New Identity New Wardrobe

Well, if you have your Bible with you this morning, and I hope you do, I want you to turn to
Ephesians chapter 4. We're continuing our ongoing study through the book of Ephesians,
and I would imagine that... of you, but not most of you, are aware of the significance of this week
and what's going to be happening on Tuesday night. Tuesday night is when the National Basketball
Association will be kicking off its 2026-2027 season. And I'm aware of this because on Tuesday
night, the opening game will be between the Philadelphia 76ers and the New York Knicks,
followed by... my beloved San Antonio Spurs, who will be playing against the Oklahoma City Thunder
that night. So you'll want to put that on your calendar and make sure you're watching. We have an
elders meeting on Tuesday night, and I'm really bitter about the fact that there's an elders
meeting and this basketball game going on at the same time. So I suppose it's my fault because we
had to postpone the elders meeting because I had flew two weeks ago, so it's all on me, but...
the NBA season kicks off this week, there's a reason I'm telling you this. It's because fans will
see something they have never seen before in the history of the NBA. They will see this,
one of the superstars of the league, LeBron James, wearing a Philadelphia 76ers uniform for the
first time. Now, some of you have heard, most of you know the name LeBron. If I ask you what teams
he had played for, some of you couldn't tell me. I know this because we had this conversation
earlier this morning with a few of you, but since his career, he started in the league in 2003,
playing for the Cleveland Cavaliers. He then played for the Miami Heat. He went back to Cleveland,
and he has just ended eight years with the Los Angeles Lakers.
He's now in Philadelphia playing with the 76ers, hoping to bring his new team. championship.
So they'll play the Knicks starting with me on Tuesday night. Now I tell you all of that because I
want you to imagine something. I want you to imagine it's opening night. LeBron is there for his
first game as a Philadelphia 76er. He is introduced and he comes out wearing his Lakers uniform.
Imagine that happening. If he came out with his Lakers uniform on, everybody would look at him and
go, did you not get the memo? You're a Sixer now. You belong with this team.
You have a new coach. You've moved to a new city. You should not be wearing your old uniform now
that you're a Sixer. You have a new locker. Everything's new. Go suit up like a Sixer.
Get out of that Laker uniform. Nobody wants to see you in that anymore. The passage we're going to
be looking at this morning in Ephesians chapter 4, we're going to see how when we become followers
of Christ, when we become Christians, we are given a new uniform that we are supposed to put on.
We have this new wardrobe that we are supposed to inhabit to help identify us as...
of this team that we are on. And we'll see that in the same way as it would be ridiculous for
LeBron James, now a Philadelphia 76er, to come out wearing his old uniform,
it would be ridiculous for us to come out looking and acting like we're on the old team,
like we have not been brought into the family of God. As we've seen in this ongoing study through
Ephesians, God's design in calling us into his family, calling us as citizens in his kingdom,
is to unite us together as brothers and sisters, teammates working together to advance the kingdom.
And we are to function together as a team, each of us using the gifts we've been given to play our
part on the team. So for the Sixers and the Spurs and every NBA team,
their goal is to win the championship this year. For Christians, our goal is to grow in spiritual
maturity so that each one of us growing more and more into the image and likeness of God will be
his representatives and his ambassadors on earth advancing the kingdom of God.
That people would see us individually and see us collectively as a church embodying the truth that
Jesus proclaimed, putting on that uniform, and they would be drawn to that as they see in our lives
how we relate to one another. In this passage we're going to look at this morning, we'll see that
there is an expectation that when we come into the family of God, things will change for us.
priorities will change. Our practices will change. Our habits will change.
How we act, what we think, what we believe, how we speak to one another, how we live together.
All of that should change when we come into God's family.
We have a new head coach. We have new teammates. We have a common goal and it reshapes our lives.
So that's what this passage is going to point us to. I want to read through it together with you,
starting at verse 17. Once again, let me just ask the Holy Spirit to be our teacher. Lord, we need
you to send your Spirit now to speak to us by your Spirit.
Soften our hearts that we would have ears to hear. Help us to be not just hearers of your Word,
but doers of your Word. Take your Word, plant it deep in us, form and fashion us into your
likeness, we pray. Amen. I'm going to ask you to stand as we read God's Word together,
so if you'd do that. This is the Word of God for the people of God, Ephesians 4, beginning at verse
17. The Bible says, 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 the hardness of heart. They've 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. 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. May God bless this reading of his word. The grass withers, the flower fades. The word of our
God will stand forever. You may be seated.
So there are two parts to this text we're looking at this morning. Verses 17 through 19 give us a
description of the Gentile way of walking. and why the Gentiles walk the way they do.
And then verses 20 through 24 give us a description of the process of spiritual transformation in
the lives of those who have learned Christ and show us how it is that we are to grow in grace.
And by the way, that phrase, learned Christ, is unique here in Ephesians 4. He's describing the
process by which we become followers. of Jesus. So let's look first at verses 17 through 19,
where Paul says, you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do. Ephesians 4,
17 is the beginning of a new section in the book of Ephesians. to the end,
this is really what Paul is addressing. In fact, this statement, do not walk as the Gentiles walk,
is what Paul will be unpacking for the rest of this letter. Here's how the Gentiles walk.
Here's how you should be walking. He's going to be laying out for us what that looks like. And the
final section is about that walking and righteousness and holiness and godliness.
He's giving us markers to look at in our lives to see Are we walking as Jesus would have us walk?
Are we following the path the Holy Spirit has mapped out for us to walk? And the spiritual
transformation that needs to take place in all of our lives comes not as we follow a recipe,
but as we yield to the Holy Spirit, and then as we walk in step with the Spirit to align our lives
with what God is calling us to. So this command in verse 17, no longer walk as the Gentiles do.
This is what Paul's elaborating. And the reason we should no longer walk as the Gentiles walk is
laid out for us. Paul's outlined it in chapters one through three. So he starts chapters one
through three and says, let me tell you everything God has done for you in Christ. He has blessed
you with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. When you were dead in your trespasses and
sins, he brought you to life. He made you alive again in Christ. He has welcomed you into his
family and made us citizens in his kingdom. He has joined us together,
uniting us with our brothers and sisters in Christ. He has, by the power of his love,
given us a foundation of spiritual strength. so that we can stand firm spiritually in the midst of
the battles that we're going to face, and the right response to what God has done for us in Christ,
the right way to say thank you, Lord, is to walk in a manner worthy of your calling. We saw that
back in verse 1 of chapter 4. Here's how you should walk in a manner worthy of your calling.
Verse 17, here's how you shouldn't walk the way the Gentiles are walking. That's the contrast here.
So no longer walk as the Gentiles walk. Now note that he starts this by saying, I say this and I
testify in the Lord. He's emphasizing that he's not just giving his opinions about what your life
should look like. He's telling them this is from the Lord. This is what the Lord wants. It's not my
opinions about this. He is stressing his apostolic credentials.
And his point is that how we live our lives and the choices we make,
these are not optional things for us when it comes to our relationship with Christ.
We are to follow in obedience as an indication of his lordship.
Now there's been some controversy in the church throughout the history of the church where some
have been reticent to want to stress too much. this idea of how we are to walk as Christians,
because they see that the emphasis here on how we live might conflict with our understanding of
grace. So you are saved by grace through faith, not of yourself, not of works.
Some people come along and say, now, when we emphasize here's how a Christian ought to walk, that's
true, but we can't We can't really enforce that because that would be adding works to salvation.
Well, think about this for a minute. If your salvation is based on what you believe,
right? Specifically believing that Jesus is who he claimed to be and that he is Lord.
If you say, I believe Jesus is Lord, then that statement, if you really believe it,
is going to have an impact on the choices you make. If I said to you,
You've got a new job. You have a new boss. Do you believe your new boss is your boss?
And you said, well, yes, I do. I just got hired. Well, then that's going to impact how you work
tomorrow. You're going to do what the boss tells you to do. When you become a Christian,
you are saying, I believe that Jesus is Lord. If that's the case, he's in charge of your life.
And if you really believe it, it's going to change how you behave. If somebody says,
I have a new boss, and I go, where are you working? They say, well, I don't know. I never go there.
Well, what do you do? Well, whatever I want. Well, what does your boss want you to do? I don't
know. I don't talk to him. I'd go, are you sure they're going to pay you? Right? You sure you have
a job there? Are you just making that up? They're not going to hire somebody like that.
When God brings us into his family, into his kingdom, he comes in and says, Jesus is Lord. Now,
your job is to respond in gratitude. to him for all that he's done for you.
Ultimately, what we really believe is borne out in how we live. So as we look at God's call for us
to live a certain way, if we push against that, if we say, that's not how I'm going to live, that's
not how I want to live, we have to go back and say, wait, I thought you said Jesus is Lord. Do you
believe that?
So what I say I believe is one thing, what I demonstrate with my actions.
really is the evidence of what I truly believe. So when Paul says here,
this life transformation, this choosing to walk, not as the Gentiles, not the way you walked in the
past, but in a new way, in a new path, it's the right response to all Christ has done for us.
It's what he expects of us. And just to be clear, when he says no longer walk as the Gentiles do,
he's not talking about how you walk. I mean, it's not about taking steps.
He's using the word walk here the way Johnny Cash used the word walk back when he said, I walk the
line. Or like the Four Seasons when they said, walk like a man. I mean,
I could go on with this, but then you get to walk like an Egyptian and walking on sunshine and it
just, it all breaks down. That's not helpful. Okay, so don't walk like a Gentile. Don't live the
way the Gentiles are living. Don't embrace Gentile priorities. Don't embrace a Gentile worldview.
And here's what's interesting. Who's he writing to?
Gentiles. All these people are Gentiles. People in the Ephesian church are converted Gentiles.
So when he says, you Gentiles don't walk like Gentiles anymore, what he's saying to them is not
that they are no longer Gentiles, but that something more important is now true about them.
They have an identity that is bigger than their Gentile identity.
Their Gentile identity used to shape everything about their lives. They grew up in a Gentile
culture. They participated in Gentile practices. They did what Gentiles do.
That's what you do growing up in that culture. And he's saying now you have a new identity that
supersedes your Gentile identity. And so you no longer walk the way the Gentiles walk because you
have a new master. You have someone new you're following. You're going to walk a different path.
You're probably familiar with this verse from 2 Corinthians 5, verse 17.
If you're not familiar with it, it's a memory verse. You should lock this one in. It says,
therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. These Gentiles who are in Christ have a new
identity, new creation. Now, I remember reading this verse for the first time and saying,
well, the old didn't pass away. I mean, I'm still who I was.
That's still true about me, but something greater has happened. So my identity is no longer shaped
by the culture around me. It's shaped by Christ. When I am in Christ,
I have new marching orders, a new purpose for my life. So he's writing to Gentiles. He's saying,
don't walk like you used to walk, like the Gentiles are still walking. Walk like Christ would have
you walk. This is not about their ethnicity as Gentiles. It's about the difference between those
who have a pagan worldview and those who have a worldview that's all about bringing glory to God.
We might say, don't walk like the godless people walk. Except here's the thing.
The Gentiles were not godless people. They were religious people. The Gentiles were highly
religious. They had religious practices. They had temples. When you go back and read the book of
Acts in the middle of Paul's visit to Ephesus, they were stressing,
great is Artemis of the Ephesians. Artemis was the goddess of fertility.
And they had a temple for Artemis in Ephesus. And so they were godly people.
They used to go down to the temple and they used to worship at the temple and practice immorality
at the temple as a part of their worship experience. Their lives were shaped by their religious
views. And Paul describes their Gentile religion in verse 17 as the futility.
They are walking in the futility of their minds. So what does that phrase mean?
What does it mean to walk in the futility of your mind? It means, That if your reason and your
intellect and your wisdom and your understanding is all based on your authority,
basically you're saying, I am the one who determines what is right and wrong in my life and in the
world, that is the futility of your mind. That mindset of putting yourself at the top and saying,
I will decide what's right and wrong, what's true and not.
The word futile means incapable of producing useful results.
So if you have a mindset that puts your wisdom and your intellect at the top of the food chain and
says, I'm the master of my destiny. I will decide what's right and what's true and what's good and
what's beautiful. That will produce no useful results in your life. That's the futility of your
mind being exalted. When I became a Christian back in 1977,
I had to realize first that when what I thought or believed clashed with what the Bible teaches,
I was going to have to bring my wisdom under the authority of Scripture and yield my wisdom to the
Scriptures. A lot of people will clash with the scriptures and what they will do is say,
I'm going to have to reinterpret the scriptures to conform to my way of thinking. That's the
futility of your mind. That's thinking your mind knows what's right and true. No,
God says my word is what's right and true and you bring your intellect, your wisdom under the
authority of my word. If I was going to rely on my own wisdom,
to chart out my life, I was going to experience the futility of my thinking. Paul explains this in
verse 18 where he says, they, the Gentiles, me, before I was a Christian, they are darkened in
their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to
the hardness of their hearts. Let me take that backwards. Because of the hardness of our hearts,
our hearts are hard toward God and His ways. They're unresponsive to God and His ways.
Because that's the condition of our hearts, that leads us to alienation from God. Your heart's hard
toward God. You alienate yourself from Him. I'm going to do what I want. If God can fit into my
agenda somehow, then I'm happy to have Him along. But if God wants to change me, forget it. I'm not
interested. That's...-hearted and alienated from God. And when you are alienated from God with a
hard heart, that's what leads to a darkened understanding and ignorance.
Because you're not going to God for wisdom, you're turning to yourself for wisdom. The Bible's not
saying that these people were ignorant in the way that we think of it, where they just didn't have
any understanding about anything. They were smart people, but they didn't have understanding about
God and his purposes for humanity, and they didn't care.
Hard-hearted, alienated from God, darkened in their understanding, ignorant to God's ways,
which made them futile in their thinking. And where it leads, verse 19,
and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
Here's what it comes down to in our lives. When your heart is hard toward God, your heart develops
calluses. You've had calluses on your hands, your fingers. When I play guitar, I get calluses on my
fingertips because the strings press against it, and you lose sensation, you lose feeling when
you've got calluses. There's a crust over the top of the skin, and you don't feel there anymore.
Well, these people have become calloused in their heart. There's a crust over their heart and
nothing penetrates. They don't feel there anymore. And that leads them, when their heart is
calloused toward the things of God, now they respond instead to their appetites,
to their passions, and their desires.
Instead of responding to what does God want for me, they say, what do my desires want for me? What
do my passions want for me? What do my affections want for me? And that's what leads them to
sensuality, and they become greedy for things that will ultimately destroy them.
Our world today is dominated by Gentile thinking and Gentile sensuality.
We live in a world where people have become calloused to God. Now, listen,
not toward the idea of God, but toward the God of the Bible.
Like the Gentiles in Ephesus, the people in our day are religious. choosing who to worship,
but they're making gods in their own image rather than yielding to the God of the Bible.
They're happy to have a God who thinks like them and approves of what they approve of, and so
that's the God that they make up and worship. I read a story this week of a woman named C.D.
Spencer. She wrote a piece in Christianity Today back in 2020 where she said she resigned from
Christianity. She said she set fire to her faith to pursue her best life,
and it led her to despair. I'm going to read her testimony. Here's what she wrote. She said, as the
world was falling apart around me from a pandemic, so was my faith.
Some call it deconstruction, but for me it was an all-out demolition. She said,
I stripped my vocabulary of the term God because I was soaking in the oppression of my past.
wanted no part of that religion, the control, the guilt. I was angry.
She said, I had been introduced to new ideas, theories, beliefs that challenged traditional
Christianity. Things like sexuality might be on a spectrum or original sin might be debatable or
the Bible contradicts itself. And these desires, she said, that I had buried deep within me,
her passions, her desires, her appetites. These desires to experiment,
to question, to challenge, all started clashing violently with the doctrines that I had been
proclaiming publicly as a writer and a youth leader. She'd been a part of a local church.
She'd been writing and speaking about God. But now, she says, I was caught between the God of my
faith and the woman that I feared I truly was. What if I couldn't enjoy life?
and enjoy God. What was I going to do? What if I could no longer deny myself for God?
What would happen if instead I denied God for myself? She said, I chose myself.
And for the next two years, I embarked on what I can only call a world tour, a tour of all that I
believed the world had to offer. Free love, drugs, the worship of other gods. I said yes to
everything I had once denied myself. And in saying yes, I thought I had found freedom.
And for a while, it felt good. There's a rush that comes with rebellion,
a thrill in doing the things you once feared. No longer restrained by the looming gaze of God,
she said, I allowed myself to indulge. All those Friday nights I had spent in Bible study instead
of campus parties seemed like a joke now. I'd missed out on life, or so I thought.
I was making up for lost time. I believed I was living my best life. But soon,
she said, the high faded. The freedom that had tasted sweet became bitter.
Said I dabbled in psychedelics that I thought would expand my mind, but left me adrift,
untethered from reality. The drugs, the sex, the defiance, none of it brought the peace for which I
had been searching. And eventually, I didn't want to live anymore. Life had lost its meaning.
She said the thought of suicide became my quiet companion, a whisper in the back of my mind that
started to get louder with every passing day. Seemed logical, even rational, to end it all.
If life has no meaning, why continue? I weighed my options.
Overdose on antidepressants or slip into a warm bath and let go. I started preparing myself to
vanish. to slip into non-existence because living in this confusion,
this depression felt unbearable. She said, but as I stood on the brink of ending it all,
fear gripped me. I had rejected the God of the Bible and now my deepest despair,
I found myself crying out to him. God helped me. She said, I hadn't called on his name in years.
I'd tried to erase his name from my memory, but it was the only word that seemed to fit at the
moment.
And she said, when I cried out, the phone rang. It was a Christian friend who had kept in touch
with me throughout my world tour. She called at that exact moment as if she had known.
She asked me, is everything okay? And I allowed myself to admit the truth for the first time in a
long time. No, I was not okay. I spilled my heart out to her, told her everything I'd been
carrying. She listened. and her presence on the other end of the line pulled me back from the edge.
When we hung up, she said, I collapsed to the floor weeping. What had just happened? I wasn't
supposed to be alive. I didn't want to be alive. But I'd cried out to God,
and the God I had renounced, and he heard me. And in that moment,
he showed up. She said, not long after that, my sister came home and found me lying on the floor
with tears streaming down my face. This was the sister who had once credited me with helping her
grow in her faith and who'd watched me walk away from that same faith all while living under the
same roof. She knelt down beside me and she said, do you want to surrender?
Was the invitation I'd been waiting for my whole life and I hadn't even known it. I said yes.
I said yes to surrendering my pride, my pain, my confusion, my frustration,
my rebellion, my emptiness. She prayed over me, the tears turned to smiles, and for the first time
I felt alive. She said, the following day everything was different. My life had changed in an
instant. The God I had walked away from, the God I thought I had rejected, had never left me. He
was there listening, waiting for me to call on him again, perhaps in a way I never really had.
Since that day, I haven't stopped talking to God. I tell him everything. I tell him my fears,
my doubts, my questions, my pleasures, my weaknesses, my aches, my desires, everything I once tried
to hide, I now bring it to him. I don't pretend anymore. Instead, I let him have every part of me,
and in return, he gives me peace.
She writes, I am convinced that I do not know what is best for me.
I thought I did, pursuing happiness apart from God, but that led to disillusionment.
I realized that if there is no God, then life has no meaning, and I thought I'll just opt out.
But God refused to let me die in my disbelief, and because of that, I now know that the only way to
find your life is to lose it.
Here's how the Bible describes that young woman's story. Proverbs 14,
there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.
Don't walk like the Gentiles walk. Following your darkened understanding and your appetites and
your passions will lead you to destruction.
Verse 20 says, that is not how you learned Christ.
This is the only place in the Bible where this phrase is used. It's not how you learned about
Christ. It's how you learned Christ. How do you learn somebody?
If I said, I want you to learn, and I give you a name here in the congregation, I want you to learn
so-and-so, learn this person, what would you have to do? Well,
you would have to go live with them.
Marianna and I dated for four years before we got married. We knew a lot about each other. I mean,
we thought we knew everything about each other. It took about a week of marriage to go, oh, wait,
where did that come from? I didn't see that before.
Something about coming together in marriage, living together, sharing a bathroom for the first
time, where you learn, not just about, you learn another person.
The only way to learn someone is to live with them.
The text here says the way you learn Christ is first you hear about him, then you are taught in
him, and finally you come to see that he is the truth.
That's the path to saving faith. Let me just point this out. I think the Bible is making it clear
here. There is a difference between superficial faith and saving faith. And we have a lot of people
in our world today who have embraced superficial faith but have rejected saving faith. So
superficial faith starts with hearing about him and then it can continue with being taught in him,
learning from Jesus about God and about life. But until you come to a point where you say Jesus is
the truth, you're still in superficial and not saving faith.
Saving faith is when you say that's true and that's going to change everything.
Saving faith leads you to the process that the Bible outlines here for us as spiritual
transformation. Three steps in this process. We find them in verse 22. When we learn Christ,
the next thing is we put off the old self, then we renew our minds,
and then we put on the new self. So that's the pattern.
Put off, renew, put on. So let's talk about that.
What does it look like to put on To put off the old self. Well,
here's what it looks like. It means you identify the thoughts, the patterns, the desires, the
actions in your life that are Gentile in the way that you practice them.
What things in your life are incongruous with Jesus and who he is?
Jesus is like this. I'm like this. We don't match up. I need to put off everything that's not like
Jesus in me.
That's what putting off is. And first you have to identify it. Verse 22 says,
it involves the attitudes and actions that
belong to your former manner of life and which are corrupt because of your deceitful desires.
So you're looking at your life and saying, what are those corrupt, deceitful patterns that are true
about my former way of life that are still present and are incongruous with who Jesus is. Here's
Jesus, here's me. What doesn't look right here? I need to put those things off. This way of living
does not fit who I am anymore. Colossians 3, by the way, gives us a good... of what some of these
things are. Colossians 3 is the chapter to go to if you want to really understand what it looks
like to put off and put on. So in Colossians 3, 5, it says, put to death. By the way,
putting off means putting to death. And this is important. Don't take your habits,
your patterns, and say, I'm going to put them over here kind of out of reach, but I'm going to keep
them around. I'll just manage them. No, you don't manage them. You mortify them. You have to put
them to death. It's not something I can dabble with from time to time, but it's something I have to
die to. Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you. Not spiritual,
but things like sexual immorality, impurity, passion,
evil desires, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these things,
the wrath of God is coming. In these, you too once walked when you were living in them,
but now you must put them away. Anger, wrath,
malice, slander. Obscene talk from your mouth.
Don't lie to one another, seeing that you put off the old self and its practices and have put on
the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. You see, same
idea of we have to put off what is earthly, what is unspiritual,
what doesn't look like Jesus. Sexual immorality, anger, wrath, slander.
It's not a comprehensive list. But it's a pretty telling list of the kinds of attitudes and actions
that ought not be characteristic of us as followers of Jesus.
So first step, identify Jesus looks like this, I look like this,
where is it not matching up? What are the things about my life that need to be put off?
Some of you will know this woman who made a big splash about six or seven years ago.
What's her name? Yes, that's Marie Kondo. Marie wrote the book about tidying up,
was a big hit, the life-changing magic of tidying up. And then she had the Netflix series that was
all about tidying up. And one of the big principles Marie Kondo teaches, when you want to tidy up
your closet, you take everything out of your closet, you put it on the bed, you hold it up, every
item, and what's the question you ask? Does this spark joy? So you've got a t-shirt that you've
had for years. You hold it up, you go, does this t-shirt still spark joy? And if it does, you put
it in the yes pile and you keep it. And if you go, you know, it doesn't spark joy anymore, I'm
going to say goodbye to it, thank it for its service for all these years of being a good t-shirt,
but I'm going to put it in the put-off pile.
The Bible says we should hold up our actions, our attitudes, our behaviors,
and we should ask, does this spark joy with God?
And what doesn't we put over here? And what does we put here? That's putting off.
Here's step two. You got to be brainwashed. That's what it says.
It says you have to renew your mind. The renewing of your mind is washing your brain,
washing away the thoughts and the attitudes and the patterns and the habits that are incongruous
with who God is. You need a brainwashing. You need You have corrupt data on your hard disk.
You need your hard disk to be defragged, maybe wiped clean, and a whole new operating system be put
in so that you can start thinking differently, thinking the way God thinks instead of the way you
think. Now, listen, don't try to clean up your behavior without renewing your mind.
Because if your mind's not renewed, then all you do is set your behavior off, but your mind's going
to say, go get that again. And you will. You've got to put off the behavior, but you've got to
renew your mind as well. In the same way that the Gentiles' behavior came from a hardened and
calloused heart, we have to recognize that our behavior flows from a renewed mind.
And you know how to renew your mind, right? Another memory verse, if you don't have this one locked
away, Romans 12.2. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your
mind. Stop. The world is working overtime to try to get you to get in line with the world's
priorities.
Don't be conformed to it. The world is not your boss. The culture is not in charge of you.
Don't be conformed to this world. Be transformed by the renewal of your mind and by testing so that
you may discern what is the will of God. what's good and acceptable and perfect.
That's what I want to do. That's what I want to think. That's what I want to be directing my life.
So we put off what doesn't look like Jesus. We change our mind.
We wash our brains. We renew. you are thinking, and finally,
this is key, you can't just put off what doesn't look like Christ. You have to put on what does
look like Christ. If all you do is put off and you don't put on Christ-like actions and attitudes,
this stuff you put off will just come back. Jesus tells a parable about a house that had a demon in
it. Do you remember this? And this house had a demon in it. And so the owner of the house chased
the demon out. and then he swept the house and got it all cleaned up. And what happened?
Demon comes back and goes, thank you for cleaning up the house, and brings seven other demons with
him. Why? Because the owner did not replace what was in the house,
the demons, with godliness. He just tried to sweep it up.
We have to not just put off, we have to put on. If all you're doing is saying, I'm going to stop
being angry, but you're not saying, I'm going to put on compassion, it's not going to work.
Again, Colossians 3 gives us a clear look at what kinds of things we should be putting on.
Colossians 3, 12, put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts,
kindness, humility, meekness, patience,
bearing with one another. Somebody has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the
Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive. And above all these things, put on love.
which binds everything together in perfect harmony, and let the peace of Christ rule in your
hearts, into which indeed you were called into one body, and be thankful.
It's a good passage to spend time meditating on. Ask yourself, would somebody who knows me well
describe me as compassionate, humble, kind, gentle,
patient, forgiving, loving, peaceful, thankful? Is that...
Are those the words people would choose for you? If not, you need to be putting those things on.
These character qualities, these are your new identity.
This is now who you are. If you are in Christ, this is you.
Christianity is not behavior modification. It's not a self-improvement plan. It's about you
stepping into the new life of who you are now
already are. The new self, it says, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and
holiness. And there's so much in this text, and actually we're going to do a little deeper dive
because what follows this text, Paul starts talking specifically about the kinds of ways Gentiles
walk that we should not walk. Don't lie, he says, like the Gentiles do.
Don't Be kind to one another, tenderhearted. He's going to go through a whole list of things.
Be angry, but don't sin. And we're going to be unpacking that in the weeks ahead.
As we look at what we've heard here this morning, as we prepare to come to the table for communion,
just a couple of questions for you to think about. Here's the first question. Do you have a new
identity? Are you in Christ?
Or, remember we talked about it, there were kind of three steps where you... hear about Christ and
you learn about Christ, but you never say Christ is the truth.
If you haven't gotten to the point where you say Christ is Lord over me, he is the truth, I'm going
to follow him, you're not in Christ.
You're just on the fringes looking and saying, that looks nice to me. Sure, I'll go along with
that. But it's submission to Christ as the truth that puts you in Christ. Are you in Christ? Or
have you seen Christianity as kind of a course on how to live as a better person? Be the person you
need to be. But that doesn't happen until your identity is in Christ. Second question,
how are you still walking like a Gentile?
What things do you need to put off? Here's Jesus, here's me.
What do I need to get rid of? What do I need to be putting on?
What Christ-like character should I be working on? And you know what? You can do this. If you
identify, I got to deal with my anger. Get some help in dealing with your anger.
There are things you can do to start putting your anger off, but you have to learn how to replace
your anger with compassion, with patience, with kindness.
So how can I put this off, but how can I cultivate these things? You say, how can I become more
kind? You want to know how to become more kind? Start doing kind things to people.
You want to know how to become more patient? Start practicing patience. You go,
well, that sounds simple. Well, you have the Holy Spirit in you.
Yield to the Holy Spirit. Ask the Holy Spirit to take control of you in those moments when you
start to become impatient. Cry out to God, Lord, give me patience here.
But again, like I said, there's more. Last thing, anytime this season you see LeBron James wearing
a Philadelphia 76ers uniform and you think, boy, that looks odd, just think about yourself. Have I
put on my new uniform? Am I walking? Do I look odd in my new I hope you do.
Because if you don't look odd, if you look like the culture, you're walking like the Gentiles.
There should be something different about you that we see.
All right, let's pray together. Father,
your word is living and active and it's powerful like a two-edged sword. Thank you for the power
and promise of your word.
Lord, I pray that we would take this seriously and not just slough it off.
I pray that we would do the spirit-led self-examination that will cause us to consider the ways
in which we continue to walk like Gentiles walk.
And I pray that we would be purposeful and get the help we need from one another, some
accountability and some coaching to help us put on the new self and put away that which is not
honoring to you. I pray for anyone here, Lord, who is on the fringes,
but has never surrendered to you as Lord.
Lord, I thank you for Michael's testimony this morning, growing up in a Christian home and hearing
the Bible and yet coming to a point where there was a transition that took place.
Lord, I pray that anyone who needs that transition moment in their own life today, that this would
be that day.
We ask these things in your name. Amen.