New Minds

17 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.18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20 But that is not the way you learned Christ!— 21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. – Ephesians 4:17-24 The title of this message is called: “new minds.” Here’s what I mean by that: we need to get out of the mindset that we know better or that we can make ourselves better or that we somehow can hold to a higher standard without being corrupted. Let me explain this concept to you. Paul is talking to two types of people: the first type of people are people who make nothing of their lifestyle and are content in being stagnantly lukewarm; and the second type of people are people who want others to become hot for God but step on the people who aren’t there yet, in their conquest of perfection. In sum, if you really think about it, he’s talking to every single type of religious institution and people within those institutions that forget that we weren’t born with the grace of salvation and that our trying to keep salvation is just a pitiful satanic diversion from the truth of our realities. But don’t think that we’re the only church that have people like this. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m talking about people who are “holy.” Because it really isn’t the people that don’t believe who cause the problems within a community. No, it’s the people who believe so little because they have been jaded and grown into accepting a normalcy of stagnancy and it’s the people who believe too much that they can obtain a higher piety or some type of extra spiritual gift by dotting more “I”s and crossing “t”s. In fact, it’s a problem of egalitarian society. It is a little reminiscent in every leading society. Let’s look at the Romans when Paul was writing this. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 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 without excuse. 21 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. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. – Romans 1:19-23 You see, this is the problem. When people get too wrapped up in something that they can’t see and in the process too wrapped up that they can’t believe it, they tend have darkened hearts. They tend to assign various traits to things in search of the thing they can’t see and become superstitious and in their superstition, they become darkened. They become foolish. But you know what. It’s not only people who are too wrapped up in the proof of not seeing what they say they are not believing, it’s the people who have been spared too often and too frequently that also seem to forget. Let’s look at Exodus. Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go in to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Let my people go, that they may serve me. 2 But if you refuse to let them go, behold, I will plague all your country with frogs. 3 The Nile shall swarm with frogs that shall come up into your house and into your bedroom and on your bed and into the houses of your servants and your people, and into your ovens and your kneading bowls. 4 The frogs shall come up on you and on your people and on all your servants.”’” 5 And the Lord said to Moses, “Say to Aaron, ‘Stretch out your hand with your staff over the rivers, over the canals and over the pools, and make frogs come up on the land of Egypt!’” 6 So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt. 7 But the magicians did the same by their secret arts and made frogs come up on the land of Egypt. 8 Then Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron and said, “Plead with the Lord to take away the frogs from me and from my people, and I will let the people go to sacrifice to the Lord.” 9 Moses said to Pharaoh, “Be pleased to command me when I am to plead for you and for your servants and for your people, that the frogs be cut off from you and your houses and be left only in the Nile.” 10 And he said, “Tomorrow.” Moses said, “Be it as you say, so that you may know that there is no one like the Lord our God. 11 The frogs shall go away from you and your houses and your servants and your people. They shall be left only in the Nile.” 12 So Moses and Aaron went out from Pharaoh, and Moses cried to the Lord about the frogs, as he had agreed with Pharaoh. 13 And the Lord did according to the word of Moses. The frogs died out in the houses, the courtyards, and the fields. 14 And they gathered them together in heaps, and the land stank. 15 But when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he hardened his heart and would not listen to them, as the Lord had said. – Exodus 8:1-15 Pharaoh had seen God’s work three times already and it would take ten acts of God for him to finally get the picture. But we, as humans, wanting to be God, also find ourselves with hardened hearts and darken ourselves unable to accept the changing mercy and grace of Jesus Christ. It’s like becoming numb to something so prevalent that the effect and impact on our lives becomes minimized. It’s like when people come to me with their problems. I’ve been in the crisis intervention business for so long that when people call me or come to my office and cry while pouring their hearts out, I’m callous to it. It means nothing to me and has little impact on me. Like “cursing” for many of us, we use those four letter words like adverbs that their true meanings as adjectives and nouns do not offend us. I was watching reruns of TV shows on Netflix from my childhood and in reflecting upon some of it, I began thinking—no wonder I’m so messed up in the head, I watched this growing up, it’s why my moralities are sort of sideways backward and redneck. We get our sensibilities from society and culture and while we believe in God who saves, while we experience the power and work of Jesus in our lives, we do not value it. We fall into a realm of thinking that is backward and old ourselves, as if we were still idiot children. We allow superstitions to get the better of us. We pride ourselves in foolish ability even though we know we aren’t able. I’m going to be honest with all of you today. I get callous and sensual and greedy to impurity on weeks I watch too much TV. I’m not telling you that TV is bad, but I’m saying, if we’re not careful, it alienates us from the life of God and we become inundated by it. It’s like over and over we see it and bam! Before we even know it, our hearts are not ready to sing praises to God, we’re not ready to read the Bible, we’re not even able to see God’s power for what it is. We end up like the Romans and say that the good and positive things in our lives are created by our own doing and it was the lucky hat that I rubbed on my hair when it was good. We forget God so easily. Then we flip the other way like the Egyptians and when God let’s up and provides a sign and miracle, we want to ignore it and continue on our path as if we own the place and life we are living. Let’s go to Mark 3. Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. 2 And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. 3 And he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come here.” 4 And he said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. 5 And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. 6 The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him. – Mark 3:1-6 I want to look at this passage in light of Ephesians 4:20: “But that is not the way you learned Christ!…” Paul was clearly referring to the Ephesian church (who is mostly Gentiles) that they should not walk like gentiles, but we see that Jesus’ fellow people, the “Jews” were walking like gentiles—ie, the Romans, Greeks and Egyptians! That is to say that, they only wanted to understand what they wanted to understand and ignore everything else, even if it were from God because they were too hardened to see Jesus’ message. I want to ask you all something, because next week, we’re going into what I want to call “Diabolical Disruptions”—here’s what I want to ask: are you ready to accept Jesus as the Jesus of the Bible, that is the spirit of Jesus’ love than the legality of Jesus’ act of love? Let me clear that up a little. Jesus came to heal and forgive and sanctify. But the healing, forgiveness and sanctification costs something, there is a legality to it, it’s called justification. The question is whether or not we want to accept Jesus for His love and therefore the legality of his actions in the supernatural court of God or do we want to focus solely on the justification and try to earn it or keep it without any rhyme or reason for the rest of our lives? That is the real question and that is what we need to see in our hearts before we move on to trying to being part of a community of change that so desperately wants to call out to the lost. If we’re not ready for it in our hearts and a lot of times, I can be honest with you, I’m not ready for it, but that makes it even more clear to me that the people who are with me are not ready for it. We need new minds, we need to do things for the right reasons despite what we know will happen. I want to touch one last thing this morning about what the nature of the gospel is before we call it quits: “22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds…” The gospel allows us to walk away from everything we hated about ourselves and known to hate about ourselves. But better than that, it allows us to refresh the way we think and understand the world in our minds— that is, our justification for things changes and our reason for being is altered by the movement of God, through the lens of God. I’ve been saying this for a few weeks now and there is a crescendo over the next two weeks about it, but I want you to see yourself, in your mind’s eye through the spirit of God in your mind as God sees you and as Jesus saw the man with the withered hand. Let’s pray.