Needing a Change of Clothes

Introduction

Close your eyes and imagine you are in a pitch-dark room. What do you see? Trick question. You are in darkness, you can’t see depth nor can you can’t see the form of objects. In other words, darkness can appear empty. Keep your eyes closed and now imagine this scenario in the dark. You wake up in the middle of the night and let’s say you need a drink of water so you walk from your bedroom to the kitchen but you don’t want to wake anyone up so you keep the lights off. On your way to the kitchen you might step on an object, for example a Lego piece, and because you’re a more mature Christian instead of saying a 3 letter cuss word that starts with D you say the Christian cuss word, Darn! After stepping on the Lego piece you then misjudge where the corner of the couch actually sticks out and you whack it with your knee and now your hobbling on one foot as you are holding your knee and foot and by now you’ve woken up the entire house. Hopefully we can all agree it’s hard to see in the dark and that it’s hard to make calculated and accurate decisions in the dark. In the end it would’ve been better if we had some source of light to guide us through the dark.

It makes sense that God’s first command of creation in Gen. 1:4 “Let there be light” Because, with light one can see reality, you can see the things that are in front of you.

Transition Statement: Now I want you to remember the descriptions of darkness and light when reading our text today.

Living in the Darkness

Christian Standard Bible Chapter 4

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.

Read Therefore in v. 17 then stop

Whenever we see the word Therefore at the start of a text we need to ask, “What is the therefore there for?”

If you remember last week’s sermon, the passage right before this talks about the saints, which is another word for believer, should be equipped for building up the Church. They should be growing in maturity no longer being tossed by false teachings as well as growing in every way that is Christ-like. So in light of this Paul says this...

Read Eph. 4:17

Quick note on the word “Gentiles”. There are times when we read the word, gentile, and it simply means a non-Jew but here it is referring to specifically non-Jews who are pagans.

Continue reading Eph. 4:18-19

Christian Standard Bible Chapter 4

18 They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them and because of the hardness of their hearts. 19 They became callous and gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more.

I want to stop here for a moment before we keep going in our text today. In verses 18 and 19 we see this image of darkness. Do you remember what we said about darkness earlier?

We said, “it’s hard to make calculated and accurate decisions in the dark.” This is where that scenario of walking through the dark to get a drink of water and our passage connect. Just like how it is hard to navigate in the dark, it is hard to navigate spiritually when your a living a spiritually dark lifestyle.

Verse 18 says that unbelievers are darkened in their understanding. This means that their understanding isn’t clear, it’s darkened, it’s hard for them to make calculated and accurate spiritual decisions. How did they become this way? Verse 18 says that it’s because of the hardness of their heart which overtime it became callous and they verse 19 ends with this key phrase, “and they gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more.”

At the end of this verse we can see that their selfish desire for more and more is ultimately the reason that they have become hard hearted toward God. It’s this selfish attitude that says I will do whatever I want to. I will do whatever makes me feel good. I will do whatever satisfies my cravings.

Remember even though Paul is describing how unbelievers live, he is warning believers. So I address you church, Crosspoint member, believer in Christ, are you being led by your selfish desires or are you submitting to the Lord in everything? Are you leading a life of gluttony, where you eat anything and everything that you want with no regard for how God commands you to take care for your body because it is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Or are you leading a life of sexual satisfaction outside of a biblical marriage, are you looking at porn for sexual satisfaction, having sex outside of marriage, are you lusting after other women or men in a sexual way even though God calls you to find satisfaction for intimacy spiritually in your relationship with Jesus Christ. Or, here is one that hits me hard, are you living a life of laziness where you desire to lay around more than following after God’s purpose for your life? Whatever your selfish tendency is, brothers and sisters in Christ we need to get real with our desires and be honest with God and confess our desires to Him.

Transition Statement: As we continue in our text we see that Paul calls believers to come out of the darkness because it’s not in the darkness but rather in the light where we came to know Christ as our personal savior.

Putting on New Clothes

Christian Standard Bible Chapter 4

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, 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.