Today on Summit Life with J.D.
Greer. Give you a definition of biblical change. This is the whole thesis of Ephesians, and this is the whole strategy of how we try to teach the Bible here. Biblical change. The Spirit of God using the story of God to make the beauty of God come alive in our hearts. It is only after saturating yourself in the gospel will your heart see and know God and be changed. Thanks for joining us today for Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer.
As always, I'm your host, Molly Vitovich. You know, for a lot of people, Christianity seems like just a list of rules. Thou shall not do this and thou shall not do that. And quite frankly, it seems like all the fun stuff is also off limits. But is that really all it is? Does Jesus want us to live by a certain moral code and preach that to others?
There's got to be more to it, right? Pastor J.D. addresses that question today on Summit Life as he continues our study of Ephesians called Mystery and Clarity. If you'd like to catch up on previous messages, you can find them at jdgreer.com. Now here's Pastor J.D.
with the first part of a message he called The New Life. Ephesians 4 verses 25 through 32, Paul gives you a list of behaviors that he tells the Ephesians that they ought to be practicing. Now here's the thing. He's describing Christian behavior. Here's the thing.
On the surface, there's nothing particularly remarkable about the list. In fact, take a look at it real quick. Verse 25, he tells you to tell the truth to each other. Verse 26, he tells you to don't steal and to get a job. Verse 28, he tells you not to lose your temper. Verse 32, he tells you to be kind. Just about every religion in the world tells you those things.
So a lot of people see that kind of thing and they're like, see? All religions basically are the same. I mean, the point of all of them is be good.
It doesn't matter what brand name you use, it's the same product. And some of you have thought this. You're like, if the point of religion is to turn bad people into good people, well, this Hindu guy I know is like one of the nicest guys I've ever known. He already does all these things. So why do I need to tell him to become a Christian? Well, I know a Muslim and he believes and practices these things. Even an atheist.
And he's good like this, so they're already good. So what's the point? Here's the question then I want us to consider. Is there anything distinctive about Christian moral teaching?
Or is it really all the same? I want to try and show you that there is something distinctive, something that is fundamentally different than what is put forward everywhere else. To do that, we're going to rewind eight verses and go back to verse 17. Paul is going to give you an eight verse theology lesson before he mentions these ways for you to behave.
And here's what we're going to do. I'm going to teach you that lesson as best I can, which is really, by the way, a summary of all the book of Ephesians up to this point, and then show you how the moral commands that grow out of that eight verse theology lesson in verses 25 through 32 are of a different sort than what every other religion teaches. Verse 17 is where we start. Now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do. When Paul says Gentiles here, he is not referring to people of a certain race. He's referring to anyone who doesn't know God. Through the Old Testament, God had revealed himself to the Jews, and anyone outside the covenant that God made with the Jewish people are referred to as Gentiles. So by Gentiles here, Paul means every person who hasn't met Jesus. Now he's about to give you a description of what those people are like and what we were like before we met Jesus, and I want us to work through it backwards.
So let's start at verse 19, because that's the end of that description, and then we'll work back backwards back up to verse 17. Verse 19, he says, They have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. That's the language of craving. Greedy.
Greedy. I have to have these sensual pleasures. I'm hungry for them.
I need them. So I've given myself entirely to them. These are people who feel enslaved to their desires.
It's the guy who can't say no to pornography. The desires are just too strong, and it's more than just lust for him. It's an escape.
It's a way to add excitement to his life. It's a way to find comfort. Or a person who turns to drugs or alcohol for some kind of refuge. That's more than just a thirsting of the body for something to drink.
It is a, you crave the feelings and the security and the safety that alcohol or some drug gives to you. Greedy lust, is what Paul says. In another one of Paul's letters, he uses a different word that means essentially the same thing. He says the heart of sin is, here's your Greek word for the day, epithumia. Epithumia. Epithumia is a word that we often translate into English as lust. Now, when I say lust, everybody thinks sex. But epithumia is not just about sex.
Epithumia means soul lust. A craving, a yearning, a greedy desire. Something about which you say I have to have that. Because without that, I can't imagine life being okay.
Without that, I might as well be dead. Even the thought of not having it produces despair in your heart. Don't just think lust for bad things. It's something, anything about which you feel like you just have to have it for life to be good. For example, for some people it's not drugs, it's the security of money. The thought of not being financially secure produces all kinds of anxiety in your heart. So you say you save and you stress and you're stingy because an abundance of money is what you feel like you have to have for you to feel secure and for you to feel satisfied.
Just ask yourself, what is the one thing you feel like you have to have for life to be good? Again, it may not be a bad thing. For some middle-aged ladies, it's the desire to have their family around and everybody get along. That's good, of course, but this thing goes beyond normal desire for family. It's a craving.
Life could not be good and has no point if the family is not close and everything is in perfect harmony. So any disruption of the family to these types of people, these ladies, is devastating to them. This is the condition of people apart from God, Paul says. They have craving, greedy hearts. Now, where does Paul say that these cravings come from?
Okay, let's work backwards. Look at this, verse 18. They come because we are alienated from the life of God. These cravings arise from the absence of God in our lives. You see, the Bible teaches that we were created for God and when we were one with God, get this, our hearts were satisfied and they were filled. When we rejected God, we lost that essential life-satisfying, soul-replenishing relationship.
We found that our souls were starving. Again, this is review, but the first condition we found ourselves in is that we felt naked. We felt naked like something's not right, there's something wrong, there's something missing. And I've asked you before, what do you do when you feel naked if you're normal? You try to cover yourself. Are you taking a shower in a hotel and suddenly you realize that there's a window right next to your shower and there's like 95 people looking in off the street into your shower, you're not like, hey, this shampoo is great right here, I love you.
You don't do that, you're just thinking, how do I get covered? Well, that's a picture of humanity, is something's not right, something is missing, something is, I feel naked, I feel empty, I feel ashamed. We know we're missing something, we may not even realize what it is or how we got to this place, but we know we're searching for something and what we're searching for is Him. His affirmation, His presence, that's what we lost. In His absence, our hearts are restless and naked and so we fill our lives and cover ourselves with cheap substitutes. Here's the next question, all right, where does this alienation from God come from and why do we stay that way? Watch this, verse 18, they are alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them. We stay alienated from God because we're ignorant of Him. We, here's what it means, we can't see God's beauty, we don't sense His glory or His majesty or His lovingness or His all satisfyingness, if that's a word, we don't sense any of those things, we're ignorant of those things. That's why we stay alienated from God because we don't even know that that's what we're looking for, right? But there's more, that ignorance itself is caused by something.
What causes that ignorance? Again, verse 18, that ignorance is, look at this, due to their hardness of heart. You see, it's not that God is not there or can't be seen, it's that their hearts were too hard even to see Him.
For many of us, even though His glory is all around us, we can't sense it, we can't feel it because our hearts are hard and dead and our spiritual eyes are blind. By the way, that is why, and college students I say this especially to you, that is why two smart people look at the same set of evidence for whether or not there is a God and come up with two completely different conclusions. It didn't always bother me in college, it's my professor, looked like a good guy, he was smart, smarter than me, and he says that clearly the evidence points toward there being no God. But then I know other people, you know, and I respect them also, they seem to be smart, they look at the same evidence and they see God in it. I'm like, well, which one's smarter?
It's got nothing to do with which one's smarter. Whether or not we see God has nothing to do with the quality of the evidence but the state of our hearts. Even my favorite atheist Friedrich Nietzsche said this, right, in his book Beyond Good and Evil he says, quote, the idea, I love this, the idea of objective human beings who are just disinterested seekers in truth is crazy. The human heart is too insecure to ever be able to handle the truth.
Cue Jack Nicholson here, you can't handle the truth. He says there is a natural hatred and fear of the truth. And I'll summarize this next part, he says, we revise our memories to fit the story of ourselves that we want to believe. There's no way I could have ever done that, says our pride, and it's not long before the past we remember is the past we wish were true.
Now everybody knows that different cultures do this. Every culture rewrites its history so that it fits the story of themselves that they want to believe, but Nietzsche is saying that individuals do that too. We mold the truth to fit our preferences and we do it with the truth about God.
We see God not as He is but as we want Him to be, including sometimes wanting Him not to be there. You're listening to Summit Life with J.D. Greer and we're so glad that you've joined us. Before we jump back into today's teaching, I want to let you know about our new featured resource that we've created. Like all of our resources, the goal is to equip you to know God's Word more each day. It's our second installment in the popular Gospel Flipbook series. It's a spiral-bound collection of flashcards that guide you through reading four of the most influential of Paul's epistles, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians. We believe that time spent in God's Word is the most important part of any believer's journey, and we've designed this resource to help make that time both engaging and fruitful. The Gospel Flipbook includes a reading plan that takes you through each of these four books, as well as historical information about the churches he's writing to, key passages to focus on, plus we've included guided prayers and reflections to help you really apply what you're learning personally. We'd love to send you a copy of the second Gospel Flipbook as our way of saying thank you for supporting this ministry.
To get yours, simply call us at 866-335-5220 or visit jdgreer.com. Now let's get back to today's teaching here on Summit Life. Once again, here's Pastor JD. You see, the strangest thing happens when God softens you up and opens your eyes to Him. You suddenly start to see Him everywhere. The skeptic says, I can't see God, and some of us look around and say, how can you not see God? You don't always understand Him, but you see the evidences of Him everywhere and you sense His presence.
So there we are. Paul has described the problem. Because the human heart is alienated from God, it craves sin. And it can't see God or sense Him or know Him because it is too hardened or deadened or blackened by sin. Now, that's not to say, by the way, that Gentiles are not religious people. Mankind in every nation has always been very religious. But the religious tendencies of the human heart are not born out of a love for or a delight in God.
More often than not, our religion is an attempt to use God. Here's a story I've told you before to illustrate this, the story of a very poor farmer who lived in medieval England back 800, 900 years ago. In his poor little dirt farm he runs, he grows a carrot that is the largest carrot he has ever seen.
It's like six feet long. He takes one look at that carrot and he thinks that is a carrot that is fit for a king. He loves his king. His king is fair. His king is kind and loving. And he thinks, I want to take this as a gift to the king because this belongs only to my king. I just want to give this to him and show him my love for him. So he takes this carrot down to the, gets the audience for the king and says, king, this is the biggest carrot I've ever grown.
I want you to have it. The king is moved by this gesture and says, that is very, that touches me. He says, you know, I happen to own all the farm around, all the land around your farm. I'm going to give you that in response just as a gift, just as you love me.
I love you. I want you to have this extra land. Well, one of the king's officers was standing there in the background and thought, dang. He said, if that's what the king would give for a carrot, imagine what he would give for a real gift like a horse. King's officer leaves the court overnight, goes and gets a horse, big old majestic horse, brings it in the next day. It's like, oh king, you're my favorite king ever. I love you, old king. And I just want you to have this horse to demonstrate your majesty. And the king who was also very wise, sees through the whole thing and says, yesterday, that farmer was giving the carrot to me.
Today, you're giving the horse to yourself. You see, that's a description in many ways of what religion is for most people. It's something that is done because we receive something back from God for it.
It is entirely self-interested. You give to God because God will reward you. He'll bless your life, take you to heaven.
That's what you're after. And so you serve God as a means to that end. Paul says, verse 24, that what God is after, look at this, is true righteousness and true holiness. People who do righteousness, watch this, for the reasons that God does it. You see where it says, created after his likeness. God does righteousness not because somebody is making him, or God doesn't do righteousness because it's a means to an end. God does righteousness because it is his nature, and he loves it.
That's why he does it. Okay? All right, so our problem is, we have an ignorant, dead heart that doesn't really want God. Well then, what would the solution be? What would the solution be if our problem is that we have an ignorant, dead heart that doesn't really want God? What's the solution? This is so obvious.
Okay? We need two things. Solution part number one, we need verse 21, a new knowledge of God, so we're not ignorant of him. And verse 23, we need a renewed heart to delight in that knowledge, so we can receive that knowledge, we can grasp it. In other words, we need a new vision of God, and then we need new eyes to see that vision with. So where does this knowledge of God, and where does this renewed heart to see it come from?
Two different places. Verse 21, this is so good. Verse 21, assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus. Commentators point out that when Paul refers to Jesus Christ, he almost always uses the term Christ, or Lord Jesus Christ. When Paul uses the term Jesus by itself, he is referring specifically to Jesus as he lived on the earth.
The Nazarene baby who was born in Bethlehem, who lived as a carpenter, worked miracles, and died on the cross. In other words, the new knowledge of God comes to us through the story of Jesus. The new knowledge of God comes to us through the story of Jesus. In the story of Jesus, we see the beauty of God, and in seeing the beauty of God revealed in the story of Jesus, we are changed. It is a story with such beauty and drama in it, that when you get swept up in it, it changes your life.
Not just by correcting this or that, but by changing you fundamentally. Temptations lose their power because you've seen greater beauty. Now you know what purpose is, and you know how much power in the universe is available to you. The love of God shown to you in that story transforms you into the kind of person who loves righteousness and holiness and forgiveness and goodness. So our ignorance is overcome by encountering the beauty of God in the story of Jesus.
But there's something else we need. Verse 23, and to be renewed in the spirit of our minds. We need a spiritual renewal. That's why Paul prays for them twice in Ephesians. God has to give you eyes to see.
A blind man can stare in the direction of the rainbow all day long, but he won't ever see it until he's been given eyes to see. So number two, our hearts perceive the new knowledge by renewal of the spirits. So here's your summary. Give you a definition of biblical change. And by the way, this is the whole thesis of Ephesians, and this is the whole strategy of how we try to teach the Bible here. Biblical change. The Spirit of God using the story of God to make the beauty of God come alive in our hearts.
The Spirit of God using the story of God to make the beauty of God come alive in our hearts. That's why, listen church, that's why these prescriptions come in chapter four, not in chapter one. It is only after saturating yourself in the gospel that Paul has driven you into in chapters one to three, and only after the Spirit of God that he has prayed for has renewed your heart. Will your heart see and know God and be changed? So now, let's answer our question. How is Christian morality fundamentally different than the morality that other religions teach? I'll give you six axioms of biblical change, right?
They're going to go quick. So jot them down. I'm going to help you see them and explain them. Six axioms of biblical change that make Christian morality unique, and throughout this I will show you how this shows up in those moral prescriptions that are given to you in verses 25 through 32. Number one, gospel change is fundamentally a change of desire. Gospel change is fundamentally a change of desire.
You do truth because you love truth. You see, one of the biggest substitutes for true gospel change, catch this, is what we call moralism. Here's the definition of moralism. Moralism is teaching people that external behavior matters more than internal disposition. Moralism. Moralism is teaching people that external behavior matters more than internal disposition. For example, how do you motivate a kid to quit lying?
All right, here we give you a couple ways we try to do it. We tell a kid, don't lie, because if you don't, if you lie, you're going to get caught and you're going to get in trouble. Or other people are going to think badly of you if you get caught lying. So what you create in him is a fear of punishment or of rejection, and he becomes honest because he doesn't want to be punished and he wants to be accepted by others.
Here's another way we try to motivate a kid not to lie. You're like, don't lie, because you're better than that. You're a greer.
Greers don't lie. You don't want to be like all them other people. If you're dishonest, you're going to lower your standards so that you're just like everybody else.
What are you doing there? You're motivating him to change by creating a sense of superiority in him. Now, you can give Christian versions of both those things. If you lie, God's going to throw you into hell. Or you can be like, hey, if you lie, you're not going to be like Jesus. You want to be like Jesus, don't you? You don't want to be like all the other people, the non-Christian liars and lying non-Christians and all the other religions. You want to be like Jesus. Jesus people are better than people in the other religions.
See what you've done? That's why most of us, by the way, don't lie. It's either a fear of being punished or a fear of losing face, or out of a sense of pride that says we're better than everybody else. The problem is, neither of those make us love the truth. Neither of those motivations make us desire to do truth just because that's what we love.
That's not, verse 24, true righteousness or true holiness. The gospel motivates us differently. It creates in our hearts a love for truth. Like God, whose image we've been made in the likeness of, we love truth and we do it because that's what we love to do. Like I told you, God does not have anybody over him saying, you better tell the truth.
If you don't tell the truth, you're going to be in trouble. God does it because it is his nature. He loves it in his core.
He loves it in his core. You might get people you see to change through moralism, but you can't really change them in their hearts. In order to achieve gospel change, we have to desire something different, something new.
That's the first principle of biblical change. Make sure you join us tomorrow for the rest of the list. You're listening to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of pastor, author, and theologian J.D.
Greer. To hear this message again or to view the full sermon transcript, visit us at jdgreer.com. While you're on our website, you can check out all kinds of free resources curated specifically to help you grow in your love and understanding of the gospel. Along with Pastor JD's messages and transcript, you'll also find his blog, the full archive of the Ask the Pastor podcast, access to our daily email devotional, our weekly newsletter, and so much more.
Once again, that's all found at jdgreer.com. Before you go, I'd love to remind you about our latest featured resource, especially if you missed hearing about it earlier in today's program. It's the second installment in our popular gospel flip book series, and this one takes you through Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians in a unique, easy to use way. You'll find information about the churches to whom Paul is writing, highlights of key passages and teachings, key themes in each book, as well as reflection questions to help you absorb the truth of each letter.
And we've included a reading plan to take you through all four books of the Bible. We'd love to send you a copy as our way to say thank you for your gift to this ministry. To give, call us at 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220. Or you can give online at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch inviting you to join us Wednesday as Pastor JD continues to answer the question, how is Christianity different from other faiths? Join us for the rest of the list right here on Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.
