Leaving The Past Behind Series

INTRODUCTION

• VIDEO

• SLIDE #1

• It’s is already that time of the year again, time to make those awesome life-changing New Year’s resolutions.

• You know, those heartfelt resolutions that you made about this time last year, you know, the ones that lasted a few days to a few weeks, you know, the resolutions that changed your life (for a few days).

• The New York Post ran an article on December 31, 2018.

• The study they wrote about said that 55% of New Year's Resolutions were health-related.

• Research conducted by Strava (a popular exercise app), the social network for athletes, has discovered that Saturday, January 12, is the fateful day of the death of New Year’s resolutions.

• After analyzing more than 31.5 million online global activities last January, Strava was able to pinpoint the date when most people report failing their resolution. https://nypost.com/2018/12/21/new-years-resolutions-last-exactly-this-long/

• What is it that drives us to make these crazy resolutions that usually end up going nowhere?

• I think we do it because we sense that something is wrong with our life as well as the world that we live.

• Beyond looking at the great brokenness of the world that humans have tried to fix, at a personal level, we know there are areas in which we all have brokenness.

• We have addictions that we can’t stop.

• We try to fill the emptiness in our lives with money, sex, power, stuff, relationships.

• We fail to live up to even our own ideals. Our insecurities get the best of us, and we become prideful, envious, lacking any love for other people.

• You might be a businessman who seems to have it all together, but you can’t stop losing your temper with your kids, and you don’t know how to have self-control.

• Or maybe you're depressed over your body image, so you work out regularly, at the expense of your family, obsessing over your happiness and sense of worth.

• When we get to the cusp of the New Year, we start to think of the things we need to correct, and each year we probably do not do too well with the effort to change.

• Today we are going to look at a great passage that can help us to grow.

• One thing I have always said about the past is it is in the past.

• You have to decide if you’re going to let the past define you, imprison you, or will you learn from the past and move forward and grow in the future?

• Human beings can strive to fix the brokenness in their lives, only to fail. Christ brings new life and a death to the old self and old way of living.

• If you want to change your life, your situation in life, maybe you are in a lousy marriage, perhaps you are not happy with your life to this point?

• There is something that you can do about it.

• Let me propose this to you for your consideration.

• We have a new life and a new identity in Jesus; the old way of living life doesn't matter anymore.

• We have to be able to leave the past behind, and we need to do three things so that we can accomplish this feat.

• In the passage, we will examine from Ephesians 4:20-24; Paul will give us three imperatives we need to implement so we can enjoy the salvation we can have in Christ!

• SLIDE #2

• Ephesians 4:20–22 (CSB) — 20 But that is not how you came to know Christ, 21 assuming you heard about him and were taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires,

• SLIDE #3

SERMON

Leaving the past behind requires one to…

I. Lay aside the old self.

• I want to focus on verse 22 for this observation; however, I wanted to us think about verses 20-21 for a moment because those verses give us some context.

• Paul was trying to encourage the Christians at Ephesus to start living the life they were called to live in Christ.

• The word YOU in verse 20 is EMPHATIC in the Greek. In verses 17-19, Paul speaks of those who were living life to satisfy their own lusts and desires.

• Apparently, there were enough "Christians" in Ephesus who were living a life as they did when they were lost.

• He reminds his readers that they were not taught to live that way in Christ.

• When you think about it, a great deal (but not all) of our problems and failures in life flow from not following what we are encouraged to do in verse 22.