Learning Christ | A Sermon on Ephesians 4: 20-24

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Understand what it means to learn Christ through this sermon on Ephesians 4: 20-24 by pastor Tim Mullet.

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Well, good morning.
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If you do have a Bible, turn to Ephesians 4 .20 -24 and we're going to be reading this passage and then we'll get started.
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Ephesians 4 .20, 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.
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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.
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Now one of the things that people most frequently say if you try to encourage them to put off some destructive attitude, action, mood, or even behavior at times is that they will frequently look at you and if you're encouraging them to put away this practice, they'll say that you're encouraging them to pray, you know, pray the gay away, if you're going to talk about that as it relates to same -sex desire, you're encouraging them to simply pray the anxiety away, pray the depression away, you know, pray the anger away, and they may even, you know, follow that up with an accusation that if you're encouraging them to get rid of these vices, these sinful attitudes, actions, moods, that that's somehow some form of prosperity gospel that you just think that, you know,
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Christians are going to be perfect and that they're not going to be characterized by any of these things and then you're just encouraging them to magically, you know, get rid of these things.
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And what that reveals when people have this kind of reaction where they look down on prayer, they look down on, you know, the power of God to help them change to be a transformed life, what that reveals is that the church really hasn't done a good job teaching people about how to be sanctified.
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The church, I think if we've done anything well, one of the things that we've done is we've taught people how to be justified, meaning we've taught them how to be reconciled with their
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Maker by putting their faith and trust in Jesus Christ as the once and for all sacrifice for our sins.
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If anything, we've helped people to realize how to be saved, but then we haven't done a really good job teaching people how to be sanctified, how to be holy, how to be like Christ.
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And so for many people, you know, you can imagine like a person who's characterized by anger, like a husband who's characterized by anger, who's characterized by frustration, and if you look at the husband and you say, hey, you have to repent of that anger, you have to repent of that frustration, you have to learn to put that off, you know, he may look at you and do exactly what
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I'm talking about, he may look at you and say, hey, you know, I tried that, I tried to ask God to take it away and He hasn't, it must be that I have some sort of, you know, brain problem, and a lot of what we do is we lean on these psychological labels to blame all of our attitudes and actions on.
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But the same thing with the wife who's just constantly stressed out, you look at a wife who's constantly stressed out, constantly anxious, and you say, hey, you have to repent of that, you have to deal with that, you have to turn from that, and she's going to look at you and say, hey, you know,
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I tried, I tried to pray it away, it didn't work, and so this is just, there must be something wrong with me, it must be something in my brain, it must be, you know, chemical imbalance, it must be something like that.
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And so what we need to do as a church is we need to do a better job helping people to deal with just the basic issues of life in a fallen world.
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So all of us as Christians, we all have the same struggles, like you're living in a world that is dominated by sin, you're living in a world filled with sinners, you know, under the curse of sin itself, we're living in a fallen creation, and not only that, like, we're fallible, we don't even know how to predict what's going to happen in the next few minutes.
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You know, we are creatures who are fundamentally limited, but then we're also bound and enslaved, you know, apart from Christ to this sin problem, and when
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God comes and declares us not guilty, He obviously doesn't just magically take away all the sins we have in our life, but what we need to do as a church is we need to put a lot more thought into what it actually means to turn from sin, whether it comes in the form of sinful behaviors, sinful attitudes, or sinful actions.
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Now, what we're going to be doing today as we talk about this passage in Ephesians is we're going to talk about how learning
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Christ is a solution to sanctification, it's a solution to help us to deal with these basic problems of life, and we may not, you know, naturally, intuitively think about learning
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Christ as being an answer to these things, but that's exactly what this passage is talking about. So you notice how
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Ephesians 4 .20 starts, Ephesians 4 .20 starts with these words, but that is not the way you learned
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Christ, but that's not the way you learned Christ, assuming that you've heard about Him and were taught in Him as the truth is in Jesus.
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And so what we want to say when we're thinking about this passage in general is that fundamentally there's a difference between what this passage is describing when it talks about learning
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Christ, so fundamentally there's a difference between learning Christ and learning about Christ, and often what the church has done is when we teach about Jesus, we're teaching certain facts about Jesus that we're hoping that people will absorb, but we're not teaching them to learn
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Christ Himself, so we're not teaching them to learn what it means to put on Christ, we're teaching them to learn certain, like, disconnected facts about Christ.
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And so, you know, when you think about how this works in general, a lot of the church's teaching at this point is really devoted to teaching people certain basic facts about who
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Jesus is, and so as we're trying to evangelize people, as we're trying to witness to people, typically you try to run them through a checklist of things about Jesus that you want them to absorb.
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So typically it starts with you want them to know that Jesus is God, right? So Jesus is God, He came to earth,
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He took on a human nature, He came to dwell among us, He lived according to the law, right? So He fulfilled the law in of Himself, and then, you know, a lot of what these facts are geared to do is they climax naturally, because the
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Gospels come to us as the story of Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection, they climax around Jesus' cross ministry,
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His Passion Week, so Jesus, you know, He was God, so we want people to know Jesus, we want them to know Jesus was
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God, He came to earth, took on flesh, He dwelt among us, He lived a perfect life, fulfilled the law, He did for us what we couldn't do,
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He was, you know, put the death on the cross, He died, He buried, He rose again on the third day, so the bulk of what we're actually trying to do at that point is we're trying to teach people to know these basic facts, and if you can know these basic facts, then you'll respond to them in justification by repenting of your sins, by believing the good news, and then you can be declared, you know, and this is the message of Gospel, you can be declared not guilty of anything that you've ever done, you know, all the sin that you've ever committed in your life, it can be forgiven, past, present, and future.
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Now that's all true, I'm not disagreeing with any of that, but I'm trying to say that there's much more to the
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Bible than the message you can be forgiven of your sins and declared not guilty, there's a lot to the
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Bible of knowing what it means to actually live the Christian life, to actually be like Christ, and that message of what
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Jesus did on the cross has implications, not simply for getting you out of hell and forgiving you of your sins, but also radically transforming your life.
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So when you think about the way that people live the Christian life, I mean, you can look at your own life and you can think about the sins that you commit, and I'm sure that everyone, like if I talk about, hey, what are some sins that you're committing right now, there might be things that come to your mind, like right now, like areas of your life that are not submitted to the obedience of Christ, that are not very
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Christ -like, you can probably think of that, I mean, if I say, hey, what are some areas like that, you might think first about areas in your spouse's life, okay, or your kid's life, but then eventually maybe you'll get around to yourself, but then when you do, here's the issue, when you're thinking about these things,
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I mean, most of us have probably given up, if you're honest, you're not allowed to lie, most of you have probably just accepted that you are basically who you are and the things you struggle with are going to be the same things that you struggle with for the rest of your life until you die, and if you can look at your marriage or your relationship with your kids, we live in a world that's just absolutely hopeless, and I'm sure that you feel a little bit of that hopelessness yourself at times, if you're honest and you're allowed to admit it, to say that, you know what, me and my wife, we fight about the same things over and over and over again, we have the same conversations over and over and over again, we deal with the same issues over and over and over and over again, it's the same thing, it's every day, same problems, we are who we are, right, we have the same struggles that we're always going to have, and that's just going to be the rest of my life, probably forever if I'm honest about it, and that's what you think, you know, and I know you're not allowed to say it quite like that, because that seems pretty hopeless and that seems to deny the power of God in your life, but I do think if you're honest and you look around the world, one of the things that's very obvious is that people rarely change, right, so think about it, people rarely change, do you see much evidence of radical transformation in people around you?
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I mean, like, you can make jokes, one of the jokes that people make about, like, how do you pick a marriage partner, is to ask them to look at, like, if you're a man, going to pick a marriage partner, well, look at the mother -in -law, because that's what the woman you're going to marry is going to be like in about 20 years, right, so you guys are nodding your head, you understand what
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I'm saying, but the same thing is true of the guy, so like the woman, you want to know what this guy's going to be like, look at the father -in -law, that's what he's going to be like, because, like, the issue is the assumption that undergirds that is that people don't change, they are who they are, who they're trained to be, like, that's going to be who they are, so you're running a path, and, like, the issue is, this is the way we think, regardless of whether or not we're allowed to say it, you're running on a path, you're running on a trajectory, and whatever comes natural to you, you're going to do, right, so every attitude, every practice, every habit that comes natural to you, we assume that you're just going to do it, because that's who you are, right, so then when we talk about the message of the gospel, in our minds, is a message that just says, hey, you know what, you're messed up, you're broken, you're sinful,
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Jesus has come to forgive you and declare you not guilty, but you're going to be what you are, essentially, like, you're basically going to be who you are, and what you need is you need
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Jesus to come and to forgive you for all that, because, you know, no one's perfect, and we're never going to be enough, and all of that's true, we do need
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Jesus to forgive us, and we do need Him to do for us what we can't do, which is to come and to live a perfect life, and to cancel all of our sins past, present, and future, but the issue is that, when we're talking about this passage, we're talking about Ephesians, there's a lot more to Ephesians than simply, hey, you know what, you're just going to end up just like your father -in -law and your mother -in -law, because people don't change, and you know what, the attitudes, the actions, the struggles that you have, you're just stuck with them, and that's who you're going to be for the rest of your life, and you know what, you and your wife, you're going to have the same fights that you're going to have, and you're just going to have to learn to get over it, and learn to be forgiving, because people are who they are, and you can't change anyone, and you just got to love everyone unconditionally,
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I mean, that's just not what we're even talking about in this book at all, right? So I mean, look at what's happening, look at what happens before Ephesians 4 .20,
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in Ephesians 4 .17, Paul says, Now this I testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk, as the
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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.
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What are unbelievers characterized by? What does it say? We're supposed to no longer walk as they're walking. What are they characterized by?
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They're darkened in their understanding, they're alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is,
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I mean, that sounds rude, doesn't it? Are you allowed to say that unbelievers are ignorant? Ignorance is in them due to the hardness of heart.
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They have become callous, they've themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But notice what he says, this is not the way you've learned in Christ.
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What we're going to be talking about today is how to not be characterized by all the things that the pagans are characterized by, you understand?
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And the way that we're not going to be characterized by all these things is to learn about the difference between learning certain facts about Christ and actually putting on Christ himself.
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Now to do this, like to learn Christ, we're going to talk about three things today. So a very simple outline, three points that we're going to talk about, which just flow naturally out of the text that you should be able to see without much work.
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So the first one is going to be to put off your old self. Second one's going to be to be renewed in the spirit of your mind. And the third is going to be to put on the new self.
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So threefold plan, how are we going to no longer walk as the Gentiles walk? Well, we're going to learn to put on Christ.
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What does it mean to do that? Well, it means to put off the old self, be renewed in the spirit of your mind, put on the new self.
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Got it? So first point, put off the old self. Now as you think about what it means to put off the old self, what
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I want you to understand here is just to think about it this way, like the old self is not who you are, okay? So these things that we're talking about up here, they're darkened in their understanding, ewing in from the life of God, become callous, give themselves over to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity, the old self is not who you are.
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You're not your old self. Now it's very easy to say that, it's very easy for me to stand here and say, hey, your old self is not who you are.
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But the problem is that you've been brainwashed your whole life by a pseudoscience called psychology to think that every single vice that you can practice is some sort of mental illness.
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That's what you think. If you look at the DSM, one of the things you're going to realize is that every single sin that the Bible mentions has a label for it.
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If your kids are disrespectful, what's their problem? Are they stubborn and rebellious as the Bible says? No. What does psychology tell you?
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Psychology tells you that they're suffering from oppositional defiant disorder. So that's their problem.
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They're suffering from oppositional defiant disorder. Hey, if you're mad, like if you get mad a lot and then you get really depressed, is that because you have an anger problem?
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The Bible says, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor be put away with you along with all malice. If you get really mad all the time and then you get depressed, is that because you have an anger problem and then you give yourself over to despair and hopelessness afterwards and then you go back to your anger again?
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No. What is your problem? You're suffering from bipolar disorder, right? If you get sad all the time and you give yourself over to despair and hopelessness and are weighed down by guilt and shame and condemnation, are those spiritual issues that you have to fight or is that because you have major depressive disorder?
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You know what? Like if you feel sad, if you feel hopeless and despair for a two -week period of time, all day long, nearly every day, and it's sudden unexplained sadness, you don't know where it's coming from, two -week period of time, all day long, every day, and you know what?
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Like, you're so sad, you're so given over to helplessness, despair, and guilt that you have like this excessive guilt, you eat too much, you eat too little, maybe you start to slow down as you walk because you're just, you don't know what to do.
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You know what? People are going to tell you, this is not a spiritual problem in the minds of many people, it's because you're suffering from major depressive disorder and you need to get on some kind of antidepressant in order to deal with the basic issues of life.
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So we have all these labels, OCD, PTSD, ADHD, we have labels for every single thing the
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Bible says that Christians should not be characterized by, we have labels for them. And then when you put those labels on people, those labels become their identity, do you understand?
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They become their identity. I see people online and they will, you know, whether they're on Twitter or something like that, they will list all of their mental disorders in their profile almost as if it's like a badge of honor, like this is who
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I am, you know, I'm just neurodivergent, suffering from ADHD, you know, depressed person, it's like, okay,
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I guess that's who you are then, you know. But then the problem is that that person who puts that label on themself, you could take any one of these
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DSM labels, you could put it on yourself, and you've been trained to think that they're an illness. And I think that many people today actually, most
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Christians today probably think that these are actual medical illnesses. And you have no idea why you think that.
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Just ask yourself, why do I think that this is a medical illness? You have no idea why you think that. Because somewhere along the line, someone said that depression was caused by a chemical imbalance in your brain.
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Do you know that that's a laughing stock in the scientific community right now? And just because, like, that's what's been advertised by these drug companies who want to make a bunch of money off of you, like they told you that this somehow resulted in a chemical imbalance theory, so you think that every time you hear a psychological label, it must be some kind of chemical imbalance.
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And you don't even ask basic questions about what's actually going on anymore. You've just been brainwashed by a bunch of pagans to say, like, here's what you've been brainwashed to think.
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Whatever comes natural to me is who I am. Every thought and every feeling and every behavior that comes natural to me, that must be who
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I am. That must be my identity. And I can't do anything about it other than get put on some kind of tranquilizer that's going to numb all my thoughts, because I've got to get rid of the bad thoughts somehow.
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That's what we're trained to think. We're trained to think that any time you see one of those labels, it must be an illness, and it must be just like cancer.
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And you don't blame someone for getting cancer. Why would you shame someone or blame someone or expect them to be able to overcome something that the pagans are constantly telling you is called an illness, right?
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So you have this illness. You can't do anything about it. Listen, like, you suffer from major depressive disorder. That sounds like you're suffering from cancer, doesn't it?
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If you suffer from general anxiety disorder, that sounds like you're suffering from cancer. But then the problem is there's no evidence that these are actual physical problems that you're suffering from.
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In fact, the Bible can tell Christians over and over again, why do you worry about your life? What you're going to eat, what you're going to drink, you know, what you're going to wear, the clothes you're going to put on.
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Doesn't God feed the birds of the air? Doesn't He clothe the grass of the field? So the Bible can come and tell you, why are you worrying about your life?
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Paul can tell you, be anxious for nothing, with everything, with supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.
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The Bible can say, why are you anxious about your life? Don't be anxious for anything. And you can have Christians who will hear those words, and then they will also hear, they will go to a doctor because they're constantly worried, and the doctor's going to tell them they have general anxiety disorder without running any medical test on them to determine that there's anything wrong with them whatsoever, and then whatever the
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Bible says right there is going to go out their brain, and they're not going to listen to anything the Bible is going to say. They're going to say,
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I'm suffering from an illness. This is who I am. This is my identity, right? This is who I am.
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I can't help it because, you know what? Worry comes natural to me. Therefore, I can't do anything about it.
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And as Christians, we say, well, I guess, you know, you're suffering from general anxiety disorder. I guess you can't help it.
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I guess we don't have anything to say to you because all we have is a message that Jesus came to forgive you of your sins, but we don't know how to take the
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Bible and help people to actually turn from these simple life problems, like anxiety is a part of life, depression is a part of life.
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What do you think is going to happen when you live in a fallen world? Do you think that everything's going to be easy? You think that you're not going to struggle with, like, worry?
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You're not going to struggle with anxiety because you're living in a world that you can't control? So here's the thing. You look at this passage.
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This is not the way you've learned in Christ. What does it mean to learn Christ? Well, to learn Christ is to be taught in Him to put off your old self.
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What is that old self? I mean, isn't that old self probably going to be the self that's characterized by all the things the
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Bible says we shouldn't be characterized? Aren't some of those things like anxiety and worry and excessive guilt and excessive shame, excessive condemnation and being held captive to the fear of death, you know, some of those things that the
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Bible says that we shouldn't be held captive by? You think that may include social anxiety disorder, right?
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Obsessive compulsive disorder, all these things. So here's the thing. We've been taught, like, to learn Christ is to be taught in Him to put off your old self, and so what you need to understand by that is your old self is not who you are.
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You're not defined by any of these materialistic, hopeless labels that says that whoever you've been, that's who you're going to be in the future.
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That's all you are. You're just a complicated machine. There must be some sort of glitch in the programming because you can't seem to get it together.
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You don't have to be who you were as a Christian. Christ has come to set you free from the power of sin. The Son sets you free.
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You'll be free indeed. You don't have to be characterized by the old self, but then notice what it also says.
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It says to put off your old self which belongs to your former manner of life. So what does that mean?
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Think about how hopeful this actually is when you think about it. Your old self is not who you are, and your former manner of life as a
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Christian is not determinative of the rest of your life. Just because for as long as you've breathed, you've trained yourself in constant anxiety, constant worry, constant sadness.
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Just because that's how you've responded to your life is that when things don't go your way you get mad, and you learn to get mad from an early age, or you learn to worry from an early age just because that's who you were.
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That doesn't mean that that has to be who you are. But it will be if you take one of these labels and you say, that's who
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I am. If you say, instead of saying, I'm sinfully angry at everyone around me all the time because I'm an angry maniac.
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If you don't want to say that, you want to say, hey, I'm suffering from intermittent explosive disorder, right?
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Which person do you think is going to actually turn from the anger? The one who says I'm suffering from intermittent explosive disorder, or the one who says, you know what?
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I'm an angry maniac. And I need to repent, right? So here's the thing. Just because you've learned in the past to be characterized by worry, to be characterized by anxiety, to be characterized by depression, to be characterized by anger, to be characterized by a lack of self -control, just because you've learned these things, that doesn't mean this has to be the rest of your life.
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But it will be the rest of your life if you say that the old man is who I am to my core, and that's all
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I'm ever going to be, okay? So the first thing you have to say is, I'm not the old man. The old man is not who
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I am. And who I am is not determinative of who I'm always going to be, right?
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So notice what it says. To put off the old self, which belongs to your former manner of life, and is corrupt through deceitful desires.
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So deceitful desires are able to be renewed. You know, a lot of people, when we're looking at these things, what we don't often do is, and this is why people often fail to put on new behaviors and fail to put on new attitudes and fail to put on new desires, is because we don't often pay attention to the desires that are underneath the surface that are producing all these things.
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And so this kind of goes back to your original point that I'm making. Like, if you have an individual who is characterized by anger, characterized by worry, characterized by fear, often what we're doing is we're just trying to pray away these bad things.
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And then we realize that, hey, they're not going away. But the problem is that these bad things are coming from certain desires that are in our heart, these deceitful desires.
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So it's these deceitful desires that are producing these problems of thoughts, these problems of behaviors, these problems of mood.
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And we're often, what we're not doing is we're not dealing with the deceitful desires that are underneath the surface, and we're just trying to put a
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Band -Aid on problems. So like with a guy who's mad all the time, what do we tell him is, hey, stop getting so angry, right?
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But why is he angry? Why is he mad? Why is he so frustrated? If you just tell him to stop, he may not be able to stop because he needs to actually figure out what the desire is underneath the surface that's producing that anger and deal with that, right?
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In the same way, like you tell someone, hey, stop being worried, it's like, well, why are they worried? What do they want right now that they're not getting?
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What is that thing that's underneath that attitude, the mood, the behavior? And we need to deal with that.
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And so part of what we're going to do today is talk about what this actually looks like. So to learn Christ is to be taught in Him to put off your old self, but it's also to be renewed in the spirit of your mind.
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That's what verse 23 says, to be renewed in the spirit of your mind. So what we need to do is we need to actually talk about what does it mean to deal with these things in a more fundamental way, in a comprehensive way, and deal with these deceitful desires that are underneath the core that we're no longer to be characterized by.
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So let me give you a case study here. So John, John's frustrated all the time, works all day long, comes home to a wife who is perpetually unhappy and constantly complains about him, and to a home that's a mess because she won't clean it.
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So when he asks her what she's done all day, she will gaslight him by pretending that her day was so hard, and the caring for the kids is just so much work, but he knows that she's lazy and easily stressed out.
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And you know what? He's had enough of it. He wants to escape. He's tired of all the fighting, so he buries his head in his phone, and he tries to keep his distance in order to keep from having another fight, right?
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So but then let's talk about her, Sarah. She's stressed out. She's obviously overwhelmed. Kids are constantly fighting with each other, never listen.
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She just feels so overwhelmed. Her husband's constantly criticizing her. I mean, that's literally all he does is he comes home and he criticizes her, and then when it goes bad, he just goes away, right?
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Looks at his phone. Guys today, they'll either play on their phone or play on video games, but then guys in the past generation, they'd probably tinker around in the garage or maybe sit around and watch sports all day long or something like that.
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But it's the same basic thing. It's just being channeled in different directions. You guys know what I'm talking about. But husband's constantly criticizing her.
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He just comes home from work, ignores her, or starts to fight with her. There's nothing she can do that will ever be good enough for him.
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She knows she should be a better homemaker, not let everything get out of control, but it's all just so much, why can't things be easier?
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So what's happening here? Like, what's happening in this scenario? The issue is they're going to run out this script over and over and over again.
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That's going to be their life. They're going to run out this script. She's going to be lazy at home, stressed out, overwhelmed. He's going to come home.
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He's going to fuss at her. She's going to look at him and say, all you ever do is fuss at me, right? Like you're not encouraging, you don't do anything nice to me, you just fuss at me, right?
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She's going to keep on doing the same thing. And then he's going to say, hey, yeah, you don't want to listen to me when I'm fussing at you, right?
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All we do is fight when I start fussing at you, so I'm just going to ignore you. And then she's going to look at him and say, you're not here, you're off in your own la -la land doing your own stuff, right?
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I need some help. He's like, well, you don't need my help, you just start learning to do stuff, right? And they're stuck.
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And that's going to be their life. And that's going to be their life all day long. And they're just going to get frustrated at each other, probably just wait till the kids get out.
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I mean, like, they're just going to learn to quit talking to each other, do their own separate thing, wait till the kids get out of the home, then wonder, like, what are we even doing married to each other?
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Like that's kind of how it's going to go. But what do they need to do to fix this? So what we do, here's what we do.
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You see certain problems. What would you tell the lady? Hey, you probably need to start cleaning the house some, right?
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So maybe you'll tell her fix her behavior, right? So it's just stop, just fix the behavior. So that's what we do. All right, so we tell the guy, hey, quit getting mad all the time, right?
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Start being encouraging. We tell the lady, hey, quit being so lazy. Stop being so stressed out all the time, right?
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So that's what we do. We just tell people, stop, just stop it. Stop the bad stuff, right? And that's typically where we end.
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Like that's what we say. We just say, just stop doing that. Stop doing that. Stop doing that. Stop doing that. That's it.
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But what does this say? It says be renewed in the spirit of your mind. What would that mean in this kind of scenario?
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What would it mean to be renewed in the spirit of your mind? What it means is that the old man has become corrupt through deceitful desires, right?
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What you need to figure out is what are these desires that are underneath the surface that are producing all this bad behavior, all these bad attitudes, all these bad actions, all this bad behavior?
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And I mean, a simple question you ask at this point is just to say, hey, what do you want that you're not getting? Like what would a husband want?
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Like think about this. What does a husband want? He probably wants to come home and think, hey, I work 10 hours and I want the house to look like you work 10 hours too, right?
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Like I don't want the house to look like you spent all day long on Netflix and it's all falling apart. Now is that a good desire?
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Seems fair, right? I don't see anything wrong with that. That seems reasonable. That's fine. Like what else does the guy want in that kind of situation?
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He wants to be able to communicate with his wife and say, hey, you need to resolve this and then it not turn into a nightmare and not turn into a big fight.
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Is that a good desire? Yeah, that's probably a good desire. And then if it is going to turn into that, and if she's just going to be perpetually unhappy every time he comes home, what does he want?
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He wants to, I don't want to be around all that, right? I don't want to be around this chaos, so I don't want to be around a chaotic house with just stressed out wife and out of control kids.
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I want some peace. I want some safety. I want some comfort. I want to just check out, right? Is that fine?
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Yeah. I think that's all fine. I mean, those are all desires that they all make sense. They're all reasonable. What about, what does the wife want?
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She probably doesn't want to be screamed at all day long by the kids, right? She doesn't want to deal with kids who are disrespectful to each other, constantly fighting with each other.
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She probably wants them to just learn to be better behaved. You know, not just screaming at her, not just constantly fighting and bickering among himself.
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Does that sound like a good desire? Probably. Right? What does she want from her husband? Him to come home, be encouraging, not just to have nothing nice to say to her.
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She probably wants to be cherished. She probably wants to be valued. She probably wants to be appreciated. She probably wants to feel like she's not just a never -ending source of criticism for him.
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Those are all good things too, right? Those are all good things. I mean, often when you talk to people in these kind of situations, one of the things you'll realize is that if you listen to one side of the story, it all makes sense.
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And then if you listen to the other one, it all makes sense. And then when you put it together, you can say, hey, there's a lot going on here.
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But here, what do we need to do? Well, we need to learn to put off our own self, which is corrupt through deceitful desires and belongs to a former manner of life.
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We need to put on a new self. And the way we do that is to be renewed in the spirit of the mind. How do they need to be renewed in the spirit of their mind?
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Okay, let's start with the husband here. Do you think that your wife is going to like being around you if the only thing you say to her is negative stuff?
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Is that reasonable? How do you renew your mind with that? Will you tell yourself that Christ loved the church, he gave himself up for her.
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It's your job to love this woman, right? It's your job to love this woman and to communicate that you love her. And you know what?
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It's not reasonable to expect that you're going to have a nice submissive wife if all you do is just criticize, even if she deserves to be criticized, right?
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Meaning, here's the thing, if you want to have a nice marriage, then what you're going to have to do is you're going to have to learn to love this woman and learn to be encouraging to this woman.
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And part of what that's going to mean is you're going to have to learn to look for the things that she's doing well instead of just fixating on all the things she isn't doing well.
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And so part of renewing your mind and renewing the way you're thinking about these things is just to say, it's not reasonable for me to desire a non -contentious woman if all
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I'm going to do is fuss at her. That's not reasonable, right? It's not reasonable for me to think that way.
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If I want a woman who's stressed out all the time and mad at me all the time and irritated at me all the time, then the way
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I get that is I come home and the only thing I say to her is negative stuff. And then when she doesn't respond to that well, then
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I'm going to retreat and hide from her. That's the way to get that, you see? So what I'm trying to say is, how do you renew your mind?
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Well, you have to tell yourself the truth about this situation, that you actually have responsibilities to this family and this wife beyond just criticizing here.
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And you know what? Think about what's actually happening if she's stressed out all the time because she doesn't know how to manage the kids and the kids are out of control.
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Maybe it's your job to teach her how to deal with these kids, right? Maybe it's your job to help come along and say, hey, we need to figure out how to resolve what's happening with our kids if they're constantly out of control.
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And maybe they're not, like folly is bound up in the heart of a child, and maybe they're not going to naturally know how to act right unless you teach them how to act right, right?
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So what does it mean to renew your mind in this kind of scenario? What I'm trying to say is, it's not just, hey, honey, you get your act together and everything will be all right.
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You have to think about, well, what are the things I want in this scenario, and what's actually happening, and what has God called me to do in this scenario?
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And how can I remind myself about what the truth of the scripture says in this moment about how I should be responding to this situation?
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And are my desires good? Yeah, but are they reasonable? No, they're not reasonable if I'm not going to deal with the things
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God's called me to do in a more comprehensive way. The same thing with the woman. So think about the woman in this scenario. You're being renewed in the spirit of your mind.
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Hey, sweetheart, you let the house go. How do you think you're going to feel? You just let everything be a mess.
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How do you think you're going to feel? You're going to be stressed out. You're going to be anxious. You're going to be overwhelmed. You know what? You need to get some good routines in your life, right?
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You need to get some good routines in your life that's going to deal with this. You're going to have to learn how to clean up as you go. Like, how do you think
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God's designed you to feel if you don't really do your job? You're going to feel depressed. You're going to feel stressed out.
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You're going to feel anxious. You're going to feel guilty. And what are you going to do with that? You're going to take all that guilt and that shame and that condemnation that you feel, and you're going to turn that on everyone around you.
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You're going to get exasperated about everyone around you. So you're getting exasperated with the kids. You're getting exasperated with the husband because he's reminding you of all your failures.
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Well, part of the problem is to say that we need to do a better job focusing on how to actually teach these kids to be well -managed.
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We need to do a better job of actually managing the responsibilities that we have. And there's not going to be some easy solution where everyone needs to just accept that our normal is chaos.
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That isn't the path to peace in life. Like, that's not the way to go, right? So what does renewing your mind look like in that kind of scenario?
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Yes, it's going to look like putting on new behaviors, and we're going to talk about that, right? But it also deals with changing the way you think and addressing these desires that you actually have in the moment and these things that you want, right?
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So you want to be cherished? You know, lady, be easy to be cherished, right? So same thing on the other end of things with the guy.
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Like, hey, look, you have a responsibility to your family, and you can't shove these things off.
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But here's the point is to say that when we're thinking about making lifestyle changes in the
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Christian life, what you don't want to do in this scenario is to come in and say,
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OK, John's frustrated. Well, John, quit being frustrated, right? You need to just stop being frustrated.
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Quit getting mad all the time. What's the problem with that? We didn't really address the situation at all, did we?
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We didn't address the desires that are underneath there. We didn't address the behaviors that are contributing to that. We just said, hey, quit being frustrated.
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And then you expect him, like a light switch, to switch off the frustration and to be at peace all the time.
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But how is he going to be at peace when his kids are a mess, his life is a mess, him and his wife are not getting along?
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He comes home and ignores everyone all day long. He's not a dad to them. He's not a husband to them. And he just thinks that he can come home, tell everyone the problem, exit.
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So the issue there is, yeah, he's going to be frustrated. He's probably going to experience that frustration until he figures out how to deal with the problem in a more comprehensive way.
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Same thing with the wife. Sarah's stressed out. What do you come in there and tell her? Hey, you know what the Bible says, don't be anxious about anything.
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How did that help her? Well, I mean, the Bible does say don't be anxious about anything. But how did that help her? Why is she stressed out all the time?
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Because she's not teaching her kids how to be normal, sane human beings, right? She's not dealing with her life like, yeah, you're going to feel stressed out all the time.
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If there's junk all over the place, there's clothes laying on the floor, there's dishes everywhere, you're probably going to feel stressed out.
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And then if you don't want to hear it when your husband's telling you about it, you know what? You're probably going to be even more stressed out because your life is out of control and you're not making responsible choices.
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And so the point is just to say, often the reason why people are not making appropriate biblical changes like they should be is because we're not thinking about these deceitful desires that are at work underneath the situation, and we're not thinking intentionally about what it means to renew our minds in these kinds of situations.
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And then, you know, verse 24, and put on the new self. So we're putting off the old self, we're being renewed in the spirit of our mind.
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We're putting on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
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And so what does that mean? That means like, hey, yeah, you know what? You're not defined by that general anxiety disorder.
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You're not defined by that major depressive disorder. Your kids are not suffering from malphysitional defiant disorder. Husband, you're not suffering from bipolar disorder.
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These are just labels that pagan people give to describe the old man and how the old man is stuck in his patterns of sin.
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So everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. If the son sets you free, you'll be free indeed. These are labels.
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These are materialistic labels that say who you are is who you're always going to be. That's who you are to your core.
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But as Christians, we're to put on the new self, which is who are we putting on? We're putting on Christ. Was Christ constantly stressed out all the time?
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Was he worried all the time? Did Christ suffer? I mean, think about this. Did Christ suffer from oppositional defiance disorder?
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Did he suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder? Was Christ bipolar? Did he have major depressive disorder?
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Did he have any of these things? Or was he filled with the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, long -suffering, gentleness, meekness, kindness, faithfulness, self -control?
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Here's the thing. Who is this new self that we're putting on? We're putting on Christ's likeness. Put on the new self.
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Created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. What does holiness mean? Holiness means being devoted to God.
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That's what it means, being devoted to Him. So what does it mean to be putting on this new self? It's to say, hey, I'm putting on Christ's likeness.
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That's what God's called me to do. Put off this old, former manner of life that's being corrupted through his deceitful desires. I'm putting on this new self, which is
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I'm putting on Christ's likeness. I'm putting on this person. So Jesus came to forgive me a debt I can never pay and fundamentally come to live inside of me, transform my life, make me new.
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Fill me with the fruit of His spirit, which are love, joy, peace, long -suffering, gentleness, meekness, kindness, faithfulness, self -control. You know what, John, in this scenario, he doesn't have to be defined by the works of the flesh, the desires of the flesh.
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He doesn't have to be filled with frustration, annoyance, irritation, just want to escape, just want to get away. He can be filled with love, joy, peace.
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Even if his kids aren't acting right, even if his wife isn't doing her job like she should be, can't John be filled with love, joy, peace?
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Can't he be characterized by long -suffering? Is being characterized by long -suffering just to say, hey, I'm going to criticize you and then go away when you don't like it?
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Is that long -suffering? Is that peace? Like, the only way I'm going to have peace is just to get away from you and get away from my responsibility to be your husband and be your parent?
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Is that long -suffering? Is that gentleness? Is that meekness? Is that kindness? Is that faithfulness?
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Is that self -control? Is just being stressed out all the time, not doing your job, not cleaning the house, is that love for anyone?
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Is that joy? Is that peace? Is that long -suffering? Is that gentleness? Is that faithfulness? Is that self -control?
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Is it any of those things? So what are we doing? We're putting on this new self, which is created after the likeness of God and true righteousness and holiness.
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And here's the thing. The only way you're going to do that is if you stop making excuses. If you stop blaming every single area in your life that doesn't line up with the
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Word of God. If you stop blaming it on other people, you're not going to change unless you stop blaming it on other people.
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Like, John needs to quit pointing his finger at his wife and John needs to quit pointing his finger at his kids. He needs to say, hey,
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I can be like Christ in this scenario no matter what anyone does, and I'm not going to blame all this on other people, and I'm not going to blame it on some stupid psychological labels.
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And now people are kind of turned away from the psychological labels a little bit, and they're tempted to blame it all on their diet and exercise and nutrition and the supplements they should be taking and everything else.
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But I'm not going to blame it on that. I can be filled with love, joy, peace, long -suffering, gentleness, kindness, faithfulness, self -control, even if, you know what,
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I'm not taking all the right supplements, I'm not eating all the right food. My kids can be filled with love, joy, peace, gentleness, kindness, faithfulness, self -control if they're
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Christians, even if I feed them red food diet. They can. But here's the issue.
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You're not going to change. Your wife is not going to change. Your kids are not going to change.
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Your situation is not going to change. It's going to be the same thing over and over and over and over again, unless you say,
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I need to kill this old man, okay, which is being corrupt through deceitful desires. I need to put that off and not be characterized by those things.
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I need to renew my mind about this situation, quit making excuses. And then I need to learn to put on this new self and say, with God's help, there is nothing to stop me from being characterized by everything the
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Bible says I should be characterized by. But you won't do that. Here's the point. You won't do that if you have labels to blame it on, if you have people to blame it on, if you have situations to blame it on, if you have socioeconomic problems to blame it on, if you have historical problems to blame it on.
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So we live in a victim society right now, and there's any number of victim labels you can put on there to blame every problem that you experience, right?
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This systemic racism that's doing it, man, I can't get ahead, you know? Man's got me down, right?
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It's the past. It's the history. It's a long history of oppression. It's a long history of abuse. I'm a member of a marginalized group.
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I have a psychological disorder. I have a psychological label. You know, my parents didn't raise me like they should. I didn't have a good example.
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I didn't have a good role model in my life. We have any number of excuses, but here's the point. None of those things define us.
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There's any number of reasons that you can use to say, I'm going to be characterized by this old man and this old pattern of life, which is being corrupted by these deceitful desires.
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There's any number of labels and excuses you can give to do that, but the Bible says that that's not, I can hear this, that's not the way you learned in Christ, and the way that you learned in Christ is to put that off to be renewed in your spirit of your mind and to put on the new self, which is