The Renewing Of The Mind Part 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Only when someone becomes a believer in Christ can they understand just how lost they were before they were saved.

People think they're okay, but in reality their lives are filled with darkness. In Ephesians, Paul teaches those who are now in Christ that their minds must be renewed. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, Paul seems to be saying that after conversion, our minds still need some cleaning up.

Well, Dave, exactly. Just because we are converted does not mean that we are always going to be thinking biblically or thinking rightly, and sometimes the sins of the past tend to catch up with us. But here's the good news, and the apostle Paul certainly emphasizes this, that through the work of the Spirit of God and the Word of God, our thinking can be changed. And if our thinking is changed, obviously we are changed. I'm not only glad that the apostle Paul wrote the book of Ephesians, but of course other books of the New Testament, to remind us of all that we have in Jesus Christ. And we here at Running to Win are committed to helping people to understand their inheritance, to understand the truths of the gospel, and you've heard it many times, to help all of us run successfully to the finish line. Well, we here at Running to Win are very near the finish line. At the end of this month, it's the end of our fiscal year, and we have a marvelous opportunity, because every gift that you give to this ministry will be doubled. So here's what you can do.

Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. And now let us go to the pulpit of Moody Church. Listen to what the text says. Isn't this an amazing description of human nature? They've given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity with a continual lust for more. You know what really convinces people that the Bible is the Word of God? It's when they read it and they read it and they say, you know, it has an accurate description of who I am, and I'm finally willing to admit it. And once they see that the Bible is accurate in terms of who they are, then they begin to say, you know, it's not hard for me to believe in creation, it's not hard for me to believe in the virgin birth, because the analysis of my soul as found in the Scriptures is so terrifyingly accurate.

Yes, that's who I really am. And you begin there, and then the whole rest of the Bible makes sense to you. What do human beings do? They have all of this within them, just like we did before we were saved, and some of us still have a lot of it in even after we're saved, but they have all of this in them, and all of their energy is spent rationalizing.

All of their energy is spent trying to justify who they are and their actions. And you see, you know, people always say, well, you know, we're reasoning animals. When I studied philosophy, Daryl, they used to always say that people are reasoning animals.

I don't know if I should buy that. I'll tell you why. It's because basically human beings do not go by reason, they go by their desires. And after they've established their desires and fulfilled them, then they use reason to justify their actions. Reason is called in to pacify the conscience and the desires.

Well, that's a terrible picture, isn't it? But that's the mind of the unconverted person. That's who we were. That's the mind we had. Now we're going to transition into something much more beautiful, and that is the mind we were given. Listen carefully. The mind we were given. Now we pick up the text. Verse 20.

What a lovely break. You, however, did not come to know Christ in that way. All these things aren't true of you, are they? Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught with regard to your former way of life to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be made new in the attitude of your minds and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

Well, something's happened. First of all, he says that we've been instructed by Christ. He says you didn't learn about Christ in this way, and there were people who taught you about him. Just like some of you who are listening today, you are now being taught about Christ. And what he says is, that's not the way you learned him that he would approve of the kinds of things we've just talked about.

He says you have heard of him. What he's saying is Jesus Christ broke into your life and shattered your self-image and gave you a whole new viewpoint as to who you are and did something that no other religion can ever possibly do. And that is, you've been converted by Christ.

Now we read this far too quickly because I want everyone to be attentive to this. I'm in verse 23. To be made new in the attitude of your minds and to put on the new self, to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. When you accepted Christ as a savior, God gave you a new self, a new mind. And as a result of that creation, and it had to be a creation of God, it says that it was created. As a result of that, there is something in you now that you did not have before you believed in Jesus. What a transformation. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. All things have passed away. All things have become new.

Sometimes in order to illustrate conversion, we as preachers were always looking for sermon illustrations. But we like to say, you know, it's like a butterfly. You know, you'd never know that a caterpillar is going to eventually become a butterfly. And before we're saved, we are the caterpillar. And after we're saved, we become the butterfly. There's a great fault in that illustration because everything that was in that butterfly was at one time in the caterpillar. It was in there in embryo. It's just that the caterpillar then went through that metamorphosis.

Is that the word? And the butterfly came about, you see, but it was all there already latent. It's not true when you got saved. When you got saved, God did something within you that you did not have before. You were created with a new self created by God to be like God in righteousness and holiness. That is something you were not born with even if you were born into a preacher's home. Do you realize how remarkable the gospel is? And that means now, and it says in the book of Colossians, the imagery there is putting off the old self with its deeds and you put on Christ.

Why? Because Jesus has given you a new mind. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, Paul says in Philippians 2. And therefore, if you're here today and you say, pardon me, but I do not have a new mind. I do not have a new self. Well, if that's true of you, you have not been born of the Spirit. You have not been redeemed by God because God does something so radical that only he can do. By the way, beautiful illustration now of the difference between Christianity and all other options that are being given out there. All the other religions of the world say, you're a caterpillar.

You don't believe it, just ask your wife. But you're a caterpillar? Fine. Become a butterfly.

Be sure to just work at it and think about all the potential. And then you can buy a book entitled 30 Days to the New You. Sorry, friend. Still the old you.

Looks a little better. New set of clothes, finally put some makeup on, but it's the old you, the old you. And then there are those who say, well, you know what we have to do? We have to wash the soul. The ancient religions had cleansing of the soul. And they said, what you need to do is to just get all that stuff out.

And especially today, say it on television, get on a talk show and hit somebody who's wronged you and let it all hang out. That'll really wash the soul, won't it? I'll just like dirty water, we'll wash a pail. Simple fact is that dirty water cannot wash the human heart.

I'm sorry. You have no answer unless you come to Christ. You tell me one other religion, you know, you students who say, oh yeah, but you know, when you go to university, you got to study all these other religions so that you're really hip.

Yeah, go ahead, do it. You find one other religion that says that if you believe on the leader, whomever, he will create within you a new self created to be like God in righteousness and holiness. When you find that, you write me a letter and you tell me who in the world it was who was lying like that. Radical stuff. That's the mind we were given. Now what I'd like to do is to speak about the mind we should use.

Which one do you think we should use? The old one? The new one, the mind you should use. Now, the imagery of putting off and putting on. And by the way, this next week's message is going to be entitled how to break a sinful habit. And that's when we'll look at the rest of the passage. There's no way that I'm going to make it to the end of this chapter today.

No way, Jose. So the question is what the imagery is that of putting off an old suit of clothes and putting on the new. Paul says put off the old self with its deeds and put on the new. The imagery is clothing. Now, you know that there are different kinds of clothing. There's a clothing that you wear when you go to a wedding, which is probably a little different than when you go to a funeral. There are soldiers who wear a different kind of clothing. There are prisoners who wear one set of clothing, like some of us who were in Cook County Jail just over a week ago.

They wear one kind of clothing. Now listen, if you were a prisoner and you were wearing this kind of clothing, which is very distinctive and recognizable, and now if you're set free, you continue to wear the same old clothing. No, what you say is it is time to cast off that clothing and now put on the clothing of a civilian and to put on the clothing that blends in with the culture and a clothing that is commensurate with who I really am, the clothes of a king if you're a Christian. You remember when Jesus raised Lazarus from the tomb, Lazarus came staggering out.

I marvel at the fact that he made it the whole way. And Jesus said that he had grave clothes and Christ said, loose them and let them go. What Christ was saying was, look, grave clothes are good if you're in a grave, but if you're no longer in the grave, put the grave clothes aside and get this guy some other clothes. Now listen, before we're saved, we have all of those old clothes and we just listed them for you. But when we are saved now, it's time to take off our clothes and to put on some different robes and we can do that because we have a new self. We have a new self that has been created by God and has made us different. So what the text is really telling us to do in the next verses, which I dare not get into because I want to leave them for next time, but he's saying, look, when it comes to anger, put it off.

When it comes to truth telling and lying, cast it aside and begin to speak the truth. And all of the things that we do that we sometimes call habits as we shall see, these habits are now replaced by something else because those things belong to our old self. Now what I'd like to do is to give you some practical suggestions of making the transfer so that we can leave here changed today by the power of God and his word. First of all, would you remember that in Bunyan's classic work, Man's Soul, you remember one of the demons, they were discussing how to get man's soul to let them in.

Man's soul, man's mind, if you please. And I couldn't find the quote last night. I'll paraphrase it. The idea that one demon says to the other, look, we have one strategy, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies. He said, we will make promises that will never be, but we will never change our strategy. Always lie. Now many of us know those lies. Some of us live those lies. Some of us, we live them because we believe them. And what we need to do is to cast them off, don't we?

How do we do it? First, would you remember that conversion is a crisis and some of you who are here today are not converted by God. You've never been saved. You do not have a new self. You can receive that if you're willing to humble yourself and come to Christ and acknowledge who you are.

But the point is conversion is a crisis. It happens in a point of time, but it is also a process because the Bible says that the putting off and the putting on is a continual, continual day by day experience. Put off the old man, put on the new. You can't say, I did it 10 years ago. You have to be able to say, I did it this morning. I, I did it this morning. I had to do it this morning. Put off the old self and put on the new. So no matter what I'm going to say to you, I wish I could say that if you just listen to the end of this message, your battles are going to be solved.

No, it is going to be a continual battle, but it is also a winnable battle and it is a battle that's worth fighting. Conversion is a crisis, but it is also then it leads to, I should say, a process of transformation. But secondly, the process, and listen carefully, the process is best described, it's best described as replacement, as replacement if you want your mind renewed.

What do I mean by replacement? One day Jesus told this parable. He said, you know, here's a guy who has an evil spirit. The evil spirit is evicted out of the man.

The man is initially very, very happy. And then the spirit goes about looking for rest and not finding it anywhere. And then he goes back to the man and discovers that his house is swept, empty, and garnished.

It is made clean, I should say, but it is very empty. And so he goes to the man and he finds seven other spirits more wicked than the first. And Jesus said all eight inhabit the man and his latter end is worse than his beginning.

I believe that that refers to the nation Israel, not necessarily people as people, but the principle is very, very applicable. If you come to Christ and your life is empty because nature abhors a vacuum, all of the old self will exert itself and take control like weeds in a garden. It'll just take over. And some Christians live this way and that's why I said, some will never change. Even if they are genuine Christians, they will just go on being as cranky, as uptight, and as hard to get along with as they ever are, period. The vacuum in their life, you see, is filled with the old self. But there are others who say, hey, wait a moment.

This doesn't have to be this way. In fact, everything that Jesus asks us to do is based on what he has already done. And because of that, what I am going to do is to fill my mind with the new self and I'm going to feed the new self and I'm going to starve the old self so that the new self begins to take over the weeds of the garden and begins to grow and does not leave that emptiness that is available for all kinds of wickedness. So how do you feed the new self? You feed the new self by the word of God. And I have noticed in my own life that proportionately, the more of the word that I absorb, the less there is of self and the need that there is to go back to the old self. And if I'm not in the word, the old self just begins to take over very, very automatically. And so what you do is you fill your mind with the word of God. You begin to read the Bible, you read it out loud, you begin to sing hymns, that's why we should memorize them, and you begin to fill your mind with that which is of God. We had Rebecca and I know a young man whose wife died of cancer, very, very painful.

She died at home. And I said, Tom, how did you keep from being bitter? And he said that the way we did it is I read the Bible to my wife chapter by chapter and afterwards we bought the Bible on cassette tape and we played it hour after hour in the house and we listened to the scripture and the filling of the word of God squeezed all of the anger and the hostility toward God, which people often have, it squeezed it out of our hearts and granted us peace.

Principle of replacement. Let me illustrate. I want all of you now to think of the number seven. Do you have a clear conception in your mind of the number seven? I think it's true to say that it's one more than six and one less than eight.

Have you located it in your bank? Now, what I'd like you to do is to just stop thinking of the number seven right now. What are you laughing at? Are you still thinking about it, Phil? Just stop.

I mean, some of you believe in free will. Exercise it. The fact is it's very difficult to stop and the more I urge you to, the more you think about it. Stop thinking of the number seven. Now what you do is you think of the number 1,000 and then you begin to think that you open an envelope and it has $1,000 just for you. You begin along that train for a little while and soon you'll forget about the number seven.

It's the principle of replacement. Let this mind be in you which is also in Christ Jesus. We are called to think God's thoughts, to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. Is that hard to do? Believe me, that's hard to do. Is it done without a battle? It is not done without a battle because every demon in hell says lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies.

We've gotten them to believe the lies for so long, we'll keep getting them to believe the lies. The Bible exposes those lies and says, you know, I don't have to think that anger. I don't have to live with that unforgiveness. I don't have to live with being such a cranky person to put up with. I don't have to be such a control freak. And once you acknowledge that sin and you pour the word of God into your life, the transformation happens.

Shall I read it again? You put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Some of you have got all kinds of clothes that you have to throw away. Your closet is filled with clothes that belong to your old life. Get rid of them and then put on the new wardrobe, which God has already provided for us, doesn't ask us to do something that he hasn't provided the basis for, and put on the new wardrobe and get on with the business of thinking differently and therefore living differently.

Because as a man thinks in his heart, so he is. And if you will, let us pray. Father, we thank you for this passage of your word, which every one of us needs.

We need our chain jerked. We need to be brought up short and to be reminded of the fact that there's a battle with the old self. Remind us of the fact that we've been created with the new self. And we ask, Father, that in grace, your mercy and your love shall abound toward us. Help us to think differently in our relationships and in our marriages and in our actions and vocations, because we are Christ's people. Make this a church of power to the city of Chicago, because we see everything differently through the eyes of your word and the eyes of Christ. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. You know, I remember a Bible teacher whose name is Tozer. He said that there is a great mistake that Christians often make. They think that because they've come to know God through Jesus Christ, they do not have to seek God anymore. Well, we do. And when we put on the new self, it means that we are seeking God. We are seeking his blessing. And we here at Running to Win are totally committed to seeking the Lord for direction and for guidance. I hope that you rejoice with us when I can tell you that we have just signed a contract for this ministry to go into three different languages.

And we can do that because of people just like you. And this is a very exciting time, because any gift that you give during this month will be doubled. And of course, we're near the end of the month.

And that means that it is also the end of our fiscal year. So I hope that you have a pen or pencil handy, because I'm going to be giving you some very important info by which you can connect with us. Here's what you do. Go to RTWOffer.com. That's RTWOffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337.

Now, because I want to make sure that you got that information, go to RTWOffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. What an opportunity! $10 becomes $20. $50 becomes $100.

Well, you can do the math. And we thank all those of you who are standing with us with your prayers and your gifts. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. Pastor Erwin Lutzer has concluded The Renewing of the Mind, the 13th message in his series Between Heaven and Earth, taken from Ephesians. Next time, we'll begin a message on Breaking a Stubborn Habit. Plan to join us. This is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.