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Our scripture today comes from the
book of Ephesians, and it is the 4th chapter and we are going
to read a portion of it. We are going to read versus 17 through 24. So
I invite you to follow along in your pew bibles or you can just listen.
Here is the word of God for us this
day.
Now this I affirm and insist on in
the Lord. You must no longer live as the Gentiles live in the futility
of their minds. They’re darkened in their understanding alienated from
the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart. They
have lost all sensitivity and abandoned themselves to licentiousness,
greedy to practice every kind of impurity. That is not the way you
learned Christ. For surely you have heard about Him and were taught in
Him as truth is in Jesus. You were taught to put away your former way
of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts; and to be
renewed in the spirit of your minds; and to clothe yourselves with a new
self, created according to the likeness of God, in true righteousness
and holiness.
That is the word of God today.
Thanks be to God.
Would you join me as we pray?
Lord thank you for your word. Thank
you for the way it instructs. Thank you for the way it informs. And
thank you, oh Lord, that it is your gift to us so that we might know you
more fully. So Lord we ask that by the power of your Spirit that we
would know you better as a result of our time together this day.
Quicken our hearts to hear what your Spirit is saying to our hearts.
Amen.
Well it’s the New Year, isn’t it?
It’s the New Year and I think all of us are looking for ways to perhaps
make some positive changes in our lives. Obviously one of the ways that
we typically do that around the New Year is resolutions. Of course, one
of those New Year resolutions that is probably on, well, I don’t know
about everybody, but the majority of our plates is the resolution to
lose a little weight. I’m not going to ask you to raise your hands…. if
you have taken that as your resolution; however, I have my hand raised.
You can do with that as you see fit. The one thing about New Year’s
resolutions, however, is that by the second week in January most of them
have already fallen by the wayside; that’s what studies show us. But
there are other experiences in our lives that you would think, by the
nature of that experience itself, would bring lasting change into our
lives. Think about those who have gone through heart bypass surgery.
That is one of those things that should bring lasting change, right?
Last year there were over 600,000 heart bypass surgeries performed in
the U.S.; and everyone of those patients, I’m sure, were told by their
doctor that they need to make some permanent changes to their lifestyle,
around things like probably exercise, diet, smoking, alcohol, those
kinds of things. Yet studies show us that 90% of people who have heart
bypass surgery don’t make permanent changes that result in better heart
health. What does that say? That says to me that, you know what, this
idea of making lasting change is really hard to come by. I think that
is universal for all people in our world.
But for those of us who are followers
of Christ who are trying to live faithfully, there is also another piece
that is part of our puzzle that we need to bring into our lives. That
is to be transformed into the likeness of Christ; we are to begin to
live like Christ. 2 Corinthians 5:17 tells us that “we are new
creatures, that we are new creatures in Christ; the old is gone, the new
has now come!” That idea, this new creatureness, has echoed through our
text today. Paul starts this exhortation about our new creatureness by
saying, “It is in the Lord that I affirm this to you, not my own
authority.” And he is saying “Folks, stand up! Take notice! This is
something that Christ wants of you, not just me. Be that new creature.
Be that new creature that you were created to be. Your old way of life,
that wasn’t of Christ, it’s not worthy of this new creatureness that you
now have.”
So Paul begins to layout in our text
what the behavior is that is of Christ and what is not. And if you
continue on in verses 25 through the rest of the chapter, Paul becomes
even more specific about what those behaviors look like. He is saying
through that that our behavior should reflect Christ; and it should,
that is part of who we are in Christ. But I think many of us kind of
stop right there at the text, and that’s all the farther we go with it.
We falsely believe that following Christ is only about right and wrong
behavior. Our thinking says that somehow we must in our own strength,
by the power of our own will, live out right actions, because we live in
a world that’s looking at us and judging us. It becomes the measure of
our spirituality to the world, and lots of times to each other, that if
we can live out this right action, this right behavior, then we are good
to go. Dallas Willard is a professor at the University of Southern
California; but he is also a Christian and one of the foremost experts
on spiritual transformation. He says this kind of mindset of doing it
on our own, and it’s all about our behaviors he calls externalism. And
he says “that this kind of externalism leads to a deadening legalism and
a provincial parochialism.” Jesus had a word for it too. He called it
the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees. I think that is
where this text has the ability to cut to the heart of the matter. True
spiritual transformation allows the words and the deeds of Christ to
naturally flow out of us, so we need right behavior. But when we have
been spiritually transformed, they naturally flow out of us as a result
of inward transformation of our heart or our spirit. Paul is telling us
to be those new creatures that we were created to be. First we must, in
order to do that, allow our spirit to be changed inwardly; and then our
outward behaviors will begin to change as a result of that. They will
naturally flow from that inward change.
I was thinking about how to, kind of,
help us understand that. Tell me if this works for you. This will
maybe give you a glimpse into my mind, I don’t know. It’s like trying
to bake a cake without an oven. We all like cake, right? Cake is
good. We like to eat cake. But it is like taking all of the
ingredients of making a cake and putting them in a pan and just letting
them sit there. That’s not cake, is it? A cake needs to be put in an
oven to be changed from the inside out so that it can become cake.
Acting out with just right actions, in our own strength, without inward
transformation is like mixing the ingredients of spirituality into the
pan but not doing anything else with it. It doesn’t transform us into
the likeness of Christ. When actions are transformed in the oven of our
heart, then, transformation can really take hold for lasting change.
This kind of spiritual transformation moves us. It move us away from
ourselves from relying on our own strength, our own will, our own might;
and it moves us towards depending more on God and His grace. True
spirituality, I think, begins to move us from self-control to God’s
control. Who has the final word in your life? Do you, or God? The
decisions that you make in your life around your spirit, your mind, your
body, your social context, and your soul, those five categories, are
categories that Willard uses to describe the entirety of who we are as
humans. When we make those decisions that affect the totality of our
humanity, who makes those calls? You or the Spirit of God within you?
Some people use the phrase “who’s the king of your life?” Other people
have talked about it as “who’s on the throne in your life, you or God?”
Spiritual transformation is about giving up control. Spiritual
transformation is also about our desires, for it moves us from self
desires to godly desires. Those five areas I just mentioned, spirit,
mind, body, social context and soul, which of those has the most
influence to affect your will, and as a result, your actions? And how
does God influence those desires?
Spiritual transformation also moves
us from self power, to God’s power. It’s an issue of grace here, I
think, as well. It is acknowledging that true change comes from God’s
work within us, God’s power at work within us, not as a result of our
human effort, our human desire. Spiritual transformation like this is
holistic in nature becoming like Christ. Becoming like Christ is not
just a spiritual component for the spiritual portion of our lives. What
we are talking about is spiritual transformation that affects all of our
lives. This kind of spiritual transformation moves us from desiring
what we currently don’t desire, and away from desiring what we currently
do desire. Let me say that again. Spiritual transformation moves us
towards desiring what we currently don’t desire, and away from desiring
what we currently do desire. When a child walks into a candy store,
what do they desire? Candy! Right? If a child walks into a candy
store and doesn’t desire candy, they’ve been transformed, haven’t they?
That’s the call of Paul. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind is about
no longer wanting the thoughts, the things, and the behaviors that we
wanted before. That is spiritual transformation. That is what God is
desiring of each one of us.
So if that’s the ‘what’ of
transformation, what’s the ‘how’ of spiritual transformation? How do we
become transformed spiritually if it’s more than just doing right
things, acting in a correct manner? And again I think our text here
from Paul points to it without necessarily directly stating it. In our
text Paul says that you “learn from Christ a different way to live.”
You learned about him, you were taught about him; and then he adds that
phrase “that truth is in Jesus”. In other words, the person of Jesus is
the way that we find spiritual transformation; seeking the person of
Jesus is the gateway to be taught of about Christ, to know who he is, to
know how he thought, how he lived, how he related with others, with God
the Father. Those are all important for those that heard that message
from Paul and read his letters, and it continues to be important for us
two thousand years later. Two thousand years later we are still called
to seek Jesus. That is more than just trying to emulate his actions.
You know I think that a lot of us
felt like when we came to Christ we were found. We even sing of the
song “I was lost but now I’ve been found.” We think about that at
conversion that Christ found us. We think “Well, I’ve been found;
that’s all I need. I’ve been found.” We’ve been found and we think
there is nothing left for us to have to seek. But being found is just
the beginning, that’s just getting in the door. Living a life that
continually seeks Jesus is the next step. Continually being found by
Christ is what it’s about. This continual seeking of Christ and his
truth is what brings about the renewal of the spirit of our minds, as
Paul says. So we can seek Christ; that is our goal. How do we seek
Christ? Well we can seek Christ through scripture, that’s an important
piece for us right now because that’s how we know him. I think that
speaks to the power of bible study, of being in God’s word, of
understanding the word. Because in scripture it helps us, it brings our
transformation because where, what, Christ is found in scripture.
Seeking Christ I think can also be
found through prayer. I’m sure that if we would go out and start
talking about it, we could probably come up with a whole list of ways
that we could seek Christ, and they’re important, and we need to be
doing those. But don’t limit yourself to seeking Christ only through,
catch this, self-directed actions. It’s about me doing bible study;
it’s about me doing prayer; it’s about me doing the other things that we
would come up with. They’re important to do but don’t limit yourself to
that because then we begin to fall back into that trap that
transformation is all about us and our actions. That somehow God is
just kind of sitting back, looking down on us and saying, “O.K. prove to
me how committed you are to me. How hard are you willing to work to be
transformed?” Do you see how that leads us back to self-control,
self-desires and self-power?
Seeking Christ also requires a
yielding of ourselves to Christ. I think that becomes a very nebulous,
kind of, hard to define term and I think it isn’t something that just
kind of happens. I think it is something that kind of grows over time,
this idea of desiring to yield ourselves. I think the starting place
for it is calling out to God, saying “God, come, meet me here; I need
you.” And lots of times it kind of comes with a yearning that may be
hard to define or describe. But maybe it comes with a little bit of a
dissatisfaction that what you are doing now is not working. That the
things you have done in the past don’t bring the same benefits any
more. You are tired of living the same old life, doing the same old
things and not getting any different results. Perhaps for some of us
it’s acknowledging that you know what, and maybe it’s only acknowledging
it to ourselves, that I’m no different than the people that I work with
that don’t know Christ. My life isn’t that much different than theirs,
or perhaps my life isn’t that much different than before I came to
Christ. There is this hunger for something more in life, something that
you are beginning to realize is not found in yourself but it’s found in
God. This yearning continues to build, I think, that moves you to want
to change, to get to the point where “I want to make a difference. I
want to be changed. I want to make a difference in the world. I want
to give something rather than just get something.” You get to the point
of “you know what God, I don’t care what it takes; I just have to be
different. It’s got to be better than this.” And that yielding, that
yielding releases our self, releases our self-control, releases our self
desires, releases our self-power to God. And when we do that, when we
begin to yield ourselves to Christ, he promises that he will come. He
will find us. And when he comes he will blow into our hearts with a
fresh wind. The power of the Holy Spirit will come into us in a new and
powerful way. It will re-energize us. It will be like the first nice
day in spring, you know, when you can throw open the windows of the
house and you’re like “Yes! Fresh air!” That’s what it’s like. It
brings a newness of life, a spark speaks to the desires in our lives
because our desires are slowly being transformed and moved closer to
God’s desires. Yielding ourselves to Christ through the power of the
Holy Spirit is a courageous step, some might even say a dangerous step;
but, you know what, I think it is a necessary step that each one of us
must take. For when we take that, it will bring benefits not just to
you individually, but it begins to have a ripple effect as your heart
begins to swell. It begins to ripple beyond you to your family; beyond
you to the church; beyond you to the world.
When we look at this idea of yielding
ourselves to Christ from a historical perspective, when people have
sought Christ in his presence for themselves and the people around them,
God has co-operated with their seeking. He has transformed them and the
communities they are a part of with the real and powerful presence of
Christ. That seeking and yielding ourselves to Christ has always been
one of those precursors that are necessary for revival, when you look at
the history of revival down through the ages. When people seek Christ
with all of their heart, God comes in a powerful way not just
historically but also as a present reality, now.
Right behavior is a result of a
change in our thinking, not just doing. It changes our thinking as we
seek Christ. Seeking the Holy Spirit is yielding ourselves to Christ’s
presence that is already within us, and this kind of transformation is a
gift of grace from the Father. It is a gift that can change one
person’s faith and through it has the power to change the world. When
we think about September 11, 2001, we know the havoc that it wreaked,
the changes that it brought. The world changed that day. The way we
view the world changed. Global economy has changed as a result of
that. Our vocabulary changed; we now know what ‘ground zero’ means.
When you think about all the change that that brought, and then you
think about that was done by less than two dozen men. You wonder “how
could that much change be brought by so few?” And before you begin to
think about their intentions, because their intentions were evil, know
this: evil does not have a monopoly on change. Remember the words of
Christ, “He who is in you, is greater that he who is in the world.” So
as you think about what they did with just a few people, imagine the
greater power that is within us and the things that could be done
through just a small group of people who seek Christ by the power of the
Holy Spirit in powerful ways. What kind of transformation could
happen? What kind of transformation could happen at a place like Faith
Church? At a place like your heart? Words for us to think about.
Amen.
Let me pray for us. Let’s spend a
moment in prayer.
Lord, God, I ask that you would move
in our hearts. Help us to seek you, to turn over a new leaf, to yield
ourselves to you in new ways. And Lord I ask by your Spirit that you
would help us to determine in our own hearts and our own minds what that
means for each one of us individually. So Lord we give you just a few
moments of silence to listen to you, to yield ourselves to you, so that
as we come to this table, it might be a great meeting, a great
affirmation of what you will do because of what you have done. Lord we
ask that in your name. Amen.
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