A New Life... The New Walk (20-24)

If you were given a second-chance at life, what would you do different?

Would you fall back into your old habits… your old ways?

Or would you live differently, knowing your eternal soul rests in the balance of your decisions?

2 weeks ago, I injured my back exercising at the gym… and I laid on that floor for what seemed like an hour.

I couldn’t move, couldn’t get up, pain rushed through my body.

And yet, despite all that you know what I was thinking?

If only I stayed home today! This would’ve never happened.

If only I stopped one rep before! This would’ve never happened.

If only I’d been more careful and responsible! This would’ve never happened.

I realized in an instant, I’d have to suffer the consequences for what i’d done.

Today, you have a chance to change before your soul becomes damaged in an eternal punishment.

We are LUCKY to be afforded another morning to wake up and BE with our family and friends! To fellowship and assemble before the throne of God!

Don’t let this day go by! Without turning your life back to God. Because there’s coming a day when it’ll be too late.

When you look back and say, “I had an OPPORTUNITY TO CHANGE… yet I squandered my life to nothing.”

If you were given a second-chance at life, how would you live?

Would you put God first?

Would you cherish doing the work of the Lord!?

Or would you live in your sin, as many so-called Christians still do today.

Change is difficult.

Pat told me Friday that when she met Jim, he was living in Alaska at the time but was moving to Georgia. That’s a big change!!

Not just with location, but with the weather, people, southern dialect.

But change doesn’t have to be difficult, for example. If the change is something we KNOW to be for our good, it’s easier to do!

Like going to Starbucks 3 times a day for a coffee… or trying to read our Bible every morning and evening.

If I know the change is for my good, it’s won’t be as difficult.

Here’s the point. When a person becomes a Christian… their life will never be the same.

Why is that? Well because of what we read in Ephesians 1-3!

That a believer is richly blessed in Christ… He is a New Creation… We are his Workmanship created for good works.

In Acts 2 after the Jews were baptized it says they “praised God, gaining favor with all the people” v.47

There was an evident CHANGE in the minds of the early Christians

A change from bashing the Son of God, to a life of praise and service for the Lord.

This morning I just want to look at a few aspects of the new life we have in Christ for those who believe and obey Him. This “new life” is a SECOND CHANCE for the unbeliever and the wayward Christian in this room. DON’T… squander it away.

Let’s consider our passage:

Ephesians 4:17–24 (ESV)

17 Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20 But that is not the way you learned Christ!— 21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

You know, there are some people whose lives haven’t changed one bit since they believed in Christ.

They still live with that person they aren’t married to.

They still get drunk on a Friday night.

They still commit adultery and fornication when they desire it.

And yet the Word of God tells me in 1 Corinthians that these individuals will not inherit the kingdom of heaven, period!!

I want to humbly suggest to you this morning that if that is still your lifestyle, where you continue to live in sin… I question your salvation.

That’s what Paul’s SAYING in Ephesians 4! If you TRULY learned Christ… then why in the WORLD are you acting like the unrighteous!!

You DIED to sin!

You are a new creation!

What are you DOING… living like the world does!

Col 3:1 “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is”

Col 3:5-6 “5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming.”

We are called to live different.

We are holy people set apart for a holy purpose.

We have a new WALK!

So let’s look at our new walk

Our new mindset! Peter calls it, in 1 Peter 3:1, “a pure mind”

Renewed mind, Transformed mind (Rom 12)

“4 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NEW LIFE”

A CHRIST-CENTERED LIFE … Self-Centered

Ephesians 4:20-21 “20 But that is not the way you learned Christ!— 21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus,”

When you LEARN Christ, you LEARN how to live.

I live by his Teachings

“love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’” —Mark 12:30

“love your neighbor as yourself” —Mark 12:31.

“repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” —Mat 4:17.

My plea is for you to read the Gospels! Be consumed in the teachings of Christ. For when you learn Christ you learn how to live.

I live by his Example

Humility, Kindness, Faithfulness.

I base my life upon the example of Christ

I live by his Sacrifice

Listen close. Without the cross, our sins would still weigh heavy over our guilty heads.

Psalm 38:4 “For my iniquities have gone over my head; like a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me.”

But the faithful are free from this guilt and weight of sin! Thank God! We walk and live by the sacrifice of our Lord.

I live by his Presence‌

I am with Christ and He is with me. He lives inside the believer.

Paul says it clearly to the Galatians 2:20 “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Christ is at the center

Everything revolves around Christ

He consumes my everyday life.. time and thoughts

The life that I live is not my own, but Christ’s.

I hope you can say today that you desire to do the things Christ wants you to do.

Jesus said in the Gospels “Learn of me”

Paul said in his letter: “Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but CHRIST lives in me”

Not just for a day, week, month… a LIFE!

A life lived in submission to the Savior.

New Attitude

New Focus

New Walk

I don’t just wake up in the morning, eat food, go to work, go to bed, and do the same thing all over again the next day.

No. I wake up EXCITED to live a life that pleases the Lord! A Christ-centered life.

It’s easy to live a self-centered life, I’ll admit! But it makes a mockery out of the God who created you… and punishment will be waiting for self-righteous, self-centered individual.

#2… Our new life in Christ comes with having:

A KNOWLEDGE OF THE TRUTH … Ignorant of Truth

Ephesians 4:20-21 “But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus”

‌We live in a knowledge-driven world.

Greeks… Acts 17:21 “Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.”

Charles Spurgeon, In his book ‘Knowing And Believing’ , wrote: “ Observe, then, that all other knowledge may be useful enough in itself, but if it does not concern Christ, it cannot be called saving knowledge.”

Yet our knowledge about Jesus has gone down the drain.

Christians must live in submission to truth

What is the Truth?

John 8:24 “24… for unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins.””

1 John 5:20 “20 And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.”

As we grow in knowledge we conform to that knowledge.

The more I study the game of Chess… not only do I become better at it, but I become more calculated in the decisions i make in life.

The more I study philosophy, the greater appreciation I have for understanding the reality of our existence!

The SAME is true with Christ! The more I live a Christ-centered life, the more I grow in the knowledge of the savior… the more my life begins to emulate His. And that STARTS… when one believes in Him and dies to sin being immersed in water.

It’s important we become mature in the Truth. The truth about::

Christ, God, man, sin, creation, death, life, history, purpose, meaning, salvation, heaven and hell, faith, grace

Its because of the knowledge of this truth that we get point #3

A SENSITIVITY TO SIN … Shameless

Ephesians 4:22 “22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,”

Sin becomes sensitive to us

We have a deep sense of what’s wrong in the sight of God

Like the beatitude, we are called to MOURN over our sin!

1 John 1:8-9 “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

When someone brings up lost loved one, thats a sensitive topic to most people.

Where in the moment you begin to hurt on the inside and feel that heavy weight latched onto your heart.

Thats the type of feeling we should have when sin comes knocking at our doorstep!

“You know what? NO. I shouldn’t be doing this”

“This sin I keep committing. It’s hurting my heart… and there’s a reason for it.”

We aren’t calloused to sin like we once were!

We were drawn out of that pit into a holy covenant in Christ and now we LIVE in the Knowledge of Him

The sensitivity we have to sin is a BLESSING!

It’s a weapon we can wield against Satan

It’s a tool we shouldn’t neglect or ignore

The question we should be asking ISN’T: “Can I still sin?” The question IS, “Why do you WANT to sin!”

Aren’t you thankful for the CROSS?

Aren’t you grateful for the grace of GOD?

You are a NEW creature… a NEW person… a Born-again Christian!

Jesus told the woman caught in adultery, “GO, and sin no more.”

Today. Leave here and sin no more.

When the temptation arises… “Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” — James 4:7.

Learn to be more aware of sin by the constant reading of God’s Word. For its only there that we find the blueprint of righteous living.

# 4. You learn Christ, and when you learn Christ, He fills you with His truth, and when you have His truth, you have a moral sensitivity, sin becomes a hated thing. And #4, the new life comes with a:

A RENEWED MIND … Perverse

Ephesians 4:23-24 “23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

“Renewed” means to "create again” “make new”

When you become a Christian, God gives you a new mind, but you’ve got to fill it with new stuff. That’s why Philippians 4:8 says, “If there be any virtue, if there be any praise” – Do what? – “think on these things that are pure and just, holy, good report, honest.”

Think differently

Sin… Life… God

A renewed mind.

A fresh perspective on life, a heavenly perspective!

Col 3:1 “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.”

If you desire to live righteously in the sight of God… it starts with a renewed mind.

A mind focused on God and His Word

A mind focused on teaching Christ

A mind focused on living faithfully

A mind focused on our heavenly home

1 John 2:15-17 “15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”

CONCLUSION:

And so what’s Paul’s message? To sum it up it’s this: verse 22, “Put off the former manner of life, the old man”; verse 24, “Put on the new man.”

Although change can be difficult… change, in many cases, in necessary. And the second chance you’ve received this morning to turn from your sin to a loving and accepting Father is a change that will impact your eternal destiny.

It WILL be DIFFICULT! Satan dangles the world and sin in front of eyes every day!

Paul says: “Put it off.” Put it off and put on righteousness and true holiness.” And by the way, can I add this as I close? This is not something you do once for all. This is something you do every day you live.

How do I change?

Repentance

Repentance changes our commitment… from living as we please, to living as Christ wills.

Luke 13:3 “I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

Confession

An open declaration to God and the world of our commitment

Mat 10:32-33 “32 So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, 33 but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.”

Baptism

Baptism in water, through the power of God, CHANGES our state.

It’s where a person ‘puts on Christ’ — Gal 3.

It’s where our ‘sins are washed away’ — Acts 2.

It’s where we become new. And God’s mercy is poured over our soul. Where our graduation takes place and our new life begins

Just as in the beginning ‘God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light’ so, at the moment he appointed for our new birth, he said, ‘Let there be life’ and there was life.

J. Alec

When I was baptized into Christ many years ago, I remember reading the words of the eunuch in Acts 8… “See, here is water, what hinders me from being baptized?”

Is there anything that hinders you from becoming a child of God this morning? If so, I want you to consider whether it’s worth your soul. There’s no greater day in your life than the day you give your life to Christ.

If you believe in your heart that Jesus died, was buried, and rose again on the third day, what hinders you from being baptized right now?

Or maybe you’re here and having heard the message from God’s Word, you’d like prayers from the Church for encouragement… wont you come too, as we stand and sing!