1. A brand-new man thinks right (17-18)
2. A brand-new man feels right (19)
3. A brand-new man acts right (20-22)
4. A brand-new man is right (23-24)
EPHESIANS 4:17-24
I remember back several years ago when we lived in Mississippi, I had an old, beat up Toyota pickup. I bought it while we were overseas and beat it to pieces 4-wheeling in the fields. Then we shipped it to Mississippi when we moved there. It was ragged and had no power. I took it up to Washington DC while I was doing a temporary job up there and drove from there to here on the weekends. I think I could have walked faster going up to Flat Top. After I got finished with that job and went back to Mississippi, I decided it was time for a new truck. We couldn’t afford anything new, but I got one that was new to me. It was a fire-engine red 1989 F-250 Extended Cab Ford. It didn’t have one single option on it, but I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I waxed that thing every week. I think I went through more Armor All than gas—and that thing used a lot of gas. I treated that truck completely differently than I did that old Toyota. Because, even though it wasn’t brand-new, it was to me. It was a completely new truck to me. It had a new look. It had a new performance. It even had a new smell. That’s the way it is supposed to be with our Christian walk. In our passage this morning, Paul reminds his readers that they are no longer supposed to walk like they did before they were saved. Instead, they are to walk like Jesus taught them. When Jesus saves us, He makes us brand-new. And the way we live should reflect the fact that we are brand-new creatures in Him. This morning, I want each of us to leave this place determined to walk like the brand-new people Jesus has created us to be. In order to do that, we’re going to look at four characteristics of being a brand-new man. The first characteristic is that a brand-new man thinks right.
EPHESIANS 4:17-18
A brand-new man thinks right. Sometimes the best way to point out the right way is to give examples of the wrong way. That is a very effective educational tool. Sometimes the best example is a non-example. That is what Paul does in these verses. He is teaching the Ephesian Christians how they should live by reminding them of how they lived when they were lost. When he speaks here about the way the Gentiles walk, he’s not talking about the difference between Gentiles and Jews. It’s not a national heritage difference. It’s a spiritual difference. He’s using Gentiles as a name to describe the way they were before Jesus saved them. And the first thing he points out is the problem with the way lost people think. He says they walk in the vanity of their mind. Vanity speaks of futility, emptiness. In other words, apart from Christ, all of our thinking is empty and futile. Isn’t that what Solomon said in Ecclesiastes? Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. The word that he used there carries the picture of a vapor. A vapor that really amounts to nothing and quickly disappears. It has no substance. Solomon was basically a philosopher—a lover of wisdom. But as he multiplied foreign wives to himself, he began to take on their pagan religions. He got away from God’s wisdom and began to seek the world’s wisdom. He walked in the vanity of his own mind. God had given him a tremendous capacity for knowledge and wisdom. So much so that he was known as the wisest man who ever lived. But he allowed that wisdom to turn to vanity. That’s what the whole book of Ecclesiastes is about. As Solomon looks back on his life, he realizes that all of his worldly wisdom was empty and futile. But in the end, he got it right. He ends the book as a brand-new man who is thinking right. In Ecclesiastes 12:13, Solomon wrote, “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.” Solomon finally got it right. He was finally thinking like a brand-new man. So, how does a brand-new man think? Paul says that the old man’s understanding was darkened because he was alienated from God. He says that he was ignorant because his heart was blind to the truth of God and His Word. It all goes back to Proverbs 1:7, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” Wisdom only comes from a right relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Education is extremely important. But if you have all the education in the world and it’s not based on the foundation of the Word of God, it’s vanity. You can have more degrees than a thermometer and if you don’t know Jesus, you’re just like Solomon—chasing a vapor that amounts to nothing. If you don’t believe me, look at the world today. We have more educational opportunities and more people are educated today than have ever been since the beginning of time. You can access more information sitting at home surfing the internet than has ever been available throughout history—combined. But yet, in many ways, we’re farther away from God than we’ve ever been. We’re just smart enough to come up with completely ridiculous ideas like evolution. Nobody+nothing=everything. We’re just smart enough to think that Martians planted DNA on Earth that started evolution. We’re just smart enough to think that there are millions of time-space dimensions that all happened and developed just by chance. And it just so happens that we developed on the one that is perfectly suited to sustain life. We’re just smart enough to think that the Bible is just a collection of myth stories designed to teach us morality. Kind of like Mother Goose or Aesop’s Fables. What futility. What darkened understanding. What ignorance. But a brand-new man bases his wisdom from a foundation of God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Is he educated? Yes. Does he study to learn more about God’s world? Yes. But that’s just it—his mind is not futile, because he realizes it’s God’s world. And his understanding is not darkened because he knows that everything is built on the foundation of God’s Word. That’s not walking like the world does. That’s thinking like a brand-new man. The brand-new man Jesus has saved us to be. But a brand-new man not only thinks right, he feels right.
EPHESIANS 4:19
A brand-new man feels right. Those of you who have been to the doctor lately know that they have a pill they say will fix just about anything. Well, this man had some pretty serious sin problems in his life and had the Lord was dealing with him about it. He didn’t want to acknowledge the Lord, so he went to the doctor about it. When the doctor asked him what the trouble was, he told him, “I haven’t been living right, Doc. My conscience is really bothering me.” So the doctor said, “So, I guess you want something that will strengthen your willpower?” The man looked at him funny and said, “No, I was looking for something that would weaken my conscience.” God gives us feelings. He gives us a conscience. We are all born with a sense of right and wrong. He made us that way. But that innate sense of right and wrong can quickly become distorted. People do wrong things. And they do things they know are wrong. When a person willingly and knowingly commits a sin they only have two options. First, they can seek the Lord’s face in confession by agreeing with Him that it is sin. Then repent of that sin by turning from it and turning toward righteousness. That’s one option. The other option is what Paul is illustrating here as a non-example. That is to justify that sin. “Well, it’s OK. It didn’t really hurt anybody.” “But I really needed to get a good grade.” “Nobody will miss it if I only take one—besides look what I’ve given them over the years.” Justifying our sin is like getting a pill from the doctor that takes away guilt. After a while it works pretty well to quiet our conscience. It’s a pretty good way to quiet the Holy Spirit’s voice. But guess what happens? Pretty soon, we can get like Paul described. We can get beyond feeling. I used to splice telephone cable. When you talk on the telephone, your conversation is turned into very low-voltage electrical current that travels over the wires in telephone cables. The voltage is so low that you can’t even feel it. It’s a different story when the phone rings. That brings 28 volts of electricity with it. That might not sound like much, but when you’re standing in water in the bottom of a manhole, it will make your teeth chatter. That is, unless you’ve been doing it for years. Some of the old-timers that I worked with couldn’t even feel it. They had been bit so many times that their fingers had no feeling in them. They could splice into that voltage without even batting an eye. That’s the way sin is. Most children have very tender consciences. Then as we grow, we begin to learn how to justify our sin. And our conscience begins to become seared. It’s not quite as sensitive as it was. It becomes a lot easier to quiet the voice of the Holy Spirit. And the more we sin, the easier it becomes. Until we get to the point where we can’t even hear His voice at all. Like Paul said, we are beyond feeling. But a brand-new man isn’t that way. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t ever sin. John said in 1 John 1:8, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” Make no mistake about it, the new man still sins. It’s just that he hates his sin instead of trying to justify it. When the Holy Spirit pricks his conscience, he listens. He feels. And he acts on those feelings. He confesses his sin just like John goes on to tell us in 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” A brand-new man feels the prompting of the Holy Spirit. A brand-new man confesses his sin instead of covering it up. And a brand-new man repents of his sin. He tears down the bridges and bulldozes the roads that led him to that sin in the first place. He protects himself from going there anymore by setting up safeguards and accountability for himself. He actively turns away from it and turns toward Christ’s righteousness. That’s what makes him feel right. And that’s what keeps him feeling right. But he not only thinks right and feels right, a brand-new man acts right.
EPHESIANS 4:20-22
A brand-new man acts right. We are not legalists. In other words, we don’t believe that doing certain things will either save you, sanctify you, or keep you saved. Salvation is given to us by no merit of our own. It is a gift of God’s grace, earned by Jesus’ blood, and sealed by His Holy Spirit. Nothing we do earns it or keeps it. With that being said, a natural by-product of salvation is good works. James said in 1:18, “Yea, a man say, Thou hast faith, and I have works—shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.” In other words, you can say you’re a Christian all day long. But if you aren’t acting like it, you’re probably not. Paul tells them in verse 20, “You know better than that.” You know what it means to be Christ-like. To live the Christian life. You know that He said, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” And you know what those commandments are. In Matthew 22:37-40, Jesus summed up the commandments into two—love God, love others. In John 13:34, Jesus also said, “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another. As I have loved you, that ye also love one another.” That is what Jesus taught. That is the truth that the Ephesian Christians had learned. That was the Christ that they had learned. But in order to love God and love each other like they had been taught, they had to act right. Now notice that Paul didn’t give them a big long list of do’s and don’ts that they had to check off. He didn’t tell them to have certain hair styles and wear certain clothes. He didn’t tell them to only listen to certain styles of music and enjoy certain types of entertainment. That’s legalism and that’s not what Paul was talking about. He was after the heart of the matter. The old man followed rules. And he was rotting, stinking, filthy and corrupt. Because the old man’s conduct is all about how it benefits me. What can I do to make me look good? What can I do to give me a better standing? What can I do to get you to look at my righteousness? That’s the former conversation of the old man that Paul tells us to put off. In King James English, conversation isn’t limited to what you talk about. It includes your complete conduct. How you act. A brand-new man puts off the way he used to act. Whether it was legalism or license. Whether you followed all the rules to make yourself look good, or whether you broke all the rules to make yourself feel good. The conduct of the old man is all about deceitful lusts. In other words, it’s all about lying to yourself and others by the way you act just so you can get what you want. So you can get your way. A brand-new man puts that conduct off. The picture Paul paints is of a garment, like a coat. When Jesus saves us, and we learn to live like Him, we take off that old coat. That’s the conduct of the old man. We quit acting like the old man because a brand-new man acts right. But a brand-new man can only think right, feel right, and act right for one reason. He can only do those things, because a brand-new man is right.
EPHESIANS 4:23-24
A brand-new man is right. When Jesus saves us, He makes us a new man. God takes our sins and covers them with the blood of His only begotten Son. He forgives them and removes them as far as the East is from the West. When that happens, we become a new creation. Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new. The old man passes away—he is pronounced dead on arrival. And we are given a new life in Christ. But sometimes, we want to carry that stinking, rotting old corpse around with us. Paul put it like this in Romans 7:24: “Who will rescue me from the body of this death?” He was saved when he wrote that. But he was struggling with putting off the old man like he knew he was supposed to. But then he went on to answer his own question in verse 25: “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” It’s Jesus that rescues us from that old man that we still want to drag around with us. Praise God, it’s Jesus that rescues us from that body of death. By His grace and by His strength, we can get rid of that old man. We take off that old coat, and we put a new one on. One that’s not made of our righteousness and our works. That would be just as ragged as the one we just took off. But we put on the righteousness of Christ. We clothe ourselves in His righteousness. That’s the new man. The brand-new man is able to say with Paul later on in Romans 8:1—“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” A brand-new man isn’t brand-new because of the things he does. He isn’t brand-new because he is able to check off so many boxes on a list. He isn’t brand-new because he has more nice things than naughty things on Santa’s list. He’s a brand-new man because Jesus has made him that way. He thinks right because Jesus has made him right. He feels right because Jesus has made him right. He acts right because Jesus has made him right. The question for you this morning is, Has Jesus made you right? Has He made you a brand-new person? The test isn’t whether you walked an aisle or prayed a prayer some time. The test is, Do you think like a brand-new person? Is your knowledge and wisdom based on the Word of God? Or is your understanding darkened and your thinking futile and vain? Do you feel like a brand-new person? Are you sensitive to the voice of the Holy Spirit and immediately make it right when He speaks to you? Or have you put Him off so many times that your heart is calloused and your conscience is seared? Are you past feeling convicted when you commit sin? Finally, do you act like a brand-new person? Whether it’s legalism or license, have you put off the conduct that you know isn’t right? Have you put off that old man and clothed yourself in Jesus’ righteousness? Are you a brand-new person today?
