[Transcript represents full sermon's text]

       Today we continue along in Ephesians chapter 4. We'll be going through verses 17 to 24, and let's go ahead and get into the text. Ephesians chapter 4, and let me read verse 17 to start us off. “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” (ESV).

       Alright, so two things we can point out from this verse. And the first thing is that Paul talks about how the Gentiles walk. Well, it depends on when we were saved, if we know how the Gentiles walk from personal experience. Of course, we do know how the Gentiles walk just from observation. What Paul's getting at, the way he phrases this, is the Gentiles represent the people of the world. The people who, as he said earlier, or in another passage, following the prince of the power of the air, living life in a way that would be considered wicked. So verse 19 in our text today tells us just in the most very basic sense how the Gentiles, the worldly people, do this. Paul says, we'll go ahead and read verse 19, jumping to it: “They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity” (ESV). That's the summation of it.

       We can look at 1 Timothy chapter 1 because there's a good text where Paul's talking to Timothy, and he tells Timothy about some of these worldly ways. Let's read 1 Timothy chapter 1 and verses 8 to 11.

“Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.” (ESV)

So there it is. He's talking about, we could say, the morality of the law. Let's just focus on that part. He says, “we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully.” The law showed people in the Old Testament where they did not meet up to God's standards. And in the moral sense is what we're focused on in this day and age. Those things that Paul lists there show us ways that the Gentiles walk using the Ephesians 4 wording in ways, of course, which we can observe with our eyes just as we look around at the world, as we have family members, as we have friends who walk in those ways. The thing is, as Christians, we're different. We follow, we strive to be moral, to be ethical, to live in righteous, right ways, right so that's what we're shooting for.

       Going back to Ephesians chapter 4. The second thing we can note from verse 17, of course, is that we're not supposed to live in those ways that Paul just mentioned. But the second part of the verse, “in the futility of their minds.”

       And that's kind of a big thing for me. That's something I focus a lot of my personal time on, is trying to gear my mind to think correctly. Since our minds are such an integral part of our lives, I personally feel like the better we can master our minds, the better we can master our behavior, right? We can't always control what happens in our lives. Sometimes we can have some influence on what happens, but sometimes we can't. Probably more often than not, we cannot. But if we have a proper mindset, if we're reacting to things with the right mind, we're going to have a better life experience and be more pleasing or beneficial to those around us than if we've got a poor mental framework by which we're reacting to things poorly. But we can focus on Romans chapter 8, and I want to look at verses 5 to 8, because I think that fits in well. Romans 8, starting in verse 5:

“For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” (ESV)

And see, we can see there how this text ties into the first Timothy text that we just went over. Because again, Paul brings back up the law.

       So all sin—I think most of us understand this—but all sin starts in the mind, right? We all have that inner sin-nature. We all have that corrupted nature. And that nature presents for us in our minds an alternate path, an alternate way we can go that's not the way God spells out in the New Testament. And we have to make a choice. It's like those old cartoons from long ago where the character would have a good angel on one shoulder and a bad angel on the other. That's it in a nutshell. We have to make the choice to set our minds on what is good. And by doing that, that sets our life pathway having right behaviors, right? You're not going to act, for instance, in a sexually immoral way in your life if you're not thinking sexually immoral thoughts in the first place. I mean, that's pretty basic. But in Romans, Paul says, for the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God.

       “[F]or it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot.” That shows the power of sin that when we get wrapped up in sin, like a lot of us are fully aware of before we were converted, how we had that sin just engrossed in our lives in every facet of our lives or a lot of facets. We can't reach God’s expectations or God's standards, what he expects from us. We don't even know a lot of times what the New Testament says. We're not in God's word. We know we're not doing right, but we don't know the specifics of what that is. And Paul says, “for those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” And that's the thing. Without our born-againness, without becoming a new creation in Christ, there's no way that we can live a righteous life before God, because after all, anyway, we have the inherent sin nature, right? We're going to sin. Even if you don't believe in the inherent sin nature, you believe that everybody eventually sins, and therefore, in essence, gets a sin nature. Regardless of the origin, when you've got that dead spirit within you, it's impossible to live righteously without becoming that new creation. And we might even say without the Holy Spirit's indwelling of us.

       We can also look at Romans 12 too. I'll scroll down to chapter 12. Paul says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (ESV). That shows us that once we become a Christian, that this process of not walking as the Gentiles walk, as Paul's talking about in Ephesians 4, Paul says in Romans 12, it's a process. It's something that we have to put into practice. We have to renew our minds. And I think safely we can say that is a daily thing, probably for the rest of our lives. And as we become more aware of that, become better at renewing our minds towards the right things, it becomes, it's like a muscle. It gets stronger the more we use it, and it's that snowball effect where we gain better discipline, gain better correct reaction to situations in life, because that's what we've been focusing on. That's what we've been trying to practice. Again, this goes back to Christian growth, which we've already touched upon a couple of times in our Ephesians series.

       Let's go to verse 18. “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” (ESV).

       Just as I mentioned, when we're renewing our minds, that has a positive snowball effect. It is that when we sin, when we're thinking thoughts which beget actions, when we're doing that on the negative side of things in immoral ways and improper ways, then that also has a negative snowball effect where the more we sin, the more our hearts become hardened. And we can look at Romans, back to Romans chapter 1, of course, and that was probably coming to a lot of your minds, but let's go to verse 28. "And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done” (ESV). This shows that God will not force people to act righteously. It's not as many teach where if a person is not acting righteously, it’s not that they're not acting that way because God has just not called them or elected them to be righteous. That's not it. That would be, dare I say it, a primitive understanding. I'm getting a little bit tough. But so God's not going to stop people from sinning. Of course, eventually he will at the end of the current setup of things. But what Paul's saying to the Romans in Romans chapter 1 is, God is letting them do what they want to do. Now, this doesn't mean everybody is totally depraved. This doesn't mean everybody is as bad as they could be. Some people are pretty depraved. But most people, probably 99% or more, still have that God image shining for some type of God-like quality. Hopefully. The more we give ourselves over to sin, the more depraved we become. But we also are all created in the image of God. We have God's imprint upon us, his natural characteristics trying to flow through us, we could even say.

       Now, if we go back to Ephesians 4, because I want to look at the second half of verse 18. Let's reread the verse. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them. They don't realize the seriousness of their sin in its totality. Jesus would say, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Remember on the cross, of course, people realize they're doing wrong a lot of times, but it's more of a vague understanding, and they don't adhere to that a lot of times. But if we focus on the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart, one passage we can look at that is a good illustration of how this works is in the Old Testament in Exodus. If we go to chapter 7 and look at verse 3, God says, “But I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, Pharaoh will not listen to you” (ESV). In this instance, people say, “Well, God is the one hardening people's hearts.” Actually, no. In this case, the text just told us that Pharaoh was not going to listen. God could see that his heart was already so hard that no matter what was said, it wasn't going to make any difference no matter what Pharaoh saw. With the signs and wonders, it wasn't going to make any difference. And that is the problem with sin is you can sin so much that your heart becomes so hardened that you're beyond hope of influence from the truth. God hardening Pharaoh's heart, he was hardening a heart that was already too far gone. It's not that God was violating Pharaoh's free will in the sense that if God had not hardened Pharaoh's heart, that Pharaoh would have been able to come back to God. God was saying he's already past the point of no return, “So I'm just going to harden his heart even more and get something out of him.” That's what God did.

       Now, of course, coming to our minds in the New Testament is probably Hebrews chapter 6 when I'm talking about this hardening of heart. Let me tap over there. The writer of Hebrews says:

“For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt” (ESV).

We can see there that, again, if a person goes too far the other way, in this case, if they were a Christian, in this case, whether we say they were a Christian or almost a Christian, however we frame it, the point is if you go too far the other way, that you can harden your heart to the point of no return. In the case of a non-Christian, that's not good. That means there's no hope of that person being saved. In the case of a Christian, it might be like what Paul talked about in 1 Corinthians 5 with the sexually immoral man. He was sexually immoral with his stepmother. And Paul said to just give that person over to Satan. Remember, it could be like that. No hope as far as pertains to this life of them coming back to God. Just something to keep in mind.

       And I want to bring up 2 Corinthians 3:14. Paul told the Corinthians, “But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away” (ESV). Again, this is talking specifically about the Jewish people and how their rejection of Christ calls them to have hardened hearts. And that's why, say, in Acts chapter 7, God gave them one last chance to accept Jesus as the Messiah. They didn't do that. Jesus retakes his seat there. He's standing up in the passage. He was ready to come now—for The Second Coming—we would say. But he has to retake his seat. And God shifts his focus to the Gentiles, away from the Jewish people primarily because their hearts are too hardened. They're just not going to come to a knowledge of the truth.

       This all shows—these passages I'm bringing up: Exodus 7:3, Hebrews 6:4-6, and 2 Corinthians 3:14—this all shows the deceitfulness of sin and how we don't want to be sinning because sin can really pull our hearts away from God. It's more serious than we perhaps think that it is. And see, the more we give ourselves over to sin, the more influence, the more power Satan is going to have in our lives. The other aspect to this quickly before we move on is just learning about things like the Jewish people learned about the Christ and Messiah. Other people learn about Christ or how God wants us to live with righteousness. Just learning those things doesn't mean someone's going to accept that, right? We understand that a lot of times that's what it is. They learn it, and then they harden their heart against that truth. And the more you continually hear the truth and harden your heart against it, the more that there's no hope for that person.

       Verse 19 of Ephesians 4, "They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity” (ESV).

       That again is the summation of everything we've been talking about. And sensuality, obviously, sexual immorality comes to our minds. That's probably the first thing. But it's more than that. It's basically just every form. It has the mind in play, I think. When we're sensual, that's in the mind, right? And it comes out in our behaviors. It’s not just sexual immorality, but it's every kind of immorality. And this, again, this is what Satan wants for people. This is in the Garden of Eden; he tempted Adam and Eve so that they would go against what God wanted and what was best for their lives and choose another pathway that was worse for their lives. By challenging, God said at the end of the day they sinned, they would surely die. And see, what Satan was trying to do there, and what he successfully accomplished, was the minute they sinned, Satan could hold God to that. He could say to God, “Well, you said that in the day they sinned, they would die.” That gave Satan an authority, an ownership over them, a legal authority, we could say, over Adam and Eve. Because in essence, they submitted to Satan's way. And that's not often said, but it was serious business. And that's what Jesus came to fix; he died on the cross in our place. He died, right? So that we, he could legally fulfill that statement from Satan that, Satan challenges God and says, well, you said they have to die because they sin. And now through Christ, God can say, well, Christ's death replaces their need to die. So Christ's death replaces that need. And you have no more claim over them. You have no more say with that argument because Christ died in their place. It's tremendously cool stuff for us.

       Verse 20 to 22 of Ephesians 4: “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” (ESV).

       There are several things Paul touches upon. He talks about how the Ephesians believers have already been taught the good ways, the righteous ways of God. That would be through their pastor, through people at the church, through Paul himself when he was there for a lengthy period of time during his third missionary journey. That's why this shows us the importance of the word of God in our lives as Christians. We want to be reading the word. We want to have the word flowing through us so that we know what is pleasing to God for starters. And just so that we're reminded of that. Just especially with all the influences coming at us from the world and even what other people say, friends, whether that be at work, outside of work, wherever at school, wherever they come from, we need to know God's words so that we don't follow after the ways of the world. Again, just like we talked about in Romans chapter 12, with the renewing of the mind in verse 22, we have to “put off the old self.”

       And Paul says, “which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires.” For a lot of people, that would have included prior religious beliefs that are not in alignment with Christianity. For us in the United States, that's going to be true for some of us, but a lot of us are going to be focused on the second part of this, which is the fact that the old self is corrupt through deceitful desires. Again, following the ways of this world, following ways of doing things, it does not count God in view and picture and perspective, in how we are conducting ourselves. And “deceitful desires”; notice that word deceit there. A lot of times it can seem like at first glance or from just surface evaluation, like doing something sinful really doesn't cause much harm, right? That might be the couple where there's pressure from the world that they move in together right before they're married. The Christian couple might be pressured from worldly friends to just go ahead and move in together. And their minds might tell them, “Oh, that's no big deal. Doesn't hurt anything. Nothing wrong with it. You know, works for everybody else. You might as well just go ahead and do it. You're probably going to get married anyway, or you're planning on getting married,”—whatever it is, however it's framed—that’s deceitful desires, right? So it's deceitful because it's not true. It's not the best way God has for the couple. And it's desires because it plays into natural desires, but it's trying to fulfill those in a sinful way.

       And we can look at 2 Corinthians 4:4. It works well: “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (ESV). That's something that Satan and his fallen angels spend a great amount of their time focusing on this deceitful desire and trying to get people to believe that sin doesn't really matter and to try to live in ways that God doesn't want us to live in because they're harmful for us. And just so much time is spent on this that in some cases it can seem almost absurd to say that which is righteous versus that which is wrong. Like you can think of the creation, right? Versus like Evolution to say, well, the world was created by God seven literal days, to most people that sounds absurd, based on the tremendous amount of effort that Satan, through his systems, has put into play in this whole theory of evolution and getting people to subscribe to that. And we can think of other areas as well, where Satan has put a lot of effort. As Paul told the Corinthians, “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (ESV). And that scoffing is a way that Satan uses. He makes the sons of light, the sons of righteousness, the Christians, seem foolish. And the sons of darkness, of the devil, to seem like they're the ones who are right. And Satan just keeps emphasizing it, just keeps repeating it. People are more prone to accept it. It's that familiarity is actually a psychological basis for that.

       But anyway, going back to Ephesians 4, let's look at verse 23: “and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds” (ESV).

       So there it is. I mean, that's what Paul told the Romans in Romans 12. Two is right thinking. And that's why I said at the beginning of this message that I spend a great deal of time trying to cultivate that right thinking in my mind. You know, I got a four-year degree in psychology. That's what I spent a lot of my time doing. And back here on my bookshelf, there are a lot of books as pertains to trying to think rightly. Now, like right here, there are three secular books. ‘When Panic Attacks’ by David D. Burns, ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ by Daniel Kahneman, and ‘Attached, The New Science of Adult Attachment and How to Help You Find and Keep Love.’ That one's by Amir Levin and Rachel F.S. Heller. Those three books, and there's just all, there's a slew of other books that can help us think correctly. A lot of the secular research actually is good for us. We've been talking a lot about Satan and his ways, and that's why I don't believe in one reason. I don't believe in total depravity.

       It's not that everything that the secular world offers us is bad. A lot of it is actually good. A lot of it might even have been worked out by God through his angels, through the good angels. Now, of course, when you're reading a secular book, depending on the book, there's going to be instances in that book, most likely, that are teaching a point that would contradict what we believe as Christians. And in that case, you just need to ignore that part. But to ignore a whole secular work that can help us to think more correctly, I would say, would be unwise. Just be mindful when reading those books. But there are also Christian books that are on these topics. I just find, personally, I've found that the Christian books about the mind tend to not have the research behind them, that a lot of the secular books have. And some of us need that research. We need to see that science side of things to be more convinced about it, why this is a good way to think. Just be mindful of that. If you do pick up the Christian side of things, like if you pick up Joyce Meyer's ‘Battlefield of the Mind.’ Great book, but it doesn't have the science in there, even though a lot of it will align with the science. Just be mindful of that. But anyway, it's important for us to be renewing our minds.

       Paul says, “to be renewed in the spirit of your minds.” That's kind of even deeper, a stronger emphasis, I think, than just renewing our minds. Of course, as I already stated, you want to know your Bible. You want to read that New Testament many times, the different sections. I would say be careful that that’s not all you read. You want to have some application of that. You want to have some commentary of that. You want to have good theological insight into what you're reading. But just maybe when you first become a Christian, I think when I first became a Christian 25 years ago now, I mean, pretty much I focused on the Bible. I probably don't know how long, but for a long time, I would just read the New Testament and just read stuff sometimes over and over again.

       Our final verse, verse 24, “and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (ESV).

       So there it is. There's the positive application of what we're supposed to do as Christians. And notice again that it's a process. It's not something that happens when we become saved or even in the first three, six months of our conversion, and then we're done. Or even after a year, it's not that we grow a little bit or grow up real fast, and then the plant stops growing, and we're done. That's not the way it works. And as we practice the righteousness of God, as we practice pure thinking, as we practice turning away from impure thinking, as we practice trying to be more optimistic versus pessimistic. Remember, remember, I brought up the book ‘Learned Optimism’ by Martin Seligman, another terrific secular book. If you're looking to try to be more positive in a realistic scientific way, not cheesy positivity type stuff, that's a great book. But again, we want to know our doctrine. We want to know how things operate. Of course, on my bookshelf back here, I brought up the book several weeks ago or several messages ago about it. It’s called ‘Satan and the Problem of Evil’ and that is by theologian Greg Boyd—if you want to understand more how Satan works. And really good book if you want to try to understand how Satan tries to operate and what he does and that kind of stuff. And then how God's side operates to some degree. So good book for that. We want to understand our doctrine.

       But we also want to be cultivating that proper mindset, staying away from evil behaviors, but that starts in the mind from pure thinking, from righteous thinking. And it all leads to acting in our lives as God would act. We say becoming more like Jesus. So Jesus said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” We remember he told that to Philip. I want to say in John chapter 14. John 14:9 to be exact. We want to be like Jesus was in how he modeled perfect behavior while he was here on Earth. And we know the core essence of that is to what? To love our neighbors as we already love ourselves, right? Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Again, back to verse 24, “and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God,” right? And true righteousness and holiness. That's what we are cultivating. We want to know our Bibles, but we also want to know how to think properly, which will lead to proper behaviors. And if we include speech and behaviors, it will also lead to proper speech. I think that's going to do it for today. We still will have one more message in Ephesians chapter 4, we're going to do four on four .

       But the important thing is that this new self that we are cultivating as Christians, this is open to anybody. Anybody can have a new self through believing in what Jesus accomplished on the cross for them. His coming into the world, living that righteous and holy life, and then dying in our place on the cross so that Satan loses authority over us when we believe in Jesus. When we believe in Christ's work on the cross, his resurrection from the dead, we too can have that new life, can walk in that new life, can be raised with him into that new life. And that's open to anybody today, anybody who would go to God in prayer and tell them they believe can have this new life in Christ, created after the likeness of God and true righteousness and holiness. As Paul told the Ephesians, having all of our sins forgiven and made in perfect image and righteousness before God. It's an awesome thing.

- Daniel Litton