Well, this evening we continue our studies in this book of Paul, God's book that's written here through the Apostle Paul to the church in Ephesus. I'm in chapter four tonight, verses 20 to 24, off with the old, on with the new. And if my voice will stay working to the end of the sermon, well, God willing, we'll see how we get on. Well, last time we were looking at the human heart in its unregenerate state and just how hardened that it is. No life of God, and that is verses 17 to 19. And the words that sort of fit together with what the human heart, what a man, a woman without God is at heart, is ignorant and their minds are futile. And their behavior, well, you can see about that there, They give themselves over to lewdness to work well and cleanness with greediness. There's a downward spiral. There is a progressive degradation, just as there's a progressive sanctification, there is its opposite. And there is progressive degradation. Indeed, you can see it again regarding verse 22, which is within our over view this evening. There's the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts. That's the state of man and ignorance and the lack of light, lack of understanding. Well, you can see that there, that it's deceitful. The heart is deceitful. that people don't know who they are, why they do what they do, how they are capable of the things that they are capable of, because they're actually, they're alienated not only from God, but from themselves. And in that way, they are really on a downward, downward path. And they have nothing within really meaningful to be able to stop that. And the difficulties and the hardening of their hearts really is a progressive thing until God intervenes. So the Christian has something so much better than that. And that's what Paul is anxious for the church in Ephesus to know. That's not that. Don't go back to that. Don't be that, but be actually what now is within your reach to be, because we have resources that are such a help. and so powerful, so life-changing, life-transforming, and this is what he wants us to lay hold of. First heading, though, is this, sanctification is work. Sanctification is work. That here is something really, in a sense, which is both so important in the Christian life, to be holy, to be becoming more holy, and yet here is something that is most mysterious as to how the interaction between us and a great and holy God takes place within the depths of our soul. We know this though, he works, but we also work. Though holiness is not our idea and our plan, it's his. And he is the one that has the template and the design. And it is that we credit with the power to shape us and mould us into that rather than the mould of the world, which we're in the process of unmoulding ourselves from that. The design is his, the plan is his, the power is his, but we still are to work. We come and hear sermons on the subject. And think that because you hear a sermon on the subject, well, that's it. Sanctification kind of just happens in some sort of ethereal way. No, the hard work starts when you get home and tomorrow morning when you go to work and when you have decisions to make and you have choices as to what you're going to say and how you're going to say it and how you're going to interact and how you're going to make a a decision and a choice about a particular subject. That's when the work really happens. And it doesn't just automatically happen, that we don't just find that we're saying the right words in the right way, that we didn't have to do anything. It's just sort of like we're a typewriter, we don't have these things these days. computer and words that will come up on the screen. And we're just like that, just like that screen, the words are there. It doesn't happen that way. We have to speak the words, we have to choose the words or not words. If we're wiser to say nothing than to say, to say nothing. to exert our will, to see something that beckons us and that we know if we went down that way it would be disastrous, and to resist it. And it's not as though suddenly kind of the desire is gone and temptation vanishes, but there has to be a determination. We turn our back, we turn away, if not literally physically, then in our thinking we turn away from it deliberately. And that is an act that we have to do. And God brings our once hardened faculties, that futility of mind where it's empty and devoid of serious and vital thought. And the understanding, that evaluation, that deeper part of us that is selecting what's useful, what's important, sifting out things, but ruling other things in. And then that all begins to reverse. And what was once darkened now becomes illuminated. What was once futile begins to have weightier thoughts, more spiritual thoughts, begins to function in a way that it couldn't function before. And the ignorance that is in us, the blindness of our heart, that hardness, that inability deep down, that resistance that asserts itself there. Indeed, people may be very pleasant, very fine, travel along, and then suddenly there's an issue. Out comes something very, very nasty and very unpleasant. And you realize, well, there's trouble there. There's a blindness, a hardness of heart. And just like when you're sort of burrowing down and digging down and then you hit that rock there. And that begins to reverse. And so that hardness begins to give way to a softening, a readiness, a willingness to change, repentance, and all the tender virtues of the fruit of the Spirit come. Now we're alive. Now we're ready for service. Now, whereas before, hands and feet and our affections there were given over to lewdness to work or uncleanness with greediness, but now we have feeling. That talks of the conscience. Now it's woken up. And now it's ready to follow the dictates of God's word. Conscience and the will begin to kind of work together in this and God's Holy Spirit. And we find ourselves then in a new course of action. But we have to ensure that we are cooperating. with God's plan of holiness, that we are working in tandem with him and not against him. For the believer can work against God. And we'll see that in future weeks. It's called grieving the spirit. It's where we're actively working against what God is seeking to bring about within us. And it produces a very, very unhappy conflict within, a kind of inner turmoil and anguish. that is really quite unpredictable at times, just how it will fall out and in which direction that we will go. So we are ever faced with choices and ever faced with opportunities that we can turn down and where we can refuse and where we then will have to learn the harder way in the future. So here we are faced with an active listening, an active work that we are about. And in this regard, it's spoken of as putting off old things and putting on new things. Well, okay. If you watch Wallace and Gromit there, he always manages there. If you see the cartoon, very amusing it is, you know, he just puts his arms up and his clothes come on and his jacket ends up on him, his tie and all the rest of it there. Very easy. But of course, no, no, you have to go to the wardrobe and put off whatever it is and put on something else that's a very deliberate act. And that's what Paul is talking about here. Sanctification is work. And like there's a garment that suits us well, Christian character and holiness, well that suits us well, that's what we're to put on. And we're to put off what doesn't suit us well, what belonged to the things we're just talking about a moment ago. And as this process happens, it is a process, then it's not again that we're passive in it, if you Sort of just leave your iPad on overnight. There's some new download that's going to come somewhere while you're sleeping and you wake up and download was successful and some new clever thing your iPad will be able to do after that. No, it doesn't just happen while we sleep, that we just plug into something and wake up with a new sort of holiness download, a new app that we can now access and that will sort us all out. Neither is it an odd experience. That's very much used to be the way, but I figure still is the way for some causes that you need an experience. You need to sort of induce some sort of crisis experience and that will make you holy. That will sort of banish your sin, take away your sinful desires and set you on a new course. Well, not quite as easy as that. we're on a Tuesday morning fellowship, we're studying J.C. Ryle, holiness, and much of his writing is to say it doesn't work like that, that it's a cost, there's a fight, and that's the chapter we're just looking at the other day, there's a fight, there's a work to be done. But always in it, that God is working, moving things and bringing us into circumstances, providences, where we have opportunities to learn, and where we are being shaped into what is his plan, what is the person that he wants us to be like, which is his son, that it is his son, that it is us reproducing the life of his son, not that we'll be going rounds doing the signs and wonders that were particular and unique to him, that it is that we will be doing extraordinary things like walking on the water that he did. But that attitude of life and purpose, that manner of living, that way of handling life and situations, that love the neighbor for God. Well, that certainly is what he wants to reproduce in us. That really brings us to what it means to be filled with all the fullness of God in chapter three, and there in verse 19, that it's this. And when we are born again, the Spirit of God, we are regenerate, we are in that renewed state, then all of that is possible. We become new creatures and therefore there's a new man to go with the new creature and that therefore sets us off in a wholly totally different direction and in a sense through that regeneration which produces righteousness and holiness as we see in verse 24 that this is actually a principle that we accept in conversion that the Christ that we come to understand when we're converted is a Christ that actually there demands holiness in his people, that it's not something we kind of learn as a shock, as a surprise, that we've had Ephesians chapter one, two, three, and then shock and surprise, that we're meant to be holy. We're reading chapter four and five. Well, no, Paul is saying that none of this should be a shock at all, because this is the Christ you learned. If indeed you have heard him and have been taught by him as the truth is in Jesus, the true Christ, the truth, truth about who God is, what God requires, what we could not supply by our fallen nature, what he did by fulfilling the law for our sakes. And we understood not all the terminology, We wouldn't have understood all the different words that now we're more familiar with as Christians and terms and see where they fit in. But that Christ whom we came to was not an empty Christ, was not a Christ that just simply did something for us, was benevolent and kind and whom we met with and were grateful for his help in that way. was a very holy Christ and he's the son of God and that he was real and that he's going to judge all people. There was a celibacy, something very, very serious about all of that. And so we are in that position of actually responding to what we already know. We've already learnt about him. We've already gained something of what sin has done to us, what it requires for remedy. that Christ should have to die on our behalf in order to secure a remedy. And so there it is, already in our encounter with him, and the one in whom we put our faith, the one who induced us to repent of our sin, are the ground rules, as it were, is the groundwork laid for holiness. This is the one that we now believe in. And there's something very emphatic in it, isn't there? That's in America, I don't think so much here, but this idea of lordship salvation, that you can have salvation from a Christ who really isn't that particular about how you live and what you do, that you, you come and get saved or some sort of trivialization of what it means to become a Christian. And, but then there's a sort of afterwards you, you kind of work out that actually he's meant to be lord of your life. And people say, well, I didn't sign up for that. You know, I want to be saved, but I kind of want to do what I want to do. And I don't really want to be interfered with. And so it becomes a bit of a surprise to people who learn that actually, no, he demands your life, your soul, your all. And if he's not going to be Lord of your life, then it doesn't look as if he's your savior either. And so we know the Christ that we met with, that this is what it's about, a serious, serious thing. It is. So the truth that's in him. leads to the commandments that we then know are his commandments to us. Those things bring knowledge to us, their implications for us, about our obedience and concern for his honor, the kind of people that we should be. And we have, well, very powerful knowledge. In Romans chapter six, in fact, we can see there that what we have in Christ transformed the whole situation that we're in. Romans 6 verse 11, likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. There's an implication. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body, but you should obey it in its lusts. You reckon yourself, you now can see that your position has changed. You're now under His Lordship, you have now been bought at a price. You have now received salvation, forgiveness of sin. And so sin now doesn't have the same power and capacity, the new nature that we have through the new birth. means that we're in a much stronger position and can actually reckon ourselves dead to sin. To say that by the act of reckoning, suddenly sin disappears. But no, we now have higher ground. We're in a different position in which we survey who we are, knowing that we are now in Christ Jesus. We're alive to him. And that says it all. We were previously alienated from the life of God, now we're alive in him. And so we can therefore make a kind of choice that's there in verse 12 of Romans 6, not letting sin reign in your body, but you should obey it in its lusts. It's now a different place that we've reached. Now, my second heading is this, forgetful people, that we are forgetful people. everything just said, the Christ that we met with when we came to Christ and we learned of him, truth we found in him, well sadly we are liable to forget because the implications of meeting with him though you put off the former conduct, the the old man, the old person prior to regeneration, prior to the new birth, which was growing corrupt according to the deceitful lusts. That's the implication. You put off that. You're done with that. You're finished with that. Reckon yourself dead to that and alive to God, which means being renewed in the spirit of your mind. And if you put on the new man, that there is this new nature that is there. Christ has formed within us and which was the creation of God to make us into true righteousness and holiness that we turn very deliberately to this offer that we have, the hope that we have of sanctification and put on then the new man. And yes, we forget. And rather than move off from our former conduct, we move back into our former conduct. We backslide into it. We revert to the old man and begin to speak and think like the old man, rather than what now we have in the inner man that we were thinking about the other week and where Christ's spirit can work within us to change us. But we We revert, we forget, and forget in a sense who we are. That's often what happens, isn't it? When we sin, we forget who we are, that we're in Christ, that we have a calling, that we have a responsibility and a stewardship, that we're representing him, that we have a testimony to bear, and it kind of disappears. Sin becomes too attractive, too powerful, and the higher calling The things that the Spirit within is impelling us towards suddenly recede, and we are back to the former conduct. And this is where Paul is saying, well, you've not so learned Christ that way. He wasn't saying to you, that's fine, carry on with your conduct, nothing to change here, no alteration that I can see here, that it's needed. No, he's not saying that to us, that's not the Christ that we we came to, but we forget him and we then drop back into old ways and backslide into being a bit deceitful here or lustful there and cleanness of some kind and covetousness, whatever may be the besetting sins that might've been there and jealousies and old anger comes out. And all of a sudden we're looking at anything but a Christian behaving like anything but a Christian. So we've started to sort of put back on bits of the garments of the old man and put on an old shirt or an old jacket that belonged there, or some sort of aspect of who we were before we were converted. Because the remnants of the old nature are still there. God doesn't, by regeneration, mean that every last part of the opposition within the flesh has gone. No, it remains. And we have to be at war with it day by day. And so it fights back. That's one of the disappointments, isn't it, to young Christians? disappointment to all the Christians too, that it fights back. And it can often come with some mighty fine justifications and kind of sob stories why you should succumb to that temptation or allow yourself a bit of license there, or you've been having a hard time, whatever, so let yourself do that there. And it can be very subtle. It's deceitful. That's what lusts do. They are deceitful things. kind of disarms you of the better reasoning and pushes you in that direction. So the old man begins to be put back on and the old nature has a way there with its remnants of its power to deceive us and at times bully us and make suggestions to us and come up with some really curious justifications as to why we should go in that direction. old man will justify bad thoughts, try to make bargains with us, that a bit of quid pro quo that we'll have a bit of sin there, but really, you know, good Bible reading there or something, or do some extravagant bit of Christian service there to sort of compensate for that. And we kind of run a ledger somewhere within our hearts at times that that we'll allow ourselves this and then we'll do a bit harder on something there and deny ourselves something there, which is all a bit sad, all a bit sordid, and really a little bit less than what Christ would look for in us, looking for a willing obedience and finding us instead bogged down in deal making. And we can, if we go too far down that path, end up really more or less back in verses 17 to 19. Our minds are becoming futile. They're empty of any valuable thoughts. And suddenly our understanding, our whole evaluation, just falling apart. And we're making really foolish decisions. And ignorance and blindness seem to be more characteristic of us than people who are in the light and who love the truth. interesting to watch on occasion that people who denounce certain things are actually committing those same things. Forget a particular preacher, you know, follow the man there. Powerful stuff, my friends, it was powerful stuff, very dramatic. And he was denouncing homosexual sin, actually. Oh, he was looking into the camera there and eyeballing you and bearing down on your conscience like that. When then the story broke that actually he was paying for some horrible acts to be performed and drugs were involved and all the rest of it there, so he was busted. Well, it was a convincing performance and allowed a denounced and yet actually he was committing those very sins as though there's a sort of compensation there that if I allow myself my luxury items, my sin, well I will stand in the pulpit and denounce it more fiercely as a result. And what a pathway that is to destruction if one doesn't repent. So we have to keep learning Christ actually. We have to keep being refreshed and reminded who he is and what we owe him, how wonderful he is, how good he is, how caring he is, what his plans are for us. Well, you know, we often smile at the simplicity and rather naivety of saying even God has a wonderful plan for your life, except of course he does. It may not be a plan that's just full of luxury and ease and new houses here and whole new setup, new gear there, but it's a plan nevertheless. It's a plan to make us holy. And as we learn from him, learn of him, as the truth is in him. And as, well, just being in the life of the church, equipping us for those works of ministry, good works, to be able to be holy people, doing holy things, then that is God's work taking place within us. And we end up doing good works done in a good way. So we keep hearing Christ, we keep learning of Him, keep reminding ourselves of Him, what He's done for us and what relationship He has to us and how we're now in Him, that all that we now are has been placed in Him, that what He did in His life, death, resurrection, reigning in glory, it connects with us and there's something available for us in that, as we seek him in prayer. So we keep putting off, and we therefore keep putting on. And we learn to be experts at, you know, spot the difference. Those pictures, aren't they, that you've got to look at one picture and see what's the anomaly here? Ah, he's wearing a different tie there, or, you know, this buttonhole slightly different in that picture than that picture. And you become trained in looking for those differences. And it's a little bit like that, that he gives us that discernment. We begin to look at ourselves more, more critically and spot the difference. I'm wearing something there that belongs to the old man. That was the old, old attire. That's my old clothing there, and it's time to take that bit off and replace that. That needs renewing, that needs changing. And when we have, as it were, those anomalies, that's something not right here, that what we should be and what we're not, and we spot the difference, and we're able then to turn away from those things, seeing what belongs and what doesn't belong. And we do at times have to recall our form of conduct and hold up ourselves as we were to where we need to go and see the things that tragically undermined us in the past that were besetting sins or issues and constantly be on the alert against them, react against them. That sort of bit of clothing is crept back on and we're spotting the difference. Oh, that's come back. Uh, that ill fitting tie or that, that, uh, that wrong, wrong dress there or the wrong gloves there that there's something out of place here. It doesn't belong to a child of God. And so we turn away from it, take it off, put on something better. we can be asleep at times, we can drift in the spiritual life oh so easily and we're just not on the case, we're just not alert and vigilant, we're getting careless, we're not thinking about who we are and what we're doing and whether it's Christ-like or whether it's the old man, the former conduct that keeps creeping back and so how much we need to be prayerful. vigilance in prayer and searching our hearts before God and allowing him to search our hearts, not inventing troubles and problems which may not be there at all or A sort of speck somewhere there, we've seen somewhere on the Pell or whatever it is, and kind of working away on that when there's a far more substantive issue that the Lord might be wanting to show us. And then we have the Bible. And the Bible, of course, is often full, if we look in the Old Testament, particularly of failures. People who didn't listen, didn't learn and who reverted and established the old idols and went back to the gods of the nations and to great harm to themselves. We can be very forgetful and actually in the end what we're forgetting is who Christ is and what he's done for us and what he wants to do for us. So final heading, something, something much better. Something much better. So if it's putting off the the former conduct, the old man, what belonged to our previous life. Well, there is something better. That's being renewed in the spirit of your mind. That's, again, not some sort of weird thing. You know, you can put yourself in an MRI scan and oh dear, it does some stuff in there. It's looking inside, been there and look inside my head. Beyond the fresh air, I found a few other things in there, which would be quite helpful to know. But it didn't, by that, renew my mind. It didn't come out of that with somehow thinking differently, seeing the world differently. Because God is offering a work that we work with him, we pray, we seek him, and he will work, he will renew us in the spirit of our mind. And that talks, doesn't it, about something undergirding how we think, something about the depths of our being and how we reflect upon things. And so we begin to express actually, more obviously, more readily, more willingly, the new nature. We live according to the new man. We are putting on more comfortably the clothing that belongs to Christlikeness, how we should be and what kind of people we're being moved towards. We gain strength from him, we feel more of the compulsion and the push of the Holy Spirit towards Christlikeness and we develop a greater sensitivity here, not losing sensitivity, not falling down that way of working all uncleanness with greediness, but actually we gain a sensitivity. The conscience becomes more alert to what's important and we develop a zero tolerance for sin. So these are great promises, and this is the Christian life. This is sanctification. This is life in the Spirit, and it has within it all the help of God. So 2 Corinthians 4, Verse 16, where Paul writes, therefore we do not lose heart, even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day, day by day. It's not just on Sundays or something like that or particular days when you're feeling especially well. It's for every day, every day of that process as we engage with God and as we are given there that power from within, the Holy Spirit, reminded of Christ as we develop according to what we really are now, the new nature, the inner man, as that strengthening work we were thinking about a few weeks ago takes place. Then there was a change in our character, temperaments, our thinking. We evaluate things differently. We suddenly make new connections and where we hadn't seen something before, we now see as a connection here. Behaviors and attitudes. Oh, I see a connection here. And we've got something to be able to bring to that. New questions that we didn't think to ask ourselves before. Now we ask ourselves questions, whereas before we just used to perhaps pass through uncritically. And there we have God's help, his good pleasure, his assurance. And it produces righteousness and holiness. That's the end product. And what it talks about there, righteousness, talks a little bit more perhaps about our relations with each other and holiness about our relations there with God. And introducing into us those very things that produce what we were looking at the other week in chapter four. In the earlier verses, verse two, the loneliness, gentleness, long-suffering, bearing with one another in love. And when we think, well, who best shows that? Well, it's the one into whose image we are being transformed and where this whole renewal project is taking us towards. It's our Lord Jesus Christ. There we have, within our new nature, that help, that template that God is creating and making to happen. There's the Holy Spirit moving towards that end. There is scripture encouraging us towards that and we have all the help of heaven in doing that. Though, as we were mentioning, we still have to assert our will and agree to God's terms and conditions and disagree with everything that is contrary to them. So in righteousness, our relationships with other people improves. We are better company to be with. We're more helpful. We're more comfortable as people to be with. There's something more straightforward, something more open. And that's the process of sanctification in that direction. There is that holiness that isn't sort of Phariseeism and the kind of rules and regulations and a rather, what we might call a decentered obedience. An obedience, but that doesn't have Christ. It doesn't have his attitude and his humor. It doesn't have his gentleness and loneliness. It's something else. It's a harder thing altogether. Something more the Pharisees were involved in. but where we love justice and we love showing compassion and where there is that willingness of heart and spirit that we just see writ large in our Lord Jesus Christ. Righteousness, holiness, that we walk carefully with God, we walk comfortably, our consciences more happy with where we're going and the plans that we're already forming in our own minds to deal with our sins, to begin a campaign against some besetting sin, some aspect of our character that we know it's tripping us up and it's time to review it and time to deal with it. So it's emphatic, isn't it? Off with the old, on with the new. What doesn't belong, get rid of it. and look to Christ now, be deliberate in putting on what we know that he loves and what we know will please him. So we'll stop there, and God willing, a couple of weeks time, return to the subject. My voice just about held out, so I'm glad of that. Let's turn to our closing hymn, which is number 621, 621. Thou whose name is called Jesus.