00:00
00:00
00:01
ប្រតិចារិក
1/0
I've been blessed to have a couple of weeks off and rest, and so it is very good to be back. Glad to be back home with my congregation and back in the pulpit. And we'll be picking up where we left off, which is the study of Paul's epistle to the Ephesians. And where we left it off, we had gone through Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 16. This morning we'll be picking up with Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 17 and looking at verses 17 through 24. If you would place your bulletin or your bulletin insert there in Paul's epistle to the Ephesians chapter 4, our Old Testament complementary passage is Joshua chapter 24 verses 14 through 18. So with your Bibles open to Joshua chapter 24, In honor of God's Word, please stand. Joshua, chapter 24, beginning in verse 14. Hear God's Word. Now, therefore, fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the river and in Egypt, and serve the And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." Then the people answered, "'Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods, for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our fathers up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery and who did those great signs in our sight, and preserved us in all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed. And the Lord drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the Lord, for He is our God." Thus far in the reading of God's Word, please turn to Paul's epistle to the Ephesians chapter 4 verses 17 through 24. and continuing in the reading of God's word. Now, this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to the hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ. Assuming that you have heard about him, and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 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. Thus far in the reading of God's word, let us pray. Father, as we have read, we now come to the preaching and the conscionable hearing of your Word, and we pray that you would open our hearts, that we may hear the voice of the Great Shepherd, that we may follow our Master. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. Please be seated. So, in Paul's epistle to the Ephesians, we've been looking at these grand themes that run throughout the very universe itself. In chapters 1 through 3, the grand theme of what God is doing in salvation, God's plan for the ages, that He is bringing all things under submission to Jesus Christ, that God is bringing together the various races, making a new creature, a new humanity, that God is doing these majestic, grand things in the universe. And Paul closes that section of Ephesians chapters 1 through 3 with that prayer for you, that you may be strengthened to be able to handle the knowledge, the power, the beauty of God's grand design displayed to you. And so these grand themes of chapters 1 through 3 then lead us into the more specific application of chapters 4 through 6. How does this grand tapestry of 1 through 3 work? How does it look worked out in your life and in my life? And so that's where Paul picks up in chapter 4, the practical application. And he begins with this phrase, I urge you to walk in a manner worthy, and contrasts it with the passage that we'll be looking at this morning, beginning in verse 17, how not to walk. And so I want you to notice the connection between verses 1-16, and then verses 17-24. How we are to walk, and then the passage that we'll be seeing this morning, how we are not to walk. And we saw in verses 1-16 that the walk, the pathway, the journey, the life that God has called us to is a journey, it's a life of unity. And we saw the crisis of unity, the importance of that unity. We saw the foundation of that unity. We saw that unity is not the same thing as uniformity. That there is a diversity that reflects true unity within the body. But then, fundamentally, we saw the purpose, the reason that God calls us to unity. The reason that God calls the congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ to be united. is so that together we may be strengthened. We may be strengthened for that journey. So we come now when the contrast, Paul has shown us how we are to walk, I urge you to walk in a manner worthy, chapter 4 verse 1. The contrast, chapter 4 verse 17, now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk. as the Gentiles do. And so we'll look at this passage, verses 17 through 24, in two ways this morning. The first is old walking, old selves. Those things that are to be put off. The second is renewal and new selves. So these contrasts that are given to us here in these verses, the old walking, the old selves, renewal and the new selves. But first, at the old walking, old selves. In 1936, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church broke away from the mainline Presbyterian Church. And the argument, the issue, the fundamental point of division, and it's a hard division. You've got beautiful church buildings that great-great-great-grandfathers and all the generations in between had donated uh... sacrificially uh... to to build these beautiful buildings that nice church buildings in your option is going to be uh... middle school job uh... or or or auditorium uh... some of them actually met in a school bus a uh... uh... an abandoned school bus was a church chapel uh... for for some time in those earlier days uh... situations where your family members your your mother, grandfather, whatever, are buried in the cemetery outside the church. And so the OPC said, we believe that God is calling us to break away from this church because of the poor theology, the liberal theology, because they have lost the heart of the gospel. But there weren't an awful lot of people who came out, who came out of the mainline church. The OPC was a small church and has remained a fairly small church over the years. There weren't a lot of people who saw that crisis that led to this division. The mainline church at that time, in the 1930s, was divided into a northern church and a southern church. In 1984, the two churches united and became the PCUSA. In 1984, this one mainline Presbyterian church had about 3.1 million members. For what it's worth today, the OPC has 35,000. were a freckle on the overall landscape. But 3.1 million members in 1984, as of 2013, 1.7. Almost half. Almost a 50% decline. Every single year between 1984 and 2013, it's been minus 1.3%, minus 1.7%, minus 2%, minus 3%. A steady decline over the last years. So that's the historical reality. How is this relevant? Well, two Sundays ago, I'm down at the beach. And I'm taking some time away, vacation, enjoying my time down at the beach. And it's a Sunday morning, and I've got some options of what to do on a Sunday morning. And one of the, there was no Or any OPC or PCA congregations very close by. And so I made the decision to go with my family to the local PCUSA congregation. It's actually the first time I've been in a PCUSA congregation since way before I ever went to seminary, anything like that. So it was my first time sort of as a minister of the gospel, as a conscious, intentional person, to walk in and say, hmm, what's What is this? And you know, it struck me. I can understand. I can understand how people would have stayed in the PCUSA. Because there was nothing egregious about it. You would have felt very much at home in many ways in this classical, liberal church. The service looked an awful lot like ours, except they had a cool building. The service looked an awful lot like ours. It opened with a call to worship. There was a reading of the law. There was a confession of sin. There was an assurance of pardon. There was a sermon in which I learned two new Hebrew words. Every good Presbyterian sermon ought to bring you back to the text, right? You know, give you some cool Greek or Hebrew to go home with. And there was a taking of the offering and there was a benediction. you would have recognized it as a Presbyterian worship service. So, as I walked out afterwards, I spoke to my family, and I said, dear members of my family, what did you think? And I'm not here to say, let's all be snarky and critical and point out all the different ways, you know, that's not our purpose. But, what did you think? Why is it important? Because this certainly looked an awful lot like what we are used to in a Presbyterian service. The liturgy was almost identical. They had somebody playing an organ, we sang most of the same hymns, mostly the same order, all that sort of thing. Felt very comfortable, felt very much at home. Didn't feel like anything just profoundly egregious that you would run off and say, ooh, I can't be here. Certainly not something that you would give up a building for. But here was the issue. Here was the problem. If you had walked into that room that day, if you had walked in and said, I don't know what this whole Christianity thing is about. I don't understand Christianity. I am your average, just clueless person. about the gospel, about Christianity, if you had walked into that situation that day, would you have walked out saying, aha, this is the message of the gospel. This is it. And the answer is no, we wouldn't have. It was a nice sermon, and about being nice people, and about how we ought to be content and thankful for the things that God gives us. All nice things. All good things. Yeah, you should be nice and you should be content. Absolutely. All on board. But you know what? There was no gospel. There was nothing that said, this is the transformation that is necessary in your life. The invitation wasn't so much for me to come and join with the body of Christ, as it was to come and join with what seemed to be a really nice group of people. In the prayer request, they were talking about how they were caring for each other, and they had the obligatory time of fellowship in the middle of the service where you stand up and shake the hand of the person around you, and the person visiting feels really awkward as he stands there. But in the time of fellowship, they were having genuine conversations with each other, and it was just a really nice, warm, friendly congregation. Sweet people, I'm sure. But I did not walk out of there having any idea of the gospel, of what the message of Christianity is about. And so when Paul comes to this practical application of the gospel in your life and in my life, he does so painting a very clear distinction A very clear sense of there is you, and then there is other. There is what you are to be, and then there is what you are not to be. And this very clear delineation between the community of the saints and that which is not to be the community of the saints. this old walk, these old selves. Now, we have already seen the contrast between the walk, that you are to walk in a manner worthy of the calling, chapter 4, verse 1, you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, but now let's notice when Paul says you are no longer to walk as the Gentiles do. If you'll recall, we've already touched on that fairly significantly. In chapter 2 and verse 15, I know everybody remembers word for word the sermon, but just for the sake of some of the children among us that may not have remembered it, we'll read it. He himself is our peace, chapter 2 verse 14, he himself is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace. The ethne, the Gentiles, the nations, the earlier division between Jew and Gentile that places nations, ethnes, ethnic groups at hostility with one another And together, Jew and Gentile places them in a hostile relationship with God has been broken down in the work that Christ Jesus has done upon the cross. A new man is created, a new humanity, a new race, so that we are no longer Jew or Gentile, male or female, bond or free, but rather we are one in Christ. And brothers and sisters, get this. Paul is now saying to you, the church, to you, the saints and faithful in the Lord Jesus Christ, that you are not to walk as the Gentiles. And he's saying this to a group of people that we would all think are Gentiles. They're from Ephesus. They are the people that we would think are the Gentiles. And yet Paul is saying, no, no, no. Remember, you are a new humanity. You, the church, are a new creation, a new man in Christ. And so you don't have the luxury of identifying yourself as a Jew. You don't have a luxury of identifying yourself as an Ephesian. You don't have the luxury of identifying yourself as a Corinthian. You don't have the luxury of identifying yourself as any ethnic group. You are a new creation in Christ and you are not to walk as those outside. Now, how is that walk defined? How is the otherness defined? There's clearly an otherness here that Paul lays out. What is the definition of that otherness? What do you think of when you think of that which is other? when you feel awkward, when you encounter someone and say, hmm, I don't know. Otherness has got nothing to do with body piercings, with tattoos. Otherness has got nothing to do with politics. Otherness has got nothing to do with any of these outward things. Look at how Paul defines otherness. Look at how Paul defines the Gentiles. They are darkened in their understanding, verse 18, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. That otherness, that thing that you and I are to look at and go, ooh, that's not me, is a rebellious heart, a darkened understanding, a rebellious mind. These things that Paul identifies as marks of that other group. And he says, beloved, you are a new creation, therefore there must be, if you are a new one, there must be an old one. And this old creation, this old identity that Paul places before you and places before me, is a hardness of heart. rebellion that then drives out, that motivates these actions. In verse 19, they have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. What is it that is other to you, the body of Christ? What is it that is those people? Beloved, those people, that other, those ones that we are not to be like. All too often we begin to see, it's a little uncomfortably, me. It's a little uncomfortably, you. When you and I push back against God's Word, when you and I deflect Those arrows of God that pierce our conscience by saying, I hope she's listening to this one. Boy, I hope he's hearing this one. Bouncing them off our shield. We are allowing the old self, we are allowing that old man to thrive. and the old walking that we are to put off is that which becomes our own living death. And that's what Paul is saying when he says, when he identifies this old walk, when he identifies this old self, when he uses these words of Gentiles, of ethnics, of those others, people not like us, he then comes here to say, It's about rebellion, rejection, stubbornness to the Word of God, which then manifests itself in this area of sin. But beloved, Paul goes on to say, that's not who you are. He goes on to say, you and I are called to renewal and to new selves. Verse 20, he says, but that is not the way you learned Christ, assuming you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus. Now that word assuming, because this is a Presbyterian sermon and you're expecting a language lesson, the word assuming there actually, the NIV has got a better translation for that, because Paul is not simply saying, listen, I hope, I hope that you've heard, I assume if you've heard, maybe you haven't, But Paul is saying, I have confidence that you have. I have confidence that you have heard the truth that is in Christ Jesus. How can Paul say that? Well, because, Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 1, Paul is writing to the saints and faithful in Ephesus. Paul is saying, I know you, I've spent time with you, I know you as a congregation, and I know That these seeds, whether they're giant oak trees or whether they're tiny little saplings, but nonetheless, these seeds are in you. The gospel is reflected in your life and in your walk as a congregation. And so to truly get what Paul is saying here in these passages, in these verses, beloved, you and I must remember the audience, the context of Paul's writing. When Paul says, to the saints and the faithful in Ephesus, he's not saying, those bad people over there need to put off and put on and become good people. But he's saying, you and I, you and I in our Christian walk, you and I in our journey, must continually put off and put on. The other is not that one out there, but the other is that old self that you and I struggle with, that you and I deal with. Your sin and your rebellious heart point you to the power of the gospel, point you to the joy of your salvation. When you see, beloved, when you see the other as being in your own heart, then you can begin to see the roadmap of salvation, of sanctification. The language of mortifying sin, putting to death, the old man, putting to death that sin that is in us, is truly the battle that is before us. Paul uses this language to describe the battle here in the words of renewal, that which you and I are called to press towards in verses 23 and 24, 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." Now, that language of renewal, it comes up in another place in the Scriptures, several other places actually, but when you think of renewal, the promise of the new creation, does that language ring a bell? That that we are looking forward to is a day when heaven and earth will be renewed. When all things will be renewed. And Paul uses that same language to speak of your journey this morning. Your Christian walk is the seed of that grand renewal, that grand transformation, that which the creation longs to see is what you are plugged into now. What you are going through now as you put off the old man and as you are renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new self. Now, the language that is given here to describe the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness, this language is caught up in our shorter catechism. Those of you who teach your children the shorter catechism will know, the children will know the shorter catechism. Question 10, how did God create man? God created man, male and female. after his own image in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, with dominion over the creatures." How do we get these three characters, the three qualities of knowledge, righteousness, and holiness? Well, two of them are from this verse right here. The new man, the new self, is that which is created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. The point here is this. God created humanity. He created our first parents. He created Adam and Eve with a design, with a purpose. And that is that we should walk before him in true knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. And what salvation does, what the gospel does, is nothing less than bring us back to that original design structure. Renewing us and bringing us back to that place that you and I were created to be. Now, this isn't an instantaneous, overwhelming, sudden blessing of the Spirit that suddenly you walk in a higher life and are perfect before God. And if you don't think so, if you think this is some instantaneous process, feel free to jump ahead. Because next week, as we pick up with chapter 4, verse 25 and following, We're going to start seeing some very, very practical, precise, specific ways in which you and I are to be walking according to the original design, what this renewal looks like. Some very specific examples of the renewed Christian walk and how we engage in this. It's a process. It's a walk. Paul uses that language. Chapter 4 verse 1, here's how you are to walk. Chapter 4 verse 17, here's how you are not to walk. It's a process, and so beloved, I would encourage you not to despair. Don't get discouraged when you see yourself struggling with sin. Be encouraged that you're struggling. Here's something shocking. I said to somebody not too long ago, sin, as a pastor, when I'm dealing with other people in my congregation, sin doesn't bother me. Just want to let that sink in a moment. It's lack of repentance that bothers me. I expect sin. Of course you sin. You know what the problem is? If you don't repent. If you're not struggling against it. If I don't see the grace of Christ working in your life so that you recognize your sin and you turn away from that sin in contrition, confession, and conversion. Because, beloved, that's the gospel. Are you going to sin? Yeah. That's how it is. Beloved, the question is not, are you going to sin? The question is, do you have a Savior? And are you going to turn in confession of sin? Turn to convert from that sin to righteousness? Turn in contrition sorrow for that sin. Are you going to demonstrate repentance? That is Paul's paradigm for your life. Don't walk after the old self, but be renewed and walk according to the new self who is created in Christ Jesus. What I didn't hear And what I should have heard in that PCUSA congregation was very simply this. Number one, see that the other is in you. See that you need the gospel. See that you need Christ. Number two, look to Christ. Look to the One who has taken your old self upon Him, carried your sin upon the cross, and be clothed in His righteousness. Beloved, that is the heart of the Gospel. See your need. and see your Savior. And thirdly, from this passage here, the heart of the Christian community, the heart of the Christian life, is to recognize that again and again and again and again and again, we have to put off and we have to put on. We live out this renewal. We live out this struggle. But we can give all that we are to the fight. Because beloved, the fight has been won. God Himself has given us His Son. God Himself has given us Christ Jesus. The victory is complete. Because God Himself has taken your old person upon him and clothe you in the righteousness of Christ if you seize Christ by faith. Beloved, my question to you is where are you? Do you see that you are the other? I hope so. I hope we can all agree to that. I hope we can all see that that other, that old man, is my battle, is my heart, is my rebellion, and is your heart and your rebellion. So on that we stand united. We stand on common footing. The question then is, where do you find your hope? It is Christ alone who is your hope. For it is Christ alone who is the perfect sacrifice. It is Christ alone who has the perfect righteousness. And it is Christ alone who will clothe you. And the offer of the gospel is come. Come to Him. Don't walk from this room today without nailing that down. Beloved, if you are in Christ, then the promise and the Encouragement and the comfort of the gospel Is not that you're not going to stop sinning But by his grace you're not going to stop repenting And you're not going to stop being forgiven And you're not going to stop in that journey and he will perform in you That which he is purposed from all eternity to conform you unto Let us pray. Almighty God and gracious heavenly Father, we do thank you for the clarity, for the beauty, for the power of your gospel. And we pray, Father, that in Christ we may live and move and have our being, that we may be renewed and that we may put off the old man. the old desires the old flesh, and seize Christ even as we are seized by him. We pray in his name. Amen.
Put On The New Self
ស៊េរី Ephesians
លេខសម្គាល់សេចក្ដីអធិប្បាយ | 1012142057110 |
រយៈពេល | 37:50 |
កាលបរិច្ឆេទ | |
ប្រភេទ | ព្រឹកថ្ងៃអាទិត្យ |
អត្ថបទព្រះគម្ពីរ | អេភេសូរ 4:17-24; យ៉ូស្វេ 24:14-18 |
ភាសា | អង់គ្លេស |
បន្ថែមមតិយោបល់
មតិយោបល់
គ្មានយោបល់
© រក្សាសិទ្ធិ
2025 SermonAudio.