Now will you turn with me in your Bible to the letter of Paul to the Ephesians as usual as we read this evening the short section from verses 17 through 19 of chapter 4 of Paul's letter to the Ephesians verses 17 through 19. These words So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality, so as to indulge in every kind of impurity with a continual lust for more. And there we will end this evening. May God, by his Spirit, indeed bless to us both the reading and now the exposition of his most holy word. Now in our studies through this great letter of Paul to the Ephesians you will recall that last Sunday evening we began to look at what is a new section of Paul's letter beginning with verse 17 and in a real sense flowing on to the very end of the letter in chapter 6. we took an overview of verses 17 through 24 last Sunday evening that are in a sense a preface to all that follows and completes this great epistle of the Apostle Paul. Tonight we're looking at the same section for the first time but in a more detailed way as we concentrate tonight upon verses 17 through 19. Now you remember that the theme of Ephesians really pulsates with two great desires. First, that believers might have a true and rich understanding and comprehension of what God has done for them in Christ and continues to do in them through him. And that has been the theme of chapters one through three that are rich in their doctrinal implications for the Christian life. But then the second pulsating desire in this great letter as we began to discover as we came to chapter four, is that the lives of the Ephesians might correspond to that work of grace that has gone on in them apace. In other words, that their outward lives, both in the church and in the world, might reflect the glorious work that God has been doing within them. so in verses 1 through 16 of chapter 4 Paul concentrated upon their life in the church to be characterized you remember by humility and unity and growth into maturity but from verse 17 onwards he concentrates upon their life in the world as we saw last Sunday evening the duties in other words that must accompany their relationships not only in the church to fellow believers, but their relationships in the pagan and unbelieving world around them. Now we saw that it was absolutely essential that the Ephesians should grasp the great and glorious truth that the life they once lived in the world is not the life that they continue to live now as regenerate believers, as new creatures in Christ Jesus. There is a world of contrast, the Apostle is going to show them, between the old and the new. And as we come to these verses and indeed to this section this evening, the great thing that we must emphasize is the need to grasp the theological underpinnings of this great new change. Now this, in a sense, is the importance of verses 17 to 24. And as we begin to look at verses 17 through 19 in detail, I think you'll see what I mean. You see, while there is a sense in which chapters 1 to 3 deal with doctrine, there's another sense in which the Apostle is always dealing with doctrine, the theological, the biblical underpinnings of the new life that we have in Christ. And until we grasp that theological basis for the change in our lives, we cannot fully live our lives in the world as God intends us to do. So in verses 17 through 19 this evening, you see then, there is what I have called the emptiness of the Christless life. And I want you to look at this under three headings as it were with me tonight. The three characteristics of the life that the Ephesians once lived and are no longer to live. Emptiness and darkness and alienation. And all of these three characteristics are found within these opening verses of this great section. Now let's turn to the first characteristic of the pagan life that is to be left behind and it's mentioned you will see in verse 17 as the Apostle says, so I tell you this and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thinking. Now, as I said a moment ago, nothing is more impressive as we look at this great thought, the first characteristic, than the Apostle's attention to the theological basis for the change in the Ephesians' lives. You see, regeneration is the profoundest change that can ever take place in this world. It is no little thing that God does within the hearts and minds and lives of his people. It is no small work that he has wrought in the Christian. But there are radical changes that have taken place. There are radical differences that are now operative in our lives, you must understand, so that we can no longer be what once we were. and the whole language of this section emphasises the importance of that change. the futility of their minds, he says, darkened in their understandings, ignorance that is in them, the Gentiles, separated from the life of God and so on, so that the whole appeal, you see, is set in that context of what once was but now is. You did not so learn Christ He is to go on to say, as the section draws to its conclusion, you must live then in a very different way. Now the first mark of that unregenerate life that they have left behind is the mark of futility or of emptiness in the futility of their thinking. Now I want you to notice several things about this description of the old life, the unregenerate life. First of all, I want you to notice that the apostle is giving to us an analysis of the great features of pagan life in the first century. One of the remarkable things about these verses is the fact that the apostle is becoming almost the psychologist we might say in modern terms. He is analyzing the life of the man out there. He is asking the question, what is he like and what makes him the person that he really is? And the answer in the first instance is that he is living a life of futility or emptiness. And this is the beginning of the grim and revolting picture of the pagan world in the first century that I must emphasize is so remarkably similar to the features of the pagan life in our own 20th century. Nothing has really changed, and we're going to see this in the course of our study this evening. Now we must say that this is a general statement and that not every pagan is as dissolute as the apostle describes throughout this description in verses 17 through 19. But just as there is a typical Christian life, you see, so there is a typical pagan life. And when you look at it, and you understand the psychology of pagan living, you must say that all of these marks, beginning with emptiness, are indeed characteristic of every pagan, though not every pagan lives in terms of these marks absolutely. Not every pagan is depraved at every level. in terms of futility and darkness and so on. There are streaks of light in some pagan lives, but all of them are characterized in the end by these very things that he is setting out. Now, particularly then, he instances the mark of emptiness and purposelessness and life without any real meaning and goal. And what I want you to notice is that he is not implying, for instance, that the pagan mind and way of life is literally empty, in the futility of their minds, he says. Now that's obviously not what he means. As we look around our world today and we see that we have unregenerate friends, their lifestyle is full of different things. Their minds are full of different things and incidentally the use of the word mind here embraces much more than the intellect. It's clear that the apostle is using that term in the sense of the whole lifestyle. of the pagan, the unregenerate person, the non-Christian. His whole lifestyle, he is saying, is characterized by a purposelessness and an emptiness without any real goal. And the lives of men and women around us, you see, are filled with many things. They're not literally empty. But what the Apostle is teaching us is that they are filled with things in the end that lead nowhere. And this is absolutely true as you realize what the Apostle is saying. Take the intellectual man today who understands some of the great philosophical themes that men deal with in our 20th century. He knows the philosophy of Hegel and Kant and Kierkegaard and so on. And yet these great philosophers, in the end, when you ask them what is the meaning and purpose of life, they have no idea. Or you take the ordinary pagan who lives for pleasure and for the delights of the senses in this world. And you say to him, what is the real meaning of life? What are your pleasures bringing you in the end? And if he's honest, he has to say that pleasures are like poppies spread. You grasp the bloom. The flower is shed. It all passes away in the end. You ask the pagan who lives at the emotional level for thrills and for kicks. And you say to him, well, where is your life leading you? And the answer is the next emotional thrill and the next high that he might receive from drugs or whatever the source of his emotional stimulus may be and so on. You see, the lives of pagans may be filled with many things that lead in the end to nothing in the futility of their minds. And this is the terrible description of the pagan world with which the apostle is concerned. Now as you think of it, you must remember what he has said back in chapter 2, verse 1 and following. And you, he says, God has quickened or given newness of life. You once lived like that, the apostles said. We once walked in the emptiness and futility of the world's ways. And you can think back in your own life this evening. What characterized your life before you became a Christian? Oh, it was filled with many things, as we've seen, but was it not utterly empty and absolutely futile? Filled with those things that in the end do not lead to any kind of substantial and lasting goal. And this very word futile in the original Greek of the New Testament means literally something which is aimless and lacking in direction. It's pointless. It leads you to utter vanity. To that which is absolutely unsatisfying and unfulfilling. And there you see is the terminus of the great pagan goal for fulfillment and happiness and purpose and meaning in life. And whether you turn to art or culture or literature or pleasure or knowledge or relationships, as the hymn writer says, I tried the broken systems, Lord, but are the waters failed? even while I stood they fled away and mocked me as I wailed in the futility of their minds now as I say this is the perfect description isn't it of modern life a life that leads in the end nowhere and it's a strictly accurate description you see of our own 20th century society And wherever you look, you see these marks written large. Man's apparent brilliance is all around us. In the realm of the arts and the sciences, in the realm of exploration into space, and so forth. But what is it? But show, and a bubble at the last. What is there in it in the end? What does it really tell you about life? Where does it really lead you to? And the answer can only be one thought, that it leaves you in the end with the emptiness with which you began, and indeed with nothing substantial at all. And that's characteristic of the life without Christ, always vain, taking out of you but not giving back to you again. so that you have nothing to lean on whatsoever when the process is fulfilled. Now thank God this evening, my dear friend, it is faith, it is the gospel which opens life to real meaning, which opens our eyes to the vanity of all things around us so that we are able to pronounce with the preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. all is futility in a life that is lived only under the sun and thank God that he has opened our minds by his spirit and given us a different understanding in the gospel of his grace so that we can look at that life that once we lived and say in the apostolic words no longer as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thinking And that leads us then to the second characteristic this evening that has been left behind as the Apostle gives us this theological basis for the changed life of the Christian in the world and his thought is darkness at the beginning of verse 18. they are darkened, he says, in their understanding. So it's not only a life that is lived out in emptiness and vanity in terms of its lifestyle, but he gives us, you see, the second characteristic that explains the reason for the first one and its darkness in their understanding. Now, you see what he's doing here, as I said, by way really of a brilliant psychological analysis of the unregenerate man. He's asking the question, what can account for men and women living in this way when their lives are completely empty and ultimately without real meaning and they have nothing in the end? Who would want to live a life like that? Who would choose it? Why are men doing it? And the answer, biblically, is that their understanding is in darkness. They have never seen and understood where they really are, and what kind of life they're really living, and what the end of that life is. Because if they had understood it, really, they would have wanted to flee from it and leave it behind forever. But they are in the condition of having the understanding darkened. And they have never realized where they really are. Now that's the condition that leads to the empty life of the unbeliever. Now look at it. The term understanding darkened in their understanding. And clearly, Paul here is referring to the mind. I said, of course, when in the previous verse he used the word mind, it's more the lifestyle, all that we are involved in in our lives. Here, it is specifically the mind or the understanding that is darkened and distinguished from all the other things in our lives. In other words, a pall of darkness has descended and covered the unregenerate man's mind so that it is midnight blackness there in terms of any spiritual understanding of life and its meaning and its goal. Now that is a constant biblical theme. In 2nd Corinthians 3, for instance, you may remember that the Apostle Paul says, but the problem with the unconverted man and the reason why he doesn't understand the gospel of grace is that there is a veil over his heart and understanding so that he cannot see spiritual truths. And in 2nd Corinthians 4, Paul goes on to say if our gospel be hid It is hid from those whom the God of this world has blinded in their minds, in their understanding. And the whole Bible teaches, you see, that one of the most disastrous effects of the fall of man is in the realm of the mind. And this is why men and women live their futile lives, because there's a failure in their thinking and in their intellect. Now that fits in with the most common biblical description of the unbeliever. What is it? You'd be surprised to know what it is. The most common description of the unbeliever in the Bible is that he is a fool. because he does not and cannot think straight. And you get that all through the Old Testament and especially in the Book of Psalms. But it gathers force even in the New Testament when, for instance, Paul says in Romans 1 verse 18 and following, professing to be wise, these unconverted pagan people, they became what? Fools! and their foolish heart was darkened and so forth. Because the darkness is in the realm you understand of the mind and the understanding. Now the second term is darkness and it's very explicit here in this verse and it's interesting that in many places in scripture those who are outside of the light of God's revelation are spoken of as being in darkness in Isaiah 9 verse 2 for instance that great prophecy of the coming of the Messiah to the regions of Galilee of the Gentiles Do you remember the prophet says, to those who sat in darkness has the light appeared. And in our Lord's teaching as we've seen in our studies through John's gospel frequently He contrasts the darkness of the unregenerate state with the light into which he, the light of the world, leads believing men. For instance, in John 3 verse 19, this is the condemnation that light has come into the world and men love darkness more than light. And you have it, of course, in the commissioning of the great apostle in Acts 26 verse 18 when recounting his conversion on the road to Damascus, he says that the Lord commissioned him to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light. So to be in this condition of the pagan is to be without the faculty of discernment, unable to see clearly. to distinguish, in other words, truth from error, what is important from what is unimportant, right from wrong in the spiritual realm. And the mind of the natural man is like midnight darkness. until the Spirit of God begins to give him supernatural illumination. He's blind. He has his understanding darkened. Now you see that's why all human attempts to seek the meaning of life and to seek human salvation all end in failure and futility and in the end nothing. In spite of man's brilliance, for instance, the great German philosopher, Goethe, on his deathbed, he had written brilliant philosophical works, apparently cried out on his deathbed, more light, more light! And the great author and philosopher who passed away within our own generation, H.G. Wells, entitled the last book that he ever wrote, Mind at the End of its Tether. Now can you imagine authoring a book like that? In other words, a pall of utter pessimism. fell on this great man, this author and philosopher, at the end of his life, and he saw nothing, whatever, in the future of mankind, mined at the end of its tether. And alas, my dear friends, fallen man in this condition may continue to boast of his great knowledge and accomplishments, But what is true of him at the last is precisely what the apostle writes here of the most cultured and educated and the most erudite of mankind. But they have their understanding darkened. Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones in his commentary on this verse gives a very vivid illustration that I think is appropriate to use this evening when on one occasion he was on a preaching tour in Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom, and his friend, a pastor, had driven him to the coast of Northern Ireland and was boasting all the while, you'll be able to see Scotland when we get there, across the Irish Channel. Well, they came to the coast and Dr. Lloyd-Jones was sitting in the car looking out across the ocean and he could see not a thing. No sign of Scotland. Nothing! Because the mist had come down and blanketed everything. And he takes that as an illustration, you see, of the pall of darkness that is on the unregenerate mind. It's not as though Scotland isn't there. Of course it's there! But we just can't see it because something has come down in between. Now thank God this evening then, my friends, that the gospel's effect is described in the New Testament as the coming of light. The God who commanded light to shine out of darkness says the Apostle in 2nd Corinthians 4 has done what? He has shined into our hearts to give the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus. And we as Christians need to grasp the nature, you see, of the unbeliever's plight, that he is in the most dreadful darkness. And we must not grow exasperated and impatient with his condition and say to ourselves almost in anger, why can't he see what we see? Because it's so obvious. But we need rather with compassion to pray for a visitation of the Holy Spirit that will remove that veil that is there and cause him to see that which is otherwise impossible for him to see and to understand. The unbeliever is a poor man. He's a benighted fool. despite all his sophistication and cleverness, his arguments and his disputes, his achievements and his books and his articles and his philosophy, however brilliant this may be in human terms, you see all of that kind of knowledge is in the end a bubble that will burst and leave nothing behind because his mind is darkened and oh we need to pray my friends for the unbeliever this evening but the Spirit of God will come in such power through our witness that the darkness might be removed and the true light might shine into those darkened minds and the eyes of the understanding be supernaturally opened. That's the condition you left behind says the apostle in verse 18. Now the third characteristic, as I finish this evening, and it is alienation at the end of verse 18. You, he says, were separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, that is the Gentiles, the unbelievers, due to the hardening of their hearts. And it's the third part of the remarkable analysis of the life of the unbeliever. Now what does it really mean? Well the life which is called the life of God in this verse is much more than the life which God approves. Some commentators have taken that understanding out of it. the life which God approves. You're separated from that life which God finds he can approve of because of the darkness of your minds and so forth. Now what the apostle means here is God's own life. The divine life as a principle within the believer which God gives to those who believe in him. The real life for which man was originally made and constituted. sin separates us from that life. The same thought is found in first Peter where he says of believers that we partake of the divine nature and is found again in our Lord's words for instance in John 17 this is eternal life that they may know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent It is the life of God in the soul of man. But believers are not, you see, in touch with the currents of that great life. They are pursuing another kind of life that we've described tonight as a bubble that will suddenly burst and leave nothing behind. And what we need to grasp then is that the unregenerate life in the end, my friends, is really not life at all. It's merely existence. Man in sin does not really live. He merely exists. He's living, in a sense, like an animal. He's chasing after vanities. Whatever the senses bring to him as pleasurable, he feels, that is something I must follow, and that is surely at least part of the meaning of life. Whatever comes to his mind and gives him satisfaction and pleasure, he will follow after. In whatever way his emotions react with pleasure, he will follow after that and feel it worthwhile. And in the end, as we've seen this evening, the result is futility and emptiness. Because he's not really living the real life. is the life of God in the soul of man that comes from his knowledge and from obedience to him. But modern man and pagan man in the first century is in the wilderness. They're cut off from this life, says the apostle. They have no real sense or awareness of what life, biblically speaking, is all about. Now look at it just briefly with me as we finish. it is through the ignorance that is in them. that they're in this condition. Well, what is this ignorance? And I think Dr. Lloyd-Jones is correct when he says, clearly, it's the ignorance of God himself. It's the life of God, but they are alienated from. They're ignorant of God himself, his character and being and attributes, his glory and majesty and eternity, his love and his mercy, his purposes and plans in the world. They're ignorant of all of that. And when they do hear about it, because of the darkened understanding, it's all like double Dutch to them. They've no awareness of the great plan of redemption in Christ and so on. It's due to the ignorance that is in them. But do you notice secondly, and we'll pursue this in greater detail next Sunday as we come to verse 19, it's due to the hardening of their hearts. It's due to something, in other words, that is deep-seated in man, due to his fall. And in his heart, he is hardened against God. And he is intrepid in his attitude that he will not allow this God to control him in any way, or to own him in any way. and it's as though there's a great callous that has grown over the center of his life and being his heart in the Bible so that he's become utterly insensitive to the things that matter most. Now by way of application let me then say this but this is the tragedy and pathos of the unregenerate man's plight in the world It is in the end alienation from God. He does not realize what he is missing. He does not know that he need not spend eternity separated from God and under his judgment but he can spend it rather in indescribable glory in a glorified body living with the God of heaven forever and ever. He's no awareness of this because he's alienated from the life of God in his inmost soul. And clearly then the great business of evangelism is to bring the unbeliever from that state of alienation and separation to know the God of salvation. And in conclusion let me say this. The purpose of this theological undergirding of the Apostles' appeal should be clear to us now. Because if we have a true understanding of our former life We will hate it. We will avoid it. We will shun it. In that great biblical word from the book of Job, we will eschew it. We'll get as far away from it as we possibly can. If we have a true understanding of what that former life was really like, you see, in emptiness and darkness and alienation. and moreover the more we realize what we've left behind the more we will appreciate what God is doing in our lives now. It's the deepest appreciation of sin you see that gives birth to the greatest realization of God's love and grace and mercy and kindness to us. And moreover, it's the true understanding of this condition that leads the Christian to his knees in prayer for the unconverted, realizing that when a soul comes to God, it's not a matter of walking down the aisle and answering a formula. It must be a work of supernatural power and divine grace that takes him out of this condition that is one of alienation and darkness and emptiness into one of regeneration. and newness of life and we realize that only the power of God can deal with such a desperate situation as that. That's why we've needed to look at the emptiness of the Christian life this evening that we might have compassionate hearts for those who are lost around us in that disposition and condition. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you this evening for the apostles' brilliant and spirit-inspired analysis of the unregenerate man and woman. how terrible that condition is, how grim and awful is that picture that he has painted and yet it is one out of which we recognize we also were taken and we are led to believe that there is hope for every elect sinner who like us may be delivered from the power of God out of darkness and brought into thine own marvelous light. Enable us to labor evangelistically with that conviction to pray evangelistically in the knowledge that only thy power is sufficient to effect such a radical change as that which the Apostle describes for us here. For Christ's sake. Amen.