah. Being renewed. Your sanctification.

In the spirit of your minds. What does that mean? What would we even make of the phrase the spirit of your minds? Let me give you a verse of Scripture. Tucked away and not thought enough about.

This is Proverbs 20, 27. The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all his innermost parts. You have a convergence of two ideas here. God is at work in you.

Now God is at work in you and you and you and you and you. And we know this theologically in Ephesians, going back chapter 1, we know it through the power of the Spirit.

So he's at work you individually through the power of the Spirit. What is that Spirit doing? That spirit is working with your spirit.

So, that you begin to look at your life and through a unique Capacity in the mammalian world that you as a human have, that no animal has, is the power of introspection. This is what makes you utterly distinct categorically. Your dog doesn't think about their own thinking. But you do. You do.

You can self-assess. You can not just feel. but can ask questions like, why do I feel this way? And as you are able to ask those questions, you're able to sit with the Lord and allow the Holy Spirit to work his word over in your life through the disciplines afforded as you apprentice yourself to Christ to be renewed. regularly, if you enter into them.

Or if you're a bump on an O log, you'll just be the same person repeatedly day after day. Or you enter into them and you're being renewed because you're learning, relearning, learning again, learning afresh Jesus, who is the way, who is the truth, who is. The life. There was an old gospel song from 1980. In a little gospel, southern gospel band called The Hemphills.

Probably you don't have them on your Spotify list. But they had a song. That was called He's Still Working on Me. Anyone ever heard that song? Yeah, it's super catchy.

He's still working on me. I love it. He's still working on me to make me what I need to be. It took him just a week to make the moon and stars, the sun and the earth and Jupiter and Mars. How loving and faithful he must be.

He's still working on me. But the verse is, listen to him. There really ought to be a sign upon my heart, don't judge him yet. There's an unfinished part. But I'll be better just according to his plan, fashioned by the master's loving.

Hands. I love that. I'm not done yet, but God isn't done with me. That's why I'm not done. In the mirror of His Word, reflections that I see.

Makes me wonder why he never gave up on me. In other words, I look in the mirror of his word and I go, wait a minute, I ain't all that in a bag of chips. I'm not as awesome as everybody tells me. If I follow my desire, I'll destroy myself. Oh.

How come he never gave up on me? And then it concludes, But he loves me as I am. And helps me when I pray. Remember, he's the potter, I'm the clay. He's the potter, I'm the clay.

He's still at work, he's still at work. And it concludes in our text. To be renewed in the spirit of mind and to put on the new self. created after the likeness of God. In true Righteousness.

and holiness. After the likeness of God. Remember the Colossians text I put up for you a moment ago, verse 10 to remind you, and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in the knowledge after the image of its creator.

So you're created in the image of God, you've fallen, Adam falls, all creation. Romans 5 is fallen now with him. Romans 8, we're longing. Creation longs to be changed and transformed back to that for which it was designed. The disfellowship, the disconnect, the discombobulation are causing a disequilibrium within the whole created order in general, and namely us.

And in that chaos of aberrant desire that we have walked out, we find ourselves compromised repeatedly, but Christ. Who having come, who shows us his way of life and invites us into redemption, says, Put off, I've put off the old, you're being renewed, and you've put on the new. And I've used this illustration before. But it's as though you have this diamond that sits here. And the diamond has Oh.

of its wonder, all of its spectacle. all of its beauty. But it's dirty. And now the gospel comes and begins to clean. and cleanse it.

Concept. It it was beautiful, but it was hidden. By stuff that glammed onto it. It had dignity, Saul made. You were made with dignity and honor, as part of the image of God.

But now you've come, and having put on the new, that dirty jewel is starting to get cleaned and cleansed and brushed up because of the gospel. And now you can put on display the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. in the face of Christ. Because he has made you. New.

He's made you know.

So my challenge to you this morning is that you and I Look different.

Now, I want to go back and just say one final thing, and then we'll close. That painting of our culture. If all it does is make you angry, then that's not helpful. That's not. The anger of men never produces the righteousness of God.

If you have people in your life who view things differently, do the world a favor. Love them. sacrifice for them. Plead with God for them. move toward them.

Embrace them. Sit with them. Engage them. Be patient. Be patient.

Has everybody here licked their flesh? Has everybody here cleaned up everything? Is everybody here all pristine now? No. You've put off the old, put on the new, but you are being renewed.

And in that frame, there's lots of room for you to look at people trapped in verses 17 through 19 and to love them really well. and to be really patient with people. and give them the hope that took away the futility of your own disposition and your own mind. Father, I pray that you would bless us Draw us to yourself. Give us the kind.

of manner of living. that would be reflective of people. Who have genuinely been brought from death to life in your kingdom. Encourage us, we pray. Draw us close to you.

In Jesus' name.