This past Wednesday, we had our Iwana kickoff for the year, and as we did the previous year, we started with a barbecue so we could connect with the kids and we can connect with the families and they can get to know the leaders and a little bit about the program. But just before we filled the fellowship hall with our guests, The ladies who were in the kitchen preparing for the meal discovered several tiny four-legged creatures with whiskers. They were uninvited guests. They were unwelcome to be there. And one of the ladies in the kitchen greeted them accordingly. Well, pests, as you well know, often do find their way into our homes. And for those of us living here in the pines, surrounded by forest, we've come to expect ants, bugs, winged insects, and rodents of all kinds. But the question is, does it concern us enough, whenever they appear, that we would take action to stop being so close and personal with them. Perhaps I should admit that I am often more calloused toward them than my wife and daughters usually are. After all, and to my way of thinking, their family was here first. We have invaded their home, the forest. Recently, I came across an article that informed its readers about a study that was done to determine just how tolerant homeowners are toward various kinds of invading pests. Certain pests, it would seem, are more prone to have an exterminator called in than the presence of other pests. Now, here is what the study found. 24%, or one fourth, will pay for an exterminator to come in and kill the invasion of spiders. 27% will pay to have ants eliminated from their home. 56% hate bedbugs enough to have a professional take care of them. 56% will pay to get rid of rodents, mice, and rats. 58% will call the professionals to win a battle against cockroaches. And coming in as the least tolerated household pest is termites. Nine out of 10 homeowners pay to eliminate termites. Now, if we are to believe this study, then we can conclude that overall, if we leave out the category of termites, More than half of the American households are willing to live with some unpleasant creatures, rather than pay for a professional exterminator to ensure their pests are eradicated. We can also see that some pests are more tolerable than others, people being friendliest to spiders. Now, taking that concept to a spiritual dimension, I think the same thing is true. Many believers are willing to live with, or maybe they think they have to live, with spiritual spiders, spiritual ants, spiritual bedbugs, spiritual cockroaches, spiritual mice, spiritual rats, and even spiritual termites. Some sins we tolerate in ourselves, and others we don't. What are the spiritual pests? Those pet sins that you're trying to live with. Maybe you've tried, when they agitate your conscience, you've tried to exterminate them. But after a while, they're back. Perhaps you've done this several times. You figure you've wiped them out, but they return. You exterminate them again, only to find in a short while they have been breeding and they're not completely gone. The vicious cycle has probably worn you out. Now our passage in Ephesians today is a call for us to remain vigilant as we pick back up after three weeks of my being away into the book of Ephesians where we left off. We are in Ephesians chapter four. And it is going to exhort us, do not give in. Do not assume that you simply have to get used to living with your spiritual pests. Our passage today will help us to understand how they breed and how we can eradicate them. But let me be very clear before we begin. Applying the solution, the cure, is not a one and done treatment. We cannot apply it once and think it's over and that we never have to do it again. No, we need constant vigilance. We have an exterminator that comes to our house once a month. Now the cheapskate that I am thought that maybe we've got them taken care of and we don't have to pay every month to have them return. Mistake. We quickly asked them to come back and set us back up on that monthly schedule. You know, just like the exterminator that we have to have come into our house regularly, we need to give regular attention to our spiritual pests. Look with me now to the opening verse of our passage or of our text here today, Ephesians 4.17, it says this. 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. Can I tell you something? Paul wasn't a Gentile. And he wrote this to the Ephesians who were Gentiles. Was he race baiting them? No, no. Paul was simply saying, you are no longer to live the way you once behaved. You know, if we change the word Gentiles that we see here in Ephesians 4.17 to the word Americans, I think you and I would feel more of the strong impact that Paul's original readers must have felt when they read this verse. Now, it won't stray from the Holy Spirit's intended meaning for us to replace it there, so let's just go ahead and take a look. Let's do that right now. Ephesians 4.17 altered would be like this. Now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the American people do in the futility of their minds. Today, when we look around our country, it's very easy to see all the evil, all the hatred, all the destruction, all the division. We look around and we're seeing godless, despotic Marxism actually being considered as a great alternative to our republic. We see a suppression and a silencing of truth. We see justifying murder and violence. lawmakers encouraging citizens to defy the law and to defy law enforcement agents. We see the making of criminals to appear as heroes and depicting their victims as deserving what they got. We see the elevation of drag queens and transvestites to the status of models for our young children to go into their kindergarten classes and read to them. And then it only takes a cursory glance at all the filth that America fills their minds with in order to entertain themselves. So I think it's a good exchange of Gentiles with Americans in verse 17, and for us to let it sink in. Now, this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the American people do in the futility of their minds. Do you watch the news and shake your head in complete bewilderment? Do you wonder how anyone can look at these things as good? Why doesn't everyone see this stuff as horrifically repulsive and condemn it? Instead, they celebrate these things. What is wrong with these folks? The Apostle Paul says, it's their thinking. Christians are to think differently from unsaved persons. Listen, when we don't employ what God has given us to think differently, Our spiritual pests will breed. So our passage goes on to address this critical matter of our thinking. We sometimes have the mistaken impression that what a person thinks is not as important so long as he or she acts properly. Well, at least I didn't commit the act. Or that a person can mess up with their behavior and still have their life together intellectually. That's not the way things actually are, according to the apostle. You see, people act as they think. And the reason they are constantly messing up is they are futile in their thinking and darkened in their understanding as a consequence of their being separated from God. Now, this doesn't mean that an unsaved person lacks intelligence or reason, but it does mean that he or she has no spiritual perception. Unbelievers are simply incapable of accepting the things of God which are spiritually appraised. 1 Corinthians 2.14 says, A natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him. And he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The next logical step for people who are calloused is they have given themselves over to immoral ways filled with all kinds of impurity and greed. What Paul is saying is that the unsaved world is actually much to blame. People have willfully hardened themselves against God, and as a result, they become warped in their spiritual understanding. Now, as soon as we see this, we notice that Paul is developing precisely the line of thought in Ephesians that he did in writing the first chapter of Romans. Beginning with verse 18 of Romans 1, Paul explains how the wrath of God is revealed against the ungodly people, not because they are innocently ignorant of him, but because they are willfully closed closing their eyes to the revelation that God has given to the world. I'd like to briefly take you to that parallel passage, and this one that I have up there is not the one I wanted to take you to. Let me see if I can find it here. I want to show you what Romans, there it is, Romans 1, verses 18 through 23, it says this. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they are, what? Without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened, claiming to be wise, they became fools. and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Boy, what a digression. And here, Paul presents a clear sequence of an unsaved person's thought life and its consequence. Degressions like this, number one, God revealed himself to people in nature so that no one is without blame for failing to seek him out or worship him. Number two, in spite of God's revelation of himself in nature, people have rejected or suppressed the revelation. Paul says they suppress the truth by their unrighteousness, their wickedness, verse 18 there. That is, they try to hide it and deny it. They sense, rightly, that if they acknowledge the truth about the existence and the nature of God, they would have to change their thinking and living. Rather than change, they repress the revelation. Number three, their ignorance of God is willful and blameworthy and not a natural failure. God's wrath is upon them. Number four, the fourth point in the sequence that we see here in these verses is about how God judges those who willfully ignore him. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore, God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity and dishonoring of their bodies among themselves. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations, for that are contrary to nature. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. Well, to find the identical sequence of thought that we just saw here in Romans chapter one, we see identical sequence in our passage of study today in Ephesians chapter four. What is wrong with the world in which the Ephesians and all other Christians find themselves is that it has hardened itself against God. The very one who is the Christian's joy and glory is the world's enemy. So we're not on the same team as the world. We don't have the same goals or tasks or loyalties. And if you're going to get on with any vigorousness in the Christian life in this world, we need to see that. We need to be very careful of choosing who we set as our model, who we want to pattern our life after. They might look virtuous, they might look very good, but the Christian has experienced a miracle of being raised from the dead. His life is not futile, but purposeful. His mind is filled with the light of God's word and his heart with the fullness of God's life. So be very careful of selecting your hero. Now let's go back to our passage for today. But that's not the way you learned Christ. Assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus. Now, these two verses contain three extraordinary verbs which can provide us with significant insight. If you write in your Bible, if you put notes in your margins, or if you write over your verses, you might want to jot down some of the short notes here about these verses. And one of them that I'd like for you to at least understand here with me is the first extraordinary verb. In our English language, it's expressed as learn. Now, the ESV, which I'm reading from here, the ESV Bible, I believe, has it right. It says, you learned Christ. That is not the way you learned Christ. But the New International Version, and just about every other version I'm familiar with, injects a preposition there. You learned about Christ. thinking it's needed for us to understand what Paul meant, they put that preposition in there, but Paul didn't include a preposition in the original language of which he was writing, and I think that he intended for us to understand what he was saying without it. I believe that Paul wanted to convey the idea of learning a person rather than a mere fact or doctrine. He probably means more than merely learning about historical Jesus or becoming acquainted with his doctrines. It's probably to be taken along the lines of Jesus's words when he said in his great prayer to the Heavenly Father, the high priestly prayer of John chapter 17, this is eternal life that they may know you and the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. It means that Christians are Christians because they have entered into a personal relationship with the living God. It is a learning of Him that changes them at the deepest level possible. To learn Christ means to have a personal relationship to Christ so that you get to know Him better each day. When Patty and I were in London a few years ago, we visited the Winston Churchill War Museum. It was fascinating to read the documents, to see pictures, watch videos, to listen to recordings of England's prime minister as he tried to steady his nation while it was being bombed every night by the Nazis. I can learn about Winston Churchill, but I can never learn him. He's dead. Jesus Christ is alive. Therefore, I can learn Christ through a personal fellowship with him. The fellowship is based on the Word of God. It can be taught the truth as it is in Jesus Christ. The better I understand the Word of God, the better I know the Son of God. For the whole Bible is the revelation of Jesus. Now, another extraordinary verb is there in verse 21, and it is the word accusate. in Greek, and it occurs in this phrase, you heard about him. Assuming that you have heard about him. Wait a minute, Paul. Why do you have to assume that the Ephesians have heard about him? Acts 18 tells us that you, Paul, lived in Ephesus for two years and you taught them about Jesus the whole time. You're not making any sense here. Well, this doesn't make sense because once again, the translation into our English Language, those translators thought they were doing us a favor by adding a word that's not in the original language when Paul wrote this letter. About. Assuming that you have heard about him is not there. The Greek simply says, assuming that you have heard him. That has a different meaning. One that I think Paul wanted us to understand. The point is not that we have heard of or heard about Christ, but rather we have heard him speak. What? How so? How have we heard Jesus speak? The answer, I believe, is that we have heard him in scripture. Now this is hard for the unsaved to understand. The minds of this world's people are clouded and their eyes are blinded, but many of you know exactly what this means. You've read the Bible or you've heard the Word of God preached and suddenly, sometimes quite unexpectedly, you're aware that Jesus is talking to you personally. Listen, this might not meet your expectation of what a Baptist preacher would say, but I'm going to say it anyway. This is not mere subjectivity. It is supernatural. For Jesus does speak. He speaks to change the life and the thinking of his people, and he does it through his word and the proclamation of it. Now, a third extraordinary verb is the Greek word adidakti. This is a heightened form of the common Greek word for instruction, and it occurs with the phrase you. You were taught in him. Now the puzzling thing about this expression is in him probably means that Jesus is the atmosphere of which all of this teaching takes place. We might say that Jesus is the school as well as the teacher as well as the subject of the instruction. It's all wrapped up in him. Christ is everything. Christ is a subject, he's the object, and he's the environment of the instruction from his word. Now as we get ready to move on to the concluding verses of our passage today, I'd first like to say that when it comes to how to dress to go out, the occasion determines the wardrobe. If we want to ratchet up the level of formality We'll dress like Bubby. Do you see Bubby here today with his tuxedo on and his bow tie and everything? We might don a sharp tuxedo or elegant evening gown. If we're headed to the office, a coat and tie or business casual outfit might do the trick. A day at the beach means flip-flops, swim gear, But let's face it, the way you dress does impact how people perceive you. Of course, clothing doesn't change who you are inside. But who you are inside does affect your choice of clothing. Christian life is no different. And these next verses tell us that we must wear the right clothes to match the new life that we have in Christ. And before we can put on our new clothes, we first have to take off the old ones. Verses 22 through 24, now it says this. 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. Now we have this imagery here of taking off the old self, all those spiritual pests that we often tolerate because Truthfully, we just get tired of trying to drive them away. And putting on the new self, the behaviors of one who is learning Christ, knowing Christ, and hearing him. Now, do you think any preacher would be very effective if he merely stood before his congregation and said, stop looking at pornography? Stop bad-mouthing others. Stop gossiping. Put away all your unforgiveness toward those who have hurt you. Stop playing with adultery in your mind. Just take those dirty garments off and put on some clean clothes. Do you think that would be effective? Neither do I. All of these things will only happen if a believer will continually renew the spirit of their mind. At the core of taking all of this off and putting on is having a renewed mind. The problem exists because something is distorted in our minds. The problem is distorted thinking. Romans 12.2 says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. A renewed mind begins with our being ruthlessly honest about our own depravity. Stop trying to pretend that you're okay. Stop trying to pretend that you're okay because at least you're not as bad as that guy over there. Stop trying to hide it from your own consciousness. Only when we identify our sin, or we call it what it is, like selfishness, and we own up to it, Can we lay it aside? Until we do that, it owns us. Listen, we need to allow the Holy Spirit to convict us many times, every day, all through the day, for our wrong thoughts, our wrong motives, and our wrong behaviors. Have you within this past hour been motivated to do something, maybe even a good thing, more from a desire to look good in front of others than to benefit that other person? Have you been motivated to do something from pride or from your own desire for pleasure? Own up to it, confess it, lay it aside. Several times each and every day, ask the Holy Spirit to show you anything in your life that is grieving him. Then when he shows you that you suddenly bragged right there, you were really trying to make yourself look good out of pride. Maybe you were bragging about what you own. Maybe you were bragging about what you know. In order to have someone admire you or think well of you, confess it right away. When the Holy Spirit shows you, take that dirty piece of clothing off. Build a habit. many times throughout your day, taking a moment and reviewing your thoughts and your activities. Ask God to show you where you might have displeased him and confess it to God. Lord, I was wrong. I'm sorry. Several years ago, a friend of Patty and I, a man named Dr. Emery Nestor, who founded several well-known Christian counseling clinics here on the West Coast, He called this practice confessing on the run. I think the reason that Dr. Nestor was so successful was because this was very central to all of his counseling. Have you been confessing on the run? His job as a psychologist was to help people have renewed minds. So from our passage today, I am asking you to exterminate your spiritual pests constantly by renewing your mind. And you do this by number one, confessing on the run, all through the day, whenever you know you have offended God. Confess it right then and there. Number two, learning and hearing Christ. You do this by a regular and consistent intake of God's Word. See him on every page. He's there. And before you open the Bible for your daily reading, make sure you pray and ask God to reveal himself to you in a fresh way. As you read, read it slowly. Read it thoughtfully. Read scripture into your mind and into your heart. Question it while you're reading. Huh, wonder why I used that word. Huh, what does this mean? Write your questions down and meditate on it all day long. See if he doesn't provide you with an answer in the next day or two. He does. Folks, I'm telling you, it works. Just drink it in. We come to faith through truth. And we mature in our faith through the truth. You know, this is what Jesus meant when he prayed to God the Father in John 17, 17. Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. And sanctify means mature them. So Jesus prayed, build them up by your truth. Your word is truth. Renew your mind, confess on the run. Renew your mind, learn Christ, and hear Christ through an intentional and regular intake of God's word, the Bible. In short, What I'm telling you is stop tolerating your spiritual pests. Let's pray.