Living the NEW LIFE in Christ | Ephesians 4:17-32

hey guys welcome back to my channel i feel like it's been so long since i've done a sit down video so i'm so excited to be back at it as you can see we are not in my normal filming space so i actually moved to nashville temporarily if you didn't watch my moving vlog video check that out because i explain why i'm here how long i'm here all that kind of stuff but here we are this is my room for the time being and i haven't been able to do a new bible study series here on youtube because the equipment i need for that video i wasn't able to travel with it i just brought my vlog camera which i'm filming on now and for that one i need like the overhead tripod and all that stuff and so i'm planning to do my next bible study series started at the beginning of august once i'm back and settled and i have all my equipment but in the time being i wanted to do a standalone bible study on ephesians 4 as you can see from the title and the reason i wanted to do this video is because i actually just spoke on this passage in my church's youth group which i serve in as i've mentioned before we've been going through the book of ephesians and i spoke on chapter four for our online youth group and i was just so pumped and so excited on the things i learned in prepping that message and then giving it and so i wanted to share it in a youtube video as well so this won't be an entire series through the book of ephesians at this point though i would love to do that in the future this will just be a standalone study on ephesians 4 and so i want to kind of give some context to the book of ephesians of what we've been learning as we've been going through the study in our youth group and i'll give that to you here then i'm pretty much just going to give the message as i gave it for the youtube video for youth group side note the apartment i'm in right now is near a really busy street and so if you hear some cars going by or background noise i apologize we are working with what we have got 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 learned christ assuming that you have heard about 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 in the likeness of god in true righteousness and holiness as for some context ephesians is a letter that the apostle paul wrote to the church at ephesus and as you know from my bible study videos i really love to use the bible project as a resource as i'm studying and getting the context of a new book it's always so important to get the context of what we're reading and so i want to share a sort of summary statement that the bible project gives on the book of ephesians to understand as we're going into it so it says that ephesians is a book that is meant to challenge us as the reader to respond to the gospel story in the way that we live our own story and so essentially the book of ephesians it presents the gospel message the magnificence of what jesus did for us and how we are to live in light of that and so as we were going through the series for youth group in chapter one we learned about how honestly it's the gospel presentation chapter one really goes into how we are adopted into the family of god through the blood of jesus and how god's purpose is to unite all things in jesus and then we move to chapter two which talks about how we were dead in our trespasses but god made us alive together with christ that god didn't come to make okay or good people into better people but he came to make us as dead sinners alive and then we get into ephesians 3 which talks about being rooted and grounded in god's love and knowing god's love comprehending the breadth and length and height and depth and for our youth group series we learned about how what we are rooted in it influences what we believe and why we do the things we do and then we had another person come in and speak on the beginning part of chapter 4 which talks about how we are prisoners for the lord and prisoner can have this negative connotation but in this chapter and in this passage really what it means is to be locked up with god connected with him and working with him to build his kingdom and so that is the context of the book of ephesians up until the second half of chapter four which is what i spoke on and so essentially we've been given this gospel presentation where we were dead but made alive and we are rooted in god's love and we are connected with him to build his kingdom and now in the second part of chapter four paul is addressing how we are to now live this new life that we have in jesus in christ as a part of the body of christ and so it talks a lot about unity and the old self and the new self how there was this old way of life that we had before that we are to put off and this new way of life now that we have in christ that we are to put on and so to talk about this paul really uses the language of clothes he says again that we are to put off the old way or the old self and we are to put on the new way or the new self i'm looking at my notes if you see me looking over here that's why but so we're going to put on this new self that is created in the true righteousness of god and holiness and so that's what we find in ephesians 4 verse 24 and so what this sort of makes me think of is dress code so for me i grew up going to a christian school and we had a dress code of things that we could wear to school and things that we couldn't wear to school and so i'm really familiar with the idea of a dress code maybe you are too maybe you've had some sort of a school you went to or a camp you attended where you had to adhere to a dress code and typically a dress code will reflect the values of whatever institution is implementing it and so for me my christian school our dress code reflected those values and christian camps i've gone to the dress codes that they have had have reflected the values of those camps and so i've had some experience with that and i've also had experience with uniforms so maybe if you haven't had a dress code experience you can relate to having to wear a uniform so for me one of my first jobs was working at a place called lord's ice cream it's a cute little old-fashioned ice cream parlor and our uniform we had to wear a white t-shirt and then jeans and a blue apron that they provided to us and that was our uniform for working there i've also worn a uniform for lifeguarding that was another job i had and we had a specific swimsuit we had to wear and a t-shirt we had to wear over that when we weren't in the pool and that was our uniform for lifeguarding i also played for a club soccer team growing up and so we had a uniform we wore for that it was a red i think for home and white for away and so that was our uniform for soccer and as we think about a uniform what is the purpose of a uniform the purpose of a uniform is to be an indication to others of the group to which you belong and so as paul is talking about putting on this new way of life putting on this new self that we are to put on as a part of the family of god essentially what paul is doing is he's giving to us this uniform that we are to wear as a part of this family of god that we have been adopted into and when we wear this uniform when we put on this way of living as a part of the body of christ then it's going to be an indication to the world of who we belong to because we don't belong to the world we are not to live as the world lives we are not to look as the world looks but rather we are called to live a life that builds others up in christ because we belong to christ and we belong to the righteousness of god and so as we think about this idea of putting on the new self there's a couple things we need to think through the first thing is that we need to start with renewing our minds so for the youth group that i gave this message and we typically when we're not in you know coronavirus times have this big series we do at the beginning of the school year called fall classic and it's the series we do to kick off the school year and it usually involves some sort of friendly competition between the different grades and so each grade might have a color or a theme they have to dress up as and there's all these competitions and messages and it's just this fun way to start the school year and so this is something that's been going on at my church for a really long time it was actually a thing when i was in high school and when i was attending that youth group and i remember when i was a sophomore for fall classic we were assigned to be the sophomore skaters so i know it might be a little hard to believe but i wasn't really a skater in high school my dressing style tended to fall more on the preppy side of things even more so than i would say how i probably dress now but i feel like in high school the big thing maybe you can relate were like the hollister polos with the little matching cami underneath and so that's really what i would tend to wear and then when i was in high school the style of jeans that was popular at least what i wore were bell bottoms so the jeans that are more fitted in the top part of your leg and then they flare out in the calf and so that's what i wore that was what i was used to wearing i had never worn skinny jeans up until that point they weren't really on trend yet and i just did not like the way they looked i was not about them but here i was assigned to be a part of the sophomore skaters and so skaters when i was in high school probably still i don't know or skinny jeans and so i remember distinctly going to pacsun and for the first time in my life buying a pair of skinny jeans and a studded belt so that i could dress up as a sophomore skater and so i was not looking forward to buying these jeans i bought them so reluctantly just to be able to participate in this youth group series and i remember that i swore to myself that these skinny jeans would die a lonely death in the deepest drawer of my dresser as soon as fall classic was done but the funny thing is is that several years after that i found myself in fall classic once more but this time not as a high school student instead as a leader and my girls at the time were juniors and we got assigned to be the junior skaters so here i was having to dress up in this same style of skinny jeans and the skater sneakers and the studded belt or whatever else it was but the only difference is that this time i didn't have to go out and buy skinny jeans because i already had skinny jeans and in fact they were all i wore this was a couple years back and at that time that was the big trend and for years that was all i wore were skinny jeans that was what i was used to wearing and that was what i liked and now here we are years after that and now i don't really wear the bell bottoms i wore in high school or the skinny jeans i wore five or however many years back but really what i tend to wear now when i wear jeans are the sort of straight leg or boyfriend style jeans that just tends to be what i gravitate towards now what i like and not only do i not wear the bell bottoms now or the skinny jeans now but it's actually really hard for me to imagine wearing those things because they're just not what i wear now but in the words of justin bieber i will never say never why because trends change what's presented to us by the world as good or desirable or even right it constantly changes and we might think that we aren't influenced by the trends that are constantly changing around us but we are and that's why we have those moments when we look back at a photo of ourselves from middle school and we think what was i thinking why would i ever wear that the answer is because that's what was in at the time that was what was stylish or the haircut that was cool at the time but trends are constantly changing and we are influenced by these changing trends when we are surrounded by something and we see it all the time it starts to slowly grow on us even if we thought we would never give into it it moves from this thing up i would never wear that you know what maybe it's not so bad too you know i think i kind of like it and the next thing we know we have full-on embraced the trend and taking it on as our own i don't know if you guys have seen i'm sure you have the tie-dye lounge sets that are all over all of social media right now i think they really became a thing especially during quarantine on tick tock i believe and when i first saw them i was just not about it i was like i don't want to look like a sherbet rainbow tie-dye whatever thing that's going on i just didn't get the appeal of that trend but sure enough i started to see it more and the more i started to see it the more my taste started to change and i started to think you know what maybe it's not so bad and i actually kind of like the way it looks in that style and sure enough i just bought a set of matching ones with anna who's my roommate here in nashville and i love them and so the point is that trends change and they influence the way that we think we are influenced by what we ingest we are influenced by what we take in from the world around us and this isn't such a big deal when it comes to talking about what kind of jeans we want to wear or a tie-dye lounge set but when we realize that we are also influenced in our way of thinking in our opinions and how we come to form what is right and what is wrong and how we should live then we realize that it is more significant and so because we are constantly being influenced by the world around us whether or not we realize it it's hard to fully trust what we think is the right or the wrong way of living because again it is influenced by everything around us and it is constantly changing and so in order to truly know what is right and wrong and what is the right way to live how god has called us to live we need something outside of ourselves something that is constant and unchanging a sort of dress code if you will that is unchanging amidst the constant trends and that is what paul is giving to us here in ephesians 4. paul is telling us that there is a wrong way and there is a right way there is this old way of life that is centered on the self on the flesh and on the world and that is the old self that we are to put off and there is this new way of life that is centered on christ and that is what we are to put on because culture changes trends are constantly changing but god's word does not people change and people will always fluctuate on what they believe to be right and wrong but god will not hebrews 13 8 says that jesus is the same yesterday today and forever he is unchanging and right before paul tells us to put on the new self he tells us first to be renewed in the spirit of our minds we find that in ephesians 4 verse 23 paul realizes that our way of thinking is always going to be influenced by something the question is what and the answer is that it should be influenced by scripture because scripture presents to us truth as this passage says in jesus is truth he is the way the truth and the life and we cannot know truth apart from him romans 12 1-2 says do not be conformed to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind we are not to take on the characteristics of the world around us and to look like the world looks but rather we are to be transformed in renewing our mind in god's truth in scripture earlier on in ephesians 4 there's a verse that says this it's a verse 14 paul is saying so that we would no longer be children tossed to and fro by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine by human cunning by craftiness and deceitful schemes so he's giving us this picture of a boat really and if you have a boat in the middle of an ocean with no anchor in it well then that boat is going to be tossed to and fro by every wind and every wave that comes against it and the boat is going to go in whatever direction that wind and those waves push it but if a boat has an anchor something that is anchoring it to the bottom of the ocean floor then it will stand firm and it will not be tossed to and fro by all these waves the truth that scripture presents to us of what is right and wrong of how god has called us to live that is our anchor and when we are not anchored in truth then we are going to be tossed to and fro by how the world tells us we should live by what the world presents to us as right and wrong and if we are not being influenced by scripture and showing us how we should be living as a part of the body of christ then we are going to be influenced by what we see on instagram we are going to be influenced by what we see our friends doing we are going to be influenced by the world around us and tossed to and fro but when we are regularly consuming scripture and renewing our minds in the truth of scripture then we are firmly anchored and rooted in truth and we will not be tossed to and fro by waves the first thing to remember in putting on this new self is that it has to start with a renewed mind the second thing is that we have to know the dress code so as we continue reading in ephesians 4 paul really goes into the characteristics of the old self versus the new self and so if he is telling us to put off this old self and to put on this new self we first have to understand what those two things are so i'm going to read through a list i have here in my notes that pulls from these passages what paul identifies as both the old self and the new self so for the old self here is what he says the old self is characterized by being calloused or hardened by being given over to our fleshly desires so ruled by our every whim of what we feel like doing it is full of falsehood and deception given over to anger by stealing or work done without integrity by being selfish with our time and resources by ignoring the conviction of the holy spirit by being full of gossip or corrupt talk by being bitter or speaking falsely about someone or in a way so as to bring about damage to their reputation which is slander that that passage refers to or having the intention or the desire to do evil or to cause ill will which is the malice that passage refers to so this is the old self these are characteristics of the old self or the old way of life that god through paul is calling us to put off and then in contrast we have the new self which we are being called to put on and the new self is marked by this it is marked by humility by gentleness by love unity peace a renewed mind by using our gifts to serve god's family by being people who speak the truth in love by seeking resolution and conflict by working hard so that we may share what we have with those in need by building each other up with our words by submitting to the holy spirit by being kind tenderhearted forgiving one another as christ has forgiven us so this is the old self versus the new self one of the roles of the holy spirit is to help empower us to live in this new life this new way of life that god has called us to the holy spirit empowers us to put on this new self because it is not something we can do in our own strength or by our own works if you followed along with my galatians bible study with me series specifically chapter five you might recognize some of those characteristics of the new self because they really reflect what we see as the fruit of the spirit that is talked about in galatians 5 and we just see that consistency and that continuity all throughout scripture so one of the roles of the holy spirit is to help empower us to live in this new way of life that god has called us to the holy spirit empowers us to put on this new self because it is not something that we can do by our own strength or in our own works and so one of the ways that the holy spirit helps us to put on this new self is by calling to remembrance truth in our moment of need but in order for the holy spirit to call to remembrance truth we first have to know truth we have to store it in our hearts we need to know how god has called us to live so that the holy spirit can remind us of how god has called us to live in that moment of decision i can think of a time specifically when i was with a group of people and i was just wanting so much to give into gossip and to share just this juicy little nugget you know spill the tea about this person to contribute to a conversation and in that moment of temptation it was actually this verse from this passage in ephesians that popped into my mind and it's the verse that says let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth but only that which is good for building up and i had to think is this thing that i want to share is that building this person up is it building up the people who are hearing it is it giving grace to those who hear like this passage talks about and in those moments of temptation we can either submit to the conviction of the holy spirit or we can submit to the desires of our flesh those are the only two options to either step back into the old self or to put on the new self and the new way of life that god has called us to and i have done both i have submitted to the holy spirit and i have submitted to the desires of my flesh and the desires of my flesh are never worth it the desires of our flesh may produce a temporary satisfaction but in the long run it is never good it never feels good even for us or for anyone else and so god calls us to this new way of life to submit to the holy spirit and in order to do that we first have to know the dress code we have to know how god has called us to live so the holy spirit can remind us of that in the moment of decision so first we start by renewing our minds we know the dress code and three we put on the new self daily so i love that paul uses this analogy of putting on clothes because putting on clothes is something that we are all familiar with it is something that is habitual it's not something that we just do once but rather it is something that we do daily and often times something that we do multiple times daily so for me usually i will wake up and put on clothes to go to work honestly in quarantine that has mainly just been pajamas but typically i will put on clothes to go to work and then maybe at some other point in the day i will put on a different set of clothes to go work out and then as i'm getting ready for bed i will put on a different set of clothes to go to bed and so we are familiar with this idea of putting on clothes and we clothe ourselves for each new scenario that we walk into all throughout the day and it is the same thing with what paul is calling us to do and putting on the new self we are to put on the new self daily and to put on the new self in each scenario that we walk into throughout our day and so maybe there's a situation where we are hanging out with a group of people who we know like to gossip or tend to gossip and just tear people down and going into that situation we are to put on the new self and remember that god has called us as a part of his family to be people who build others up maybe we are in a situation where somebody hurt us and we are just so tempted to become calloused and hardened and angry and bitter and to maybe cancel that person and in that situation we are called to put on the new self and remember that god has called us to be people who seek reconciliation who seek resolution peace humility and unity maybe we are spending time with family and you're just at home and you guys are spending all this time around each other and you get under each other's skin and you have a tendency to just get annoyed or impatient and in that situation we are called to put on the new self and remember that god has called us to be people who are patient kind and who readily forgive maybe we are going into work or going into school or logging into social media with the mindset that we need to get ahead and make a name for ourselves and in that situation we are called to put on the new self and remember that god has called us to be people who yes work hard but not for our own personal benefit or not to show other people how great we are but rather so that we can give to those in need and so that we can serve people from what god has given us viewing our resources and our time and anything that god has given us is something that we can use to give to and serve to and bless other people and so god is the one who empowers us by his spirit to put on this new self daily and in each of these little decisions throughout our day where we have that decision if we're gonna put on the old self or put on the new self and so the final thing i want to share in closing i just love this passage there's so much good stuff in it is to remember this that as you are putting on this new self or this uniform that it is an indication to the world around you of the group to which you belong which is the family of god the righteousness of god he has taken us dead in our sin and made us alive together with him and through the way we love others and build others up others might come to know god and the love that he has for them and so that is essentially the message i gave on ephesians 4 for youth group and i really just wanted to share it here because i just thought it was such a rich and incredible passage that so clearly lays out the truth of how god has called us to live and god is just so faithful to give us this reminder to give us his spirit to empower us to live this way and to give us grace in the many times that we fall short of this but we can keep coming back to this as the reminder of what jesus has done for us and how we are to live as the body of christ in light of that my camera is blinking which means it's about to die so i'm going to end this video here i hope that you found this encouraging or helpful i would love to know what from this sort of message bible study video stood out to you most leave a comment down below letting me know if you did enjoy this video please be sure to give it a thumbs up and then also hit the subscribe button if you haven't already thank you so much for watching and i will see you in my next video bye

Channel: Kaci Nicole

Views: 4,377

Rating: 4.9840636 out of 5

Keywords: ephesians 4:17-32, bible study with me ephesians 4, ephesians 4, ephesians 4 sermon, commentary on ephesians 4, study the bible with me ephesians 4, ephesians bible project, ephesians 4 bible study, study on ephesians 4, living the new life in christ, put on the new self, put off the old self, let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth except that which is good for building up, do not let the sun go down on your anger, bible video, ephesians chapter 4, bible study video

Id: BxPkyAYBm_I

Length: 26min 37sec (1597 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 16 2020