And we trust that not all of you
slept in your cars last night.
And I will say this, the nice air
-conditioned room over at the end, without any
kids running around at 5 o'clock in
the morning saying, get up, or whatever they
were doing, was very, very nice.
And all I can say is I really
appreciate it.
Now, there are two people I have been
very thankful to see here this week, besides
many, many others.
One was this morning when I saw Brother
Ernest Woodhouse get here.
I was very thankful for that, for some
very obvious reasons.
And we did talk him out of his
coat, though.
Not us, but somebody else up there.
I saw he had his blue coat on.
I said, oh, no, don't do that to
me.
But anyway, so very glad to see our
Brother Woodhouse here this morning.
And also, last night, it was a thrill
for me to see our Brother Hal Green.
And I know that you've all been praying
for him and the brain surgery that he
did have.
And I'm just thrilled to see the rapid
recovery we've already seen in Hal's life.
I've not seen him since he had the
surgery up at Mayo.
And we're just thrilled to even have him
here this morning to be with us.
I don't know if he's here this morning
or not.
He kind of overdid it last night, I
think.
He was a little tired.
But keep praying for Hal.
And we just praise the Lord for him
being here and being able to be with
us during this conference.
Well, I'm not going to ask how many
of you read Ephesians 4, 17 to 24
since last night.
So let's read it together this morning.
Ephesians 4, beginning at verse 17.
Now let me...
Eddie, Johnny, what time am I supposed to
be down before I get shot?
How about 20, 22 after?
11?
No.
Oh, okay.
Thank you.
Verse 17.
This I say, therefore, and testify in the
Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other
Gentiles walk in the vanity of their minds,
having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the
life of God through the ignorance that is
in them, because of the blindness of their
hearts, who, being past feeling, have given themselves
over unto lasciviousness to work all uncleanness with
greediness.
But ye have not so learned Christ.
If so be that ye have heard him
and have been taught by him as the
truth is in Jesus, that ye put off
concerning the former conversation the old man which
is corrupt according to the deceitful lesson, and
be renewed in the spirit of your mind,
and that ye put on the new man
which after God is created in righteousness and
true holiness.
Last week we were with my parents in
kind of a family reunion for a couple
of days and we were looking at the
pictures that Prince Charles and Princess Diana celebrated
their first anniversary.
And they had their little baby boy who
is now second in line to the throne
of England.
Now Prince Charles is first.
I don't know if he can't wait until
his mother gets off the throne, I don't
know.
But anyway, behind Prince Charles now is his
son with that nice long British name.
I wouldn't try to repeat all the names
that their young son has.
But he is now second in line to
the throne.
But just imagine this young son who is
the one who is going to inherit the
throne of England maybe in the days to
come.
And all of a sudden he gets up
to be around a teenager and he decides,
you know, I really don't like this king
thing.
I don't like this royalty fit that I
have to go through.
So I'm going to go out and I'm
going to live like a pauper.
I'm going to go out and live like
one of the typical bums, you know, out
wherever the Skid Row is in London.
And I'm going to do my thing.
I'm going to do all the grubby and
I'm going to do the whole thing.
And so he acts loose and smells like
a very, very grubby person.
But the reality of the matter of this
whole situation is that this young boy, whether
he likes it or not at this point,
of course that goes beyond the illustration, but
whether he likes it or not, he will
always be the son of Prince Charles.
And he will be second in line to
the throne of England.
Now, of course, we know he can abdicate.
He can do other things like that.
But we know that he is royalty.
And that is part of what the Apostle
Paul is trying to appeal here to is
that we are king's kids.
We are children of God.
We are in Christ and Christ is in
us.
And the lifestyle that he's appealing to us
to live is to be a life that
is consistent with those who are in Christ,
those who are children of God, those who
have been redeemed by the blood of the
Lamb.
Now, last night we talked about the beginning
of this section with this appeal, this urging,
this beseeching that he talked about in verse
1.
And he picks up the same idea again
in verse 17 when he says the word,
therefore.
He's going back to this urging.
He's going back to this appeal, to this
beseeching and begging.
But he goes on with a little bit
stronger term, terms that have a little bit
of an ominous overtone.
This word for testify here is a word
that goes beyond just a courtroom testimony.
It can be that.
But it goes to a place where it
is almost a warning.
And he talks about...
And this message, by the way, I'm really
excited about.
Even though there's some really dark things in
this message, there is an exciting message that
I'd like to communicate to you as we
get on up to verse 20.
Now, the first thing he starts off and
talks about, he talks about the negative side
of what we are no longer.
He says that ye henceforth walk not as
other Gentiles walk.
Now, he's not saying there, by the way,
that you don't walk as those who are
non-Schwarzes.
Okay?
That's not what he's saying.
He's not using this in racial terms between
Jew and Gentile.
All the portions in the Word of God
where you see this word Gentile, it refers
to a religious system.
A system that is without God, that denies
the presence of God in their lives.
So, he's not talking about non-Jews racially.
He's talking about people who are separated from
the commonwealth of Israel in the terms of
the kingdom of God.
That we no longer are part, that these
people are not part of the family of
God at all.
They're Gentiles.
And he says we're not to walk, not
to have our lifestyle like that anymore.
And he gives a six-fold description in
verses 17 down through 19 of the way
that Gentiles walk.
Now, please note as you're taking a look
at this that the cruciality of the words
that have to do with mind.
Notice verse 17, in the vanity of their
mind.
Verse 18, having their understanding darken.
The life of God through them.
The ignorance.
And then you go on and see more
as we see later on.
The cruciality of the mind.
Now, I was just reading about a report
of this.
The criminal mind.
A report that was done by two penologists
or criminologists.
And it used to be that people said
that criminals were a product of their society.
Those of you who have ever seen the
West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein, that they
have a song in there on Officer Krupke.
And in that song they say, we're depraved
on account of we're deprived.
And so the idea behind that song is
that depravity, reprobation, or the psychopathic, sociopathic mind
is a result of bad environment, bad circumstances.
Growing up in a slum, growing up in
poverty, growing up in adverse situations.
And they say that that's what's causing the
criminals.
That's why all the prisons are so full
of them, because of circumstances.
But this study that came out, they said
no, that's not true.
That we're finding that crime is not a
result of circumstances, or environment, or situations that
people are born into.
But that crime is a result of a
mindset, the way people think.
And this of course reminds us of the
words of Solomon when he says, as a
man thinketh in his heart, so is he.
Now the Gentiles, these religious system that leaves
God out, has a certain mindset.
And this mindset is described here in verses
17 through 19.
Now the first thing it says, it says
in a vanity of their mind.
Now that word, vanity, is the word I'm
sure that you're acquainted with, is the word,
it means empty.
It's full of nothing.
It's useless.
It's pointless.
It's purposeless.
It has no goal, no motivation, no orientation.
Now I find that very interesting, because I
graduated from the University of Illinois in Chicago.
And I'll never forget, after I first became
a Christian, that I was subjected, now we
use that word, subjected to a humanities course.
And in this humanities course, this man had
us reading all different kinds of books.
And he just, every class period, he expounded
on the wonder of evolution and how man,
through the product of eons, of ages, and
we're the epitome of creation.
He said, oh man, he was really persuasive.
Of course, I had the unique opportunity of
talking to R.J. Little at the time
when he was still alive.
And R.J. Little gave me some really
neat ammunition.
So one day in class, I stood up,
I raised my hand and said, Professor, could
I ask you a question?
Yes.
At this point he didn't know I was
Christian.
I said, if you were walking through a
desert and you saw three bricks on top
of one another, and with mortar in between,
what would you conclude?
Well, I'd conclude, man's been here.
I said, well, I'd take a look at
all of this creation and all of the
handiwork that I see around here and I
conclude, God's been here.
Hubba, hubba, hubba.
It was really kind of funny watching that.
And he said, well, I don't see it
that way at all.
But you know, he could see the three
bricks and you take a look at this,
I'd much rather see this than three bricks.
But anyway, then I used another one on
him.
And he says, well, I've read the Bible
through and through and I heard another one
that you used on people like that.
And I said, that's what you get for
reading other people's mail.
But anyway, but the idea, this guy, he's
a doctor.
He's a Ph.D. He has all that
the world has to offer.
He's gone to the world's well and he's
drunk deep and he came out empty.
And that's the Gentile mind.
They say, we're so full.
They got Ph.D., L.L.D., D
.L. and all these different things that they
got behind their names.
And they say, we've got it all.
And the reality of it is, they've got
nothing.
But the Gentiles are walking with an empty
mind.
A mind that is full of vanity.
And then it says, having the understanding darkened.
That this mind, that you, you know, things
to us, having the Spirit of God coming
in and having illumined our lives and lightened
up our lives on the inside and we
read the Word of God and it's plain
to us.
It's obvious.
And you sit there and you try to
show it to them and, huh?
And they just don't seem to understand what
you're talking about.
They don't seem to be able to relate
what you're talking about at all.
They're, I don't understand this.
And we're last night, you know, one of
the advantages of being in a motel.
I did a nasty, I turned on the
TV and crisis to crisis program last night
with Barbara Jordan.
And of course, you know, Barbara Jordan is
the Congresswoman, the black Congresswoman is an attorney
who has gained a great deal of fame
during the Watergate trials.
She was one of the ones who interrogated
all the people with Sam Ervin and company
during the Watergate trials.
And she was doing a report on the
portrait of a religious zealot.
And it was Ed McAteer who was the
president of Roundtable.
And of course, you see Barbara Jordan who
is a very, you know, precise individual.
She says her word very plainly, very distinctly,
you know, exactly what she's saying.
And you could see, you know, the sarcasm.
And yes, the films were really kind of
good.
You know, it gets you some good Baptist
revivals.
It had Jerry Falwell and James Robertson and
all these different things.
And the gospel, how to be saved and
all these different things.
And of course, they were putting this on.
See what we're being subjected to?
What this religious right is like?
I said, amen.
So she's going.
It really sounds pretty good.
But see, the problem that they have is
their understanding is darkened.
And the things that lightened up in us
because God is living on the inside, they
don't understand.
They don't understand what you're going to a
Bible conference?
What do you do there?
Well, we sit down and we have Bible
studies.
What else do you do?
Oh, then we talk and fellowship and drink
a lot of coffee.
What else do you do?
Well, we have more Bible studies.
Oh, there's a little bit of softball in
there, right?
None of you guys, I can tell.
But they don't understand this.
And we have a seminar that we're involved
with.
It's called Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts.
And we've talked to people at the seminar
building and when we first went to the
Keough Auditorium in St. Louis.
And they asked, well, what is this like?
Because they're all geared up for a rock
concert and things like that.
And all these people and the very first
time that we watched them cleaning out from
a rock concert.
And the first night they're out there and
the concession stands, they couldn't get...
You sure you don't want to sell any
beer?
Yeah, we're sure.
Your people, all 4,000 of these people
aren't going to want any of that.
No, they're not going to want it.
You're sure?
We're sure.
So, the first night they watched it and
they couldn't believe people were walking around with
a trash can in their hand looking for
trash cans.
They're not used to that.
And these guys would come up to us
afterwards and say, what is this group now?
They don't understand what's going on.
See, that's what the Gentiles are like.
Outside of God, this religious system.
Their mind is vanity.
Secondly, that their understanding is darkened.
Thirdly, they're alienated from the light of God
through the ignorance that is in them.
Now, isn't that kind of...
God sits there and takes a look at
man's might, man's intelligence, man's power and what
does he call him?
He calls him ignorant.
You know, I probably should have used this
verse in my humanities professor along with one
of my...
a few of my philosophy professors and all
of my psychology professors.
And, you know, they think they're so wise
and God takes a look at it and
says, it's just ignorant.
There's nothing of value there that is going
to change people's lives.
You know, I was...
Jack Wurzen was down speaking at school one
time and he had debated with this beautiful
woman from Texas.
Madeleine Murray O'Hare.
And I said, beautiful...
you know.
Well, anyway, he was debating with her up
in Wisconsin and there was a call-in
program and this young girl called in and
said, Miss O'Hare.
By the way, isn't it kind of exciting
her son's gotten saved?
Isn't that exciting?
But she said, Miss O'Hare, she...
I didn't used to believe in God.
I was in drugs, immoral and suicidal.
I had attempted suicide a number of times.
My life was miserable.
I was unhappy.
My parents were broken up.
I was kicked out of the house.
I had nowhere to live.
I had no money.
And I was getting ready to attempt suicide
again and all of a sudden I turned
on the Word of Life program with Jack
Worston.
And he told me how to become a
believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as
my Savior and it came in and I'm
happy now.
I'm back in school and I'm finishing up
high school.
I'm back living with my parents.
That my life has meaning and purpose and
joy and all the rest.
And he said, Miss O'Hare, what do
you have to offer me?
You know what?
What does she have to offer them?
Absolutely nothing.
She's alienated from the life of God.
She is walking in darkness and in death.
And she has nothing to offer other than
darkness and death.
And that's the Gentile's walk.
The Gentile's walk is a life that is
alienated.
It is at odds with.
It is enemies with God Himself.
And then fourthly, because of the blindness of
their heart.
Now, you might take a look in your
margin there and you see that's the word
that they have, the word hardness.
Well, they can make there's a big long
discussion if you get into the commentaries on
this and what the meaning of this word
is.
I think it might be the idea is
something like this.
That as long as this little eyeball that
we have right here is kind of soft
and flexible, pliable, and like that, it works
fine.
But if that eye starts becoming rigid, just
like if our veins become rigid and things
like that and it starts getting hard, that
that would cause blindness.
And I don't know if that can even
happen.
But this is the illustration behind it.
The eye getting hard and the hardness produces
a blindness so that people can't see.
And so we see that the heart of
the man outside of God, outside of the
family of God, without having God living inside
of him, that he's described as being blind
in his heart or hardened in his heart.
Of course, we can think of Pharaoh.
Pharaoh hardened his heart and God hardened his
heart.
We see that the willful hardening of his
own heart, but then the judicial hardening that
came from God Himself.
So we see the blindness of their heart.
And isn't this interesting?
You know, that we see all these...
they don't understand things and then you come
up and they say, don't you see?
You come up and you talk to parents
and you see what they're doing with their
children.
They're programming their children for destruction.
And you come up and don't you see
that what you're doing is wrong?
And they don't see it because of the
blindness that's in their heart.
Because of the hardness in their heart.
You know, one of the greatest things that's
been propagated in our society has been Benjamin
Spock's Baby and Child Care.
Even Benjamin Spock, you know, later on, of
course you can't take all those books back.
Benjamin Spock, later on, recanted of what he
had said in Permissive Education.
Because he began realizing, even though he didn't
understand the Bible, that, you know, the parent
who doesn't thank their child, who doesn't discipline
their child, is a parent who really did
not love their child.
That there is hate in their heart for
that child.
And so this permissive type thing that was
going on, and so I never forget this
one cartoon that really epitomized permissive child training.
And these parents were hovering over their little
girl in the middle of their house, which
was burned down.
It was just in rubble all around them,
and you see the smoke coming up, and
they take their little girl.
Now we realize that you are expressing some
of your frustrations with life.
Right.
Don't you see that that kind of thinking,
that that kind of attitude of heart, is
producing all kinds of wickedness and immorality in
our world?
And that's what he goes on to say.
He says, "...who being past feelings have given
themselves over unto lasciviousness."
They give themselves over.
They are so callous towards natural things without
natural affection, that they don't have love for
their parents, they don't have love for their
children, they don't have love for other people.
They're past feelings.
And not only that, they're past feelings that
the Spirit of God, Bertrand Russell, used to
say that, and Bertrand Russell was of course
one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto
back in 1933, and we'll talk a little
bit about that on Friday when we're in
our seminar on humanism.
But Bertrand Russell being one of the signers
of that, he said, "...back when I was
a young man, when I began first espousing
my principles of atheism, there was something inside
of me telling me, you're wrong, you're wrong,
you're wrong.
Well, I've grown past that now."
Well, he really hadn't grown past it, had
he?
He had become past feelings.
He couldn't respond any longer.
He was beyond feelings.
And notice that this person goes beyond feelings,
gives himself over to lasciviousness.
Now, this word for lasciviousness is a very,
very strong word.
It's a word that has to do with
sensuality, but not just in the gallery of
our mind, not just in the quarters of
our heart, but it's a person who is
involved in lasciviousness, sensuality, wantonness, in an open
and public way whose lifestyle is just violate
the public standards in mores, that he parades
as a public show his sensuality.
And don't we have that today?
I mean, today, where the American Psychiatric Association
calls homosexuality normal, where the city of San
Francisco, and I've talked to a number of
people from San Francisco, literally, is run by
this quote-unquote, and isn't this terrible that
this word has been so misused, the gay
community.
I mean, that used to be a nice
word, the gay nineties.
Now use that word and it's a ruined
word.
You can't use it anymore, can you?
And the whole city is run by that.
But you go on and you can talk
about the movies, the billboards, the magazines, and
all the things that we're subjected to in
our society, and things are paraded openly.
That's what it says.
To work.
And you know what that word there is?
To do business.
Make merchandise of, that the Gentiles are making
merchandise of uncleanness.
I was just reading some reports that the
estimates of the people who are involved in
the business of pornography, that last year some
people have estimated that just pornography did a
business of a hundred billion dollars in our
country last year.
Now that's a lot of money.
Think we could rent the campground for a
hundred billion?
Think you could retire on a hundred billion?
Live off the interest?
You could live off the interest and give
about four hundred million a year in interest.
That's a lot.
And they're making merchandise of it with greediness.
And have you ever seen that book?
Looking out for number one.
And that's what people are.
The greediness.
No matter what it takes.
I'll take what you've got if necessary.
That's the Gentiles' walk.
But then he says, but ye have not
so learned Christ.
That's where the Gentiles walk.
He's not saying this is the way they
are.
He says that's the way the Gentiles walk.
But ye have not so learned Christ.
If so be that ye have heard him
and have been taught by him as the
truth is in Jesus.
Now can I give you a little bit
of a lesson in the language of the
New Testament?
That if there, there's four kinds of if
in the Greek New Testament.
One is if and it's true.
If and it's not true.
If and it's probably true.
And if and it's probably not true.
Those are called conditional sentences.
First cause, second cause, third cause, fourth cause,
and last condition.
Now that if right there is a first
class condition.
If and it's true.
If so be and you have that ye
have heard him and have been taught by
him as the truth is in Jesus.
This is true of you.
So that Paul realized that when he was
writing to these people in Ephesus, this little
church in the middle of this moral cesspool
in Ephesus, he says I know you really
have been born again.
You really have met the Lord Jesus Christ,
this historical person.
And by the way, it's very rare for
Paul to use that word Jesus just by
itself.
It's either Lord Jesus or Jesus Christ or
the Lord Jesus Christ.
Rarely does he use the word Jesus all
by itself.
And when he does, it's usually referring to
the historical person, the Lord Jesus, the man
Jesus Christ.
And so that the truth in this man
Jesus, we know that that's true and if
you've met this man who literally lived, who
literally died and shed his blood, who literally
was buried and rose from the dead on
the third day, that's this man who lived
in history.
He is the embodiment of truth.
And he says, I know you've learned him.
And you did not learn Jesus the way
the Gentiles are walking.
Now that kind of lifestyle we can see
prayed on the front page of the newspapers
in Nashville, St. Louis, Des Moines, or wherever
you're from.
We know that that kind of lifestyle is
being lived.
But the sad thing that Paul is warning
them about, he says, now some of you
Christians who are in Christ and Christ is
in you are living though just like the
Gentiles walk.
You're walking like they walk.
And he says, hey, no, that's not the
way it ought to be.
Verse 22, that ye put off concerning the
former conversation of the old man which is
corrupt according to the deceitful lust.
Now that word put off with a companion
word in verse 24, put on, I'm sure
you've heard this before, it's just the terminology
of putting off clothes and putting on clothes.
How many of you have ever read to
your children the little seven series book by
C.S. Lewis called The Chronicles of Narnia?
Three of you?
Four of you?
Come on, you've got to do that.
Oh, the children are too old to grow
on.
My child is 35 years old.
He wouldn't stand for me reading to him
right now.
Well, they've got a beautiful little description on
the Boy to the Dawn Treader.
This one guy is selfish.
He's greedy.
He goes out and he puts some dragon
gold on his arm and he turns into
a dragon.
And he's got all of his problems.
And finally, Aslan the Lion, which is a
picture of Jesus Christ, takes him up onto
Aslan's mountain and he says to Yusuf, this
dragon, take off your dragon skin.
So he sits there and he takes off
his dragon skin.
He looks.
Do you know what he's got?
He's still got a dragon skin.
So he grabs his dragon skin and he
puts it off.
Another dragon skin.
He grabs the dragon skin and puts it
off.
Oh, I can't get it off.
That's right.
We can't get off that old dragon skin.
That is something that can only be accomplished
by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
It is Jesus, when we have met Him,
that we learn Christ and heard Him and
have been taught by Him as the truth
is in Jesus.
When we have this experience of being in
Christ and Christ in us, then we find
out that this putting off is not on
something that we can do by some moral
rearmament.
Benjamin Franklin, 13 point program of improving himself.
He does this, he does this, he does
this, and after he finishes 13 points and
what he's still got, he's still got dragon
skin.
But then Aslan takes his claw and it
comes up and it cuts right to the
heart of the dragon.
He thought it was going to hurt.
It didn't.
And Aslan the lion peels off that old
dragon skin and there's the new Yusuf, the
new man.
Now, can I tell you another thing about
the Greek language that that word put off
and that word put on is in the
aorist tense.
Aorist tense, not present tense.
If it's present tense, keep on putting off.
Uh uh, that's not what it says.
You put it off.
That's being interpreted.
It is once for all and forever put
off at the cross of Christ.
Romans chapter 6, he tells about that, you
know that in Galatians chapter 2 verse 20
that this old man is crucified with Christ.
The old man, this Gentile walk, hey, get
excited about this.
Go ahead and smile.
The old man is crucified.
He has no more claim on believers in
the Lord Jesus Christ.
So our position is it is put off.
So, in our practice, no problem.
Our practice can be a result of putting
it off.
But the problem is that our practice of
putting it off is not following our position
in Christ that we're living as a Gentile's
walk.
And then he says that he put on
the new man which after God is created
in righteousness and true holiness.
Now this new man, this new man that
we put on and that we're clothed and
produces righteousness and holiness, that's what we're going
to talk about as we go on through
the rest of Ephesians chapter 4 and 5
and on up into chapter 6.
This new man, what does this new man
like when it comes to using your tongue?
How does that like?
When it's out in the business world?
When it's in your family and your husband
and wife relationship?
What is that new man like?
Now he's not just saying put on the
new man and then running and saying figure
it out for yourself.
That's not it at all.
But he's saying here that this old man
which is described here in verses 17-19
because of being in Christ has been put
off.
Has been put off forever.
We are crucified with Christ.
The old man is dead in Christ.
It has no more claim to him.
And we can put on in practice the
man that we are in Christ.
We can live consistently with him.
Let's pray.