You’re Wearing That?: Ephesians 4:17-32

Maybe you saw it’s football season now, so I got to start using football analogies. And maybe you saw last night Lane Kiffin who last if you’re not sure, was the coach at Old Miss. Had been there for about six years, I believe. Now he’s at LSU after leaving them on their playoff run last year. And now he had to go back into Von Hemingway Stadium in Oxford, Mississippi to coach the LSU Tigers against the Old Miss Rebels.

Picture, if you will, if you would have turned that game on last night on ABC. And as Lane Kiffin is walking from their locker room onto the field, he is wearing his typical visor, but it’s the Old Miss Rebels visor he used to wear. And instead of wearing the LSU purple and gold, he is now wearing a Oxford Mississippi Rebels Old Miss logoed polo, but he’s still standing on the LSU side. He’s still coaching the Tigers. He’s just wearing his old clothes.

You know, I think about that a lot about how these coaches, especially the ones who are constantly traveling and changing. They’re like, they’re constantly having to get a new wardrobe. They’re constantly having to And it’s not just them. Their wife is, their kids are, and like what do they do with the old stuff? Do they just give it to Goodwill? I don’t know.

Uh, you know, and then they have to go in, then they have to get all new clothes. And you wonder, especially with kids, like kids get very attached to their clothing. You can imagine that their their sons and daughters have like the cheer outfit that they just love. Two weeks later, month later, they’re they’re wanting to wear that old Rebels gear.

Elaine doesn’t have any kids that age, but but you can imagine some of these coaches do. Like, mom, can we I want to wear Where’s my old Rebels cheer outfit? Maybe you can’t wear that anymore. Why not? Because we’re Tigers now, right?

It’d be crazy for us to wear the gear of the old team. That is exactly what Paul is saying in this passage. You do not belong to that team anymore. You can’t wear their clothing anymore. You can’t wear that old visor anymore. You belong to a new team. It’s time for you to dress like it.

And look how he describes this old team. Because he’s going to talk, he says as the Gentiles do, meaning referring to the Ephesians, right, who worship these pagan gods.

He says, “Listen, you can’t you can’t live like them. They are there’s three main problems with them. It starts in their mind. He says they’re understanding. Sorry, they’re they’re feudal of their mind. They’re darkened in their understanding and they are ignorant.

You don’t want to dress like them. They’re their thinking is feudal. They’re darkened in their understanding and they’re ignorant. Right? They don’t they don’t know what you know now. They don’t know what God is doing in his world. They don’t know who Jesus is and what he came to do. And they certainly don’t know the promises of his return with his second coming and the new heavens and the new earth.

So because of what they don’t know, their whole thinking is wrong. They are like they’re walking in the dark. The Bible uses that imagery all the time of what it is like we are without Jesus and without his word. That it’s like you you get up in the middle of the night and you got to go to the bathroom and you have to hit four different things with your toe before you get there.

Especially me, right? When when we have to take a kid to the bed and I have to go walk through their room, there is toys galore. I’ve actually made a rule in in my bedroom that there is no toys with wheels are allowed in my bedroom because we would have like two grocery carts and a riding toy like at the foot of my bed and it always ended up on my side of the bed.

So that if I got up in the middle of the night, I was tripping over seven things before I got to the bathroom. And so I just said no more wheels in my bedroom. It cannot cross that threshold.

Paul is describing the way we are without Jesus in thinking like that. People without Christ are darkened in their understanding. They can’t see the way to go. They don’t know where they’re going because they can’t see the way the world is like it really is.

And so because of that, he says they are feudal in their minds, which means that they can say things, they can think things, it’s just of no real value. It doesn’t last. It has no substance to it.

You can go this week, go and look, go and look at uh people who have claimed that Christianity will be dead soon. And as people have often put, you can go to their grave right now, those people who said that, and you can bring your Christian Bible and you can bring your worship guide and remind them that they died long before Christianity ever would. Right? Their their thinking is feudal. There there’s a problem like that.

Paul is building up why you don’t want to dress like them.

But not only is there They’re thinking wrong. Their hearts are wrong. He starts out at the end of verse 18. Due to their hardness of heart, they have become calloused, right?

You build up calluses maybe on your on your hand. Maybe I I have them on my feet real bad. The girls cannot stand it. Those like that just tough rough on my toes and my heel, right? There’s nothing I can do about it, I don’t think.

Um I’ve tried everything they’ve said to do and it’s just it’s still there. They’ll like they’ll play with it, they’ll get disgusted with it, but I can’t feel any of it, right? because my my feet are so calloused on the bottom that my skin has no feeling to it.

Paul says that’s what we are like without Christ is that our hearts are hardened just as Pharaoh’s was as God kept trying to call him and command him let my people go. Let the Israelites go and worship me in the wilderness.

And consistently Pharaoh’s heart was hardened so that he could not feel the right things.

He had no sensitivity to the things of the Lord. Meaning the things that he should have been convicted over did not convict him. The things that should have broken his heart did not break his heart.

Even and we’ll get to this in a second. Even the things that should have angered him did not anger him.

And so he was not only hardness of heart, he was callous. And this is how it describes it. Paul does at the end of verse 19. So that they have given themselves up to sensuality.

You know, there’s that old saying about about the the man at the bar. A man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink, and then the drink takes a man, right? That’s the way the Bible describes our sin, specifically our sexual sin.

We we take our sexual sin and then eventually our sin will take us, right? And now what we thought belonged to us and things that we participated in, now the Bible says eventually it will possess you and it will own you and it will control you.

As Baptist preachers used to say when I was growing up, right? That sin will take you further than you ever wanted to go. It will cost you more than you ever wanted to spend. And it will make your life more miserable than you ever thought it would.

That is the way the Bible describes that.

Now over here in Ephesians 4, it says that they’ve given themselves up to sensuality. Romans 1 actually gives us another uh side of that coin. It says that God actually gives people up to their sin.

Meaning that these people, now in Romans 1, it’s specifically talking about these people who have given themselves over specifically to homosexuality. He says, God says at some point, listen, if that’s what you want to do, if that’s really how you want to give your life in, that sin can just have you. I’ll just let them I’ll let it have you.

And that God actually releases people over to their sin. Meaning that in some way, God still holds back sin from really taking uh taking apart even sinners. Even people that are not his. God still holds sin back, but eventually God lets people have their sin.

If that’s what you want, you can have your sin and you can have all of its problems.

Look at how verse 19 ends. that these people end up being greedy to practice every kind of impurity. Not greedy for more money, greedy for more sin.

The psalmist describes it this way. He says that people lie in bed at night dreaming of the sins they can commit tomorrow, right?

And so Paul is building up on this.

Sorry, there’s one more thing. I skipped it at the center, right? They’re they’re broken in their thinking. Their hearts are wrong. And ultimately at the center of it is in verse 18. So they are alienated from the life of God.

They are on the outside looking in. Their thinking is wrong. Their hearts are wrong. And they don’t get to be part of God’s people. They don’t get to be part of what God is doing in his world.

They don’t know how to think. They don’t know how to feel because they are on the outside looking in of who God is and what he has done and what he teaches.

And Paul is trying to build up and saying that’s your old way of life. That’s what that really that life is really like.

So then he says this verse 20, but that’s not the way you learned Christ. Assuming Paul says, I I am assuming here that you have heard about Christ. You were taught about Christ because the truth is in Christ.

So Paul says, listen, if that’s not who you are, if you have heard about Jesus and his gospel, as he says in chapter one, the good news of your salvation, if you’ve heard about that and you’ve believed the gospel and you were taught about Jesus, now let me pause for a second because it’s possible that there’s someone here who has heard about Jesus.

Every one of you’s been here before. So you’ve heard about Jesus. You’ve heard about the good news that Jesus Christ came into this world to take on your sin to the to the cross so that he could die for your sins. Go to the grave and then come alive again as we started the service with so that you could be saved from your sins.

And Paul is saying if you can admit that you’re a sinner as we practice in our confession, admitting your sin is a Christian practice. If you can believe that Jesus died for your sins and rose again and if you can confess him as Lord, then what are you doing in this old way of life?

But some of you are still in that old way of life. Perhaps maybe there’s someone here who’s still living according to the old way of life.

And I would just call you to spend your time this morning thinking about that. Is this how I want to live my life? Is this the thinking I want to have? Is this the heart I want to have? Do I want to end up with God giving me over to my sensuality or do I want this new way of Christ as he says that the truth is in Christ?

So, so verse 22, Paul’s going to switch. Now, most of the end of Ephesians is he’s calling us on how to walk, right? Walk. He’s that’s how he started in chapter 1, verse one, I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling.

In chapter five, he’s going to say to walk in love. But now he’s going to switch from walking to clothing.

He says that’s the clothes you used to wear. You used to wear the clothes of people like that. Broken in their understanding, broken in their hearts with alienated from the the life of God.

So put off those old clothes. Take them off.

Paul Paul is really using the imagery of like he would take off dirty clothes at the end of the day. He’s saying, “Why are you wearing that? Take that old way of life off and be renewed in the spirit of your minds so that you can put on the new self which is created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

You see, in many ways, the opening illustration of of Lane Keifin going back and wearing his old teams jerseys is actually worse than that.

Paul says because Paul is is saying it’s not just that you’ve changed teams although there is a way in which that’s true it’s more than that as chapter 2 told us we used to be dead and now we’re alive.

Imagine because I’ve used this analogy before in Ephesians let me use it again. Imagine when Lazarus was come out of the tomb and Jesus says unbind him meaning unwrap him from those mummy like cloths.

Imagine a month later You’re over in Bethany where where Lazarus lived and and you’re in the marketplace buying some figs, right? You look over and Lazarus is there walking around. He looks as healthy as can be, but he’s still got those those wraps around his head, right? He’s still got the mummy cloths wrapped around him.

You’d be like, “Lazarus, what are you doing? You’re alive, man. Why are you dressing like you’re still in the grave? You’re wearing dead people’s clothes. You don’t have to wear those anymore. You’re not decomposing in some tomb. You’re alive. Jesus resurrected you. Why are you wearing those kinds of clothes?

You see, Paul is not He’s not yelling at us. He wasn’t yelling at the Ephesian church. He’s not guilt tripping us.

He’s simply saying, “Jesus has made y’all alive. Why are you dressing like you’re in a cemetery? You’re alive.”

So then he says, “Okay, we maybe we would say, all right, I got you. I’m with you. What does that look like?

Well, Paul’s going to give us five specifics and then he’s going to kind of sum it up. He actually gives us to be clear, he actually gives us four specifics, sums us up and then gives a little PS at the end, right?

So, let’s say the the four slash5 specifics that he gives.

The spec first specific is in 25. What clothes do we take off and what clothes do we put on?

Well, first of all, we take off lying. We take off lying.

Now, now you may say, “Well, I don’t think a lot of us are struggling with lying to each other.” And I would say, “I think you’re right. That doesn’t mean that every new Christian doesn’t struggle with lying, though.”

And so, I would say this. If you are a liar, stop lying. Paul says that. Stop lying. That’s that’s how dead people live, right? That’s how pagans live. That’s how people who bow down to like Artemis lives.

You don’t live like that anymore. Jesus has made you alive. Stop lying.

Now, I’ve been thinking about this all week. Maybe one place where we do struggle with lying though is in answering the question you doing good. Maybe even you’ve already lied to that question this morning.

I bet honestly I’m just going to be honest with you. I bet somebody has lied to that very question this morning or some version of it. You doing good? You need anything? Could I do any? Can I help you in any way?

I guarantee you somebody has said, “No, there’s nothing. I’m doing great.” And really in your heart you’re struggling.

Even if it was just to be like, “Yeah, I could use some prayer. I’ve been really discouraged lately.” Or maybe say, “You know what? I’ve I’ve been lonely lately. I could really use somebody just to go to lunch with.”

But instead, we look at them and we just bald-faced lie. I’m great. Couldn’t complain if I wanted to.

Well, stop lying. Stop. Paul says, “Put away that kind of stuff.”

That’s how pagans have to live. Pagans have to act tough. Pagans have to live like they got it all together. You don’t have to do that.

Here’s why. He says, “Speak the truth with his neighbor.”

Last week, I talked about calling people out on their sin. Let’s that’s still true that we should speak the truth in love. But also, let’s just be honest with each other.

Why? Paul says at the end of verse 25, because we’re members together. We belong to the same body.

It’s like a an autoimmune disease, right? I was trying to find the best example. This is probably the best example.

Sometimes the body will see your organs, right? and it’ll say that’s not supposed to be here. And so it tells the brain, hey, this thing that you thought was a kidney should not be in our body. And it begins to attack the kidney, which is the healthy kidney it’s had since conception, right?

And it lies to the brain. And so the brain begins to attack that kidney.

Paul says, when we don’t tell each other the truth, we’re doing the same thing here.

When we say, “I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m okay. I’m good. happy as a clam, whatever that means, right? When we say that kind of stuff, we’re just we’re like an autoimmune disease.

Because if we would be honest with each other, if we would look each other in the eye and say, “I’m struggling.” What would happen?

Well, we would be healthier because they would be given an opportunity to love us. The whole church would be better off. The whole body would be better off.

But we’re hurting each other by not telling each other the truth.

The second thing, verse 26, so so put that off. put on truth with each other. That’s hard.

Now listen, I say that I I I say that like it’s really easy. But that’s actually really hard, right? There’s a reason why the world doesn’t live like that because it’s hard.

But we can be honest with each other here because we belong to the same body here.

Second though, second thing to take off is being angry and sinning.

Right now, you could interpret this. I’ll just be honest with you. You can interpret this as don’t get angry and sin, right? So don’t be angry. Focusing on the the not being angry.

But the biggest reason against that interpretation is that Jesus got angry, right? So it’s hard to be like don’t be angry except for that time when Jesus got angry. And there’s some exception to the rule here because Jesus shows us how to live, right?

So, I think it’s better to say, don’t be angry and sin. In your anger, be careful not to sin.

Paul’s going to actually give us uh uh really two two kind of lessons there, and then he’s going to tell us why.

The first is this. Be very careful with your anger. When you get angry, be very careful.

Over in Genesis, God describes it to Cain. Like anger is like a crouching predator, like a leopard sitting outside your door. You got to be careful with anger.

It can be it can be wonderful. It is like a fire, right? And fire can cook, fire can heat, and fire can burn down your house.

And that’s all anger can be. You have to keep anger under control. Be careful with your anger.

How do you do that? He tells us how.

Well, he tells us one reason. Wow. Right. One way that you can be careful with your anger is to not let the sun go down on it.

Now, what does that mean exactly, right? I mean, you can apply that very legalistically and say, “I will not be angry more than until sundown.”

But like, what do you do if you get angry at night? What do you do if you get angry at twilight? Like right after, like right before right after sun s sunown, right?

And what do you do if you’re living in Antarctica where the sun only sets like every eight months? Does that mean you can just burn in your anger for long periods of time?

No, I don’t think so, right?

I think what Paul is saying is this. Be careful with your anger and don’t let it stay for a long time, right?

It it’s not don’t do anything with it, but it is don’t let it just burn inside of your heart for a long time.

So, there’s there’s kind of two kind of ends of the spectrum. Don’t do something really rash and foolish in your anger. Be very careful with it. Be very wise with it.

But also don’t hold it in so that it just burns and eats you alive from the inside out, right?

Why? It tells us why.

Because you don’t want to give the devil an opportunity. Either one of those will do that. Either one.

Either one of those. If you get angry and you fly off the handle, the devil has a great opportunity to lead you into sin, right?

I mean, how many of us have sinned because we got angry and we let the anger decide what we did next? Probably every single person in here has done that at some point in our life.

How many of us though have let the anger just burn inside of us for days, weeks, and months? And it changed the way that we felt about people. It changed the way that we loved them. It changed our relationship with them.

Because like an ember just sitting there. It just burned and burned and burned us from the inside out.

Either one of those is saying Satan, it’s just writing an invitation to Satan. Satan, come and ruin something in my life.

Is what’s what Paul is saying. You’re inviting Satan to come ruin something. Why would you do that?

Paul says, “Take that off. Be careful when you get angry.”

I I heard something from one of our seminary professors, meaning Southern uh Southern Baptist seminary professors.

He said this. He said, “When we get angry, we kind of have three three opportunities. We can say, I’m angry because you you did such and such.”

Well, that’s an accusation, and that’s not going to go anywhere, right?

We can say, “I’m angry because I” And if we do that, right? it can be a confession, right? I’m angry because I got impatient and I shouldn’t. I’m got I got angry because I felt like you were hurting my feelings and that was disrespectful and I I didn’t like that and I’m sorry, right?

But if we say, “I got angry because God said,“Well, now all of a sudden we’re doing what Jesus did, right?

When Jesus got angry and did not sin, what did Jesus do? He said, “My father said this house will be a house of prayer.”

He said, that’s really what Jesus did. He said, “I’m angry because God’s told me this. God has said this.”

And here’s the thing about that, right? Here’s the lesson that’s really counterintuitive.

Something should make us angry. Sin should make us angry.

It’s not wrong when you see a sin and it makes you angry. When you see people hurting because someone else sinned against them. It should make you angry. It should.

The question is not should it make us angry. It’s that what should that anger lead us to do?

And that’s where we have to be very careful.

All right. So take off sinning in our anger.

Third, again, not something I think we really have a problem with. Let the thief no longer steal.

I’ll put this very bluntly. If you’re stealing, if you’re a thief, stop stealing. Okay?

I don’t think a lot of you struggle with that. I’m not sure anybody in here struggles with stealing, right?

But if you are, if you’re a thief, stop stealing, right? Just just stop it.

Paul says, I do think people in Ephesus really were stealing. I I think like really there probably were Christians who had come out of some pagan lifestyle and like Paul telling them that was like, “Okay, all right. I’m sorry,” right?

But but I don’t think many of us do that. I think most of us have taken off stealing.

I don’t even think many of us have struggled with what he says next. Rather let him labor doing honest work with his own hands.

I think most of y’all are doing honest labor. I don’t think many of you are like running drugs or held in a gambling ring of some kind to get some kind of side, you know, money out there.

I think most of your work is honest, good work. You’re laboring.

I will say this though, students, work hard at your homework because God said to, right? I mean, do I mean that’s true.

Like tomorrow at work, work hard, adults, because God told God said that’s good for you to work hard.

But here’s why. This is the part that I don’t think that we do.

I think that we have taken off stealing or even never put it on. I think that most of us work hard with our own hand doing honest work.

But I’m not sure it’s for this reason that Paul says, “So that you may have something to share with anyone in need.”

Is that your goal for your bank account?

I want to get my my my promotions. I want to get my bonuses so that I never have to tell somebody no when they really are in me.

Paul says that’s the way the church should live. That our goal in our life, our goal with our paychecks, our goal with our careers is to get to a point so that we never have to say, “I’m sorry, man. I I really just can’t afford to help you.”

Because sometimes we are we have to say no to people. We have to say, “I’m sorry. I I can’t help you. I just I don’t have the funds to help you.”

Paul says your career your career goal should be to never have to say no to someone legitimately in need.

I’m not saying you have to give everybody at a stop sign money, but I do mean that we should have to say that’s a legitimate need, but I just can’t help you, right?

And that could be the Is that why you work? Is that why you’re going to school? Is that why you’re getting a a college uh degree? is so that you could get to a point so that you never have to say no to someone legitimately in need, especially inside the church.

I don’t know, maybe it is. That’s what Paul says to put on.

Fourth, before we get to kind of closing and then the PS, let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth.

This is the word for like fish that is old, right? It’s the kind of stuff that will give you food poisoning is the the word for corrupting, right? Talking like food poisoning.

There is nothing worse than food poisoning. the I’ve gotten it really two times in my life and at both times I at some point in that night I have prayed Lord if you just want to take me it’s okay right like if if you just want to kill me and I don’t have to spend the next eight hours doing this I think I’m okay with that right like the girls will find a way to move on without me if you just want to just take me to heaven because this is so bad right

that’s what Paul is using. He’s using that analogy of food that makes you sick.

Like Well, now listen, I think that does include cuss words. I I don’t think that’s the main point here. I think it does include it.

I’m gonna I’m gonna really give you a teaser, though, because nobody ever takes me up on these.

I think we’ve gotten our hierarchy of the worst cuss words completely wrong. Um, and you can ask me about that later if you want to.

But I think our hierarchy of what’s the worst cuss word is completely backwards. Um, so but you can just ask me about that as you leave.

Don’t think about that now, Brian. Like I see your face. um he’s trying to make his own list, but like but you can ask me about that afterwards.

But what I really think Paul is talking about here is not four-letter words. He’s really talking about those little sentences that happen in every church where we discourage and we disparage people.

We demean people. We put maybe people down. We put the church down.

We complain instead of asking questions. We become like the Israelites just murmuring all the time, just mumbling and grumbling.

Now, let me say this. If you have a a question, you are always free to pull me aside.

Say, “Pastor, why do we do this?” Right? I don’t understand this. Why is this part of something you say? Why is this something you do? Why do we do this? Why are we trying this?

That’s a fair question.

All those are questions. Also, it’s fair for you to pull me aside and say, “I’m not sure I agree with this. Can you help me understand this better? Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you’re wrong. But why are you doing this?”

Right? You’re always welcome to questions and complaints, but but Paul gives us some idea of how to do that, right?

He says, I I think there’s three things here.

Only speak the kind of words, right? that are good for building up the body.

So before we speak, we should ask, is this going to build our church up or is it going to tear it down in some way? Is it going to build us up?

Does it fit the occasion? Meaning, there are some sentences that are the right sentence. It’s just the wrong time. It’s the wrong place.

We could have done this separately. We could have done this another time, another place.

And lastly, does it give grace to those who hear?

Are you gracious with your words? Are you are you wanting to understand? Are you giving them every benefit of the doubt as love does?

Right. Put away the corrupting talk.

That’s the way pagans do. Pagans speak and it tears apart from the inside.

He says, “That’s not the way you live if you’re really alive,” right?

Speak in such a way that you love each other, you care for each other, you build each other up.

Now, he’s going to sum all that up, sum all of this up in verse 30, but he kind of gives a PS in 31.

He says this, “Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and slander along with all malice be put away.”

What he’s actually doing when you study the words is he’s kind of building.

It starts in bitterness and then it leads to this two kind of synonyms for anger. One of them has like this bubbling, like it’s a boiling kind of anger where it eventually it just explodes.

And that’s what the next word means, an exploding kind of anger, right?

And then he says these two words, clamor and slander.

Clamor is when you make a ruckus about it. You get loud. You shout, right? You fly off the handle.

Slander doesn’t have to be that way, though. Slander usually isn’t loud. Slander is usually very quiet.

It’s usually one-on-one where you just speak ill will of someone, and that’s what ends the last word, malice.

Right? Malice is when you legitimately want bad things to happen to the other person.

Right? And so what he’s doing is he’s showing us progression that if you start in bitterness, you better be careful because if you’re not careful, you’re going to end up legitimately hating that person that you just started off being bitter with.

Right? And I got to tell you that is the human heart.

Like God says these things, you read these things, you really think about your own life and the ways that your own heart has gone and you’re like that is exactly what happened.

I started off bitter and I ended up with malice.

If you’re not careful, that’ll happen.

Paul tells us how to avoid that, though.

Verse 32, be kind to one another, tenderhearted.

Here’s how you for how you avoid it.

Forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.

What starts this whole cycle that starts off by being bitter?

You failed to forgive them. You failed to forgive them.

Somewhere along the way, somebody said something that hurt your feelings. Somebody did something wrong. Somebody made a wrong choice and you didn’t forgive them and then you got bitter.

If you’re not careful, that’s going to take you all the way down to mass.

I cannot imagine that a church out our age with people that have been in it for so long, I can’t imagine that everything that’s happened here has all been forgiven.

Meaning this, that’s a confusing way to say this. I’m sure somebody in here hasn’t forgiven somebody else in here.

I’m just sure of it because of time. I mean, there’s just so much in this room, so much history in this room with each other.

But the only way you can answer that is in your own heart.

Is there any person in this room you haven’t forgiven of something?

I don’t know that. You know that.

Maybe they’re not in this room. Maybe they’re somewhere else. And you’ve just refusing to forgive them.

Paul says, “Well, you say, “Well, why should I forgive them?”

Because God in Christ forgave you, right?

That’s why I read that story at the beginning in the gospel passage.

If you’ve been forgiven much, you can forgive much because you keep remembering, “God, I forgot how much God forgave me about. I can forgive this.”

But if not, you’re going to end up bitter and eventually you’re going to end up with mouths.

And that’s not the way to build up a church.

Notice how Paul ends here. It’s kind of the verse 30 how he sums it all up.

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

Paul’s saying, listen, it’s not do all these things so that you will be redeemed.

He’s saying you’ve already been sealed for the day of redemption. You’ve already been sealed for the day when Jesus will come back and make all things new.

But in the meantime, Paul’s using this analogy.

It hurts the Holy Spirit’s heart to see unforgiveness and lies and not sharing with each other in need to not speaking the truth to not working hard to to letting anger and corrupting talk come out of our mouth leading us into sin.

He says it hurts the Holy Spirit to see because he’s done so much for us.

Again, this is not about you need to be better. It’s not what Paul’s It’s not what I’m saying.

What Paul is saying, what I’m trying to say is this.

You’re not dead anymore. Stop dressing like you are dead.

Stop going to death’s closet and picking out the clothes you used to have to wear.

You’re now alive. You can wear the clothes of Jesus with truth and love and sharing and building each other up and forgiveness, kindheartedness, tenderheartedness, because that’s what Jesus gives you.

That is not the way you were taught. Assume you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus.

This morning, I bet all of us need to take something off and put something on.

And if you need to pray about that or pray with me about that, I’ll be down here while we sing.

There might be somebody here though who is still dead and needs to be made alive.

You’ve heard the teaching of Jesus taught. It’s time for you to believe it and receive it.

I’d love to talk with you about that as well.

Let’s pray together before we sing.

Jesus, would you help us to take off the grave clothes and to put on the clothes of your son made in the image of God so that we could be righteous and holy, dressed like we ought, not like Lazarus still wearing around those old bandages, but on the new clothes, the clothes of a resurrection.

Would you help us to do that now as people are dealing with unforgiveness, with with lies, with unsharing, with anger that leads them into sin, with corrupting talk?

Would you help us to put those clothes away and dress like we’re really alive in Jesus name? Amen.

This transcript was created by AI from the Livestream feed.