NO LONGER IN THE DARK
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on May 28, 2023 under 2023 |
Bethany Bible Church Mother’s Day Sunday Sermon Message; May 28, 2023 from Ephesians 4:17-21
Theme: Now that we are in Christ, we should no longer walk as we once did when we were lost in the darkness.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
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We’ve been studying together from the apostle Paul’s New Testament letter to the Ephesians. And today we come to the most practical section of that letter. In fact, I would say that—when it comes to living a transformed life in Jesus Christ—it may be among the most practical portions of the whole New Testament itself.
It has its beginning in Ephesians 4:1; where Paul wrote,
I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called … (Ephesians 4:1I).
Someone’s “walk”, as we’ve noted before, is another name for their “lifestyle” or “pattern of living”. After describing to us all of the wonderful spiritual riches that belong to someone who has been redeemed—explaining what a wonderful thing it is to have been called by God into salvation through faith in Jesus’ cross—Paul then urges the believer to rise up and “walk” in a manner that is appropriate to who they now are in Christ.
And in this morning’s passage, he begins to take up that theme in earnest—calling his readers to live completely transformed lives. In Ephesians 4:17-24, he writes;
This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness (vv. 17-24).
And then, from 4:25 all the way to 6:9, Paul gives us a detailed description of what it looks like to put off the former practices of our old, sinful way of life, and to put on the new practices of a life completely transformed in Jesus Christ. In my opinion, it’s one of the most exciting, enriching, and edifying portions of the Bible.
But this whole glorious theme starts off in a very sobering and serious way. Before getting into the details of what our new way of walking should look like, Paul first reminds us of what the old way of walking was like. He warns us to no longer walk according to the principles and dynamics of that old way of walking—because those principles and dynamics are what characterize someone who is lost and who has no relationship with God at all.
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To help us understand the details of this morning’s passage, I’d like to read to you from what the apostle Paul wrote in another of his letters—in Romans 1. It helps explain what we’ll be looking at in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians this morning.
In the Book of Romans, Paul wanted to describe to his readers the ‘good news’ of the gospel. But to show how truly good the ‘good news’ is, he needed to declare the ‘bad news’ first. In Romans 1—starting at verse 18—he wrote;
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things (Romans 1:18-23).
So; here, we’re being told the bad news that must precede the good news. And you can see how it all begins. The truth about God is plain enough to people. They can clearly see that He is there, because they can see the evidence of His existence all around them through what He has made. They have no excuse. But even though they know that He is there, they make a sinful decision to ignore Him—or to refuse to acknowledge Him—or to refuse to give Him the thanks that is due Him. They put the truth about Him in a box, as it were, and sit on the lid. In fact, in their hatred of Him, they even seek to exchange Him for something else—which is where all forms of idolatry and false religion begin.
And because of this—as Paul says—they became “futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened”. Theologians often refer to this as the ‘noetic effects of sin’. Noeō is the Greek word for ”thinking” or “understanding”; and Paul is showing us how, when someone sinfully refuses to acknowledge or worship the God who made them, it results in a distortion of their reasoning powers. They reject Him who is the source of all truth, and thus become “futile” or “ineffective” in their understanding. Morally speaking, they become “fools”.
And it goes downhill from there. Since they reject God, He pulls His hand away.
Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due (vv. 24-27).
Along with the futility of the mind comes the corruption of the passions. As a consequence of rejecting Him, God gives people up to “vile passions”. Think of it! As an act of judgment, God lets them do what they really want to do—and allows them to suffer the results! It grieves me deeply to say it; but this is the true, biblical explanation of so much of what we see going on all around us today. The horrible wickedness that we see prevailing all around us is a result of God giving people up to their sinful passions. We shouldn’t just shake our heads in disgust at the things we’re seeing celebrated all around us. We should weep with deep sorrow at the terrible lost condition of the human souls that are caught up in the horrible tragedy of it all.
And hard as it is to imagine, it gets even worse. Paul went on to describe that with the depravity of passions comes the debasement of the human mind … and with it, even more depraved behavior. The whole social order falls apart while people celebrate sin. He writes;
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them (vv. 28-32).
This explains everything that we see going on today! The reason why things are the way they are in this world today isn’t ultimately because of bad government, or bad education, or bad economics, or bad elections, or bad policing, or bad courts. We’re usually told that those are the reasons for the mess we’re in today. But in reality, those are simply the by-products of the real reason. And the real reason for the mess we’re in today is that modern men and women—who are made in the image of God—have chosen to away from their Creator and are refusing to acknowledge Him or give Him the worship and the thanks that He is due.
And dear believing brothers and sisters; I was once there! And so were you! But praise God that that’s no longer true! God—in great mercy and love—has made us alive in Christ! He has opened our eyes to see our lost condition, awakened us to what Jesus did on the cross for us, and enabled us to put our faith in Him. He has rescued us from the vanity of our thinking and the depravity of our conduct, brought us back to Himself, and washed us 100% clean in His sight through the blood of Jesus! He has poured out upon us all of His rich spiritual blessings in Christ, and adopted us as His own sons and daughters by faith. He has made us fellow-heirs with His Son Jesus; and has destined us to be forever glorified with Him in heavenly glory!
And now—having been so gloriously saved by Him—it’s time for us to respond as we should. It’s time for us to rise up and live like what we now are. It’s time for us to put away the old principles of thinking and the old patterns of living, and put on the attitudes and practices of people who have been made brand new in Christ. As Paul puts it in Romans 12:1-2;
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God (12:1-2).
That’s basically what the apostle Paul is telling us in our passage this morning—in Ephesians 4:17-21. He’s telling us that, now that we are in Christ, we should no longer walk as we once did when we were lost in the darkness. It’s no longer appropriate to who we now are.
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So then; look at how he began in verse 17. He told his believing readers …
1. HOW WE ARE TO NO LONGER WALK.
He said, “ This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk …” And look at how seriously he wrote those words. He not only ‘said’ it as a consequence of all that came before—because of all of the riches that are now ours in Christ; but he also ‘testified’ it ‘in the Lord’. This is put in the form of a solemn command. In the New International Version, it’s translated, “So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord”.
This is a command that comes to us with great authority. In fact, when Paul says “therefore”, I have even wondered if he was—to some degree—pointing our attention back to what he said in verse 11. Back there, he told his readers that the Lord gave “some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers” for the building up of the church. And could it be, then, that he is—in a sense—saying, “I am giving you a solemn command on the basis of my authority as an apostle; an apostle who has been given to you by the Lord Jesus Himself to build you up in the faith. I speak this command to you with the authority of Jesus Himself.” I certainly think so. I believe we should take his words that seriously!
And look at what he commands us to do. We’re to “no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk”. The name ‘Gentiles’ is meant—not in the biological sense of people who are ethnically non-Jewish—but rather in the spiritual sense of people who are outside of a covenant relationship with God. It would be like what he said to the Thessalonian believers in 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5;
For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God … (1 Thessalonians 4:3-5).
Paul’s words make a kind of assumption about his readers. The assumption is that they are still habitually walking and talking and thinking and acting like the “Gentiles who do not know God”; and that they should “no longer” do so. That makes this, to some degree, an ongoing command to be put repeatedly into practice; because we are in constant need of being reminded to stop behaving like the unbelieving people of this world.
When I think of this, I’m reminded of the apostle John’s words in 1 John 2:15-17;
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever (1 John 2:15-17).
I’m grateful that the indwelling Holy Spirit helps us in this—continually calling us away from the things of this world, and back to a pure devotion to our Lord. We’re a work in progress; and the Spirit helps us to obey this command to “no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk”.
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And to help us see why we must not walk that way any longer, Paul then went on to tell us …
2. WHAT CHARACTERIZES THAT OLD WALK.
The things he tells us in verses 17-19 bring to our minds the very same kind of things that he said in that longer passage in Romans 1. He tells us, first, that the old way of walking was characterized by a darkening of the understanding. He described it in verses 17-18 as “in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened …”
Do you remember what we called this earlier? We called it ‘the noetic effects of sin’. When unbelieving people refuse to acknowledge the God who made them—the God who is, in fact, the very ground of all being and the source of all true understanding—then it can’t help but bring harm to their powers of reasoning. Paul put it this way in Titus 1:15;
To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and conscience are defiled (Titus 1:15).
Things seem to make sense to God-rejecting people … but only in a distorted kind of way that isn’t in accord with things as they really are. As one theologian put it, their understanding is off-kilter like a table saw blade that isn’t set straight. It cuts the wood … but cuts it at an incorrect angle so that the pieces no longer fit right. That, by the way, is why nothing that a God-rejecting culture tries to do to correct the problems of the world will ever ultimately work. The efforts may help in a temporary way; but they will always end in failure … and eventually end up causing more problems … because it all comes from the futility of the unbelieving mind.
I think of that as a first step in a downward slide. Once someone has experienced the darkening of the understanding that comes from sinful rebellion against God, the next thing that characterizes their walk is an alienation from the life of God. Paul puts it this way in verse 18; “being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them …”
The ignorance that Paul is speaking of isn’t simply a matter of not knowing something. This is speaking of an immoral kind of ignorance—a kind that knows that God is there, but that refuses to acknowledge Him from out of a preference for sin. It’s what happens when people prefer not to think about God anymore. They become alienated from the life that God gives.
Paul described this condition very vividly in Ephesians 2:1-3;
And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others (Ephesians 2:1-3).
When we were in that condition, we were physically alive; but we were alienated from the life of God. We were “dead” in trespasses and sins—the deluded playthings of the devil.
A third step down the slide is described for us in verse 19. Being thus alienated from the life of God, that old way of walking is also characterized by a callousness of the conscience. Paul says that it is “because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness …” They no longer feel shame. They reject all sense of guilt. The things that they once did in secret, they now do in public in a bold display of defiance and arrogance—even locking arms together in great numbers to put their disobedience to God on display for the whole world to see.
When Paul uses the word “blindness” in this passage, he doesn’t use the ordinary word for blindness. Instead, he uses a word that basically means “hardness” or “callousness”; as when a part of our body that ordinarily registers sensitivity becomes “hardened” or “callous” and no longer communicates pain anymore. If I keep passing my finger through the flame of a candle over and over, I will eventually destroy my sensitivity; and the skin of my finger will no longer feel pain as it should while it burns. And the human conscience can be like that. Each time we ignore it—and each time we sin in violation of it—we weaken its sensitivity. Soon, it becomes calloused; and it no longer feels the shame of sin. In 1 Timothy 4:1-2, the apostle Paul wrote;
Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron (1 Timothy 4:1-2).
And a final step down the slide is found at the end of verse 19; where we’re told that, in callousness—being past feeling—they give themselves over to lewdness “to work all uncleanness with greediness.” And thus, that old way of walking becomes characterized by a yielding to depraved behavior. It’s characterized by those who—as Paul put it at the end of Romans 1—
knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them (Romans 1:32).
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Now, dear brothers and sisters in Christ; that’s the character and nature of the manner of life in which you and I used to walk. And I believe that we should not only be horrified by what we see of it today, but that we should have nothing in the world but sorrow and compassion for those who are still in it. We have been delivered from it by the power of the gospel … and so can they. That’s one way this passage should affect us. It should move us to proclaim the gospel.
But the other way that it should affect us is to renew our commitment to “no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk”. And that, then, leads us to a third thing to notice from this passage; and that is …
3. WHY WE SHOULD NOW WALK DIFFERENTLY.
The way that ‘the Gentiles’—the unbelieving people of this world—walk is characterized by being “in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness”. But as Paul goes on to say in verses 20-21; “But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus.”
I love how Paul doesn’t say, “But you have not so learned about Christ.” To simply learn facts about Christ alone won’t transform our walk. But as Paul actually puts it, we have “learned” Christ Himself! We’ve been brought into a saving relationship with Him by faith; a relationship transforms us in every way. It leads us to walk in fellowship with our Lord and Savior in holiness. And that’s because—as Paul says—we have indeed “heard Him and have been taught by Him” who is Truth!
When I think of this, I think of the words of 2 Corinthians 5:14-17;
For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again. Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new (2 Corinthians 5:14-17).
So, dear brothers and sisters; let’s cease walking in the old way. We’re no longer living in the dark. As new creations in Christ—who live in the light—let’s walk like what we are!
AE
