The Word (Part 3): God’s Revelation Unto Us

 Introduction

There are two kinds of people in this world…those who are teachable and those who think they have it all figured out.

Usually, those who think they have it all figured out end up proving they really didn’t know half of what they think they knew, and those who are teachable end up knowing more than they previously had.

My dad taught me that there is always something new to learn and I need to always be learning.

This is true in all areas of life and especially when it comes to our relationship with Jesus.

2 Timothy 3:16–17 ESV

16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

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.

1) God Reveals to Us A Need for Learning (v.17-18a)

“…no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding…”

Gentiles refers to those who have NO knowledge of the one true God!

Their understanding was made up entirely of their own perceptions.

How they understood the world and their place in the world was entirely defined by them or defined for them by the culture.

All they knew was what they could see, touch, taste, feel, and hear.

Their understanding was darkened

Misinformed and unaware they were misinformed.

Though they had some concept of something outside of themselves, they were content that they had figured it out and was blissfully unaware that they didn’t know what they didn’t know.

Romans 1:18–32 ESV

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. 24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. 26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. 28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

From being in Christ, it’s becoming easier for us to see the futility and lostness of the world around us, yet we must never forget that we are prone to resorting to our previous way of thinking.

We once thought of God and the things of God from a darkened perspective.

If we are not letting God’s Word continually teach us, we are still prone to reverting back to a worldly understanding of things.

After all, Paul’s encouragement to the Ephesians was written “to the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus…” (Eph. 1:1).

We have to constantly and intentionally seek to remember that we still have a lot to learn about God, ourselves in Christ, and our new life we have in Christ.

Should we ever neglect to let the Word of God teach us, we rely on our own perception…our own darkened understanding and futility of mind.

2) God Reveals to Us A Need for Living (v. 18b-19)

“…alienated from the life of God because of ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.”

The world around us that is devoid of God is not living…it is dying.

Those who go about their lives in ignorance, trying to just make it through this life are not making it through…they are dying and heading to an eternity where they will be forever alienated from the life of God.

It kind of like Cole Sear in the movie the1999 movie The Sixth Sense… When we look around and see those without God we…

…I see dead people…walking around like regular people. They don’t see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don’t know their dead.”

Those who are devoid of the life of God are hardened in their hearts to true understanding.

They are callous in their thinking and rely heavily on their own sensuality and impulses.

As a result, the deadness of our hearts and our minds lead only to impurity and decay…moral decay, spiritual decay, emotional decay, intellectual decay, etc.

If it weren’t for God revealing Himself to us by the Holy Spirit through His Word, this is all we would know and we would think that this is all there was.

Don’t believe me…look at every culture and society that is devoid of God. As our nation turns further away from Him, moral and societal decay is rampant.

God’s Word reveals to us that we have a need to truly live and that life only comes from Jesus, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

As those who are in Christ, we must embrace life in Jesus every moment of every day.

Anytime we fail to keep our minds and our hearts focused on Him through His Word, we give way to ignorance and sensuality.

This is why we must never become complacent or neglectful of our walk with Jesus. We need Him every moment of every day.

3) God Reveals to Us A Need for His Likeness (v.20-24)

Ephesians 4:20–24 ESV

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.

As we embrace Jesus, He changes us.

As we are taught about Jesus, we are taught life in Jesus. When we come to know Him and embrace Him, we do so through repentance and embracing transformation.

There is only one way in which we know we have come to know the real Jesus and not a made up version of Jesus: To truly follow Jesus, we are taught “to put off the old self…, be renewed in the spirit of our minds, and put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

Any other way is not truly knowing Jesus!

This is the danger of false gospels such as the prosperity gospel, easy-beliefism, church affiliation, emotionalism, universalism, etc. All of these things that do not call a person to repentance and new life are birthed out of ignorance and deceive people into remaining dead…they just feel a little bit better about it…for a time.

Anything that promotes you remaining in ignorance and futility of thinking with no laying down of the old self, being renewed in your way of thinking, and putting on the new life created in the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness is a false and dead gospel…even if does have some culturally Christian flavoring.

We need to conform to the image of Christ. We need to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. We need to have our lives engulfed in true righteousness and holiness.

Without God’s Word, His revelation to us for these things, we would have no clue what it means to truly live!

Closing

We need to admit that we still have a lot to learn.

We need to admit that we still have a lot to learn about truly living.

We need to admit that truly living only comes through Christ and Christ alone as we put on the new self that displays God’s true righteousness and holiness.

We need to admit that God’s Word needs to shape all of our life, not just our religious preference.

We need Christ to define us through His Word.

We need Christ to define the world around us through His Word.

We need Christ to reveal all these things to us by the Holy Spirit through His Word.

Oh that we might, day by day, moment by moment, embrace God’s Revelation Unto Us!