Saying No to the Old Life

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 the seventeenth verse Ephesians 4:17 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 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 after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness amen and brief prayer our Spirit of God descend upon our hearts wean them from the earth and through all their pulses move and speak to our weakness mighty as thou art and help us love thee as we ought to love for Jesus sake amen while those of you who are visiting with us will discover that we are here in Ephesians in our studies we have been in Ephesus for some time and looks like we'll be there for a little time yet and it is important that as we keep coming back to the book that we keep the context pretty clearly in our minds it's always possible for us to begin to disengage a piece or a section or a couple of verses and treat them in a way that actually is quite harmful and so we remind ourselves that Ephesus was a city in the first century it was a large place it had a large population it was the richest of cities it was part of the most prosperous region of the Roman Empire at the time it also hosts one of the seven wonders of the world namely the Temple of Artemis or the Temple of Diana and that particular structure along with the theater and with the library of calais tended to dominate the skyline of the time if you visited Ephesus you've been able to go into what was really the Roman sports context or to see the crumbling edifice that was once a library and to realize well just as you squeezed your eyes together how magnificent this must have been it dominated that is the temple dominated the society not only architectural II but also if you're like philosophically or spiritually insofar as those who had heard the teaching of the Apostle Paul and had become followers of Jesus found themselves to be a minority in the vastness of that city and Luke records how on one occasion the vast crowd had essentially drowned out those who were seeking to tell the story of Jesus by chanting in a prolonged fashion great is Diana of the Ephesians great as Diana of Ephesians and the implication being we know about greatness and we don't need to hear about your Jesus the opposition to the church at that time was strong and it was threatening and Paul has written to them in order that they might realize just where they fit into the vast scheme of things and if you can think all the way back to when we began through in the Commons before we move back in here we began with that great symphony of praise to the electing grace of God and how Paul tells them you know you have been predestined for adoption as sons to the praise of his glory and you've obtained an inheritance that can't fade and eventually he builds on and on and you've been seated with Jesus in the highest places you're in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus so just keep looking down from the vantage point in which you find yourselves as he goes through the letter he's reminding them of the wonder of what God has done in making them his own and most people if they only know a couple of verses out of Ephesians know verses 8 and 9 of chapter 2 for by grace you were saved through faith and this not your own doing it's the gift of God not a result of works so that no one may boast and then not everybody it goes on to learn verse 10 which is equally important for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them and it's not a common picture but it is a metaphor that Paul employs when he speaks of the church and describing it essentially as a workshop as a workshop I don't have a workshop because I don't work in the shop that is hey I mean what did someone give me a saw is only a danger to me and everybody around me but I do admire people that have workshops and I have bits and pieces around my house I I was looking as I studied yesterday in the afternoon just a tiny piece of wood about about that size that was up on a shelf and it made me think of dear Byron Nelson the late Byron Nelson the golfer and he had made these little pieces of wood to give to the members of the United States Ryder Cup team and had ended stamped a sam on the back of it and it was just cut and and and I thought how how nice and how wonderful and how it was representative of the Grace and the commitment of the one who did the work in the shop in order to produce that well the picture is of God Almighty as it were painting if you like painting the likeness of his son on the canvas of the lives of his children you are his workmanship he is fashioning you according to the likeness of his son what is what is God doing with those whom he has redeemed in essence he is making us like Jesus that's the whole plan and he is doing it not in isolation from one another but in relationship to one another and that's why after Paul gets to the end of chapter three he begins chapter four I therefore a prisoner for the Lord urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called God is painting on the canvas of your lives he says therefore when you walk out into that Ephesian culture made sure that you walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called so that the people who see your work who hear your words who witness your deeds will have some kind of inkling of the fact that Jesus Christ is alive and is able to change lives because they will see that your life has been changed and as we've gone through these early chapters we've seen again and again that there is a great need for this a need in Ephesus and a need in Cleveland this morning what we have in this little section and I'll outline it and we'll work our way through it slowly in verses 17 to 19 he is basically reminding the the folks who are now part of the Church of their lifestyle outside of Christ it's a general description not everybody would fit every specific author it is a description of life lived with no interest in Jesus or in the purposes for which he's come so he's going to remind them of of what they wear outside of Christ and then in verses 20 to 24 now he says let me tell you what you are this is what you are and this is this you got to understand the replacement factor that's involved if you have put on the garments of your new life and Jesus then you better make sure that you're putting off the old stuff that you once wore when you were still pagan when you were still disinterested in Jesus and then from verse 25 to the end of the chapter he is essentially saying and this is what this is what you have to look forward to so that is what this is what you wear this is what you are and this is what you're going to be you say well how much of this will we get through not very much at all so but at least you've got an outline of it and you can say well that was what we were going to have as a sermon and and look at what look at what we got but anyway here we are walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called that's how he begins the chapter he then has a discourse on the nature of the church itself of the importance of unity that is to be maintained that unity which will then be expressed as the gifts that God has given the gifts of his word are then manifested in the congregation thereby producing ministry and as they are involved in ministry so the body of Christ is is coming to maturity and we have been dealing with that up until verse 16 now from verse 17 it says though he says now the gifts are the gifts that God has given to the urghhh have been given in order that you might live in unity and he says and also that you might live in purity and also that you might live in purity and he's going to make it very very clear here the vast difference between the lifestyle of the Christian and those who are yet outside of Christ now it's important we realize and this is why I say we have to keep going back in order that we might go forward as actually justin prayed for us he reminded us of verse 4 and 5 of Ephesians 2 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 he has made us alive together with Christ in other words he has regenerated us it was something that was absolutely necessary because he says we were dead we were dead this is a vastly different perspective on humanity than that which we deal with on a daily basis whereby we're told you're sick or you're dysfunctional you may well be sick and I may well be dysfunctional but the real issue is that I'm sinful and that I'm dead I'm part of the Walking Dead outside of Christ I'm part of the Walking Dead and the problem is I don't know I'm dead and so we need the Bible to tell us about ourselves in a way that is frankly unpalatable because it will be only then that we will realize what a wonder it is to be made alive and he has made you alive he says and if he has made you alive then your life should be manifest in your lifestyle if you now have the status of a son or sons and daughters then there are standards which go along with that status if you are professing to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ then there is behavior which will testify to the reality to the reality of your belief okay so a new life new lifestyle new status new standards you believe you behavior so that when the standards are not present when the behavior is absent when the lifestyle is not there then we have reason to say I wonder if I really do have a new life I wonder if I have the status of a son I wonder if I am simply believing in an intellectual way but not in a life changing heart rending renewing way and what he's really doing here I notice the way he begins he says now I say this I say and testify in the Lord in other words I'm speaking as the Lord's servant he says I this this comes to you from the Lord Himself through me I my mission - I want to issue you a warning I want you to make sure that you realize just how crucial this is in saying what he's saying let's be clear what he is not saying Paul is not here suggesting that by trying to live like God's children they can make themselves God's children and that's not what he said you can't make yourself God's child by trying to appear like one rather they are to become what they are now by God's grace you are now part of his family then there should be some family characteristics that are obvious you are now have the status of living in this royal household then there should be something about your walk there should be something about your talk he says that will distinguish you from that talk and that walk which was once yours which he's about to describe and the challenge I think is straightforward tomorrow today the next 24 hours or so we will be at various Memorial Day parades many of us and it's almost inevitable that there will be some little coterie of musicians probably pipe bands people that love love the sound of the pipes not realizing that the Irish send them to the Scots as a joke and and the Scots never got the joke but there'll be they'll be there and they'll be playing away and it's and they'll be playing that they essentially the national anthem - which is amazing grace is if they can't play anything else on the pipes they always play Amazing Grace right and and we will stand in companies of 50s or hundreds or maybe a thousand and there won't be one person in ten that has any notion of what is what the melody line is actually conveying that a slave-trader whose mother died when he was seven but who had been so immersed in the scriptures between zero and seven that when he found himself as a profligate slave-trading captain cursing rotten rascal in the darkness of the storm it was the words of his mother that came back to call him to an understanding of what it means to be embraced by the love of God and so he wrote Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me John Newton I once was lost but I'm found I was blind but now I see that's what Paul is describing here he's not talking about a little religious shift in the community to him he writes that they have sort of decided to be a little more religious or that they've they've decided to embrace a different kind of formula or framework no no they've been radically changed they have been changed as a result of the power of Christ you see it actually addresses the very issue of what does it mean to be a Christian what does it mean to be a Christian you know it's distinctly possible that you can listen to me or my colleagues Sunday after Sunday and hear language used and you're sitting there going yeah but I don't really know how to join the dots on that well let me just tell you how for Peter describes describes the the believers to me rights the Christians to me rights he says now that you have tasted the goodness of the Lord you've tasted the goodness of the Lord it's a picture they have received Christ are you thirsty are you hungry until you're thirsty and hungry you never come and taste of the Lord you can walk in and walk out go is very interesting hmm remarkable boring horrible whatever you want to say but when you come thirsty and you find out where the living water is then you taste then you're changed in fact you're changing then you taste but that's for another time Paul says you have been rescued from the present evil world order so what does it mean to be a Christian means that I have tasted of the goodness of the Lord it means that I have been rescued from the present evil world order what's that mean well you can't understand Paul unless you realize the way in which Paul's statement of the gospel is tired always directly to Adam and to Adam you know so for example as in Adam all die so in Christ we'll all be made alive so the great story that Paul is always bringing to bear is the fact that God made a world that he made it perfect the world as man knows it is not as God has made it but as man has spoiled it man has sinned disintegration alienation chaos has come into the world murder and mayhem how in the world can this be put back together again well we need a second Adam another one who will rise up as an Adam who will undo all the things that the first Adam has done and it will do the things that that first Adam has failed to do namely love God and serve him and obey Him and Paul says and this is the wonder of it as the hymn writer puts it all loving wisdom of our God when all was sin and shame a second Adam to the fight and to the rescue came today I see you this morning we if you were coming for a membership interview here at Parkside Church and you you came to the question on the paper season and tell me how you became a Christian Oh what would you actually write down there would you say well you know for the longest time I listened to that stuff that I had never tasted it but in such-and-such a day or in such-and-such a period of my life I suddenly caught it I I taste it and I saw that the Lord was good would you would you be able to write down and say you know I I was actually I was in the grip of stuff that I could not get out of I was in the grip of my ego I was in the grip of my sinful propensities I was in the grip of my own security whatever it was and I was just trapped in it and then I realized that Jesus came to rescue me in fact you might even say we sang a song one morning when when I was lost you came and rescued me reach down into the pit and lifted me Oh God and you might say that was that was it I remember that Sunday morning I can't remember which one it was would you say that would you say that you have received Christ you see don't complicate things to receive Christ it's what John says is the issue he came to his own and his own did not receive him but to as many as received him he gave the right to become the children of God yeah I mean if I I'm not somebody give me a book this morning a gift I was very very nice I like I like gifts and and the person came to it and and he actually handed it to me like this now I could have told him I don't want your gift but I received it it's now mine it's no longer his I received it some of your sitting out there you made this whole becoming a Christian thing so complicated you don't know what do you know whether you're up or down right where you are today you may receive Christ acknowledge who he is why he came what he's done and the very father you have an inclination in your heart to accept the gift that he offers is the indication of the fact that God is at work in your heart otherwise you'd be going I don't know why this guy says this stuff now that's what had happened to these people and that's why he's now writing to them incidentally if you want a little story in the in the gospel records of somebody who received Jesus you've got the story of Zacchaeus tanja in the in the story of Zacchaeus it's it's fantastic isn't it is he you know he's up the tree and Jesus comes and stops under his tree and says as if he has come down I got to come to your house and see it's a kid says oh no you can't come to my house I don't want you to come to my house I just want to stay up the tree now it doesn't say that it says he came down immediately and welcomed him gladly he came down immediately and welcomed him gladly he didn't say oh well if you're coming back through another time you know I mean I'm up the tree now I don't just just be coming down the trees it's a nice tree now you hear the gospel presented to you oh you know today when you hear God's voice welcome him get down the tree and welcomed him gladly welcomed him to your heart you don't know everything you won't know everything this side of eternity but you know enough you know with Newton that you're a great sinner and that God is a great Savior so you receive him and he came down the tree and welcomed him gladly and the religious establishment grumbled and said this is ridiculous he's gone into the house of a sinner and Jesus says of course the Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost I did not come to put together a religious club he said I came to call sinners to repentance while we were yet sinners Christ died for us the story of a gospel is not clean up and he might accept you the glory of the gospel is accept him and watch him clean you up and the clean up operation is right here in this pudding off and in the pudding on I testify in the Lord that you aren't to be walking in the way that you used to walk and they had previously just been drifting along on the stream of the ideas of their culture the things that made Ephesus Ephesus and made them them were part and parcel of their lives he's reminded them back in chapter 2 that in that situation they were actually without hope and without God in the world it's again I say to you as a quite staggering description of godlessness and these verses that 17 18 and 19 are really in accord with what Paul writes in his opening chapter of Romans and I'm going to read this to you in in that Phillips paraphrase just so you've got it in your mind now the holy anger of God is disclosed from heaven this is verse 18 of Romans 1 the holy anger of God is disclosed from heaven against the godlessness and evil of those men who render truth dumb and inoperative by their wickedness who render truth dumb you think about the big preoccupation of our culture now is there any kind of truth at all you know where its truth is the true truth the false truth middle truth no they render truth dumb by their wickedness it's not that they do not know the truth about God indeed he has made it quite plain to them for since the beginning of the world the invisible attributes of God for example his eternal power and divinity have been plainly discernible through things which he has made and which are commonly seen and known like stars and rivers and babies and flowers and eyes and optic nerves and all of the rest plainly seen leaving these men without a rag of excuse they knew all the time that there is a God yet they refused to acknowledge him as such or to thank him for what he is or does thus they became fatuous in their argumentations plunged their silly minds still further into the dark behind a facade of wisdom they became just fools fools who would exchange the glory of the immortal God for an imitation image of a mortal man or of creatures that run or fly or crawl now both there and here Paul is not addressing the unbeliever it's important for us to notice that he is describing the godless he is describing the pagan in Romans 1 he's doing the same thing he's speaking in the third-person this is what this was this this this this notice when he speaks to the pagan for example in acts 17 when he has the opportunity face-on to address the Intelligencia he doesn't give them romans chapter 1 nor does he actually give them you know you guys are futile in your understanding you know you're darkened I mean you're you're a bunch of deadbeats I mean I can't believe that I'm even speaking to you no you don't do that at all no no no no he's not changing his tune on the strength of what is true concerning the predicament of man outside of Christ he says the God who made the world and everything in it doesn't live in buildings made with hands he starts exactly where they are he quotes their own prophets or their own their own poets he says you know God is not far from one of you from from away from you as many of your own poets have said he's a masterful piece of work leading them along and along and along until he says in God has said a day when he will judge the world and he's given proof of this by appointing his son and by raising him from the dead and at that point the people said okay we heard enough of this when the when the crunch came but didn't go directly to the crunch I see that because some of us are tempted to go right back out into the community with verse 17 of Ephesians and feel that it is our duty to let everybody know that you are Europe your future you're dark you're ignorant you've got a hard heart you're callous you're sensual you're greedy and so on and PS have a nice day know these is describing what you were or what you and I would be were it not for the grace of God exactly this not in every detail not every nice person fulfills this in all the detail this is the trajectory of humanity when it rejects the truth of God when it says no there is no God atheism is a choice it is a choice it is a decision I refuse to believe in God I took the baby in my arms and I refuse to accept the creative handiwork of God I looked at these things I rejected wholesale it's a choice and the inevitability that flows from that is described in the second part of Romans 1 and also here and you'll notice without I don't need to belabor it but you will notice the elements that are involved in it the trajectory look at if your Bible is open look there what it says because of the ignorance that is in them do or do as you say - their hardness of heart due to their hardness of heart so if you start with hardness of heart which is actually where it starts you see that the progression is a downward path which begins with an obstinate rejection of the truth of God an obstinate rejection of the truth of God it's an expression of the folly and futility of man when the psalmist says The Fool has said in his heart there is no God he is not describing somebody who got too hot on their SATs he's not describing somebody that doesn't have intellectual capacity it is a statement concerning not the absence of intellectual acumen but an expression of ethical or moral revulsion to the truth of God it is a foolish thing to do that's why Paul when he writes the Corinthians he says in the wisdom of God God has planned it in such a way that man through his wisdom will not know God that there is no intellectual road to God that you can't figure itself through to God you can think every apologetic thought you like but you will never bow your stubborn will down before Almighty God until he shows you who you are who Jesus is why he came and why it matters is absolutely there hardness of heart ignorance alienation darkened in the understanding callous hardened given up to sensuality and greedy to practice every kind of impurity as I say to you just as there is a general description of the Christian life which is to follow where you were taught you were trusting you were renewed you were putting on the new self so this is a general description of life outside of Christ outside of Christ this is the way it goes don't walk like this he says you're living in the culture out of which you've come don't let it gets don't get sucked back into it don't start a thing the way you used to think in the futility of your minds it's 50 years in another few days to the anniversary of sergeant pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band I'm sure you're very interested in that the 50 years on you know the cries the cries of that generation have come the strangulated cries of the contemporary generation why because you see once we turn our back on the reality of a God who loved us so much that He gave His only begotten Son to die for us there is an inevitability about what follows we can mask it in all kinds of ways we can be really kinda nice bourgeois respectable car-driving mortgage paying people on the east side of Cleveland but if the thoughts of our minds were put up on this screen right now this morning agreed sensuality hard heart alienated from friends not speaking to my family posters I'm warning you you don't go back down that road because you have been made alive in Christ and this is what you were this is what it would be like if if God had not intervened in your life you'd be down here somewhere that's why you see none of us if we understand anything of the grace of God we should never be up on our high horse we should never be going can you believe him look at that mess you're looking at yourself outside of Christ what what made you what did God know you were a really special person and he just included you in the group because he liked you because he saw how good you were no there was nothing in us to commend ourselves to him Amazing Grace not like grace Amazing Grace that saved me I had to write my testimony this week for a newspaper piece in in England for later on in the year and they said I had 400 words to tell somebody how it was that I came to trust in Christ and it was a it was a it was a salary and wonderful exercise for me and it made me wonder that God in His mercy reached into my life when I was young and all I'm stupid and sinful an argumentative and jealous and spiteful and all the all the seeds of sin were all embedded in my little heart but God saved me he saved me they'll save you too you asked him see the futility of life you don't have to go looking for it do you you know you have to you have to try hard I read The Times The New York Times The Wall Street Journal and The Times of London every day and if I didn't have a Bible I don't know what I would do because it doesn't really matter where you go you can go to the business section the sports section the Scottish section you can go to any section you want and as you work your way through it what do you find you find hard hearts dark and mines sensuality greedy I mean even even then even the newspapers are full of stuff that a generation ago nobody would have even printed in a newspaper but why why are we able to handle this now because we become callous the culture is calloused the culture is marbleized the culture is desensitized so you've got you've got lifestyle you've got language you've got all kinds of stuff that our children and our grandchildren are confronted with that we never faced when we were their age 50 60 years ago what has happened it's the trajectory of Romans 1 how do you get out of it only by the grace of God I charge you he says that you do not get caught up now again in the futility of your minds don't be don't be sidelined by all the brilliant people if people come to me all the time say well you know there's a lot of people are much more clever than you'd beg and they they don't believe a one bit of what you're on about I said well that's not a hard exercise to find people cleverer than me I get that part that's that's true but I I understand that I understand that Stephen Hawking who is arguably as a as a physicist is apparently one of the greatest brains that still is alive in in the in the Western world investigating black holes and things that I don't even understand I'm Morgan cinema holes on the road when I'm driving home then black holes in the universe but I just shows what an ignoramus I really am some of you are able to go down that line I was very interested to discover that his doomsday report because he said we are a thousand we're a thousand years away from having to inhabit another planet and get out of here because this one is over he announced that from his research but in the last little while he slashed it by 900 years and it's now down to a hundred so the the the pressure is on that according to Stephen and he is a brilliant physicist according to his most recent analysis humanity has essentially left to evacuate the planet and become multi planetary species oh the futility of a genius oh the folly of a man intellectually vast a testimony to what Paul writes where is the wise where is the scribe where is the debater of the age has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world for since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who what's the last word through the folly of what we preach to save those who do what no see I've I been so long with you and still you can't finish the sentence through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe believe you remember when the Philippian jailer is going to kill himself when the when the shackles come off Paul and Silas and Paul says hey don't worry about it we're all still here and he comes running up and he says what must I do to be saved and why did Paul say leave believe people tell me it can't be that simple it is that simple and it is that profound because listen you can't come to God on your own terms you can't come to God on your own time you'll only come on his time and on his terms that's why I always say to you today if you hear his voice don't harden your hearts because if you hear his voice you may be sure it's his time and now is the time and now is the day of salvation you see Stephen Hawking is a genius but he's marked by the futility that is here remember Horace the Latin dramatist he instructed his students when they were writing they were writing dramatic plays and dramatic art he says he told them a God must not be introduced into the action unless the plot has got into such a tangle that only a God can unravel it well what the Bible says is that the plot has got into such a tangle that it's not a god but it is the God the Living God the only God in the person of his son who has come to untangle the knotted rigmarole of life lived outside of him well Jesus came stopped underneath Zacchaeus tree I can't wait to ask him about that Jesus comes and stops at your seat and says will you do what Sakhi is dead will you get out of your seat and welcome me gladly will you receive me to believe in me well we'll come back to this God our Father thank you that you are the God who seeks and saves that you're the God who calls out through the night and reaches into our rebellious futile self-preoccupied souls and turns on the lights and suddenly we realize that we'd been in the dark for so long we were we were in the dark so much we never even realized how dark it was we didn't realize we were dead until you made us alive what a mystery fulfill your purpose this gracious God in US and through as this day for Christ's sake 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

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Keywords: Truth For Life, Alistair Begg, Christian Living, The Church, New Birth, Regeneration, Ephesians

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Length: 42min 58sec (2578 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 12 2020