What Not To Wear Series

What Not to Wear

Eph. 4:24-32

Intro: When Brigitte wins the remote control wars at our house and manages to banish me from ESPN or Fox News she will usually watch something on Hallmark, the Home and Garden network or TLC.

And seeing how they are girly channels, which usually means I’m forced into watching some sort of girly show which of course diminishes my masculinity.

OK, maybe it’s not that bad...not have to watch some of them.

One of the shows she watches is on TLC is called “What not to Wear”, the US version of a British program where two fashion experts will invade the life of an unsuspecting person who has been “volunteered” for the show by their friends and family.

The person who is featured usually will have some sort of style issues…the still stuck in the 80’s; and the goal is to get them into the 21st century.

Before this takes place our 2 fashion experts will tear apart this person’s closet, as well as their self esteem while trying to get them to see that baggy warm up pants and old concert t-shirts should not be worn to the office if you are an attorney.

They do this by showing them how they look in their current wardrobe in a 360 degree mirror…and then what the need to look for when they are given a $5000 Visa card to build a new wardrobe.

Now I realize that we’ve probably lost the men here who zoomed out as soon as they heard “Home and Garden”…so here you go: Football kickoff is Sept. 4.

Everyone back with me?

Transition: My reason for bringing this up is that knowing the right thing to wear at the right time can make a big difference.

For instance, me showing up for a funeral in a pair of torn up blue jeans and flip flops won’t cut it…

And apparently for some it may still be wrong to wear white after Labor Day…I’m not sure.

But I do know that wearing the right things does make a world of difference…especially for the born again believer; and I don’t mean it being in the sense of physical clothing either.

If clothing defines who you are, what we put on in a spiritual sense is the very essence of who we are.

So, what are you wearing?

Paul explains to us in our passage this morning what we are to wear and not to wear.

Read Eph. 4:24-32 and pray.

Today we wrap up our series, “Change from the Inside” out, this study of the 4th chapter of Ephesians in which the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to explain to those reading these words what our lives should be like as a result of our faith in Christ.

Change in sermon title…realized after printing off outline and working on it a bit more, title didn’t really fit; now “What not to wear”.

Salvation is life change; it is a change that takes place from the inside out.

Our faith, which comes by God’s grace alone, results in a repentance (turning from our old ways into the way of God)…and it happens by God’s spirit being reborn in us.

It brings us from dead in sin to alive in Christ, granting us forgiveness for our sins and the gift of eternal life.

And the cost for us? Nothing.

Christ did it all, He shed His blood and died on the cross for the remission of my sins and your sins and rose from the dead 3 days later to also grant us eternal life.

Our salvation is something that is evident in our Spirit and also should be evident in our lives.

The Apostle Paul explains this life change to us in the closing verses of Ephesians 4 when he tells us what not to wear.

First of all notice that it says it should be…

1. Off with the Old

On “What not to Wear” the first item of business is to evaluate the current wardrobe: see what is in there and hopefully see what is wrong with it.

It may be comfortable, it may be “habitual”, it may be fashionable in your own eyes…but in the eyes of the experts it is anything but.

Paul tells us what we shouldn’t be wearing first and foremost; the old that we must take off and remove from our spiritual wardrobes.

He first of all mentions…

A. Lying, vs. 25

Seems simple enough, doesn’t it?

Possibly not, remember Paul was writing this to the CHURCH of Ephesus; supposedly a bunch of born again believers.

This word for “lying” or “falsehood” comes from the Greek “pseudos” which means false or fake and it comes from the same Greek root used by Jesus in John 8:44

You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.