THE WAR IS ON!
EPHESIANS 4:17-19
INTRO.: The battle lines have been drawn in the sand.
1. The forces have taken their positions, and are prepared for the worst.
2. The leaders have exhausted every resource, and have resigned themselves to the inevitable.
3. Weapons are readied, now aimed toward the enemy.
4. A new war on this troubled planet? More war in Iraq or Israel? The beginning of a new fiction book?
5. No! It is a very real battle, one that is not just beginning, but has been waged for many long years.
6. However, it has intensified in the last few centuries, and fighting is as fierce as it has ever been.
7. It is the battle for your mind!
BKGD.: Since the beginning of time, God and Satan have been locked in battle for the minds of the human race.
1. It started in the Garden of Eden, and has not been completed as of yet.
2. At Calvary, God won a decisive battle through Jesus’ death and resurrection.
3. Another fatal blow was dealt on the Day of Pentecost, when God the Holy Spirit became personally involved in the lives of believers.
4. But in recent years, Satan has begun to gain precious ground through the sadistic lies he continues to spread.
5. The Apostle Paul describes this battleground extensively throughout his epistles, but none so clear as in the letter to the church at Ephesus.
6. He describes in vivid detail the hold that Satan has on the minds of men, and how we as Christians are to be different.
READ THE TEXT.
7. Paul’s command here is literally, "Stop living as the Gentiles do."
8. Stop living as everyone else in your culture; even though wicked Ephesus is your home, stop living like the Ephesians.
9. This command implies that the Ephesian Christians were still battling with the old life, as we are today.
10. So why is it so hard to stop living like the world? It is all in the mind!
I. The Condition of the Mind – Vanity
A. The mind is the beginning point for us to understand our predicament.
1. Paul does not begin with our behavior.
a. It is not a problem with our environment.
b. It is not a problem of our biological structure.
c. It is not problem of nature or nurture.
2. The problem begins in our mind.
a. "Mind" encompasses the reason, the understanding, the conscience, and the affections.
b. What we believe affects the way we behave.
c. When our reason is awry, our understanding is without light, our conscience is limited, and our affections turned inward, our behavior will be displeasing to God.
B. Paul describes it as "futility of thinking (better "mind")."
1. "Vanity" carries the idea of emptiness as to its results, bankrupt.
a. The secular mind’s thinking results in an emptiness, an aimlessness, a uselessness.
b. It is the waste of the rational powers on worthless objects.
2. The mind’s departure is from the knowledge of the true God.
a. Though man knew God, he departed from him.
Romans 1:21 – "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile."
b. This departure resulted in futile thinking, which ends in wrong behavior.
I Thessalonians 4:3-5 – "It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God . . ."
3. Our actions flow from our thoughts, so if our thought life is futile and pointless, then our actions will be likewise irrational.
C. Paul says they are "darkened in their understanding."
1. It implies that they have been partakers of life and light, i.e., before the Fall.
2. It also speaks of a permanent condition.
a. They are without the faculty of discernment.
b. They are unable to clearly distinguish between right and wrong.
Romans 1:21 – "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile."
ILL.: Counselors, psychologists, and psychiatrists and their solutions to men’s problems are flawed, futile, and frustrated. To try to change a person’s behavior when he is operating with a materialistic, secular mind is futile. Man lacks the vital data to make the proper changes.
II. The Cause of the Condition of the Mind – Alienation
A. It all started with the Fall of man.
1. Satan’s lie to Adam and Eve centered on their mind.
Genesis 3:5 – "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
a. "Eyes will be opened" speaks of more knowledge.
b. "Be like God, knowing good and evil" means they would have enough knowledge to be self-sufficient.
2. Adam and Eve desired the fruit to gain more wisdom.
Genesis 3:6-7 – "When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was . . . desirable for gaining wisdom . . . she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it."
a. They bought into Satan’s lie.
b. The result was the fall from God’s grace and separation from God.
3. It is the same lie that Satan expounds today.
a. Secular Humanism – "There is no deity to help us; we must help ourselves.
b. Postmodernism – "There is no absolute truth; we must create our own.
c. New Age – "There is no Christian deity; I am my own God."
B. They revolted from the revelation of God.
1. Paul implies here a willful separation.
a. Man made the separation from God, not God from man.
b. The separation has gotten wider as man’s mind has gotten darker.
c. A choice made often becomes a habit.
2. Their alienation was a result of their ignorance, their lack of knowledge of God.
a. Men are born in moral, ethical, and spiritual stupidity.
b. It is a willful turning from God, refusing to accept the knowledge of Him.
ILL.: William Pitt was one England’s great prime ministers and a great intellect. He was a friend of William Wilberforce, who was a great proponent of abolition because of his Christian convictions. Pitt was a nominal Christian, as most were in his day, but Christianity did not mean much to him. Wilberforce invited Pitt to hear the great preacher, Richard Cecil. After many excuses, Pitt finally agreed to go. Cecil was at his best, and Wilberforce was uplifted as never before; he was glorifying God and praying for his friend Pitt. When the service ended and they were going out together, William Pitt turned to his friend Wilberforce and said, "You know, Wilberforce, I have not the slightest idea what that man was talking about."
3. Their alienation was a result of their hardness of heart.
a. Literally – "a hardening of the skin so as not to be sensible to touch."
b. They are calloused to feeling, have lost sensitivity to all moral principles and practices, are morally unresponsive.
c. Their hardness to the spiritual things of God has caused the gap between them and God to widen.
III. The Consequences of the Condition of the Mind – Degradation
A. The Person is past feeling.
1. They become insensitive to moral and spiritual impressions.
2. They become insensitive to the appeal of truth.
I Timothy 4:2 – "Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron."
B. They abandon themselves to moral perversion.
1. There is no sense of shame or decency.
ILL.: Pleasure for pleasure’s sake, living only to feel good, becomes a narcotic, deadening the pain of futility, blindness, and alienation.
2. All moral restraint is scorned; they do not have the resources to restrain themselves.
3. Their desires are insatiable.
CONCLU.: Are you still trying to hang on to the lifestyle you followed before you became a Christian?
1. The Bible says that it is not possible.
James 4:4 – "You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God."
I John 2:15 – "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him."
1. When a person becomes a Christian, he desires to cut himself off from the system of this world.
2. Although the world continues to tempt us from time to time, we are to forsake Satan’s evil system.
3. Two questions:
a. Are you still a part of this world’s evil system? Have you accepted Christ as your Savior?
b. If you are a Christian, are you making a conscious effort to break from this world’s evil system?
