Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] I think Chet did an awesome job of reminding us that in Jesus Christ God says yes to us.
[00:00:18] And I was inspired by Katie calling us to a life of surrender, service and generosity. I.
[00:00:27] I was impressed with the quality of their work, and I hope you were too.
[00:00:38] Three weeks ago, I preached at the west campus and it was a beautiful experience. They're thriving.
[00:00:46] They're bulldozers out there every week moving dirt. And this time next year, we ought to be in.
[00:00:58] Our. Dear Heavenly Father, we want to learn how to live life in Christ Jesus.
[00:01:08] I want my faith to be something more than what happens on the edges of my life.
[00:01:17] I want my faith to define the reality of my life.
[00:01:22] And I pray that you would teach us how to live life in Christ Jesus.
[00:01:28] I pray that your spirit would give us understanding of the revelation that you gave to Paul and we'd understand it clearly enough that on Monday morning we can get up and live differently than we would have.
[00:01:46] And I ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
[00:01:51] It often helps us to understand the Bible if we understand the context.
[00:01:58] Paul wrote the book of Ephesians to a church that he started in Ephesus.
[00:02:06] Paul wrote two kinds of letters.
[00:02:09] One kind was a problem solving letter. So like First Corinthians, people from that church sent Paul a letter and said, hey, we're having these problems. What should we do? So Paul wrote them a letter on how to solve those problems.
[00:02:26] Ephesians isn't a problem solving book.
[00:02:30] It is an instructional letter.
[00:02:35] And he's saying, if you've grown up spiritually to the point that you recognize in your soul a real desire to live life in Christ Jesus, this is how you do it, all right?
[00:02:55] If you don't really desire to live life in Christ Jesus, if you just want to kind of have Jesus attached to your life, so when you need him, he's there.
[00:03:09] This book isn't going to speak too much to you.
[00:03:13] It is, it is a. It is a message to people who've come to the point where they're just not content living a culturally mandated life.
[00:03:27] And their soul requires something richer and better.
[00:03:32] And if that's where your soul is today, then Ephesians chapter four has an incredible message for us.
[00:03:41] Sometimes Paul is hard to understand because he's talking about psychological ideas in a pre.
[00:03:54] Psychological vocabulary world.
[00:03:59] You know, almost all of our psychological vocabulary was invented in the 20th century.
[00:04:06] All the words that we use for psychology and to understand the human psyche, all those words were invented in the 20th century.
[00:04:16] So Paul is trying to deal with These same soul psyche realities.
[00:04:24] But he's trying to do it in a vocabulary that precedes our modern psychologist. All right, but if we understand that, it helps us figure him out.
[00:04:39] So Paul says In Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 22, put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires. All right, so let's start right out with what does Paul want me to think about when he says my old self?
[00:05:09] What is? What is? What is in his mind when he says, you have an old self that you have to deal with?
[00:05:21] I believe, first of all, this is a theological idea. Now listen to this.
[00:05:31] When you become a Christian, Christ creates a new person in you.
[00:05:40] This is what Paul wrote to the Colossians.
[00:05:42] Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
[00:05:49] The old has passed away, and behold, the new has come.
[00:05:55] So this is what Paul is saying.
[00:05:57] Your inner self before you became a Christian is different than your inner self after you became a Christian.
[00:06:08] Before you became a Christian, your old self was a broken self.
[00:06:16] It was a corrupt self. It was a totally selfish self.
[00:06:22] But when you became a Christian, Christ created somebody new in you.
[00:06:30] You have a new person.
[00:06:32] And that new person is not the corrupt person.
[00:06:38] That new person is created in the image of Jesus Christ.
[00:06:44] There's something about your soul that is a reflection of the wonder, the majesty, the beauty and the holiness of Jesus Christ.
[00:06:56] Now listen to what he's saying.
[00:07:05] I wished that when I became a Christian, this old self would have gone in the trash can.
[00:07:16] But it didn't.
[00:07:19] This old self would lingers around, and I have to come up with ways of confronting it.
[00:07:28] This old self expresses itself in habits.
[00:07:34] Would somebody tell me why the bad habits I created when I was a teenager stick and the good habits that I've been trying the rest of my life to, they. They flake out?
[00:07:50] Is why is it easier for bad habits to hang around than good habits to displace them?
[00:07:58] Paul is saying, this is the struggle to live the Christian life. And I have to have a strategy to say morning by morning, there have bad habits hung around in my life, but they're not in charge anymore.
[00:08:16] I have a plan in Christ to confront my bad habits from the past.
[00:08:24] It's not just habits.
[00:08:26] It's ugly ways of thinking.
[00:08:32] Ah.
[00:08:33] I'm rarely driving down the road and I rarely say, there is a good driver.
[00:08:44] Fact is, I don't know I've ever said it, but I bet I say every day, that guy's an idiot. Shouldn't even have a license.
[00:08:53] Church.
[00:08:56] Ah, well, now I'm the person that people are saying, that guy's an idiot. Where did he learn to park?
[00:09:04] All right.
[00:09:06] Paul says you have ways of thinking. Your old self has ways of thinking that aren't healthy and they have to be confronted. You have to say to yourself, I do not permit you to think that way anymore.
[00:09:24] Are you hearing me?
[00:09:26] To live life in Christ Jesus, I have to confront my old self. It's habits that are corrupt. It's ways of thinking that aren't healthy.
[00:09:36] And in fact, we all have desires that we have to say no to.
[00:09:41] Church.
[00:09:43] Everyone in this room has desires we have to say no to. So Paul says, you want to live life in Christ Jesus.
[00:09:53] Well, you're going to have to start out by acknowledging and confronting There is a side of you that is spiritually unhealthy and it has to be confronted.
[00:10:08] That unhealthiness shows itself in habits, thoughts and desires.
[00:10:15] Each morning we commit ourselves to a better manner of life. I am not repeating the failures of the past.
[00:10:25] Tomorrow morning when I get up and I have my morning devotions, I'm going to pray something like this to God. I want to live a better Christian life today than I did yesterday.
[00:10:38] I want more of the life of Christ to be dominant in me today than it was yesterday.
[00:10:46] I want a manner of life that when I go to bed at night and lay my head down on the pillow, or I can say, thank you, God, for a day lived well instead of, oh, God, I'm so sorry. What an idiot I am.
[00:11:04] Church.
[00:11:10] The strength of this old life is exposed in three things. And Paul tells us he uses the word decaying or corrupt.
[00:11:24] He uses the word passions and desires. And he uses the word deceiving and deceptive. All right.
[00:11:32] My old self, if I'm not careful, has a corrupting influence on me.
[00:11:41] My old self doesn't make me better. It makes me worse.
[00:11:47] Have you ever?
[00:11:48] Have you ever.
[00:11:50] We used to call it backsliding.
[00:11:53] You were close to God, and then you let yourself drift and drift and drift. And then finally you said to yourself one day, how did I get here?
[00:12:02] Church? Anyone?
[00:12:04] All right, that's the decaying, the corrupting effect of the old self.
[00:12:12] The old self is never content with one compromise.
[00:12:17] It is a corrupting influence. And the more I yield to it, the more it corrupts me.
[00:12:26] The more I confront it, the healthier I become.
[00:12:32] And then the second word is this word for strong desires.
[00:12:38] I've. I've shared with you this on Multiple occasions the world around you conspires to make you want things.
[00:12:51] You get it.
[00:12:53] People make billions of dollars a year making commercials that are designed to do one thing trigger your I see, I want.
[00:13:08] You see, my old self is full of endless I want, I want, I want, I want, I want. Church And Paul is saying, if you're going to live life in Christ Jesus, you have to start confronting this old self that is so selfish that it can't ever be satisfied. It always wants something else.
[00:13:38] Church.
[00:13:40] Does that mean we can't have nice stuff? No, it doesn't. I think we should have nice stuff.
[00:13:46] What I don't think is my life should be lived with an eye on getting the next thing I want.
[00:13:58] I think my life should be lived with an eye on what is Christ at work in me to do today and how can I most richly and fully live in that?
[00:14:12] Listen, when a man's ways please the Lord, he gives them the desires of his heart.
[00:14:22] Do you hear that?
[00:14:24] Do not be afraid, little flock. It is your father's good desire to give you the kingdom. God wants to bless you. He wants to be good to you. He wants you to. He wants you to live a life more abundantly.
[00:14:41] But he doesn't want the focus of the Christian life to be on the next I want. He wants the focus on the Christian life to be. God is at work in me both to will and to work according to his own good pleasure. And. And I want to live in the middle of that every single day.
[00:15:03] And then the last word is deceiving and deceptive. My old self lies to me.
[00:15:10] Church, you have a inner self and that inner self lies to you.
[00:15:20] And it lies on both sides of the equation.
[00:15:24] When I'm tempted to do something wrong, my old self says, oh, that's not so bad. Don't worry about it. What are you so uptight about?
[00:15:33] Well, then I do the wrong thing. And then my old self says, you're a loser, you're an idiot.
[00:15:42] The same old self that said to me, ah, that's not so bad, don't worry about it. He turns on me, stabs me in the back and says, you loser.
[00:15:52] Church Paul says, if we're going to live a healthy Christian life, we got to start confronting this old self that is very good at lying to us.
[00:16:07] If I'm going to live a healthy Christian life on Monday, I have to know that there is a broken part within me that doesn't tell me the truth.
[00:16:19] And I have to be willing throughout the day to say to that old self.
[00:16:24] You're lying.
[00:16:26] I know how this turns out.
[00:16:29] I know what happened the last time I spoke in a snide way to my wife. And I don't care to live that way, church.
[00:16:38] All right.
[00:16:40] Ah, but just confronting the old self isn't enough. He says in verse 23.
[00:16:47] And to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in truth, righteousness and holiness.
[00:17:01] Our new self expresses itself most clearly in how we think. He calls it the spirit of your mind.
[00:17:12] I can't remember. Some years ago I did a sermon series on self talk.
[00:17:16] You're talking to yourself all the time, whether you are aware of it or not.
[00:17:22] We have this running conversation with ourselves in our head and it's called self talk.
[00:17:28] And it turns out the people who have studied this say it is a powerful gift or it is a terrible enemy. It matters how you talk to yourself, Church.
[00:17:42] It matters what you say to yourself.
[00:17:47] I am a firm believer in the Christian discipline of self affirmation.
[00:17:57] I say to myself, you are a man of God.
[00:18:02] I say to myself, you are a child of God.
[00:18:07] I say to myself, you are a follower of Jesus Christ.
[00:18:11] I say to myself, you are a believer, church.
[00:18:18] Because my old self wants to say loser, Idiot, And stuff I'm not allowed to say in church.
[00:18:41] All right? Paul says that old self talk has to go and we have to have a new self that speaks to us on the inside in a different way.
[00:18:56] Ah, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.
[00:19:04] Let the ideas of God influence your self talk.
[00:19:10] Do you hear that?
[00:19:12] My old self says you, you're a sinner. You've done. You've failed God. My new self says, I am redeemed.
[00:19:21] I'm bought not with corruptible things like silver and gold, but but with the incorruptible blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. You see, your self talk matters. And when you put on your new self, your inner self talk says healthy things to you that call out a better life in you.
[00:19:46] Every morning I set an agenda for the day by how I think and talk.
[00:19:53] Start fresh with healthy spiritual talk.
[00:19:56] Here, write this verse down.
[00:19:59] Colossians 3, 8, 10.
[00:20:04] But now you must put them all away.
[00:20:08] Here's what I have to stop doing.
[00:20:12] I have to stop being angry.
[00:20:15] I have to have. I have to stop wrath.
[00:20:17] I have to stop malice. I have to stop slander, obscene talk.
[00:20:23] I have to stop lying.
[00:20:26] I have to put off the old self and these practices.
[00:20:30] All right, now look at verse 10 and have put on the new self which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of the Creator.
[00:20:45] Monday morning I'm going to say to myself, today I live in the new self.
[00:20:53] Today I live in the image of my Creator.
[00:20:57] I was created in the image of God in Adam. I was recreated in God's image through Jesus Christ. And Monday morning I want to live life in Christ Jesus. And my self talk is going to be today I live in the image of my Creator.
[00:21:15] Today I say to myself, are you thinking the way Christ taught you to think?
[00:21:21] Are you talking the way Christ taught you to talk?
[00:21:25] Are you acting the way Christ taught you to act?
[00:21:29] Are you showing gentleness, patience, kindness the way Christ taught you to act? You see the point?
[00:21:35] It's I can't leave it to be random.
[00:21:38] I can't say, well, maybe I'll get lucky today and live a good Christian life. I have to be purposeful. I have to get up in the morning and say, I'm not living in the old self today, I'm living in the new self. I have to say through my, I have to say to myself throughout today I am created in the image of Jesus Christ. And I'm going to try to meet every moment today the way I've learned that Jesus Christ would meet a moment just like this.
[00:22:11] This is consciously living the Christian life.
[00:22:17] In the same way Paul tells us the uglinesses of the old self, he tells us the goodnesses of the new self. He says, first of all, this new self is the likeness of God.
[00:22:31] We are capable of being like God.
[00:22:35] Now one more time, some of you need to hear that twice.
[00:22:39] You are created with a capacity to be like God.
[00:22:45] Do you hear this?
[00:22:47] It is. It doesn't take, it doesn't take a world revolution for you to live out the likeness of God. You were created for that.
[00:23:00] You need to say to yourself tomorrow morning, I was created to be more like God than I have been in the past.
[00:23:15] I have a potential to be more like God than I have ever lived up to.
[00:23:23] And today I'm going to see what new steps I can take to live out my potential to be like God.
[00:23:36] Church, are you willing to experiment with that?
[00:23:40] What if you just tried it? What if you just got up tomorrow morning and you said, today I'm going to do a self check four times.
[00:23:52] And each one of those four times I'm going to say to myself, which side of the line are you on? Old self, new self, where's your head? Is it old self thinking or new Self thinking.
[00:24:08] Whatever your choices look like today, do they reflect the likeness of God, or do they reflect the deceptions, the corruptions, and the waywardness of the old self?
[00:24:25] The second thing he says is righteousness.
[00:24:29] I believe I've shared with you on multiple occasions.
[00:24:32] Righteousness means to do right. Just do the next right thing.
[00:24:37] Church.
[00:24:39] If the next right thing is to simply look up to God and say, I'm trusting you for something I don't have myself, then just do the next right thing.
[00:24:49] If the next right thing is, dear God, I can't see my way forward, but I'm following you.
[00:24:57] Just do the next right thing.
[00:25:00] If the next right thing is simply to say to God, thank you for the way you've been good to me, thank you for the kindness you've shown me, thank you for the gift of your grace.
[00:25:14] Just live in the new self and do the next right thing.
[00:25:21] All right?
[00:25:22] The third characteristic is holiness.
[00:25:25] I was reading Calvin this week and Calvin says righteousness is the second half of the Ten Commandments. It means treating people around you. Right?
[00:25:38] Holiness is the first half of the ten Commandments, and it means to have a healthy relationship to God.
[00:25:47] Remember the first commandment, Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
[00:25:52] Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God.
[00:25:56] Okay? The holiness is about a healthy connection to the reality of God.
[00:26:05] If I'm living the Christian life the way I should throughout the day, I'm finding touch points where I touch the existence and the reality of God.
[00:26:21] You don't have. Look it, you don't have to hide yourself in a closet for an hour. You don't have to. You can just be still for a matter of seconds and you can just say, oh, God, just for a moment in your presence.
[00:26:35] If I'm going to live the Christian life, I have to have these touch points of holiness throughout the day.
[00:26:43] And then finally, the last one is truth. Ah.
[00:26:47] Life in Christ is a life of truth.
[00:26:50] You will know the truth and the truth shall set you free.
[00:26:55] Jesus prayed, sanctify them by thy truth. Thy word is truth.
[00:27:01] And then Paul, as we have learned on many occasions, he.
[00:27:07] He just has to make lists of stuff.
[00:27:10] He is a list maker.
[00:27:13] Verse 17.
[00:27:15] Now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the ethnic cultures do in the futility of their minds.
[00:27:26] They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of heart.
[00:27:39] They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greed, to practice every kinds of impurity.
[00:27:49] So if you take this apart, Paul lists eight things we have to be careful of because it's the way I preach. You're going to have to listen to all eight of them.
[00:28:03] Ah, let's look at them. Number one, I'm going to paraphrase these to make them easier.
[00:28:12] If I'm going to live the Christian life, I have to stop following the fads of the world I live in.
[00:28:21] I have to stop following the moral cultural fads of the world I live in.
[00:28:28] I'm going to mention a couple of things and probably going to get emails on this.
[00:28:35] Look, the cancel culture is not the way of the Lord.
[00:28:45] Could I tell you this?
[00:28:50] Listen what Paul taught.
[00:28:52] If you see someone taken in a fault, you who are spiritual, cancel them, write them off, throw them out.
[00:29:04] It's not what he said.
[00:29:06] If you see someone taking a fall, you who are spiritual, restore them with the spirit of gentleness.
[00:29:15] Taking heed to yourself because you can be tempted also.
[00:29:21] Can you hear this church?
[00:29:24] We've gone through a terrible cultural fad of people make mistakes and then just getting canceled.
[00:29:32] Ah.
[00:29:33] Ah. All right.
[00:29:35] Ah.
[00:29:36] There has to be in life in Christ Jesus a plan to restore people.
[00:29:45] A plan to help people see the brokenness and find forgiveness and get healing and and be back on track to walk with God. Can you hear this?
[00:30:00] Paul is saying don't get swept off your feet by the cultural moral fads of your generation.
[00:30:09] The second thing he talks about is empty mindedness. This doesn't mean that you don't think about anything. It just means your mind is empty of the things that it should have in it.
[00:30:25] We get too distracted to think about spiritual things.
[00:30:30] I wonder if you do a self check, is it a common thing in your life to go three or four days and not really think about Christ and the things of God?
[00:30:45] I'll just reduce it to one day. Is it a common thing for you to live a whole day and for Christ really not to enter into your mind?
[00:30:55] If it is, that's what Paul's talking about here.
[00:30:59] I can't live the Christian life and my mind be empty of the things of God.
[00:31:06] I've got to have time in my life to let thinking about God occur.
[00:31:16] So. Well, Doc, you don't know how busy I am. I'm telling you, if you're too busy to think about God, you're too busy church.
[00:31:27] Turn the TV off, turn off the radio, set different priorities.
[00:31:34] I cannot live life in Christ Jesus and have extended lengths of time where I never even think about him.
[00:31:44] Brothers.
[00:31:46] Ah.
[00:31:47] How well would it go if you didn't think about your spouse for two or three days?
[00:31:58] No conversation for two or three days.
[00:32:02] I don't know how it would go at your place, but I know it would get a little testy where I put my boots in the closet.
[00:32:13] Why is it that things we find unacceptable in a human relationship can be quite normal in a spiritual relationship?
[00:32:25] Church.
[00:32:28] Then the next thing he says is you understand evil more than good.
[00:32:37] He says their understanding is darkened.
[00:32:43] It becomes easier to understand evil than good.
[00:32:49] I watch these police shows because I like the cops to catch the bad guys at the end of every show.
[00:32:58] You know what I mean? I like first 48. They catch them at the end of the show. I hate the ones where they don't catch them. All right?
[00:33:07] I just like that view of the world, all right?
[00:33:10] But when you watch these shows, I find there are levels of evil in the world that I just don't understand.
[00:33:21] I can't comprehend how someone could possibly do that.
[00:33:28] Ah.
[00:33:31] Ah.
[00:33:34] On the other hand, I find in my own experience it's easier for me to understand people doing incredibly good things.
[00:33:49] But, you know, you can get your life turned backwards where you understand the bad and you don't understand the good.
[00:33:58] Do you hear this, Church?
[00:34:00] You can get your life turned around where it the good things people do make no sense to you at all.
[00:34:11] And selfishness, vanity, backstabbing, that all becomes comprehensible to you.
[00:34:26] Paul said if we're going to live the Christian life, we have to be more aware of the good than the evil.
[00:34:32] The fourth thing he says is they are alienated from life in God.
[00:34:39] This word alienated actually means the idea of you are living in a culture other than your own.
[00:34:51] The idea is we are more at home in our physical culture than we are spiritual culture.
[00:35:00] In life in Christ.
[00:35:02] I become more at home in my spiritual culture than I am in my physical culture.
[00:35:08] I have a richer sense of belonging.
[00:35:11] I have a deeper identity in my spiritual existence than I do in the merely physical world I live in.
[00:35:19] 5.
[00:35:21] Stubbornly ignorant.
[00:35:24] It's one thing to be ignorant, it's another thing to be stubborn about it.
[00:35:29] Church.
[00:35:31] Ah. I've never met anybody who said I'm stubbornly ignorant. But I have met people who say, ah, ah, ah.
[00:35:42] Stubborn about this opinion.
[00:35:44] Ah.
[00:35:51] Look, the Christian life is a life of progress. We can't get stubborn anywhere.
[00:35:57] Do you get it where you get stubborn? You stop making progress, where you've made up your mind, you Know what you need to know. You don't need to go any farther than that. You. You stop spiritual progress there.
[00:36:12] Do you understand?
[00:36:15] God is at work to help us move, to help us grow, to help us think in better and richer and more holy ways.
[00:36:27] And when I make up my stubborn mind, I cut myself off from the growing grace of God.
[00:36:43] Paul says that this kind of old. That living the life of the old man makes us insensitive.
[00:36:51] I've. I've. I've seen this in my life and in the life of others.
[00:36:54] The more you tolerate something in yourself that's wicked, the less sensitive you are to it.
[00:37:03] You get that we get less sensitive to.
[00:37:13] Maybe.
[00:37:17] Maybe there was a time in your life if you took the Lord's name in vain, you would be. You would be instantly uncomfortable in yourself.
[00:37:30] But then you let yourself do it, and you let yourself do it and you let yourself do it. And now you've lost the sensitivity to it. It doesn't bother you the way it once might have bothered you. Do you see the point? Paul says the old man makes us calloused. We lose our sensitivity to spiritual realities and we become more and more tolerant of. Of. Of evil.
[00:37:59] The next one is lacking. The next one is lacking moral restraint.
[00:38:06] The word is licentiousness. And here's another word that we don't use in our common vocabulary anymore. So I want to talk to you about it.
[00:38:14] Do you hear the word license in licentious?
[00:38:18] License? Licentious.
[00:38:21] Yeah.
[00:38:22] All right, Good.
[00:38:26] Earth to church. Do you read me?
[00:38:29] All right.
[00:38:31] I have a driver's license. That means I have permission to drive.
[00:38:37] Without that driver's license, I don't have permission to drive. All right, well, licentious means I give myself permission to do everything and think things that I shouldn't give myself permission to do and think.
[00:38:52] Licentious means I'm giving myself permission to do and think things that are not healthy and will not have good results.
[00:39:04] Ah.
[00:39:07] Sin is insatiable.
[00:39:09] Get that?
[00:39:12] Ah.
[00:39:14] Ah.
[00:39:16] All right.
[00:39:18] Then finally he says, if I didn't get it in all these things I've listed, well, I'm going to make a really big category, and I'm going to throw everything else into that, working out every kind of impurity. And Paul says, if I didn't hit your.
[00:39:34] If I didn't hit your target, well, your target falls into all these other impurities, and you know what it is, so. So start dealing with it.
[00:39:50] Verse 20.
[00:39:53] That is not the way you learned Christ, assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus.
[00:40:04] We learn about Christ through our new self, not our old self.
[00:40:10] Would you hear this?
[00:40:11] When you're living in your old self, you're not learning about Christ.
[00:40:18] That old self is being corrupted, it's being deceived.
[00:40:22] When you're living in your new self, that's when you're learning the most about Christ.
[00:40:29] When you're seeing yourself as created in his image, when you're seeing yourself as doing the next right thing. When you're seeing yourself as being holy and touching the presence of God. When you see yourself as being honest and truthful with yourself and others, you're living in the new self. And that's where you're going to learn more and more about Jesus Christ.
[00:40:52] You don't learn about Christ in the classroom of old self. You learn about Christ in the classroom of new self respect. Remember I read you the Colossians passage and you have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of the Creator. When I'm living in my new self, I am being renewed in knowledge that now I'm growing, I'm learning, I'm developing, I'm becoming more like the Creator.
[00:41:25] The value of life in Christ, the value of living in the new self is I become more of who God created me to be.
[00:41:37] We learn more about Christ by remembering what we've heard about Him.
[00:41:43] Ah.
[00:41:46] How are you learning about Christ?
[00:41:52] If you wanted to learn something in life, you would find, you would find a method to learn about that, right?
[00:42:02] What are you doing to learn about Christ?
[00:42:07] Ah.
[00:42:09] Do you have a personal study plan?
[00:42:12] I am a firm believer that everybody ought to read the Bible every single day.
[00:42:17] Church here's the truth.
[00:42:21] Ah.
[00:42:22] Ah.
[00:42:23] Ah.
[00:42:26] Ah.
[00:42:29] I make a lot of mistakes when I read the Bible every day, but I'm a full fledged jerk when I don't.
[00:42:37] Church I want the word of Christ to dwell in me richly. I want God's ideas to be in my mind.
[00:42:46] I want the Holy Spirit to be able to say, remember what you read in the scripture this morning.
[00:42:52] Remember that prayer you prayed about? Being gentle.
[00:42:55] Church.
[00:42:57] Do you have a personal study plan? Are you in a life group? This church has awesome life groups. You can go in a life group. You can sit with other people who wanna live life in Christ Jesus. You can talk about these topics. You can be encouraged, enriched, and inspired.
[00:43:17] But you gotta go.
[00:43:19] You gotta go.
[00:43:24] I believe that one of the primary ways to learn about Christ is preaching.
[00:43:31] Are you, Are you a healthy attender? Of preaching.
[00:43:37] We try to do some internal statistics and we try to learn national averages and all this stuff.
[00:43:43] Ah, ah. It isn't uncommon for the bulk of churches like us for people to attend once or twice a month.
[00:44:00] Ah, you can't maintain a healthy Christian life on once or twice a month Christianity. Do you hear this say, well, I don't know, Doc, I'll tell you what Paul says or one of Paul's students.
[00:44:16] Do not forsake the gathering of yourselves together as the manner of some is.
[00:44:23] You know what Paul says. There are people out there who think they can live the Christian life and not go to church.
[00:44:30] They're mistaken.
[00:44:32] Don't follow their example.
[00:44:35] Do you hear this?
[00:44:37] Finally, our church offers classes this fall I'm going to offer a class on verse by verse study through the Gospel of Luke. I don't know where we are, chapter something.
[00:44:51] We started it and we do verse by verse. We'll read the whole book out loud as when we do this study and we'll study verse by verse, paragraph by paragraph and you can grow in your understanding of Christ.
[00:45:04] There are Christian books that you can read, but you need a spiritual plan that, that brings the teaching of Jesus Christ to you in greater and greater clarity.
[00:45:21] And then Paul ends this paragraph by saying, we learn to live life in Christ through the truth that is in Jesus.
[00:45:32] We can't ever separate life in Christ from Christ.
[00:45:38] What do you mean by that?
[00:45:40] Christianity is not a philosophy.
[00:45:44] It is a daily way of living.
[00:45:48] There are plenty of people who have a Jesus Christ philosophy, but it doesn't affect their daily, their daily lives.
[00:45:58] They have a Christian, they have a Christian calendar, but it doesn't affect the way they treat the people they work with.
[00:46:09] They have a, they have a, they have a Christian T shirt that says the King Jesus, but it doesn't change the way they think and the way they feel and the way they treat people around them.
[00:46:27] Now listen what Paul is saying. Paul is saying there is a wonderful life to be lived in Christ, but you have to do it consciously and on purpose.
[00:46:37] And it's not a philosophy. It is a personal relationship to the living, loving Lord Jesus Christ, our dear Heavenly Father.
[00:46:47] I pray for a new inclination to live life in Christ Jesus.
[00:46:52] I pray for a new longing to live life in Christ Jesus.
[00:46:56] I pray for a new awareness of how to live life in Christ Jesus.
[00:47:01] And then I pray that we would put on the new self, the one that's being created in the image of Christ.
[00:47:10] We would think differently, we would make different choices. We would have different affections and desires, and Christ would be the center of our lives.
[00:47:23] Amen.
