Put Off the Old Self

 Okay, friends, please grab a Bible and open with me to Ephesians chapter four. Ephesians chapter four, I believe it's on page 1,161. In your chair back bibles. There's a Bible that'll be underneath you or in front of you if you wanna open and have a copy of God's word, uh, before us, uh, together in the flow of Ephesians Paul.

Takes us from the riches of God's grace. In Ephesians, chapters one to three. I mean, if you haven't ever read that, if you're new, please go read Ephesians one to three. It just takes you into the depths of God's love for his people. And then he exhorts us beginning in chapter four, to live out lives that are worthy of our calling in light of what Jesus has done for us.

And that order is incredibly important. The imperatives, what God has done come before the indicatives, what we are therefore to do. And so much of the time in Christianity, people get those backwards. And that is the exact opposite way Christ intends us to live. And last week we saw in Ephesians four, seven through 16, pastor Mark taught us that the Christian grows in direct relationship to the corporate use of the gifts that are given.

To his church and Christ having triumphed over s sin and death ascends to heaven. And he gives diverse gifts to every believer so that we, those of us in the room, not somebody else, don't think about other people. You owe Trinity. You are given gifts and your presence. If you're new to this church, your presence is not just you being with us, but it's also the gifts that you've been uniquely given by the Holy Spirit to help make this local body something beautiful for Owasso and Tulsa and Collinsville and Broken Arrow and Muskogee and Sapulpa and the whole of Tulsa Metro.

And so when we come to Ephesians four, verse 17, you hear Paul lay out a very clear contrast. There is an old way to live and there's a new way to live. And I wonder if you might join me in allowing yourself. To lay down the idols of your heart and allow the spirit to convict us of the ways that we so quickly go back to the old way of life.

And so if you're willing to enable, let's stand together and we'll read Ephesians verses uh, chapter four, verse 17 through verse 24.

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 after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

The grass withers and the flowers fade. But God's word stands forever, and this is the word of the Lord. Thanks, bey. God, you may be seated. Please, father, take our hearts, our minds, our desires, our wills, everything that might potentially distract us, and would you show us the beauty of Jesus in these moments together before we come to your table?

We pray. In Jesus' name, amen. Across the street from Lauren and I when we lived in New Jersey, was a man. His name was Clifford. He built a very brand new, beautiful home in midst of a hundred year old homes on our street on Aiken Avenue. And Clifford had in his front yard, two trees, one tree was a tree that he himself planted about six months prior to when we moved in.

And next to it was the same kind of tree, both sugar maples. But the second tree had been there for 150 years and it towered 30 feet above his third story attic. And it shaded all of his yard and a good portion of mine. And every Saturday morning we would find Clifford out in his lawn and he would be watering his tree.

And if you were to ask Clifford Clifford, why is it that you wanna nurture this tree so much, he says, because one day, someday you see that 150 year old tree. One day, someday this sugar maple is gonna be just as big as that one. And the syrup we take out of this one is gonna be just as sweet as that one you watch.

And so for the years we lived there, across the street from Clifford, we watched. And sure enough, every year, except for the year that the cicadas ambushed his tree, it grew like 18 inches in circumference every year. And we watched this little sapling grow to become a pretty amazing tree of great stature before we moved to Oklahoma.

And the thing that was interesting about Clifford is that he loved landscaping. He loved trees, and he knew how they grew. And so when we watched Clifford Water his trees, we never once saw him spray the tree. He never sprayed the tree. What do you think he did every Saturday? After Saturday, after Saturday, he watered the roots.

He watered the base of that tree. And if you were to ask Clifford, he would say to you, oh, the secret is not some kind of fertilizer to keep the tree safe. The secret is not some new agricultural invention. The secret is consistent watering of the roots of these trees. And the apostle Paul is doing something very similar.

As we turn to chapter four in Ephesians, he has just watered the roots of the tree for three chapters. And now he says, okay, now that the roots are well watered, I want to take your attention from the roots and I want you to see the branches. But the whole point of the book of Ephesians is chapters one to three, you must water the roots.

You must see what God has done in time and space and history for his people. In order for you then to even begin to think about what it means to walk in a manner worthy verse one of chapter four of the calling to which we have received. And so when you get to verse 17, it comes after these amazing chapters of root watering.

And he makes two very simple points in these verses from chapter, uh, verse 17 to verse 24. And they're simply this, number one, therefore do not walk as the Gentiles. And number two. Learn Christ. Do not walk as the Gentiles and learn Christ. Now, first, Paul says, therefore I tell you, I testify. I insist on it.

Do not walk. As the Gentiles walk, you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do. And how does he describe it? He says that their minds are darkened. That's the word in Greek for futility. Their minds are darkened. They run after emptiness. It's a chasing after the wind that cannot satisfy. And when he says, don't walk as the Gentiles do, Paul is not being racist.

He's not talking about ethnicity. He's talking about a way of life. He's talking about a culture. He's talking about a group of people who ignored God's law. Who had it in their heart as Romans one teaches us all men do, but who stiff armed God, who resisted believing in him when it had no curiosity about the one true God.

And as a result, it says that their culture, their mindset, that they ignored God. That's what it, that's what the root word of the English word ignorant means. Right? You're ignorant. You ignore the truth. And Paul says, don't go back to your old ways, to your old self. It is the futility of your mind. It is chasing after meaninglessness.

It is always pursuing something that you want to grasp and always coming up empty. It is like running on a treadmill, always moving, but never making any progress. And friends, let me just say, it is so easy to walk back and to live in the old way of thinking. I mean, even this week, as I came back from St.

Louis last week, and I'm getting back into the rhythm of the week. I had a hard time writing the sermon because I wanted you to like it. I found the idol of my heart saying, don't write a bad sermon. So I wrote two and one night I didn't sleep at all and I thought, why do I not? And there was just this overwhelming sense of the Lord saying, your identity is not in how well you lead the church or in your vocation.

It is not even in how good of a husband or a daddy you are. It is in Christ and all that he has called you to be. He has saved you. He has redeemed you. He's bought you with his blood since before the dawn of time. And so I find myself even needing these verses as I face the temptation of going back to the futility of thinking as I did years ago, and as I still do on so many occasions.

And Paul explains what's going on to those who don't believe the gospel. They are darkened in their understanding. Notice what he says. They're alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. Our problem is not just information. Our problem is our willful turning away from God.

It is a hardening of heart that leads to a darkened mind. And Paul continues. He says, Theia in Greek. Their understanding is darkened. They are spiritually blind to the truth. They are separated from God. First Peter, chapter one, verse 14, if you're a note taker, and Romans chapters one, verses 18 through 23, they speak to the dynamic of being darkened in our mind and ignoring the truth of God for all people.

And how our heart becomes crusty. It gets hardened. And this isn't just an ancient problem. It's a problem in my life, and it's a problem in yours. It's a problem in every human heart because we want control. We wanna push God out. And as David Palin, a friend of some here often said, our biggest danger isn't just bad things, but it is the good things that we make ultimate.

And those good things become idols. They promise life and they bring futility. Paul continues, they become callous. They've given themselves up to sensuality, to greedy practices of every kind and every kind of impurity. We lose sensitivity to the law of God, and we chase anything that promises us happiness, but all of those never satisfy.

Paul says, and the warning to us is not just a warning about those people out there. The warning to us is about the people in here us, that we can grow callous. We grow callous to the needs of the poor, of people who live five miles from here, that live in a depth of poverty. That would stagger your imagination.

We grow callous to those who are in deep. Our family met a person this week who's going through incredible suffering and you want to just lock that out. You don't wanna deal with it. It's too weighty and too heavy. But the Lord has called us to deal with people who are suffering extremely impossible situations in life, caring for children, um, who have lost their use of limbs and sight even sound a hearing.

I mean, don't grow callous Trinity to the needs around us. And the only way that you can't grow callous and the only way to eat, you won't be overwhelmed by those is if you consistently remember the gospel promise that he has given you in Ephesians one to three. That he has called you since before the dawn of time, and he has not just called you into a world full of hurt, but he promises to redeem it.

He's coming again to make everything new, and it's not just making you new. He's making all of creation new. This is Colossians, chapter one. And so Paul says, don't go back to the old patterns, the old idols, when you've been given something far greater. And this is always where the gospel begins. For the Apostle Paul.

He shows us the depth of our sin and our need for rescue and the darkness of our condition so that we might run to the light. And that takes us to the turning point in these verses. In verse 20, notice he has this interesting phrase. He says, that is not the way you learned Christ. Learn Christ. Can you say that together?

Learn Christ. That's the point of the sermon. What's the sermon about this morning that we are to learn Christ? He says, but day. But there's the transition. That is not the way you learn Christ. And in this turning point he says that you did not learn. It's not about Christ. He doesn't say that is not the way you learned about him.

That is the way you learned Christ. That is the way you understand him. To be personal, to be a God who loves you is to have a relationship with Jesus. Listen, this town is full of people who know about Jesus in some vague way. They may not be able to take you through the story of the Bible if the trusses of this church remind us of, but they know about Jesus.

He's a good teacher. But Paul says, no, do you? You learned him. That means that there was a point in life where you were broken. Of your selfishness and you were readily able to admit you were a sinner in need of grace and you knew, not his judgment, but you knew his embrace as he forgave you of your sin and then he clothed you with a righteousness that you didn't deserve.

That is what it means to learn Jesus. And when you learn somebody, you do everything you can in order to get to them, to know them better, to wanna have a relationship with them. When Lauren and I were engaged, we lived in Dallas and then she, during our engagement, I lived in our apartment on Beach View Avenue, and she lived with the Eisen Lords a family in Dallas.

And I remember driving from our apartment to go see Lauren. And I could have driven down the streets the wrong way. I could have cut through people's yards. I could have just tried to see where the Co, the crow flew and just go straight into that neighborhood of the Eis and Lords. No, but what I obeyed the traffic signs that I drove the speed limit and I stopped at every stoplight.

But I didn't get to lo and I didn't say, look at how well I drove. I wanted her, I wanted to be with her. And in the same way, friends, God's law is like all the traffic signs, all the streets, all the roads, all the one way streets, all the highway signs. They were saying, do you wanna get to me? Do you wanna know me?

Then drive, go obey my law to get to me to learn Christ. And the way that he describes that is he gives three in Definitives. I know we gotta go to English class for a second. Three in Definitives. An in definitive is a verb that is not conjugated, it is not described. It is simply to say two, like two Run is an infin.

And here he gives three in Definitives. He says, two, put off your old self. Do you notice that it's down there in verse 22. Then he says, another one in verse 23 to be renewed. In the spirit of your minds, do you see that? And in verse 24, 2, put on the new self, all these infinitives are describing the way that you learned Christ.

So I'm gonna talk about all three of those here for just a minute. These in Definitives, these two do something verbs. Describe what it means to have learned Jesus. And so first he says, put off the old self. You were taught to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires.

Why must you no longer walk as the Gentiles do? Paul tells you, because it's become corrupt. Nobody who walked through Chernobyl in normal street clothes, didn't rush to take a shower and change clothes. If there was a nuclear blast near us, every single one of us would be contaminated. And indeed there was.

That's what Genesis chapter three describes. It's the nuclear blast of sin entering the world. The ground is affected. Thorns grew up by the sweat of Adam's brow. He now had to work the ground and over the entrance of the garden was what put cherubim in a flaming sword.

It was corrupt. The world was fallen. And Jesus, indeed, Jesus came to redeem it. And he says, you wanna know how to begin to live like new humanity. You've been through the Chernobyl site. Go take a shower, go change your clothes, put off the old, and be prepared by the renewing of your mind to put on the new.

But putting off the old self is not just a one-time event. It's a lifelong calling. It is a daily battle and the remnants of Adam and the tangle of your old habits and desires, they don't just roll over and die. And the question remains for us is how do you put off your old self? And this is where I need the help of friends.

And the friend that helps me the most is a 16th century Puritan, 17th century Puritan named John Owen. He said in his classic work on mortification of sin, he says, the whole book is written about one verse of the Bible. It's Romans eight 13. If you live according to the flesh will die. But if you, by the spirit put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

And Owen's thesis of the book is this, the choices believers who are assuredly, freed from the condemning power of sin ought to make it their business all the days of their life to mortify the indwelling power of sin. In other words, you never graduate from this fight. Holiness is a fight and a battle that we are all in.

And Owen warns us, he says, when sin lets us alone, we let sin alone. But sin is never less quiet than when it seems to be most dormant. So what? Our contrivances against it, they ought to be vigorous at all times and at all conditions, even when there is the least suspicion. In other words, what is he saying?

It's saying that when it seems as though you are going through a season of great joy and pleasure and peace, look out. Don't cease to fight. Don't let it require you to go through an incredible struggle in order for you to be aware of the lurking nature of sin in your life and the idols of your heart.

We were at the St. Louis Zoo last week and, uh, took my boys there. And there's a picture I took of the boys and their friends, and they're laying against this glass and what is right behind them in this glass underwater. But a giant hippo nostril stuck right on the glass. And you've got this amazing 3000 pound beast of an animal.

And the hippo is like the hippo. Look how cute and snugly he is. And so many of us think of sin like a giant sleepy hippo. Look at it, you know, he is up to breathe and he comes back down. Oh, he must be fun to play with. Do you know? Do you know an animal? That's the king of the jungle, a lion? Do you know the one animal that a lion is deathly afraid of when you get into the water with it?

The hippo. Why? The hippo looks cute and cuddly, but it will destroy a lion in the water. And so it is with your sin. Some of you think, ah, I know. I look at my 401k so much. I know I idolize money, but really it's not that big a deal. Oh, it's a big deal. I know that I worry about this, but it's not a big deal.

Oh yeah, no, you're me. What is worry? But meditating on things you cannot control. You do know how to meditate, but rather than meditate on his word, we tend to meditate on those things we can't control. So Paul says, put off the old self.

Owen calls out all of our attempts to do it in a superficial way. He says, external endeavors such as bodily exercise or self performances or legal duties without the least mention of Christ or his spirit are bronze. They are hardened with the swollen words of vanity. For a deep root extraction of sin requires deep acquaintance with the gospel of God.

I. If you're gonna live out, Romans chapter four to six, you gotta know, I mean, Ephesians four to six. You gotta know Ephesians one to three. What does mortification look like? For Owen, it involves three things. It involves a habitual weakening of sin. Not just occasional duties, but it involves a consistent weakening of sin.

You need to think about your sin more to study it, to know it, to be able to consistently weaken its influence. Secondly, it involves a constant battle, an ongoing daily engagement. Not perfection, of course, but perseverance. And it does involve, Owen says, real success. Genuine change. Genuine growth, real heart change by the spirit's power, not, not just external conformity.

Thomas Watson is another Puritan, and he taught us a bit more on how to do this as good doctors of the faith do. He said. And if you're gonna walk in repentance, what is it? You need to see your sin. Some of us don't even see it. You identify your sin and you need to be sorry for the sin itself, not for getting caught in the sin, but sorrow for the sin itself.

And then confess it. Confess it to the Lord. Yes, certainly some of you need to confess it to others in your life. And then there's a humility, and then there's a hatred. Not that you got caught, but you hate the sin. And then there's turning from it. Sight, sorrow, confession, humility, hatred, real change.

Watson teaches us and Owen, um. Gave this advice to preachers at Oxford in talking about the mortification of sin. He says to make, to break men of particular sins and habits, but not to break their hearts, is to deprive ourselves of the advantages of actually pastoring them. In other words, if I were to simply tell you guys go do what the Bible says, some of you would come and say, great sermon pastor, great sermon.

And you know what? Those compliments scare me to death because it's very easy in this culture to create a church full of Legalists sermon, seven things to do. Great. And I'll go out the week and for about an hour, I'll pretend I can do those seven things. I'll come back next week, beat up more and more.

Instead, we wanna preach the gospel in this church. We want you to see that you are accepted, therefore, go obey. You have a lover. You're trying to get to go drive the streets of his law with beauty and gladness and joy because you're trying to get to him. Put off your old self. Learn Christ. Secondly, he says that not only are we to put off our old self, but we are to be renewed by the spirit of our minds.

You yield, you open up to be renewed as passive. You don't renew yourself. You are renewed. God is the one who's at work here, and our job is to continue to yield the patterns of our thoughts, our desires, our motivations. You yield your temptations to the Lord and say, Lord, here they are. Some of you don't know what to pray for.

Stay with me. I know what's getting. Some of us don't know what to pray for, but you can pray. Lord, help me to identify the temptations of my life and to yield them before him and to be able to share those with your community group. Because if you, if you navel gaze for too long, it can become overwhelming.

So share it with another brother or another sister in community group.

As Jack Miller used to love to say, he says, preach the gospel to yourself every day. Let the good news of Christ finish work for you. Become the loudest voice in your mind so that you can continue to run to become more and more self-aware of your need for him. And what that means for us in worship is it means you can rest because it is Jesus who's doing the work.

And you can rest in him because until you rest in him, Ephesians one through three, you can not really obey his law. Ephesians four to six.

Thirdly, not only are we to be renewed in our minds, but we are to put on the new self. Put on the new self. Paul writes, created after the likeness of God, his imago day, and true righteousness and holiness. This is isn't just a better version of you, it is a new you. New heart, new you clothed in his righteousness.

And as you clinging to the gospel, you realize that your reconciliation is not just vertical, it's also horizontal. And so it changes your relationship. You grow humble around your friends in ways that make you different over time. Sometimes very slowly and sometimes through seasons of great trial, but you grow more and more humble.

You don't have to be the smartest person in the room every time you can learn from others. You can become more loving. You can bear the fruit.

Milton Vincent is a pastor who, um, once wrote a poem. Amazing. It is when I stopped to regard that God would consent to an anguish so hard surrendering his son, and to mayhem and death to tortuous writing till his final breath. Why does God forsake me alone? Jesus cried. Yet, God left him hanging until he had died.

And when you see Jesus's love for you, you're able to put off the old self and you're able to yield all the temptations and you're able to imagine what it means to put on the new self. So now God relates to me only with grace, the former wrath, banished without any trace. And each day I'm made a bit more as I should, his grace, using all things to render me good.

Yes, even in trials, God's grace abounds to and does me the good he assigns it to do. Tim Keller says, all of life is a battle between two selves, but there's a different battle before you become a Christian from the battle that you experience after you become a Christian. The battle between the selves before you meet Christ is a world without hope.

It is a battle that you cannot win, but after you're in Christ, you know his love, it is a battle that you cannot lose. Because the war has been won for you. And every day Paul says, wake up and say to yourself, because I am in Christ, because I'm a new creation. Because I am loved and accepted. I am secure.

And therefore I'm willing in light of that fact to live differently. And I will put off the old, and I will put on the new. Where are you wearing the old clothes? Where are you thinking the old ways? Where do you need to remember your new identity and put on the new self living as someone who is already infinitely loved, already accepted, already made new in Christ?

Don't you see what Jesus has done for us? Listen at the nuclear bomb site of the garden in Genesis chapter three. I mean, do you wonder what is, do you wonder why Jesus had to wear a crown of thorns? Because the ground was full of thorns after the cross, and Jesus wore that crown of thorns as if to say, by this crown of thorns, oh, creation.

I am reversing the curse. Do you ever wonder why Jesus sweat drops of blood in the garden of Gethsemane? It speaks. God told Adam, by the sweat of your brow, you will have to work. And so Jesus did all the work for us. And he sweat even to the point of shedding blood in the garden of Gethsemane. Don't you see his beauty and his love for you?

Don't you see that? When Jesus was on the cross, what did they do? They didn't break his legs. They stabbed him in the side and out of the side of Jesus. What came water flowed. Why? Because he's reversing the curse. Because there was a flaming sword that guarded the way to the garden. And here Jesus is, he experiences that sword, but out of Jesus comes the water to extinguish the flames.

Oh, your savior loves you more than you could ever imagine. Drive to him. Go see him. Obey his law because of the relationships that you have with him. Learn Christ and know him.

So remember Clifford's sugar maple Tree? Never did we find him watering the branches. He was never injecting maple syrup into the trunk. He was never stapling fruit on the edge of those trees. He watered the root just like we are to water our justification in faith. Every week you wanna know how to grow more holy.

You come back to the fact that you are justified in his sight. And in light of that, then you grow in sanctification. But you can never grow fruit on the tree unless you think of old Clifford in his front yard watering that sugar maple tree week after week after week. 'cause the water in the roots, because the roots grow deep.

And when the roots grow deep, the fruit grows sweet. And it is true in our life as well, Trinity. So let's run to the gospel this morning as we come to the table. Hallelujah. Learn Christ, maybe do it together. Let's pray. Father, would you help us by the gift of your spirit to long, for righteousness, to long for holiness?

Oh, thank you for the gift of our union with Jesus. Would you empower us by your spirit to walk in a manner worthy of our calling, not in our own strength, but by resting in Christ who is our life and it's in these, in His name we pray. Amen.

Sermon transcript is computer generated.