Brainwashing
Notes
Transcript
A few weeks ago, I came back from South Asia.
What’s interesting about coming back is
I left on a Wednesday night and arrived on a Thursday morning
But I flew for over 21 hours
With layovers I travelled for about 27 hours total
That’s terrible math
I literally somehow squeezed an extra day in between two days
without ever noticing it
When I woke up on Wednesday morning in South Asia
we went for breakfast, had a meeting
Then we went back to our guest house
We had a full debrief of the week we were there.
WE then went into the city and went shopping
Walking around the smog and the dust of the city.
They took us all to the airport
dropped us off at the departures gate
We had to repack all the stuff we bought.
We went to the first of many security check points
Went to the ticket counter to get our boarding passes
Went through immigration to get out of the country
And then we waited in the airport for a few hours before boarding.
We flew to Doha, Qatar, the second nicest airport on the planet.
While there we waited for a few hours until
until we went through several more security check points
Got on the next plane
And flew for 14 hours back to New York
We got to New York and went through more security check points
Got all our luggage
Rechecked all our luggage
Got a bagel and a Diet Coke
Because those don’t exist outside of America
and the best place in the world to get a bagel is in New York
As part of my missionary work to the Southerners
I introduced all my Southern brethren to the Bagel and Cream Cheese
We had a Lord’s supper right there in the airport
I broke the bread and drank the Diet Coke
I prayed thankfulness for the bagel and Diet Coke God provided
and being safely on American soil
It was a beautiful thing
And then boarded the next plane
We landed in RDU after a few hour flight.
Went through more security check points
Got our luggage and put it on the van
And drove back to home.
By the time I walked in the door to my home
I had been wearing the same clothes through several countries
for over 25 hours, 11 time zones
I was probably nose blind to how I smelled
After trying to eat on the airplane
And spilling food down the front of me
Sitting next to other people
Whose bathing habits were less than mine
And after being in four different airports
Sitting in the seats and absorbing whoever sat in them before me.
Here’s the point,
When I got home, I was ready for a shower and to change.
But I was so tired from the travels
and honestly couldn’t tell really how I smelled
Because I was nose blind to my own aroma.
after living in it for so long.
When Paul writes to the Ephesians in chapter 4
he had hoped they would have known better
and that he knew he taught them better
Don’t walk in the way the Gentiles walk
This is not how you came to know Christ
and then Paul shares this discipleship process.
He says in verse 22
22 to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires,
23 to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,
24 and to put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.
Three things that Paul wants this church and all Christians to do
remove the old stinking way of life
Be renewed in the spirit of your minds
Put on the new self
Let me put it this way in the context of where I was at the time.
take off the old clothes
Take a shower
And put on new clothes.
Let’s walk through these one at a time.
Take Off the Old Clothes
Take Off the Old Clothes
Granted, it’s not clothes that he’s talking about here.
This is a whole new life Paul is talking about.
Remove the old stinking way of life.
We may not ever realize how much we truly smell like the world.
The key to this is
if we still smell like the world,
they won’t notice the difference.
So it’s time to take off the old stinking clothes of the world.
The issue may be that we have become nose blind to our old self
Even as Christians, it is possible that
we still hold on to the old self
It’s easy to say from Romans 6:6
6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be rendered powerless so that we may no longer be enslaved to sin,
What Paul is saying here is
this is a daily practice.
This is a one and done as far as our sin is concerned with God
but this is a daily practice to keep removing the old stinking mindset.
Jesus said it this way
23 Then he said to them all, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.
24 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will save it.
Take up our cross daily
that means we put our old self on the cross every day.
Who wants to walk around this life
with nasty, dirty, stinking old selves on.
Some may be nose blind to their old life
but I can assure you that everyone else around you
knows exactly how you smell.
Can the world smell the difference?
according to the Bible they can
14 But thanks be to God, who always leads us in Christ’s triumphal procession and through us spreads the aroma of the knowledge of him in every place.
15 For to God we are the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.
16 To some we are an aroma of death leading to death, but to others, an aroma of life leading to life. Who is adequate for these things?
If we smell good to the world, we are carrying the aroma of death.
However when we are the aroma of life
and the fragrance of Christ
we smell like death to the rest of the world.
They need to smell that life in us
so they can want the fragrance we have to offer.
So Paul tells us that after we strip off the old clothes,
we need to take a shower
Take A Shower
Take A Shower
Now if we wash the outsides of our bodies
we may be clean on the outside and dead on the inside.
Jesus accused the Pharisees of this
that they were whitewashed tombs on the outside
full of dead men’s bones.
So Paul is going to go a step further than just taking a shower
He is literally talking about brainwashing.
Brainwashing
Brainwashing
The next step is to renew our mind
we take a shower. brainwashing
As much as by taking our nasty clothes of the world off
We still carry whatever smell they had on our bodies.
Just because I removed all the clothes I was wearing for 25 plus hours
And placed them in the washing machine
I still needed to remove the dust, dirt and grime from
The streets of South Asia from my body.
I needed a shower and bad.
and that shower felt so good!
As we renew our minds in Christ
We begin to change our patterns of thinking
And how we filter information in our brains.
and we experience the joy of having the Word of God
wash through our minds
and the peace of God to pass through our brains.
What’s interesting is that Paul doesn’t say to change our behavior.
Although that may be a byproduct of renewing our minds
to change your behavior only hits the surface of the issue.
It would be like removing your old clothes
and never taking a shower
When a child is disciplined for something they did wrong
they may change their behavior while they are in eyesight
but the minute they leave your home
they are going to do whatever they want to do.
I’ve seen this happen over and over again.
Parents send their kids to a Christian school
and that school may have a ton of rules that may or may not be legalistic.
When they graduate, I ca almost guarantee you
97% of those that graduate
go hog wild when they leave your home and go to college
or when they get into work force.
They changed their behavior, but never changed their beliefs.
The biggest battleground is not our behavior or our circumstances.
The biggest battleground is our minds
and our enemy knows that.
He wants us to focus all our efforts
in changing the scenery and the circumstances of our lives
but never looking into the deeper issues
of where our circumstances come from.
James talks about the tongue being an untamable member of our body.
but then he further says that the tongue isn’t the issue.
The tongue get’s what it has to say from the deep well of our heart.
10 Blessing and cursing come out of the same mouth. My brothers and sisters, these things should not be this way.
11 Does a spring pour out sweet and bitter water from the same opening?
12 Can a fig tree produce olives, my brothers and sisters, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a saltwater spring yield fresh water.
The tongue gets what it is going to say from our mind.
If the mind is corrupt,
then it makes sense that out the mouth comes corruption.
If your mind is full of bitterness
then you will speak bitterness.
If your mind is constantly fearful
then you will always speak and act in fearful ways.
If the mind is convinced about poor self esteem
you will behave and act in a way that everyone is out to get you.
However, if we can renew our minds to believe the things of God...
imagine what our lives would look like if all we knew
were the things God told us
and all we did was act on the things God gave to us.
Instead of believing that I am a failure
we could believe that by God’s grace and power
I am enough.
38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,
39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
5 Keep your life free from the love of money. Be satisfied with what you have, for he himself has said, I will never leave you or abandon you.
Instead of believing that I am not good enough
We can believe I am complete in Christ
10 and you have been filled by him, who is the head over every ruler and authority.
14 For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are sanctified.
Instead of living in fear
we can be free from fear
7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but one of power, love, and sound judgment.
7 casting all your cares on him, because he cares about you.
18 There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. So the one who fears is not complete in love.
This is what it means to renew your mind
this is why Bible intake is so vital to the Christian
This is why prayer matters as we are dependent on God
because we cannot hope to go through life without His Word
and the constant conversation we need with Him.
The Bible is less about the stories we tell our children
but about the promises that lay within the stories.
We tell the story about David and Goliath
cute story about a little shepherd boy who
took a sling and killed a giant
then we tell our children it’s all about slaying our giants
and miss the bigger picture.
David may have held the sling, but who prepared David to throw it?
was it by coincidence that David just so happened to know how to sling rocks?
Was it just an act of childish bravery that
caused David to want to stand toe to toe with
a man that was three times his height?
What we should remember from that story is as Charles Spurgeon says,
that it was the best weapon in the world to reach so tall a giant.
and the very fittest weapon that David could have used,
for he had been skilled in it since his youth up.
There is always adaptation in the instruments that God uses
to produce the ordained result.
And though the story is not to them
or in the excellence in them,
but all is ascribed to God,
yet there is a fitness and preparedness in them that God uses
even if we do not.
God is playing the long game with David.
He made him a shepherd
where he had to train to use the sling to protect the flock.
He trained by killing lions and bears
so that when it came time for David to be called to fight Goliath
He had already been prepared for the moment.
Folks, God wants us to be prepared for our moments
and those moments are to glorify Him.
He prepares us through our times in the Word with Him.
and as He fills us with His Word
He is playing the long game for the times
we need to fight off the wrong thinking of the world
and the opportunities we have to represent Him
and glorify Him.
By renewing our minds we change our beliefs
then we change our behavior.
You can change your behavior
but something newer and shiny will come along
and reshape your behavior if it’s not rooted in beliefs.
and suddenly as James puts it
we are being thrown around by every wind of doctrine
What does it look like to change your beliefs and behavior?
When you get home read Hebrews 11
I won’t read the chapter
but this afternoon, take time to read through this.
Here is a listing of people that changed their beliefs and not just their behavior
People like Abel, Noah, Abraham, Rahab, Enoch, Moses, David, Samuel, the Prophets.
They did everything they did by faith
Faith in what?
Faith in the promises of God.
Promises that were given to them, but never received by them
39 All these were approved through their faith, but they did not receive what was promised,
40 since God had provided something better for us, so that they would not be made perfect without us.
What would make someone go to the extent that these Old Testament people did
and never receive the promises they were promised?
Someone said, “What they believed was powerful enough to affect their thoughts and their emotions, which led them to action.”
They had their minds renewed
and through that renewal, they accomplished some incredible things
and God accomplished some incredible things through them.
Renewing our minds is also a daily event.
I don’t know about you, but
I can easily fall back on stinking thinking in my life.
I have to constantly have God’s Word in front of me
in order to get through each moment of the day.
I don’t just take a shower once a week.
I have to shower every day
because I know how I get when I don’t shower every day
My brain is still part of a sinful body
and therefore it is corrupted, impure
and it naturally wants to do unrighteous things.
Before we got saved
we may have wanted to do unrighteous things
After we have been redeemed by Christ
we have the Holy Spirit living within us
To help us make better choices
Or at least try to guide us in a more righteous direction.
WE take off the old clothes
we renew our minds
Lastly Paul tells us to put on new clothes,
Put on A New Outfit
Put on A New Outfit
After. We take a shower, we put on new clothes.
why on earth would we want to
put on the same dirty clothes we had before?
I’ve seen too many people do this before.
I used to go to camp with middle school boys.
Middle school boys have the unique ability to be
nose blind to anything.
They can live in their own filth
and not want to shower for weeks.
Being in a camp environment is tough.
They don’t want to shower partly because
I believer they are afraid of water
sometimes because they can’t wake up in time
and also because they just don’t care.
You know when they start to want to shower?
when they get noticed by girls.
Suddenly this kid who you couldn’t bribe or threaten to take a shower
becomes an absolute germaphobe
and showers six times a day
spends an hour at a time in the shower
and comes out smelling like a bottle of Axe body spray.
Before that, they could care less.
they are ok with the smell
because they can’t smell it anymore.
Some Christians are the same way
They want to claim the title of being a Christian
But they are still wearing the dirty clothes from their past.
or haven’t showered off the old stuff
Still doing the same dirty things from before they accepted Christ.
That’s why as Luke so eloquently put it last week
Paul begins this section with
Don’t walk in the meaninglessness of your own thoughts
17 Therefore, I say this and testify in the Lord: You should no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thoughts.
20 But that is not how you came to know Christ,
21 assuming you heard about him and were taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus,
And that is not how you came to know Christ.
We have His Spirit living in us now
To help guide us for both better choices
And away from temptations that happen in our lives.
So the true Christian wants to renew their minds
And put on the righteous robes of Christ.
Warren Wiersbe said it this way
When you sow a thought, you also reap an action. Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny.
Folks, we take off the old clothes
renew our minds, brainwash, shower that thing
then we put on new clothes.
On Sundays, I preach at 10:00 a.m.
and I'm expected to be there on time, ready to go.
Some Sundays I preach two services,
so I go home and rest and come back to preach at 5:00 PM
Today I get to be part of three services
one at 10am, a wedding at 2pm, and a service tonight at 5PM
Day after day, week after week.
The strange thing is,
I never realized just how regimented my schedule is.
I never gave it a thought.
It was simply part of how life works.
Then I went to overseas.
And I discovered that not everyone operates
the way we do here in the United States.
You want to make an American pastor nervous?
Send them off with a national brother into the back woods
and tell them they are preaching a sermon.
We arrived at the church
In my head I’m asking
When does church start?
When everyone gets here,
and has had a chance to greet everyone. OK
How long is the service?
When does church end?
When it’s over. Sometimes an hour, sometimes 4 hours later.
When do I preach and for how long?
However long the Lord leads you and when we tell you.
We're doing a church program afterwards?
Great! What time is that? 3:00.
Or maybe 3:20? Or 4:00?
Well, no, not everyone is here yet,
so we'll get started around 4:15.
And all of a sudden, for the first time,
I realized just how much my life centered around the ticking of a clock.
Now, my point in sharing this is
not that one way of approaching life is better or worse than the other
(there are positives and negatives to both approaches).
My point is: centering my life's activities
around the movement of gears and clock hands
is something I was virtually unaware of,
to the point that it never occurred to me
that there was another way to approach life.
Our lives can get so caught up in our way of doing life
we let culture around us dictate how it should be
slowly that culture begins to invade.
Now punctuality isn’t such a bad thing
but what happens when we let other things like
social media begin to invade our culture.
Politics begin to invade our culture.
Other beliefs begin to invade our culture
These things need to be washed out
that’s why Paul is adamant about not walking like the Gentiles
the former culture
the way of the world
We need to put that stuff away, kill it
wash our brains with the Word
and put on the new life
so the world can see how we were created to operate from the beginning.
