In Christ Alone

the following message is made available by truth for life for more information visit us online at truthfortheworld.org I invite you to turn with me to Ephesians and to chapter four and we'll read from there from verse 17 Ephesians chapter 4 verse 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 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 they have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality greedy to practice every kind of impurity but that is not the way you learn Christ assuming that you have heard of him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus to put off your old self which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness amen we turn again to God in prayer father as we come now to the Bible we earnestly pray for the help of the Holy Spirit to reveal Christ to us to reveal ourselves to show us who and what we are outside of Christ and in Christ help us Lord to think to believe to obey for we pray in Jesus name Amen well you know when we come to the Bible not only as we come to it now in this public forum but as we turn to our Bibles on a daily basis we turn to a book that understands the world in which we live indeed there is a very real sense in which when we open up our Bibles we're reading them in a world that has been aptly and strikingly described for us in verses 17 18 and 19 the verses to which we paid attention last time and if you recall you know that we read them in light of Paul's opening section of his letter to the Romans and we were suggesting to one another that between them we really have the locus classic as' of humanity outside of Christ here is if you like a succinct and dreadful but equally clear understanding of humanity it turned away from God and we noted that it is marked by futility by darkness by alienation by ignorance hardness a callous nature to sensuality and a greediness that extends to every kind of impurity isn't it it's not a very nice description it's not the kind of thing that you're going to find by just reading the average novel or by turning up one of the the popular magazines that are available to us on a on a routine basis but it is a classic description of the natural state of humanity of which each of us is a part outside of Christ and one of the things that should be most striking to us is that when we consider this and we realize that it had immediate relevance to Ephesus a long way from here Ephesus in modern-day Turkey 2,000 years ago and here we are in the 21st century in Western culture and we realize that all these weeks and months and years have elapsed since these words were penned and it is pretty clear in fact it is glaringly obvious that humanity is unable to repair its walls unable to mend it's disappointments unable to rectify its flaws and it's false whether we take it on a micro level or on a macro level whether you take it in terms of relationships on an interpersonal basis or whether you regard the nations of the world this morning it's not difficult to realize that the world in which we live is broken and that the attempts at fixing that broken world have proved at best to be fleeting momentary and certainly not lasting the attempts remain the same throughout time if only we can educate the people a little better if only they have an understanding of things then I'm sure they will just clean their act up doesn't happen in Europe you buy cigarettes one buy cigarettes in in a white box that simply says on it this stuff will kill you and our people go in and say could I have two packs of that please so the education is not able to deal with their habitual behavior in the same way legislation cannot alter the darkness of humanity can alter the darkness in my own heart the heart of man is not changed by acts of parliament in London nor by acts of Congress in Washington DC all of those endeavors after all this time still cry out is there any remedy is there any possibility how in a world can this thing be fixed and of course the answer that Paul is providing to these Ephesians is that what man is able to do unable to do in himself God has done and into the spiritual blindness a light has shone into the hardness the grace and mercy of Christ has come into an impure and an unclean world the the light of righteousness and purity and and clarity stands out in stark relief and it's not as if somehow or another we look for this as it were in gutter press we don't even need to look for it it trips us up I was mentioning the physicists last week Hawking and now this week Dawkins Dawkins my most famous notorious relief for his book The God Delusion a very brilliant man there's no doubt about that commenting on the atonement commenting on the death of Jesus and page 253 in his book he describes the death of Jesus as a vicious sick masochistic repellant action to be dismissed as barking mad why does he say that because he is spiritually blind because his eyes have not been opened to the truth because of the hardness of his heart you contrast that with some pretty intelligent people who are here today they could probably take him on I couldn't but you could and yet you're prepared to stand up and saying how deep the Father's love for us how vast beyond all measure that he would give his only son to make a wretch his treasure now why is it that you're singing that and he's saying that is because you're cleverer than him and it's about IQ and if you're smart enough that you can get in no it's because the eyes of your understanding have been opened because the grace of God in His mercy has been revealed to you the answer to this as Paul has made clear is in him that is in Jesus in him you are now completely different he's begun in that way in Ephesians chapter 1 in verse 7 in him we have redemption through his blood he says the same thing in him when you hear the word of truth the gospel of your salvation you believed in him you were see sealed with a promised holy spirit now we understand as some of us do at least because we sing these things once I was blind but believed I saw everything proud and you have foolish at the same time or in another line from one of our songs I was a stranger chasing selfish dreams now I made one through grace alone now why is this Paul is explaining it he's coming to it here and he does it elsewhere you were at one time carrying out the desires of the body and the mind you were cheered there by nature children of Wrath like the rest of mankind as verse 3 of chapter 2 but God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses made us alive together with Christ and by grace you have been saved so this is the underpinning of all that he is now speaking to them about about the nature of the church what it means to be the church how gifts have been given to the church in order that church might function and then in order that the church might be marked not only by unity but also by purity and this is because God has intervened in deliverance in other words what he's making clear is the vast contrast between life outside of Christ 17 to 19 and life in Christ 20 and following he's not unique in this Peter does the same thing he reminds his scattered readers he that the Lord Jesus has called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light and so he says as aliens and strangers live in such a way as to make this clear in other words to come back to our passage we are to walk in a manner that is worthy of the calling to which we have been called let's be clear about this the business of Christianity is not to improve the world there are all kinds of people out there trying to improve the world that is not what Jesus came to do no actually Jesus came to take men and women out of the world to save them from the world and to bring in an entirely new humanity you see that's the significance of there is neither Jew nor Gentile Scythian bond or free he's not saying these things don't exist of course they exist but they totally subservient they're actually ultimately irrelevant in relationship to what God has chosen to do in making a whole new humanity that's what we were learning when he talked about breaking down the wall of separation between the Jew and the Gentile and he says you came from here and you came from here and he has made one new man out of the two what does he mean one new man out of the two as Jesus rose from the dead he is if you like the prototype of the first new man and when we are included in Christ then we are included in a new humanity that doesn't mean that we drop out of the world Jesus made that clear as well father I ask that you don't take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one but he also said of his followers they are not of the world even as I am NOT of the world so the Christian is different from the non-christian and if a person is a Christian then he or she knows that he is different and furthermore the non-christians know that we're different too unless we've decided to go with Boy George on a chemical a comma comma comma chameleon kind of Christianity where we're playing one side against the other read first Peter remember he says they will think you are weird because you do not run with them in the same profligacy that marks their lifestyle you once were perfectly fine in that realm but not anymore why because you're not in that realm anymore you see what Paul is actually saying in this section is this to these readers we are no longer to live as we once did as the old man which is his terminology why because we are no longer the old man but we are to become in practical expression the new man that we have been made in Jesus so there is an immediate contrast isn't there these you used to live in this way in the hardness of your heart callous engaged in these things listen to one degree or another it's true of us all Marie McShane died at 29 he was a very good Presbyterian minister a 29 year old man he wrote in his journal I know that the seed of every sin known to man dwells in my heart all right he may not have given expression to it all he probably hadn't but he knew that he was only one step away from every one of them and that's true of every one of us true of every one of us that's why there's no place for the Christian snob there's no place for looking down at people and saying can you believe that you should believe it because you're looking at yourself outside of Christ now the contrast is both challenging and it is at the same time encouraging what a what a picture always 17 18 19 and then he says but that is not the way you learned Christ it's a bit like in Hebrews where he describes the apostasy situation and he says however when I think of you I'm thinking differently that is not the way you learn Christ so when you were in Christ's classroom if we might put it that way what did you learn since resting he says you learned Christ doesn't say you learned about Christ but you learn Christ to learn Christ surely is more than simply knowing about Christ you take a survey around the building even later on today and ask people if they know about Christ and many of us say yes we do they'll have all kinds of ideas about him as well some will be true and some will be spurious but they haven't learned Christ you could say you know somebody I could say i knew Susan but I've learned Susan for a long time I've embraced everything that Susan is my life cannot be explained apart from that embrace there's something of that when he says you have learned Christ there's something of him in Philippians 3 where he says that I might know him what do you mean you might know him of course you know him you're the Apostle Paul that I might know him and the power of his resurrection and share in the Fellowship of his suffering so in other words to learn Christ is to embrace him in all that makes him Christ Jesus is the Lord and the king and the Savior and the prophet and the priest and so on and when that begins to permeate a life and an understanding of things unlike the dark understanding of outside of Christ then it flavors everything we mentioned Newton last week I mentioned him again now for the very same reason Newtons life was a shambles by his own testimony in fact shambles is to be kind to him he was profligate he was disgraceful he was horrible and yet he writes to him how sweet the name of Jesus as in a believers ear you met him and his friends who'd been on those ships with him heard heard that Newton was a was a vicar and and was writing hymns they said well you got a whole new take on Jesus Christ now cuz you've been saying that for a long time but this is different yes Jesus my shepherd Savior friend my prophet priest my king my lord my life my way my end what happened to Newton he learned Christ look at your text that is another way you learn Christ assuming that you've heard about him and we're taught in him he's not suggesting that they haven't it's just his way of calling in to verify the fact and to do so by going on to act in keeping with the word that they've heard and were taught in him here'd actually our verse in there says heard about him but there's no preposition in Greek there's no about it actually just reads and you have heard him as the Gospels had come to them they had heard Christ's voice the Apostles had preached and they had heard the voice of Christ remember when we were in chapter 2 a hundred years ago he says something along those lines he says for and and Jesus came and preached peace to you you were far off and peace to those who were near and people would say well I wasn't here when Jesus came and preached Jesus came and preached in Ephesus no what does he mean and he came and preached well you see it's what we've began to remind ourselves off that when the Word of God has taught that the voice of Jesus is aired this the mouth of God is in the Word of God so that far beyond the voice of a mere man at the level in which you process my sentences and syntax there is a dynamic that takes place there is a dialogue that takes place in the midst of the monologue which is a dialogue between the Spirit of God who wrote the Word of God and the heart of man who listens to the Word of God being conveyed without that all things are useless exercise without that I should simply be giving inspirational talks for fortune 500 companies if they would have me or doing something else where communication skills matter but no you see you heard him you heard him that's why the hymn writer can say I heard the voice of Jesus say come unto me and rest well you never heard the voice of Jesus was no audible voice what does he mean he heard him in the word you heard him and you were taught in him we're only here in verse 21 aren't we assuming that you have heard him and were taught in him in other words Christ wasn't only the subject matter or the teacher he was actually the sphere like the context in which all of this was taking place and you were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus interestingly he uses Jesus here this is the only time in the letter where he uses the word Jesus on its own why doesn't he say as the truth is in the Messiah or as the truth is in God he says as the truth is in Jesus I think he must do it purposefully to remind the people that they have believed in Jesus they have not believed in a philosophy they have not embraced a religion they have not simply exchanged one set of external circumstances for another no they fed a direct encounter with the Living God in the person of Jesus you have come to Jesus you have found the truth in Jesus the one the historical Jesus the one who was born of the Virgin Mary who suffered under Pontius Pilate who was dead and was buried who was raised from the dead who will return in power and great glory that's who you've come to trust in he who said I am the way and the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except through me why do we go to all the world why are they going to Bolivia why are we supporting people in in the in the lostness of Asia if this is not the case you see nobody will be interested in seeing the gospel going out to the world unless you have learned Christ you have heard him you have been taught in him then you find yourself saying everybody needs to hear this everybody needs to know this we go to all the world with Kingdom Hope unfurled no other name has power to save save Jesus Christ the Lord the need for the secular person on that London Bridge is the same need as exists in the life of the Muslim terrorists it is the need for Jesus as a savior and a free and we dare not allow the world to shut us down and to become just another little story and the addendum of Western culture no no not for a moment you did not learn Christ in that way you heard him you were taught in him toward what the truth that is in Jesus in Jesus you see if you do not have this conviction in your heart you you'll never stand you'll never stand for this if all you understand for is a nice way of life a kind of you know suburban Valley nice deal that's fine nobody cares about that you might get criticized by somebody but by-and-large is fairly acceptable but if you're gonna go in that party and say yeah I'll tell you something if you want to know about me I was I had a hard heart I was ignorant I was a snob man I I was so scientific I told everybody you couldn't believe that jazz and and and the person says and what happened to you well I learned Christ what is I heard him you heard him yeah I was taught in him people say well you know if you were on a train they would move their seat it move away from you our time is hastening on what then does he mean that you were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus what is this truth in Jesus that you were taught because this is the development of his argument now we have said and it is important to keep saying that when we read Paul as we're doing now it is important to understand Paul's usual argument or Paul's logical flow so that when we come for example to Ephesians 4 we can read it in light of Romans chapter 5 and 6 we can read it in light of first Corinthians 15 we focus on it here but we don't abstract it from the overall context of his instruction and what is Paul's great thing Paul's great thing it's constantly make clear to people that as a believer we are no longer in Adam in Adam right Adam is the the founder of the race Adam is the beginning of it all Adam is the one who was made in the image of God Adam is the one who sinned and brought all in Adam down into the destructive dimension of his sin that's why we exist in the realm of futility and darkness and so on however says Paul when a man or a woman hears the gospel and comes to trust in Christ then the ties that bind us to Adam in our old man are then broken and we are adopted into a whole new family so we are then he says no longer in Adam but now we are in Christ and all that is in Christ is now ours by dint of our union with him United with Adam we live in the realm of sin and rebellion and hardness and alienation and so on United with Christ we are brought into the realm of righteousness and holiness and truth and so on if you wanted in a sentence force Corinthians 15:22 for as in Adam all die so in Christ we'll all be made alive now I think this is why he says in verse 23 that part of what is going on is the renewal in the spirit of our minds because we need our minds renewed in this don't we so that we can learn to think about ourselves in the right way I had a hard time creating an outline for this talk as it's pretty obvious by now but I just did write three words down to try and keep me somewhere on track I wrote one word down which was futility the futility which is represented outside of Christ then I wrote down the word identity that that the key to grappling with us is understanding our right in Christ and then I wrote a final word down which is the word destiny which is the guaranteed assurance of the end of the line for those who have been removed from the realm of futility have a new identity in Jesus and have a destiny that is involved with righteousness and holiness and so on so that we would be really clear that in coming to the Lord Jesus Christ a radical change has taken place a radical change is taking place the old is gone and the new has come well if the old has gone and the new has come then there ought to be an indication of that in some way and what we must understand is that these verbs here are not in the imperative but that is not the way you learn Christ past tense assuming you've heard about him and we're taught in him past tense as the truth is in Jesus to put off your old self which belongs to your former to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self so we've got to put off we've got a renewed spirit of the mind and we've got to put on I was helped by reminding myself that Paul does the same thing essentially in Colossians chapter 3 and I think you'll be helped by this if you turn to it for just a moment in Colossians chapter 3 where the whole emphasis of the chapter is putting on the new self and Paul has urged these readers to put to death the things that were part and parcel of their pre converted state he says you really ought to take it seriously because on account of these the wrath of God is coming now here we go verse 7 Indy's you too once walked once walked this was the framework of your life you may not have done all these bad things but this was the world in which you lived because you see it's the world in Adam in Adam if we don't understand this in Adam in Christ thing we go immediately wrong because we start saying well I wasn't really that bad so it doesn't apply to me listen in Adam you're about as bad as you can get that's the doctrine of total depravity it doesn't mean that you're as bad as possible but it means that there is no part of your existence that is not infected and affected by sin so he says in these you too once walked when you were living in them but now you must put them all away anger malice slander obscene talk from your mouth don't tell lies to one another here we go seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator what's the point these verbs to put off and put on are not fresh commands they are simply the old commands which he gave them when he was with them and of which he now reminds them in other words what he's saying is when I came and preached the gospel to you and you understood the gospel when I explained to you that you're a dead man in Adam and that there is life in the Lord Jesus Christ when you trusted in Jesus you put off your old man and you put on the new man you will remove from one realm and placed in another realm your part was repentance God's part was regeneration he made you alive when you were dead in your trespasses and sins you see how vastly different this is from a kind of conversion story that says well you know I'm very interested in Christianity I like it is it makes me feel good about things so really that's fascinating that's not remotely what Paul is talking about here no it's a radical transformation III think probably the symbol of baptism is as helpful as any isn't it remember when Paul and writing out to the Galatians he says as many of you who were baptized into Christ have put on Christ you've put on Christ the picture there is a clear picture people would come down into the baptismal waters in their regular clothes they would disrobe themselves they would go into the to just turn to their skivvies they would go into the water they would be baptized they would come out and they would be given a brand spanking new fresh white robe and they would walk out and the people would say look at that look at that why did he do that well because he's put off the old man and he wants people to know I hate always tell you this but it was so striking to me in Yorkshire a man who'd been a very successful business guy very proud of his deal he had it buttoned down when he got baptized he insisted on being baptized in his business suit a really expensive suit and I said you know I said no no definite sorry went in man in his business suit and he and and he came out he said I'm gonna baptize all of my life my my business and everything is it get it all get it all down in here I'm putting off the old he didn't it wasn't that he stopped being a businessman but his motivation had changed entirely and I'd be strange to do that and then say hey hang on him and I want to go back over here and get my old stuff and put it all back on and and put it on on top over this lovely new robe that you've given me that's what Paul is saying here they said are you kidding me are you are you gonna go back and start that same stuff that March your life before you put off and put on it's not impossible we do it because the pool is so strong the environment in which we live says hey what do you care about marriage don't let anybody do that marriage stuff what do you care about purity what do you care about a little dishonesty come on enjoy the good stuff don't get wrapped up in that oh know why I put it off I put it on what's your mind gone wrong well I'm being renewed in my mind I'm being renewed in my mind you see that's where the Bible comes in loved ones oh I know you can read your Bible at home you can read it on your iPhone if you want you can go sit up on a hill and do it if you want but the purpose of God and bringing you into the community of God's people is in order first of all priority number one that you might hear from God because you and I both know that we words were on a three-fold front against the world the flesh and the devil and it is a continual and irreconcilable war it never quits all the way from here to finally we close our eyes in death and open up to realize who Christ is in all his fullness and in the meantime Paul says in light of that what has happened IRA's tense you put off you put on Harris terraced in other words a tense that describes something that happened in the past that has abiding significance for all of life he says in in the meantime you are being renewed in your minds things are different now let me go to Sunday school I can always get it by going to Sunday school things are different now something happened to me this is the testimony since I gave my heart to Jesus things are different now there's a change it must be since I gave my heart to him things I loved before have passed away things I love far more have come to stay because things are different now something happened to me and I gave my heart to Christ the poll says are you gonna go back and start that stuff again you put off you put on have your mind renewed in the scriptures don't buy the lie don't try and kit let's not train kit ourselves you know well Jesus mixed with sinners that's why you know listen when Jesus mixed with sinners he was never mistaken for one of them our inclination to mix with sinners is to obscure the radical difference that is represented in the change brought about by Jesus that's why you see the Bible says if there's no evidence of change then there's no reason to believe in conversion God does not justify those whom he doesn't sanctify he makes us alive with Christ in order that as we walk through this world we might be seen to be different final final observation from from pilgrims progress it remember in pilgrims progress when when they reached Vanity Fair and Vanity Fair was a fair wherein should be sold all sorts of vanity that makes sense and so here here there were at all times juggling's cheats games plays fools Apes knaves rogues and that of every kind and here are to be seen to and that for nothing thefts murders adulteries false swearers and that of a blood-red color now the pilgrims must needs go through this fair and when they went through the fair all the people in the fair were moved and the town itself is aware in a hub of about them and that for several reasons why because he said all is so nice of you to come to our fair we're glad that you like all this stuff all this adultery and all this murdering and all this foolishness and all this vanity we're glad to see that Christians are starting to really enter into things makes us feel a lot better about ourselves you're dead right it does no no no no no they were abuzz and I can't read it all because our time is gone you can read it for yourself depending on the version maybe around page 101 why was the town so stirred up first because the pilgrims were clothed with such kind of raiment as was diverse from the raiment of any that traded in that fare the people therefore of the fair made a great gazing upon them and some said they were fools and some said they were bad lumps and some they were outlandish men why do you just wear all the dirty stuff you're going to show up here with that robe of righteousness thing and as they wondered at their repair so they did likewise in their speech we're coming to that verse 25 are you a flat-out liar don't tell me you're a Christian but that which did not a little amuse the merchandisers was that these pilgrims set very light by all their wares they cared not so much as to look on them and if they called upon them to buy they would put their fingers in their ears and cry turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity and look upward signifying that their trade and traffic was in heaven and one guy grabbing hold of their carriage says what will you buy and they said out of the carriage we will buy the truth the truth the futility of life outside of Christ the identity that is represented in Christ and the ultimate destiny of all who are placed into Christ into a realm of righteousness and holiness I don't know everybody here today I don't know where you are in relationship to these things but I do know this that a lot of people are tied up they're tied up outside of Christ by failing to understand the breadth the wonder the simplicity of Christ's invitation and it is an invitation to come to him to come to him you did not learn Christ in this way you heard him you were taught in him the truth that is in Jesus and it's as simple as that I hear the voice of Jesus I respond to his voice I become his child the old goes the new comes he says they're all perfect then mm-hmm no this is a lifetime journey it's a lifetime tumble journey from the East Side to the park well Lord we just need so much the help of the holy spirit to assure us of these truths and apply them to our hearts we thank you that the call of the gospel is not to a philosophy to an idea to a religious experience but to a person that it is the truth that is in Jesus that Jesus who met the lady at the well that Jesus who called Zacchaeus down out of the tree that Jesus who healed a man let down through the roof that Jesus who was gracious to Peter when he fouled up the Jesus who has reached out to us Lord I pray for any who have never ever come to Christ that even today they may do so just in the simplicity of the response of their hearts here in Christ's voice and calling out to him to save them and befriend them may it be so for your glory sake amen this message was brought to you from truth for life where the learning is for living to learn more about truth for life with Alistair beg visit us online at truthfortheworld.org

Channel: Alistair Begg

Views: 2,151

Rating: 4.9322033 out of 5

Keywords: Truth For Life, Christian Living, Ephesians, Alistair Begg, Christian Thinking, Original Sin, Theology, Union with Christ

Id: 1fhxHlkg9cg

Length: 41min 30sec (2490 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 12 2020