Like This not Like That

Good morning and welcome to Dishman Baptist Church. Please take your Bibles and turn in them with me to Ephesians 4, Ephesians 4.

There is something in many of us that loves the idea of something old becoming new again. This is a fact that is well capitalized on by the HGTV network as well as the new Fixer Upper network and the number of flipping, renovating and otherwise renewing of old things. Some of you may remember Bob Villa and This Old House. He sort of pioneered the industry. We may never have the financial means to flip a house or the skills necessary to take an old house and make it new but we love watching those who do.

This next section of Ephesians really could be entitled Soul Fixer Upper - and maybe that should be the title of a little mini-series that we’re now going to encounter in our study of this great book. One of the best parts of those shows that I just mentioned is when the buyers or clients walk through an old dilapidated house with the hosts and they tell them all of the things that they are going to do to make an old house new again.

Paul, superintended by the Holy Spirit, is going to spend the next several verses telling us what things need to be renewed in our lives. Like a master craftsman, he is going to lay bare the human heart and expose the underlying issues that need to be rooted out of the life of a Christian and then identify those attributes that need to be replaced. And really what we’re going to learn starting this morning is that all of it needs to be razed and completely rebuilt. There is no cool shiplap or hard wood floors in our spiritual lives that are worth restoring or keeping. As we go through the next few weeks allow the Spirit to lay your heart bare and to identify as a master Craftsman those areas of each of our lives that need to be renewed.

This morning we need to start at the beginning - the initial charge that Paul delivers to the Ephesians at the outset of this rebuilding project. Please look with me at Ephesians 4:17-24.

Ephesians 4:17–24 CSB

Therefore, I say this and testify in the Lord: You should no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thoughts. 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. They became callous and gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more. But that is not how you came to know Christ, assuming you heard about him and were taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus, to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires, to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.

Paul has spent the last several verses - and in the case of the original letter, the last prolonged, run-on sentence - telling the Ephesians what they are meant to be corporately. Here he is going to return to the individual emphasis that he began this practical section of the epistle with back in verses 1 and 2.

Ephesians 4:1–2 CSB

Therefore I, the prisoner in the Lord, urge you to walk worthy of the calling you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love,

Notice the similarities in verse 1 with the beginning of verse 17 - Therefore I. Paul is gathering all of his credibility as an apostle and preparing to charge this church to act in a certain manner. But, just like in verse 1, here he finds the basis of his credibility not simply in his positional authority as an apostle but rather in the One who had delivered that authority to him and entrusted him with the responsibilities that attend that role. In verse 1 he highlights his condition as a prisoner in the Lord - just to remind us that he is a captive of Christ and is completely subservient to His desires and wishes - which also brings a deeper meaning to the picture he paints later in this section saying that Christ led the captives captive.

In these verse this morning Paul says “I say this and testify in the Lord”. The word for testify is martyromai and it carries the sense of not a simple testimony the way we would interpret testimony today, but rather it means to insist, to implore. It is a close synonym to the word in verse 1 translated as urge parakaleo. It is also the same root word that Paul uses in 2 Timothy 4:1 to charge Timothy before God and Christ Jesus to preach the Word.

The point is that this is solemn and important information that Paul is about to impart to the Ephesians. It is not something to be taken lightly or to be viewed as something that is optional. These next verses are not a simple request but rather a command issued to the church by the Spirit.

Notice also the repetition of the word walk. In verse 1 Paul tells the believers to walk worthy of the calling they have received. Here it is the exact opposite - rather than walk that way, he says do not walk this way. We’re going to come back to this opening statement of Paul’s later as I want to examine the two contrasts that he makes in the passage first and then return to this main statement that he makes at the beginning.

Not Like This

Paul begins his description of the Gentiles in a rather unflattering fashion. Now it is important to recognize that Paul is not using the term gentile here in the ethnic sense as much of the church that he is writing to would have been made up of ethnic gentiles. They would have remained uncircumcised and thus could not even be considered Jewish proselytes. In using the term gentile he is referring to the spiritual status of the people who are outside of Christ - who are not a part of the entity that Paul has spent the better parts of chapters 2 and 3 teaching about. They are not a part of the church.

Paul says that they have futile thoughts - that their thought process are marked by futility. He is not saying that they can’t think but rather that the results of their thinking results in fruitlessness. Their thinking is useless. It is idle. It is empty. It is a term that was used in conjunction with references to idol worship. That the gentiles, many of whom worshipped idols were by nature empty minded. The author of Psalm 115 captures this idea as he writes

Psalm 115:4–8 CSB

Their idols are silver and gold, made by human hands. They have mouths but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see. They have ears but cannot hear, noses, but cannot smell. They have hands but cannot feel, feet, but cannot walk. They cannot make a sound with their throats. Those who make them are just like them, as are all who trust in them.

The church at Ephesus was surrounded by pagan idol worship. The city of Ephesus was home to the temple of Artemis or Diana considered to be one of the wonders of the ancient world. The sale and presence of idols surrounded them and those who worshipped these idols surrounded them as well. Paul is saying here that the thinking of those who worshipped such abominations would ultimately turn useless because they were not acknowledging the true source knowledge and rational thought - God. Paul would write to the Roman church

Romans 1:21 CSB

For though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became worthless, and their senseless hearts were darkened.

This is familiar to us though isn’t it. We live in a world where rational thought seems to be rapidly disappearing. We used to fear that common sense was an endangered species - with quotes like “Common sense is the most limited of natural resources” and “Common sense is not a gift. It is a punishment because you have to deal with everyone who doesn’t have it.” But now it seems that even rational thought is disappearing rapidly from our society. Evolution. Global warming. Common core math. These are all examples of a loss of the ability to rationally process information. To think that everything somehow came into existence from nothing. To think that temperatures are now somehow higher than they were two thousand years ago - but have no data from that time to corroborate the theory.

I remember listening to a podcast a few years ago where an engineering student wouldn’t tell the host that 2+2 equals 5 was wrong. In this environment I’m not worried about our old bridges even if they do collapse because they’ve stood for decades on solid engineering. I’m worried about the new bridges that will be engineered by people who can’t answer the simple question of 2+2 equals 4.

Paul says that the reason this is happening, the reason that their thinking is futile, is because their understanding is darkened. It is fairly safe to say that the darkened heart, the spiritually dead heart and mind is in the dark. Paul is reminding his readers of what he said regarding their former state earlier as he wrote

Ephesians 2:2–3 CSB

in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient. We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also.

They were dead in their trespasses and incapable of understanding not only the good nature of God but also the common workings of the world. In many ways we experience much of the same issues today. We are the most educated, most technologically advanced generation in the history of the world. We’ve put men into outer space. We’ve mapped the very building blocks of life. And yet there are people who legitimately think that we’re all a part of some computer simulation. That we’re the who’s that Horton hasn’t heard yet. That we’re all a part of some massive Truman Show. That everything is fake.

We’re so confused. Not we - but the society we live in. They’re so confused that they can’t see why this would be a problem - there was an article published this week with this headline “We’re uncomfortable in our own locker room. Lia Thomas’ UPENN teammates tell how the trans swimmer doesn’t always cover up his (It actually reads her but I fixed the typo there) male genitals when changing and their concerns go ignored by their coach”. I mean what could possibly be wrong with that? The gentiles understanding is so darkened that they don’t see an issue with that.

And the result of this is that, as Paul writes in Romans 1:21 as we just read, their senseless hearts are darkened and they are excluded from the life of God. The verb excluded in the perfect tense reminds the readers of what Paul said about them in Ephesians 2:12 - that they were at one time excluded from the covenant of God but have now been brought near through Christ. What these readers once were the gentiles still are. The perfect tense of the verb reinforces that the conditions that caused their exclusion in the past still exist and contribute to the continuance of their exclusion now.

Paul says that there are two reasons why they are excluded - their ignorance and the hardness of their hearts. The term ignorance is a hard term to accept in most conversations. Most people would prefer to be called just about anything except ignorant. In second temple Judaism ignorance was often a way to refer to sins that may have been committed unintentionally. It is the picture of the sacrifice described in Leviticus 5:18

Leviticus 5:18 CSB

He must bring an unblemished ram from the flock according to your assessment of its value as a guilt offering to the priest. Then the priest will make atonement on his behalf for the error he has committed unintentionally, and he will be forgiven.

And the way that Paul refers to sinners in Acts 17:30

Acts 17:30 CSB

“Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God now commands all people everywhere to repent,

Now Paul is not trying to minimize the seriousness of sin or the complicity of the gentiles in rebelling against God, in refusing to acknowledge Him or His truth and the resultant futility of thought that they have fallen in to, but he is seeking more to point out the factors that contribute to their lack of understanding than to highlight their guilt in sin.

Of course the next phrase draws them even further away from God. While one might be excused for ignorance in Scripture - hence the expression for repentance in Acts 17:30 - a hard heart is the result of stubbornly refusing to repent and a continual denial of the God-ness of God. It was the description used for the Pharisees in Mark 3 when they sought to have Jesus executed

Mark 3:5 CSB

After looking around at them with anger, he was grieved at the hardness of their hearts and told the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out, and his hand was restored.

The term here is a medical term that describes the calcification that forms around broken bones and becomes harder than the bone itself. It also describes the hardening that can occur in joints making them immobile. A hard heart is one that is permanently and completely against God with very little hope of it ever softening. I don’t want to say no hope because there is the promise of God taking a heart of stone and replacing it with a heart of flesh in Ezekiel. So while God may take sovereign action to soften the hardened heart, in most cases those who remain in willful sin and disobedience with a darkened understanding and futile mind only further petrify.

In the northeastern corner of Arizona there is a national forest of a few hundred thousand acres that is home to a petrified forest. The trees are beautifully multicolored and hard as rock. But there are petrified hearts walking all around us every day. Paul says that they have become calloused.

This word means to lose the capacity to feel shame or embarrassment. To become so detached from reality that anything goes - and nothing seems wrong. In the world that Paul was writing there was the antics that took place under the guise of religion at the temple of Artemis. It was a sexual cult and really anything was available. Much the same shift is taking place in our culture today. The only thing that is wrong is to point out that something might be wrong. And so we have people claiming to be whatever sex they want to be. We have women marrying themselves - it is a practice called solagamy and it is basically the practice of marrying yourself.

Then there is the story that came out of LA this week with this headline “Trans child molester, 26, who sexually assaulted a girl, 10, is sentenced to just two years in a juvenile facility: judge slams woke LA DA who refused to prosecute her (meaning it’s a him) as an adult.” So basically this DA is so calloused and can’t see the foolishness of putting a 26 year old man into a juvenile detention center with young girls because he calls himself a female…and there’s no shame, there’s no embarrassment that this is happening. It has been shoved down our throats as being normal.

We have become like the youth in the story from ancient Greece. There was a young man who stole a fox and then accidentally came upon the man he had stolen it from. To remain uncaught, the youth took the fox and stuck it in his shirt. He stood without moving a muscle as the frightened fox tore out his vital organs. Even at the cost of a painful death he would not own up to his own wrongs.

Our society is much the same. The gentiles of Paul’s day and the gentiles of our day have gone so far that they can’t say anything is wrong now and it is killing them. Their penchant for sin is killing them. Along with the last thing that Paul says regarding gentiles - that they have given themselves over to the practice of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more. We shouldn’t be shocked by any of this - we say this in our house “heathens are going to heath”. They are going to follow their darkened hearts and minds and grow more and more calloused as time goes on.

But Paul is about to shift gears.

Like That

But that is not how you came to know Christ - assuming you heard about Him and were taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus. The verb for came to know can carry the meaning of simply learning information but we know that that is not how you come to know Christ. Paul is speaking here of the Gospel and coming to know Him as a one time act. This is a direct reference to salvation and should drive the readers back to what Paul wrote earlier that in Christ they were made alive.

Ephesians 2:4–5 CSB

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace!

Paul is immediately contrasting the futility and the deadness of the gentiles with the life that has been brought about in the believers through the work of Christ on the cross and His subsequent resurrection. By saying assuming you have heard about Him Paul is not calling in to question whether they have but rather conveys a truth that Paul knows to be true. Much the same way that Jesus uses if in John 15:18

John 15:18 CSB

“If the world hates you, understand that it hated me before it hated you.

This is a statement of fact by Christ - not if the world hates you but since or when the world hates you. Paul is saying the same thing here by saying that assuming you have heard about Him. Paul knows that these believers have heard and been taught the Gospel about Christ and that many of them have heard the Spirit’s call on their lives and submitted coming to know Christ.

He now tells them that there are three things they must do that are counter-point to the actions of the world.

They must take off the old man. Take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires. In order for the believers to begin to serve Christ they must take off their old way of life. This is a reference to the removal of a garment as the reference to putting on the new self is a reference to putting on a new garment. This is something that requires consistent, diligent effort on the part of the believer. Paul chronicles for us in Romans 7 the now but not yet condition and desires of the Christian life - that we may desire not to sin but yet our old flesh still rears its ugly head and drives us toward the sins that we are so familiar with. If you are a believer you no longer have the luxury of saying “the devil made me do that” - if you ever had that luxury. Satan is not omniscient, omnipotent or omnipresent. And in fact he doesn’t have to do anything more to get you to sin than to simply stay out of your way. You are predisposed to being a sinner.

But we must realize that this process of putting off the old self is more than simply doing the right things. It is more than behavioral modification.

Dustin Benge said this “Killing sin isn’t simply about behavioral modification but about placing your affections in a superior satisfaction - Jesus Christ.”

Puritan John Flavel said “Study the Word more, and the concerns and the interests of the world less.”

In so doing we will, with the help of the Holy Spirit in our lives, accomplish the second task that Paul gives the believers - be renewed in the spirit of your minds. Oh what need we have of this. If only we would think differently then we would be better at the Christian life. But that is not the point of this statement. We have lots of resources to help us think differently.

Consider these words from Alistair Begg “There has never been a time in Christianity’s history when more how-to books have been written for believers. Yet how are we really doing? We seemingly know how to do everything, but we don’t know who God is.”

If we want to be renewed in our minds we have to stop playing at church, playing at being a Christian and have our passions changed such that our sole desire in life is Christ. That our deepest needs are satisfied in Christ. That our sweetest satisfaction is found in Christ. Only then will we find that our minds are being renewed and that we are putting on the new self.

Look what Paul says here about this new self - the one created according to God’s likeness. There was a marring of the likeness of God in each and every person at the Fall. The good image of God that Adam and Eve were created in was marred by sin. Now we’ll never completely get rid of sin in this life but the closer we come to God, the more the spirit of our minds is renewed, the more we will reflect the image that He created us to be. We will be found to be in righteousness and purity - two synonyms that are found when we are in the truth. The truth is Christ - He is the ultimate source of truth and the only way that our thinking will not be futile. Righteousness and purity can only happen in the light and when we are there we will not have our minds darkened. When we are being renewed in the spirit of our minds we can’t help but be connected to God and our ignorance and hard hearts are replaced with knowledge and hearts of flesh. We can’t be callous and be righteous - because guilt is a tool that is meant to bring us to repentance, not for the sake of condemnation but for the experience of forgiveness.

We wont have time to desire impurity when we are found in purity and our desire will be for more and more of Him - a wellspring that will never run dry. The pursuits of this world are empty and fruitless. They’re all vanity said the wisest man who ever lived. But the pursuit of Christ will never leave us wanting.

Just quickly though look back with me at verse 17.

Ephesians 4:17 CSB

Therefore, I say this and testify in the Lord: You should no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thoughts.

What is the first thing Paul says to his friends in Ephesus? What is his charge to them? That you should no longer walk as the Gentiles do? If that is the case - then why does the modern church spend so much time trying to be like the gentiles? Why do we have so many buildings where this Word is not being taught today. This is nothing new - Paul writes this to these believers to remind them that this is a charge they must not only follow through on but fight against compromising in. Charles Spurgeon in the late 1800’s said

“I believe that one reason the church of God at this present moment has so little influence over the world is because the world has so much influence over the church.”

Oh that we would seek to put off the old practices, that we would seek to be renewed in the spirit of our minds through the work of the Holy Spirit as we study His Word and the person of Christ together, that we would each put on the new self that we might more clearly reflect the image of God - the one we were created to be - in His likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.