We're in the middle of the New Testaments. I'm going to call some letters. There's also a Surinam page. I helped you to follow along a little bit this morning. And just to, I mentioned earlier, our summer schedule is 10 and noon. So this is at noon. We're going to pick up this very synchronicity. We're going to go through verses 17 to 24 here. for a few minutes this morning, but we'll come back to verse 25 to 32 at noon for a little bit of time as well. This is a big passage that goes together, and you'll see why. It's a beautiful passage in God's providence. On the same Sunday that our brothers baptized, this passage came up, and so I didn't plan that, or it was crazed in this little providence that we've seen today. And so Ephesians 4, verses 17 to 24, here's what Paul says, here's what the Holy Spirit says to us. Now this I say and testify in the Lord for a very serious solemn testimony here, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do. In the futility of their minds, they are dark and devastating, alienated from the light of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learn Christ, assuming that you have heard about him and were caught in him. As the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life, and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and to put on the new selves, created after the likeness of God, a true righteousness and holiness." And to all these words, God's people say, Amen. Well, we continue this morning through Paul's letter here to the Ephesians with this exhortation. So I mentioned last Sunday that chapters 1, 2, and 3 This is what they call a doctrinal section. The Greek word is called indicative. They're mostly statements of facts, statements of realities, of all that God has already done in Jesus Christ. The things that Jesus did are chapters one through three. And then in Tedras four, five, and six, it's not exactly this way, but pretty much, these are equitations. This is what we call the imperatives. These are things that we are meant to do. What God has done, one, two, and three, what we are to do, four, five, and six. Now, we don't want to say that in a way that makes it sound as if it's slavish, or as if it's somehow earning something with God, or paying God back. I've mentioned this many times before. But when we hear these time trajectory occasions, like you saw in chapter four, verse one, where Paul says, therefore, right, therefore, I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. This is a broad response that may a child of God have. One who's confirmed, one who's baptized, one who belongs to Jesus Christ. How then should we go on living? We know who we once lived, which we'll see here, Paul calls out, we'll make the Gentiles. But now we've got to listen to who I have and why. So chapter one, two, and three describe why. Well, the what's, the what, and four minus six, the so what's. How we respond to the gospel. And so, we come again to our passage here, Ephesians 4, which we began to see last Sunday, was a really important exhortation to us. We live in a very hyper-politicized, fragmented world and society, don't we? And the church, chapters 4, 1 through 16, was a big chunk last Sunday, but the church is supposed to be a place of unity. Right? All the world out there is in chaos. The church should be a refuge. Out there we have our parties and our platforms and the things that we want to see done and the people that we want to follow after to try to get those things done. We come here and we should be good if I meant it. And we saw this last Sunday, this little creed He even gave us there. Verses 4, 5, and 6, that unifies. These are the things that are important. So keep the main thing I said last Sunday. Keep the main thing, the main thing. Don't major on minors. Right? Don't major on minors. That was last Sunday. This morning, the Lord agreed to speak to us in our world. And the passage, again, is very relevant to us. We live in a world where there are no limits. Right? No limits. No limits. No laws. Right? No taboos, no faux pas. Anything and everything goes. But Paul says, don't live like the world. That's a negative declaration. Don't live like the world. But live as new creatures, new creations in Jesus. That's what God's preaching. You once were in the world, don't live like that anymore. You're now in Christ. Live like it. That's his positive interpretation. So let's listen into what the Holy Spirit says. this morning. Here, then, if we can score, 17.4. So, first of all, notice his negative interpretation, verses 17 and 18 to 19. Don't live like old fallen worlds. Don't live like that anymore. Now, this, I say, I testify in the Lord. So, he's witnessing here, he's very serious here. He's speaking in the authority and the power of the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 17, you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do. you must no longer walk as the Gentile you found. If we go back in the Book of Acts, chapters number 19 and following, you'll see that Paul, as it was his custom, as he came to Ephesus, this was a major city, one of the great cities in the ancient world, the Greek Empire, Roman Empire. This was predominantly a Gentile city. But, Paul has always, even in the synagogue of the Jews first, he preached for a few weeks and they began to take offense at his message that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah. They say that they took him out and said that he was a Gentile. So, Paul is speaking primarily, predominantly, mostly to Gentiles. Right? To non-Jews. To Greeks. Right? To Greeks. People of the ancient world. Now, he tells them that they'll be like Gentiles. You are Gentiles. Don't live like Gentiles. That's what he said. Now, what did he say? Well, just when he says the word Gentile, insert unbelief. That's really what he's saying. Gentile is a euphemism or just a placeholder for an unbeliever or being in the world. So don't live like the world. Don't live like unbelievers. Don't live like you used to live as Gentile. So that's the contrast that he's making here. Also note the connection back to verse number one of chapter four. where Paul again said, I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. So that was picking up that thought once again here in verse 17. This language of walking, right? This language of walking. When he says don't walk, when he says in verse 1, to walk in a manner worthy of the conduct that you've been called, and then when he says in verse 17, don't walk like the Gentiles, what does he mean by walk? What is he trying to communicate? how you live, right? He's a runaway. He goes back to the Old Testament. There are two ways. There are two ways. Psalm number 1. There are two ways. The way of the blessed and the way of the righteous. The way of the world. There are two ways. The prophets. We've been seeing that in our Old Testament readings. We'll come back to it this afternoon. There are two ways, there are two paths. And Jesus, being a Jewish rabbi himself, spoke of the straight and narrow way. He spoke of the crooked and wide path. And here's Paul writing to Gentile believers to walk in a way in the Lord's footsteps, not to walk like the world. Right? So this is a very Old Testament Jewish way of describing how you live your life. So a walk is just a nice little way of saying, or a nice little image of living your life, your lifestyle. So he's told them to live in a way that's worthy of the Lord, and now he's saying, don't live like unbelieving Gentiles out there in the world. You've been called out of darkness. You've been called out of darkness into what? The marvelous light, which is the Lord himself, 1 Peter 2, amen. Recall the darkness. It's a dark, marvelous light. While the apostles said they've watched it, one, you've been called out of the kingdom of darkness into what? You've been called Alba, the King of Darkness and the King of Blasphemy. Or who? The Beloved Son. So don't live like that anymore. You can't live like that anymore. You're a believer. You're a bad guy. You belong underneath the stomach. So remember what I said last Sunday, that being a Christian is more than just believing certain things. It is acts, right? There are creeds, but there are also deeds. So it's not just believing certain things, but also seeking to live in certain kinds of ways. now we hear a lot in our culture of course, we are like every single day of our life, our mind is so accustomed to it, we probably just tune it out as believers, but we hear that we can believe anything we want so long as we keep our faith prided, that's what we are told as Christians, you can believe whatever you want just keep it pride, don't speak about Jesus I just saw the chaplain of the fire department in Karloff that was told to no longer pray in Jesus' name. Chaplain of the fire department in Karloff that was just told to no longer pray in Jesus' name. You can believe what you want privately, but you cannot speak of Jesus publicly. Brothers and sisters, we can't. We just can't abide that. We can't live that way. We believe a certain way. We believe certain things. We're Christians. And our walk is after the Lord. We walk following His steps. He said the greatest thing and we've got to do it. We follow Him as His disciples. We live in a certain way because because of our faith. It's not that we have a private kind of faith that's just a little clogging in our hearts and we walk away until Sunday morning comes and the rest of the week we walk and we're like, Lord, you can't do that. That's what Paul's saying, you can't do that. The Christian faith is not just your personal faith, which it is, but it is the faith, it is a faith, it is a public faith. That's what Paul's saying. Paul would love to describe the line found in the Unbelievers in the world with a series of words and images. Notice, Ben momentarily makes two quick comments about each one of them, but he gives a bunch of images here, a bunch of ways of describing what it means to live like Gentiles, as Unbelievers in the world. Don't live like the world in the futility of their mind. That word futility is used for emptiness and purposelessness, meaninglessness. In fact, the Apostle Paul uses it in Acts 14 to describe idols. He tells the church in Thessalonica that they have turned from vain things, that's the same word, you've turned from futilities, you've turned from meaninglessnesses, meaning idolatry, to a living God. Okay, so futility can be used of idols in the New Testament, but it can also be used of certain ways of life. So 1 Peter 1, verse number 18, you were ransomed, the apostle says, from the futile ways. It's the same word in the poem for you. The futile ways inherited from your fathers. In other words, serving empty idols leads to an empty life. Serving empty idols leads to an empty life. Now, don't think of idols as, you know, those primitive people way back then or even today, you know, in some far-off place, right? You know, Elon Musk sent his Starlink to these tribes out in the Amazon. Apparently, they had to retract the story because it really wasn't true. They got addicted to pornography and so forth. It was just a hit in the Islam camp. But they did send Starlink to an Amazonian tribe, and they got online. Right? And they got out of line and they got out of the world further than we could even imagine. We think of idols as, you know, those people there. That they survived. The little, little, little backwater people. They have their little trinkets above their fireplaces or they have them, you know, in their little mud huts somewhere. You, you, are your own deepest, darkest, vainest idol of all. You. You are the worst idol of all. That's our American spirit. Love yourself, care for yourself, be whatever you want to be, have as much as you want without concern for others, and the list goes on. You are an idol. Don't think we're all sitting here describing fantasies as, you know, little statues. We speak multiply about us. You serve the idol, capital S, self. That is your idol. You and I have that Bible. Then we put it in a different place. Some people put it in the stock. Some people put it in the bank now. Some people put it in sex, coward, prestige, their position in life, wherever it might be. To do that is to live a selfish, futile, empty, purpose, mess life. Don't hear what I mean. Don't look at it. They are also, he says, darkened in their understanding, verse 18. Darkened in their understanding. He earlier said in chapter two, verse three, not only they were dead in your trespasses and sins, but you once carried out the desires of the mind. You once lived in a way that carried out the desires of your mind. So you thought it and you did it, right? You fought it and you did. Dark beings in there under sin alienated the light with God because of the ignorance that is in them. Again, he said this before, chapter two, verse number 12, that when the Gentiles were just Gentiles, they're unbelievers or outside of God's kingdom, they were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel. Right, go back to chapter 2, read that, the sermons, the contrast that the Apostle made there about Israel and the Gentiles. But now he's speaking at the heart of the matter. Back in the old days, the Gentiles were alienated from the Jews, but the real issue is that they were alienated from God. That's what he says here. To live like a Gentile, to live like the world, to live as an unbeliever, is to be alienated from the life of God. Which means what? What does it mean to be alienated in God's life? You're spiritually dead, right? You're spiritually dead. To be alienated, what does that word mean? You look better to be a fool. When you watch interviews, or you read interviews of migrants who are coming to America, and they ask them, you know, like, how are they feeling, and most of all, people interview, and they get, and they ask them, as they're migrating, you know, what, what do you miss the most? From wherever place you come. And the Edge of Always liked the saint, isn't it? They miss their families. They miss their family. They miss being, you know, where they're at, and those that are closest to them. They have a sense of distance, not just geographically, but they feel distant from their family. And then they get here, and they're around other human beings, and they still feel distant. They feel alienated from all those people already. And that's what alienation is. To be distant. To even feel a sense of distance, right? To want to be somewhere, but you're not. In this case, as an unbeliever, you know, we're not really wanting to be with God. We're just doing our own thing. We're literally alien to God. We're literally separated from Him. So, being at that extreme distance, the feeling of being alone, how much more so are we as human beings made in God's image? Made to relate to God, to love God, and to be loved by Him? How much more so are we alienated from Him because of our sin? That's what Paul calls ignorance here. Ignorance. When he says ignorance here, we probably would say, oh, they just didn't know. If they knew, they'd do better. That's not what he's saying. The word ignorance is not speaking of how we understand this, you know, if I just knew better. He's saying, not that we, in our unbelieving state, didn't know about God, but that we wouldn't know, right? It wasn't a matter of just, you know, information. And if we could just dial this information to our neighbors, they would all look at the faith. No. The Gentile, the world, the unbeliever, won't, won't bow their knees, won't know God. As Paul said in the Roman chapter 1, although they knew God, speaking of unbelievers, although they knew God, they did not honor Him as such. Although they knew God, they did not cease it to acknowledge God. We talked about knowing and really knowing, right? So they knew God, they knew God existed, to the right and wrong, they'll have that download on the Algebra Hearts. But people really, really don't want to know Him in the same way in a personal way. due to their hardness of heart, he said. Like a rock, right? A hardened heart is like a rock. It's hard, it's not soft, it's strong, it's not easy to break. God has put his law upon every human being's heart or conscience as a witness between right and wrong. But when we habitually resist The conscience that God has given to us, that's right, that's wrong, don't do this, do that. When we habitually, constantly, over time, resist God, your conscience is God speaking to you, mind you. When you habitually resist that, it leads to more hardness. Until in the end, the Bible says, you have a seer conscience. A seer conscience. What does it mean to have a seer conscience? Can a word mean to seer something? It's not really a word we're probably used to, but maybe dad can grill steak today? Over at the sermon? Yeah. The best way to cook a steak is to fix it. You've got to sear the outside. Make the grill really hot with a pan, super duper hot. Put that meat on there and just sear it in. Burn it almost. But like a little thin layer of burn, right? And then you flip it over. Why? Because the hard outside isn't from the juice inside. It isn't dry enough. So I've got some complaints. We had an archaeologist come up and dried that steak a bit. So I'm going to do my best and I'm trying to steer it, right? Keep the inside juicy. But here, it's a furnace apartment. You have to have a steered conscience that nothing is going to get in. That's what happens. We steer our conscience like it's hardened and nothing wants to get in. And that's why it's not about, you know, us just, you know, we can't drag you to church and make you believe. Brothers and sisters and friends, we can't make you believe. You know, we can tell you all the hand-spoke arguments, you know, why Jesus rose again today, why the Bible is the Word of God, why you should be a believer, all these things. Ultimately, only the Holy Spirit can penetrate that sphere of conscience. So we pray that for you, if you're here today, get on with Jesus. We pray that for you, that the Lord would soften you're part and part. Then he says they've become callous. It's a very similar image. They've become callous or porous is the Greek word here. It's a kind of larval they use in the Greek world. Porous. And it was used in various contexts including callouses on skin. Right? We get a callous on your skin, you can't feel pain on that part of your skin, right? On your foot, for example, you feel. It's got a big hard callous, you can't feel anything yet. And so that's a graphic way of Carl saying that they've lost all moral sensibility. They've lost all moral sensibility. Again, he's saying this, he's saying that's the way he used to live. Like, don't do that again. Right? Don't tell her again. And finally, sensuality, or impurity. Verse number 19, they had given themselves up to sensuality, the reason to practice every kind of impurity. Sensuality is, another word to translate it is debauchery. That's vice without restraint. That's having no shame in flaunting one's self. Without any shame, and without any care about the people looking at you doing what you're doing. right? Just go to a pride festival and we'll see what I'm talking about. You don't want to go to Moodle Dolls and watch that. That's who it is. That's flauncy without any shame and without any regard to those who are walking and to those who are outside. That sends you out. That's debauchery. Greedy, in fact, every kind of insured So the Holy Spirit to the Apostle Paul exhorts you in known certain terms to flee the lies of the world that you once knew. That's what he's saying here. Flee the lies of the world that you once knew. And so the interpretation is to us as believers to be different. Amen? To be different than the world. Right? What if we lived differently than the world around us? What kind of difference could we actually make? Not living in meaningless ways, but significant ways, that our life reflects eternity as a witness to the world. Not living in darkness, but shining its light in the darkness. Not living alienated from God, but living, so living in the presence of God, every single moment of every single day, that His presence is known through us. To Paul say, Not living in a hard-hearted kind of way, but being tentative-hearted, full of love for each other, and for the communities in which we live. Not callous, but gentle. Not impure, but pure. Reflecting God himself. Reflecting God's laws, even, to the world. But also, as we do that, it also reflects the beauty of the gospel. If you're not here today you don't know what it means to have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. All that Paul is saying here to us as Christians that we once were and that we've got to flee that. He's saying the harsh reality to you that you're still in it. You're still walking in that way. But here's the dividends. God's here. Amen? And when God's here but God calms you to the length back to him in your brokenness with all of your sins and to come to Jesus. Simple as that. Call out again and let's get a receipt. Let's get a receipt there. But wait, stop, stop. The Lord is a burden, He's a burden, thanks. He's heard our prayers when we cry to Him. That's all it is. There's no works involved. There's no payments involved. There's no groups of fire to jump through today. You just trust in Jesus. Trust in Jesus. So don't live like the old Paul in the world. Don't live like the new priest. Verses 20 and 24. Don't live like that, but live like this, right? So we don't want to just be, you know, here's the negative stuff. Here's how we should live. Paul makes this big contrast and he gives here three past tense verbs in verses 20 to 21. But that is not the way you learn Christ, right? You learn. It's the past tense. You learn, right? As soon as you have heard, get a kind of sense about Him, and we're taught to get a sense in Him as the truth is in Jesus. So learn, heard, taught. Use a free pass to infer. So learn, heard, taught. What does that sound like? Like what kind of place does that sound like? Where do people learn and get geared to? To school, right? So you're a disciple of Jesus. That means that you're a student. That you are a lifelong, not just a follower, but you are a student. That's why in the ancient world, Greek philosophers and Jewish rabbis, there were certain kinds of philosophers called the peripatetic philosophers. These were Greek philosophers who, peripateo is the Greek word, which means that they're walking around. They would travel, and as they would walk around, you would have your disciples. your followers, your students. That's what they do with Jesus as well. So, yes it means to follow him, but more simply it means to be a student. And we are lifelong students of the Lord Jesus Christ. And notice that Jesus is the substance of what we learn. He's the substance. You learned what? Look at verse 20. What did you learn? Christ. You learned Christ, he said. So he's writing this letter back to the Ephesians, where he's been there for multiple years. He was teaching that and categoizing that, and they've been baptized by the ministers. And this is Timothy was one of them. Paul was the apostle, was preaching. You learn Christ, right? You learn him. He's the substance of all that we want to learn. But notice also that Jesus is the teacher in this school. The ESV translates the phrase, you have heard about. The little word about is not there. It's for the, all translations interpretate, so the translation is the term that's saying you've heard about Christ. But Cole literally says you've heard him. You learn Christ, you've heard him. You've heard him. Through the voice of the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers that I mentioned in chapter 4 earlier, you heard Christ Himself. You heard Christ Himself. Right? Paul is saying, you didn't hear me. You heard Christ Himself. This is what Paul tells the Thessalonians later on. In 1 Thessalonians 2 verse 13, when you receive the word of God, which you have heard from us, all in the apocryphal, as helpers, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it was in truth, the word of God. So this is a steric thought. I mean, I want to add, it's a great thought. It could be, we are sharing Christ. Speak to us through his word. But it's also a steric thought, to ask him to speak that word, right? Don't mess around. Don't mess around, is what the Lord says to me. Our seminary students are gone for the summer, but that's definitely, that's the allocation must. Ministers, go to the YB ministers, don't mess around. You're speaking the word, not yourself. You're speaking the word, not us. Then so we, we, we've learned Christ, he's the substance of all we've learned. We've learned, we've heard from him, we've heard him speak, right? He's the very teacher itself, and And in a spirit sense, in a sense, He also is the schoolhouse. He's the place of the school. You were taught in Him, notice, in Him, as the Shuvah is in Jesus. That little in phrase we've seen multiple times all night. In other words, again, you've heard Christ speak. You've responded to His voice. Now it's up to you to learn and to grow. Now, what really taught, what did Paul teach this church in Ephesus? What did he teach them? Again, there are some translation things here. He says here in EDSC, to put off your old self. To put off your old self. Now, Paul uses here, that would be defendable, but a certain tense of a verb that can be translated various ways. In here, it's translated as an imperative. To put off, like so it's, Verse 22 is normally understood to be, Paul doesn't give it another imperative. Paul doesn't even demand it. That you are to be putting on for your old self. But I think the best way to understand this is Paul is translating false speaking in the past. That they have had their old self taken off when certain thing about the Virgin Mary that some of the action ursin, it's God doing the action in fact. God has taken off of them the old self. He's already done it in the past. What is he speaking of? I think he's speaking here of the baptism. They were converted inwardly and baptism is the outer expression of that conversion. And so when they were converted, i.e. baptized, God took off of them this old self. That's what Paul's saying. That old self is Adam. The old self is Adam, right? The first man, the old world, fallen Adam, the world of sin, the world that none can leave. Adam is the old self. He is the emblem of our sinful. So here is Father's Day, and this is just a great way of describing it. So this old self, right? This old self is Adam, as I mentioned, which is emblematic of our sinful. So if I were to say to you, especially to us as men here, men, right? Stop being like your dad. Now for some of us, you know, about like, will he represent, will he represent, some of us have the greatest of dads, like stop being like your dad. Now if you said it with me, right, if you knew my dad and you said, Danny, stop being like your dad, what would we be saying? Stop being like your dad. Well, you wouldn't be saying that because my dad was emblematic of all the bad things about me, right? Like, stop doing those things and saying those things that happen while certain hats are wearing. The ball's coming to you. But our dad is Adam, our first father. Hiram, speaking, is Adam. You've put him on. God, in fact, took him on. God has stripped you naked of that old self, that old man, Adam, your sins. Why? Notice the old self, the old man, the old world, belongs to your former manner of life. It's corrupt through deceitful design. What is that? That way of living that he's just described, verse 78 and 90. That living, that way of living, that's the old way of living. That's the old world. That's Adam. That's your former manner of life. God took that off of you in your baptism, in your conversion. That's not you anymore. That's what they say. Don't be like your dad. Here at Father's Day, look at the kids. I think that Eli's got some awesome dads here, so, you know, be like your dad. Be like your dad, but be like Adam. What were they taught? That God took off Adam as a word in their baptism. But also, here again, it's time for us to put on the new self. But again, it's a particular tense of the verb, it's the way which fall is righted here. I think it's best, it's a past tense here, that you have put on, or to have put on, this new self. In conversion, in baptism, God put on this new self. So kids, in contrast to the old man, the old self here, which I said equals Adam, so old self equals Adam, to write it down. Who do you think the new self equals? So old self equals Adam. New self equals? Jesus. Emmanuel, I'm so proud of you. You can say Pastor Dave. Last time we had a baptism, we said that we have to go in and sit, because I've never gotten to do that down. You're always going to hear about, that story is the golden migration. So, Christ, right? Jesus here. Jesus. He's the new man. He's the new self. And you put on Christ. So what? So amazing. Paul says this elsewhere in Romans chapter 12, 13. Put off and put on. Put off the old blood of Christ. You've been clothed with Jesus Christ. Now we're going to come to this later on in chapter 6 in a few weeks. The armor of God. The armor of God is all about Jesus. You're to put on Jesus. every single day. But here, speaking of this in his past tense, sounding away, he's saying that you have already, you are inwardly converted, and you outwardly were baptized to signify that you were convergent. When you did that, God took off of you, Adam, your sins, and he put on you, Jesus. He put on for you Jesus. So, he's using here imagery of clothing. Taking off clothes, putting on clothes. Old, ragged, Holes that came from mobs eating it up. Dirt, soot, right? Just rip, shred, close. That's add-on. You can try this. God has put on to you a beautiful robe, spotless white, embroidered, a robe of glory and holiness and righteousness. That's why in the ancient church in the old days, our brother Blake wore white today. I didn't tell you where, in the old days, you would look at these, you got baptized and stripped out to your skivvies, your underwear, your old clothes, and throw them away, make a lot of work, right? That's how they did it. It was symbolic of passages just like this. And so Paul says, you have put on, have had put on Christ, which is created, the sentence is like recreated, recreated, after the likeness of God. and true holiness, true righteousness, and whole. Now what Old Testament passage do you think that is reflecting that? The language of, so you have the old man, Alex, the new man, Jesus, and this new man is created at the likeness of God and true righteousness and holiness. What does that reflect? What Old Testament passage? Where did that come from? Genesis where? That's the creation of Adam and Eve in the image of likeness of God, isn't it? So they were breathing in all this and excess in the image of God. They fell. They sinned. And we get all that inheritance as soon beings. It's not a great inheritance. That's what we get. We come to Jesus. He takes that off of us and He recreates in us that very same image of God. and true holiness, or true righteousness, and holiness. So what Adam had, and what Adam fell from, Jesus recreates in you and me. And so there's creation, there was the fall, and there's recreation. And come to Jesus, like faith, and he converts our hearts, and we're baptized, he's recreating us. He's making us the new, the oldest past, the newest God in him. That's why you have to live like that. How can't you? I mean, you're spotless. You're clothed in whites. Why would you get it dirty? Your robe is seamless. Why would you shred it to nothingness? don't live like people of the world, because you have already had taken off of you, add up in your sins, and you've had put on to you, Jesus in his righteousness, and his spotlessness, and his glory. And then he says, all that past putting off and putting on, means therefore, verse 23, when he says here, to be renewed, this is a present tense, so this is present tense verb in our time. Be renewed, the spirit of Vermont. be renewed in the spirit of your mind. Don't be conformed to the world as Paul said of somewhere else. Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by what? The renewal of your mind. That's what Paul said. In that word spirit here, we have a small s, right? The spirit or mind. but I think it's best to have an accountable essence. Holy Spirit. Who's the one who renews us? The Holy Spirit. And so, Paul is saying, well, you know, if we read this, well, how do I renew? How do I renew the Spirit and the Holy Spirit in my mind? How do I do that? Every single day. It's as simple as this, and I've mentioned this a thousand times. Here's a thousand and one. Every single day when you wake up, kids and adults, you have to preach the gospel to yourself. I'm in bad times. That's what you say to yourself. I am in bad times. My sins are washed away and I have all that Jesus Christ the Lord has done for me. That's mine. Amen? I'm back. So, in contrast to walking and living like you used to in a world of unbelief, as a fallen son and daughter of Adam, Paul says to Liz, like the new creation that you already are. Live as Jesus Christ has made you in his righteousness and in his holiness. That's how we're supposed to live in the new system. Baptism is the transition point in our lives, death to life, darkness to life, sin to salvation. from the Kingdom of God, from the Kingdom of Satan, the Kingdom of God. We leave the world, we come into Heaven. Live like that. Live like that. Now we'll come back to that at noon. I pray you'll come back for 15-20 minutes. The rest of the Passion is going to fill up the house. What does it look like to live a holy, heavenly, renewed life? Until then, brothers and sisters, let's do the Father thing. Amen? Amen, and let's pray.