“Former & Present Way of Living” Ephesians 4:17-24
- Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, preached this sermon on March 12, 2023
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Audio Transcript
If you have your Bibles with you today, we’re going to be in Ephesians 4. Ephesians 4, 17 through 24.
I’ll begin reading verse 17. Therefore I say this and testify in the Lord. You should no longer walk as the Gentiles do. In the futility of their thoughts. They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them and because of the hardness of their hearts, they became callous and gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity, with a desire for more and more.
But that is not how you came to know Christ, assuming you heard about him and were taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus, to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires, to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness, in righteousness and purity of the truth. God, we thank you today that we once again have the opportunity to spend time in your Word together. We ask that you would impress upon our hearts the true meaning of the text, and also that you would guide us into changes that we might need to make in our life. Help us also see to the encouragement that you have for us here today, Father, that you loved us and you’ve provided for us. All the things that we need for godly living and a right relationship with you.
All the things that we could not do for ourselves, you’ve done in your son, Jesus Christ, through his life, his death, his burial, and his resurrection. In his name we pray. Amen. Verse 17. Paul says, Therefore I say this and testify in the Lord, you should no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thoughts.
Paul is talking to believers here, but he’s telling them that they have to make a choice not to walk in the same way that the Gentiles do. In other words, don’t walk like the heathen. Don’t walk and your life as if you are an unbeliever. When we think about the idea of walking here, we’re talking about the lifestyle, the way we live, the things that we do, the things that we talk about, the places we go, all the relationships that we have. And the opposite of the walk that we’re supposed to have according to the Spirit, would be the word trespassing in Scripture.
That we choose not to live God’s way. We choose to go down a path that is contrary to his. That’s what the unsaved are doing. They’re trespassing, they’re walking in a pathway that is not the way that we are supposed to walk as believers. Again, Paul says you should no longer walk.
This is a choice that Paul told the Ephesians that they needed to make and act upon. So the question is, is it possible for a Christian to live a life st style like an unbeliever? And the answer to that is definitely yes. A believer can choose to not walk in the way that God would have them to walk. But for a believer to do that, it’s a futile way to live.
Because in the spirit of a true believer, there’s going to be a constant turmoil between the Holy Spirit that is inside of us, that is speaking against what our fleshly body is telling us that it still wants us to do. A true believer is going to have no peace in their heart if they’re walking like an unbeliever. And there’s going to be a sense of a lack of joy and a close relationship with God. Like I said, it’s possible for a believer to walk like an unbeliever, but they’re not going to be happy that way. It’s like a chicken that’s trying to fly.
The chicken can fly, but it’s not very beautiful and it’s not very comfortable. So it is with a Christian that’s trying to live a worldly lifestyle. Whereas on the other hand, a person that is unbeliever, when they’re living in sin, they’re like that eagle that’s just soaring through the sky. They do it easily and they love it and they enjoy it. We have the parable of the prodigal son that pictures this scenario of someone who is a son decides they don’t want to live like a son anymore, but they still want the benefits of the inheritance.
In the story of the prodigal son, the son wanted his inheritance and he wanted a wild lifestyle too. He’s a picture of the believer that is in God’s family, but he’s also wanting to live like the world. For a while, it seemed like the prodigal son had the best of both worlds. But eventually he ran out of money and he ended up feeding pigs, which was the lowest of the low for a Jewish man. At that point, he realized what a fool he had been and he decided to return to his father.
Now, the father didn’t pursue him all this time, but we find him waiting patiently for his son to return to him. If we are children of God, we will always be the children of God. He never leaves us if we decide to walk on a different path, like the unbelievers, he allows us to do that. But all the time he’s waiting, he’s willing to forgive us so that we can return to cleanse us from the pig pen where we’ve been living. So Paul says, choose to stay close to the Father.
Don’t choose to live like a lost sinner and wander off. You may be happy for a while, but it’s not going to be a true happiness that lasts. Because a true believer is going to desire to go home and return to the Father eventually. Whereas a non believer is going to be happy to be away from the Father. The non believer is going to be happy to be away from God and will never have a desire to return to Him.
We’re going to look at Romans 8 now and look at two different mindsets that were presented here. We have the mindset or the mind of the flesh, and we have the mindset or the mindset. The mind or the mindset of the spirit. The flesh. We’re talking about this earthly body that we have.
And the mindset of the spirit is what a believer receives when they accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. The Holy Spirit comes into them, gives them a new life that was not there before. The Holy Spirit comes in and solves the problem that happened to Adam and Eve. When they ate from the tree that they weren’t supposed to, they died externally, meaning eventually they were going to die. And their body was affected by sin from that point on, but their spirit died within them and Jesus Christ died on the cross allows us to have that spirit to come back to life.
In Romans 8:5 we read, for those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on the things of the flesh. But those who live according to the spirit have their minds set on the things of the Spirit. The mindset of the flesh is hostile to God because it does not submit to God’s law. Indeed, it is unable to do so. We come to faith in Christ.
The Holy Spirit gives us this new spiritual life inside of us. But even though our spirit has been quickened, it’s been healed and is brought to life through salvation. We still have this same old body, this body that’s affected by sin, a body that gets old, old, that’s affected by disease and eventually is going to die. We praise the Lord that one day he tells us we’re going to have glorified bodies when Jesus Christ returns. And at that point we will have a living spirit inside of us and we will have a glorified body.
But in the meantime, our flesh remains unchanged in this life. It must die someday before God can make it new. And as long as we have this body of flesh, it continues to desire to follow the ways of the world. Whereas unbelievers have no choice in this. It tells us that they are unable to submit to God’s law because they’re perfectly content with a dead spirit just living in a body that’s also dead.
They’re living according to the flesh. But believers however, have have been set free from the bondage to the flesh. And according to the text, they’re free now to live not according to their body anymore, but to live according to the Spirit in them, in the flesh. Without the life giving Spirit, it’s impossible to be reconciled from God and it is impossible to submit to and to fulfill the law of God. But what we could not do for ourselves, our body couldn’t achieve salvation.
Our body couldn’t save itself. Instead Christ did that for us. Scripture tells us that he came and he lived in a body without sin and he lived a perfect life. And he completely submitted to God’s law, not breaking any of the law. And therefore in his perfection he was preparing to be a perfect sacrifice for our sin.
We are unable even to die for ourselves because of the sin in our life. But Jesus Christ, like the lambs and the bulls and the rams in the Old Testament, the perfect sacrifice, shed his blood on the cross for us so that we might now have the new life giving spirit within us. The believer has a choice between these two mindsets. Romans 8 tells us in verse 9, you however are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. We still have our body, but now our main residence is in this Spirit that lives inside of us.
Verse 10 says, now if Christ is in you, the body is still dead because of sin, but the Spirit gives life because of right righteousness. Unbelievers are in the flesh. They are dead both spiritually and bodily. But believers now with this new life are in the Spirit. They’re alive inside in this Spirit that lives inside of us.
But we still have the body that is succumbing to the effects of sin and death. And that life giving Spirit makes us aware that there’s now a difference between the way we want to live in our Spirit and it’s contrary to the way that our flesh is telling us to live. And Scripture tells us we’re going to continue to have that struggle until Jesus Christ returns and he saves our body also and gives us a new one. So the believer has this choice. Romans 8:12 says, so then, brothers and sisters, we are not obligated to the flesh, whereas unbelievers are completely obligated to the flesh.
They’re in slavery to the flesh. In essence, they’re in slavery to Satan. They want to follow that will. They want to go down that path. But, brothers and sisters, when Jesus Christ died for us on the cross, he not only saved us, but it tells us that he redeemed us, meaning he paid the price for us.
He redeemed us out of slavery to the world, slavery to Satan, so that now we can live according to the Spirit. Verse 13 says, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. Now, the emphasis here isn’t that we put to death the deeds of the body, but it’s by the Spirit of God working inside of us. It’s not because of anything that we can do, but we have to submit to him so that he can teach and train our body not to live the way that it wants to. The choice here isn’t, well, I’ll just work harder to be a better Christian, or I’ll do better, or I’ll do more good things.
The choice is to say, God, we are allowing your spirit to accomplish completely in us what he wants to do. To be led by God’s spirit means we let him continue to work in us and through us in the way that he wants to do it. Not according to our will, not according to our flesh. It’s like somebody who’s driving in a car and there was a song out. The words were giving the will to Jesus.
Remember the song, jesus, Take the Wheel? That’s right. Well, just thinking that through, it means telling God, I want the Holy Spirit to take the wheel of my life. Now, have you ever been driving in a car and you had anybody reach out and grab the steering wheel when you’re trying to drive? It’s a scary thing.
You can’t continue to hold onto the steering wheel of your life if you’re really allowing the Spirit to drive. But not only does he want to steer your vehicle, but he may decide to take you to places that you never wanted to go in the past. Or he may look in your backseat or in your trunk and say, you know, there’s some luggage here that you really don’t need this. If you’re going to let me take control of your life, you need to let me set that Outside the car, he might tell you have to listen to a different radio station. He might tell you that, you know, you can’t let those people ride in this vehicle with you anymore as you travel down this road of life because they’re leading you into sin.
And the Holy Spirit may even say, you know, you need to let this person ride with you. And it’s somebody that you never would have wanted to ride with in the past. The whole thing is that when we’re giving our life over to the Spirit, we’re saying, anything, any place, anywhere that you want to go today, I’m willing to let you take me there and do those things. But it’s not only saying today, it’s saying, whatever happens next week and a year down the road, I’m not going to change my mind. You are in control.
That’s what we are supposed to do. We’re supposed to allow the Spirit to control us so that he puts to death the desires that we have in this sinful body that we are still carrying today. Romans 8 tells us in verse 3 that the law, in essence, was a failure in one way. For what the law could not do since it was weakened by the flesh, God did. So why did we have all these rules given to us?
Why do we have the 10 commands if God knew that we could not follow him? Well, that’s exactly what God was trying to show us. He was trying to say, look, you have all these laws, and we say, but we can’t follow them. We keep breaking them. And God says, exactly.
That’s what I want you to see. The law could not save you. You can’t save yourselves. Therefore, I’m going to do something. What the law could not do, God did.
No one can keep the law because breaking just one command is enough to make someone a sinner. Its purpose was to demonstrate that we needed another way. Its purpose was to demonstrate that we needed a savior to come in and do for us what we could not do for ourselves. And Scripture tells us that that’s exactly what God did. He provided what we needed.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. Jesus is the answer. So that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life going on. In Romans 8, what God did, it says, he condemned sin in the flesh by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh as a sin offering in order that the law’s requirement would be fulfilled in us. What did God do?
He condemned sin, and he put sin aside he condemned it by sending Jesus his Son. And it says that he came in the likeness of sinful flesh, meaning that he looked just like us. He had a real body just like us. He experienced the consequences of sin all around him. But he was not sinful.
He was like us, but not exactly like us. And he did this according to verse four, in order that the law’s requirement will be fulfilled in us. Jesus fulfilled the law’s requirement completely. And when we come to faith in him, we’re placed in him. So when God looks at us instead of seeing us and our failure, he sees Jesus Christ and He says, my beloved Son, you completely fulfilled the law.
Christ condemned sin instead of condemning us. Jesus came as a man and lived among us, experiencing the effects of sin, but never sinning himself. And then he died on the cross as an offering to atone or to cover our sins, to save us from them, to cleanse us from sin. He fulfilled the law in two ways, by living a sinless life. But he also fulfilled the law that there is the necessity that blood be shed for the remission or the forgiveness of sins.
He lived the life, and he also served as the perfect sacrifice. Therefore, to be truly saved, we have to fully rely on Christ to do the work for us instead of relying on ourselves to do the work. And that’s such a great temptation for people. We would rather save ourselves than asking the Lord to save us. We would rather be able to brag about it and say, you know, I’ve lived a wonderful life.
I’m better than other people. I’ve given so much to the church or to charity, and I attend church regularly. And I had this great pedigree because my mom was a Christian and my grandparents and everybody all the way back. But all those things make us brag. About who?
About ourselves. And if we’re bragging about ourselves in regard to our salvation, we’re saying things like, well, see what I’ve done. See how good I live. See how much better I am than others. But on the other hand, if we trust God alone to work in us, we start saying things like, see what Jesus has done because I can do nothing.
See how sinful I am, but see how perfect my Savior is. And see how I am the lowest of the low. And there’s no comparison of me to other people, because in God’s eyes and compared to him, we are all completely sinful. The former way of life. What does his life look like that we’re supposed to put aside?
Let’s go back to Ephesians chapter 4. And Paul gives us some characteristics of the former way of life. He says in verse 18 that they are darkened in their understanding. They’re excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them. And because of the hardness of their hearts.
They became callous and gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity, with a desire for more and more. So just briefly look at those words there. First, Paul says that they were darkened. They don’t even know that they’re lost until they hear the Gospel and the Spirit of God works in their hearts. They’re like an eclipse of the sun or an eclipse of the moon.
They don’t see the sun, you don’t see the moon, even though it’s still there. And that way that they were darkened, they’re also excluded from the life of God. Meaning that they don’t even know what real life is like because they’re dead. They’re no more than a corpse in a casket having understanding of life because they’re not experiencing it. Excluded from the life of God.
Also, Paul says that they’re ignorant now. They think that they’re wise. They think that what they’re doing is wonderful and great and they’re enjoying following that path. But they’re ignorant because they don’t have the knowledge of true faith in Jesus Christ. Then they get to the point that they begin to harden.
It means that their hearts become petrified. People that are following the way of the world, following the way of the flesh, they want to harden their hearts. They want to put aside Scripture. They want to say God doesn’t exist. They’re doing whatever they can so that they don’t feel the guilt, so they don’t feel shame, so they don’t feel lost in one way or another.
Not only do they harden themselves, but eventually they become calloused. Like you have a callus on your hand. It gets so tough that it doesn’t matter whether you poke it or pinch it or whatever, you just don’t feel the pain of it anymore. And so it is with people that continue to turn away from the Lord that they get to the point that they don’t even understand that they’re separated from Him. They don’t have any desire to return because their conscience is seared and it barely functions anymore.
In the end, this lifestyle, it leads to promiscuity. That throughout Scripture and civilizations and false religions, they all go down to this path where they pursue sexual excess. They do excessive things to obtain pleasure. Especially in all types of sexual perversion. And even when they get to this point, then they’re continually looking for things other than God to meet their needs.
It says that they still have a desire for more and more people that don’t follow the Lord will never be completely satisfied with. By following the ways of the world. The emptiness that they are trying to fill with promiscuous sexual practices will never be filled. And we see that in the cult religions in the New Testament and in the Old Testament. Again, they all eventually involve sexual practices because Satan is moving people continually in that direction away from the Lord.
How did the world get to this place? How did we get from Eden to where we are today? Let’s go back to Romans chapter one and I begin reading in verse 21 says. For though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude. Adam and Eve knew God.
They knew him intimately and very personally. And Adam lived for over 900 years telling people about what God had done and how he had created them and given them the world. But even with his own son Cain, there was a choice not to glorify God anymore or to even show gratitude. After Cain killed his brother Abel, God didn’t slay him, he didn’t kill him. God was very gracious to him and saying, you, yes, you’re going to suffer a punishment, you’re going to wander, but you’re not going to die.
But we don’t see in Cain any attitude of giving praise to God that he spared him, or any gratitude. Instead, with the rest of the world, his thinking became worthless. And that was what happened with the minds of the people as they turned from the Lord. What they were thinking that they thought was so wonderful had no value in it. And their hearts became senseless and darkened.
They claimed to be wise. They thought that they had all the answers. But they became fools and instead exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man. Birds, four footed animals and reptiles. They made idols that looked like people.
They made idols that looked like birds. They made idols, idols that looked like cattle. They even made idols that looked like reptiles. Things that were hideous and awful to look at. They gave up our true relationship with the Creator of the universe in all of his glory.
They gave that up for these things that were ugly and really unappealing. They had the direct testimony of Adam and Eve. But even while he was alive, people began to turn against the Lord. And all their thoughts in seeking spiritual life became worthless. Even at the Tower of Babel they were choosing Another way to have a religion.
They thought that they would build something that would honor them up to the heavens, that they could speak with the gods. But in all of this, their thoughts were futile, their thoughts were wrong. They claimed to be wise. They gave up the glorious Creator and they decided instead to serve the creature instead of what had made all of the creation. This was the downward spiral that they were following.
And in verse 25 it says they exchanged the truth of God for a lie. And instead they worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator who is praised forever. Amen. And so it is today that people still have the choice. They’re either going to worship God, they’re going to worship things, or they’re going to worship themselves.
And Satan is continually pushing people down this spiral. He’s nudging them, and some people are running headlong down it to serve themselves and things instead of God. What is the prescription for this? What do we need to do? We come back now to Ephesians, chapter 4, 4, 20.
But that is not how you came to know Christ, assuming you heard about him and were taught by him as the truth is in Jesus. Back in Romans, they exchanged the truth of God for a lie. The prescription is now that we give up the lie of what the world is teaching, what our flesh is telling us, and instead except the truth that is in Jesus Christ. When we come to know him after we’ve heard about him, his death, his burial, and his resurrection, he continues to teach us through the word that he’s given to us. He continues to teach us by His Spirit that lives in us.
The prescription is to follow him instead of the ways of the world. Verse 22. We read now about three different things that Paul says needs to happen in our lives. First is, it says in verse 22, to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires. The second thing is to be renewed in the spirit of your minds.
And the third thing is to put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth. We talk about taking off here. We’re basically talking about taking off your clothes. We’re getting rid of the way we used to live. Change your clothes, get rid of the old ones.
Paul says you have to make that choice, to set it aside. But sometimes our old clothes, they feel really comfortable to us, so we want to hang on to them. And we’re like, well, I’ll sew that hole up or I’ll put A patch on there. I can mend that area in my life. But once again, we’re back to trying to do things ourselves in place of what God has done for us.
We shouldn’t even put those clothes in a closet where they’re going to be a temptation to pull them out and wear them again. But we’re talking about taking off our clothes. We. We can’t accomplish this in our own strength. Jesus died on the cross so that you now might be dressed in his righteousness.
All we have to do is ask him when we come to him for salvation. God, take off these worldly rags that I’m cherishing. Take off this sinful lifestyle that I’m trying to maintain. Your old clothes might be filthy with sin, or they might look really good. You might be great at picking out clothes and you might have this wonderful look.
In other words, people say, wow, that has to be a godly person because of what they do or how they talk or the way they pray or the things that they do at church. But if that’s an outfit that you’re wearing that you created yourself, it is in no way going to bring salvation in your life. The Pharisees who were trying to live according to the law, they looked great on the outside, but Jesus said that they were like whitewashed tombs. Inside, there was nothing but filth and death. They look great on the outside, but what they were doing for themselves and how they were trying to live.
And Jesus was saying, no, there’s got to be a change in your heart. The Spirit has to come in and give you life. And then you have to get rid of the clothes that you’ve made for yourselves and place yourself inside of me. Paul says, choose to put away the way that you were living. And then he tells us to be renewed.
And what that means here is it doesn’t just happen once and then we go on our way. We have to have a continual renewing of the life, the spiritual life inside of us. There has to be a continual struggle and a desire to put aside the old. It happens every single day in your mind that you get up and you decide, today I’m going to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. I’m going to set my fleshly desires aside.
I’m going to let the Spirit be in control, take off, be renewed daily. And then he says, now you have something great to put on. You have the new self that Jesus Christ has provided for you. Put on the robes of righteousness that God is providing to you through his Son, Jesus Christ. Once again Those robes cannot be your own making.
Jesus told the parable about the wedding feast where all the guests were invited in and the king had prepared special garments for everyone to wear. But there was one man who came in through a window, and he thought his robes were good enough the way they were. He might even thought that his robes looked better than what the king had provided. But he’s a picture of someone who was trying to enter into the family of God in his own strength, by his own best deeds. And what did the king do?
He cast him out. Because the only way to be part of the wedding feast, to be part of the family, was if you accepted the robes of righteousness that king, being God, provides to us through the Lord Jesus Christ. So we find ourselves between Romans and Ephesians with this constant struggle in our life. It’s like we have two dogs that are living inside of us. And this illustration is something my dad shared when I was a kid.
And I’ve heard it so many places, I don’t know where it originally started. But the key is that the dog you feed will succeed. And what we’re saying here is that the one dog is our fleshly desires to do things that we’re not supposed to do according to the world, but the other dog is our spiritual dog that the Holy Spirit has placed inside of us. And there’s going to be this constant battle throughout our life to follow the Spirit’s leading until we can finally divest ourselves of the body of flesh that we have. So what do you do?
Well, you have to decide. I’m going to feed my spirit instead of feeding my fleshly life. And eventually the dog that you feed the most is going to succeed in the way you live as a believer. If you continue to feed your flesh and strengthen it, then that’s the dog that’s going to come out on top. Whereas if you feed yourself spiritually, then that’s the dog that’s going to have the strength in your life.
The dog you feed will succeed. I’m going to give you four practical ways to feed your spirit. The first is in Second Corinthians, chapter 10, verses three through five. And here it is. To control your thoughts, Control your thoughts.
Verse 3 says, for although we live in the flesh, we’re still in the body. We do not wage war according to the flesh, since the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but are powerful through God. For the demolition of strongholds. The battle that you’re fighting is really not against your body. The battle is a spiritual battle that’s going on.
So things that you might do physically to strengthen yourself are not going to help you to put down the evil way of living. We have to depend upon the Spirit to fight that battle for us. And when we do, we’re going to demolish arguments and every proud thing that is raised up against the knowledge of God. And here’s the key, we take every thought captive to obey Christ. Your thoughts that you have throughout the day are extremely important.
They’re important in either that they’re going to lead you down a fleshly path or they’re going to lead you down a spiritual path. Therefore, if you are thinking about evil, if you’re thinking about sin, if you’re considering temptations, then what you’re doing is you’re opening up the door for Satan to move in to lead you to sin. You have to control your thoughts. But so many times we try to control our thoughts by saying, I can’t think about that. I can’t think about that.
No, I shouldn’t look at that, I can’t think about that. It reminds me of Sometimes I have a dream at night and it wakes me up because I’m doing some type of work and I don’t have the supplies or something isn’t going right. And then I try to go back to sleep and I have the same dream again. Things aren’t going right. I’m trying to get something finished.
So I wake up, then I go back to sleep. Get ever have that have happened. The dream just keeps going on and on and you can’t get rid of your mind. And first I start thinking, don’t think about that, don’t think about that, don’t think about that. And I just think more and more about it.
There has to be a change. So instead of not thinking about it, I usually get up and I go and I get something to eat. I might sit in my chair, I might read my Bible. I do something to change my mindset. So it is that scripture says, don’t spend so much time thinking about what you don’t need to think about.
Spend time thinking about things that you should be thinking about. Don’t concentrate on trying to think about not thinking about unspiritual things, but instead concentrate on thinking about spiritual things. Philippians 4:8 says, finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any moral excellence, and if there is anything praiseworthy, dwell on these things. When you fill your mind with good stuff, there’s not room for the evil stuff to come in and work there. And there are plenty of books.
You have the Bible, you have great music. There’s so much that you can continually fill your mind so that you’re so flooded with spiritual thoughts that the evil thoughts have less chance of coming in and filling your mind. Control your input. Control your thoughts. Then Ephesians 6:18 gives us another way that we renew our spirit continually, and that’s to pray.
Ephesians 6:18 says, Pray at all times in the spirit with every prayer and request, and stay alert with all perseverance and intercession for all the saints. As you’re continually filling your mind with things that are pure and holy and wonderful and spiritual, you also can talk to the Lord about these things. And when you are faced with an evil thought, when you’re faced with a temptation or someone that comes and tries to lead you astray, you don’t have to wait till tomorrow morning during devotions to pray about it. Stop and pray right then. Lord, help me to get past this thought.
Help me in this situation. Renew my mind right now so that I can not put on the ways of the world for even a few minutes here, but let me continue to to live controlled by you. Control your thoughts by putting good things into your mind. Pray continually. The last thing is that we need to know the word.
Second Timothy 3, 16, 17 tells us why God’s Word is so important. What does it actually do for us when we read it and study it? First it says that all scripture is inspired by God, meaning all of it is truth. It is what we are to continually to follow. And if it doesn’t agree with what the world is saying, there shouldn’t even be an argument in our mind.
Well, which way am I going to go? The flesh is going to say, follow the world, but the Spirit is going to say, no, stick to what the scripture says. And what does the scripture do for us? What’s profitable? First for teaching, meaning God left us with an instruction book not only on how to have faith and how to have righteousness, but it’s an instruction book on how to live.
So we have the teaching there if we will read it and study it. But God’s worst when we also spend time in it, it rebukes us. And it’s no fun to be rebuked. That’s when someone tells you you’re doing something wrong, and it can hurt, hurt, and it can sting. We shouldn’t neglect God’s word because it sometimes corrects us and rebukes us, even if it makes us feel bad.
But the wonderful thing about God’s Word, it doesn’t just get onto us and say, you’re doing something wrong, but it also is good for correcting meaning, okay, you shouldn’t do that, but now this is what you need to be doing in its place. It’s getting us back on the right place where we’re supposed to be going. And lastly, it’s good for training in righteousness. That means it continues to build us up. It continues to strengthen us so that we can fight the battle that we have in us between our flesh and our spirit more fully.
Verse 17 says that God’s Word does this so much for us, that the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work. Whatever we need, God has provided for us. He’s provided us salvation in His Son, he’s provided us direction in His Word, and He provides us power to fulfill these things in his spirit. Our emphasis always has to be on depending on what God has done for us because the tendency is to walk back in the flesh. And even though we feel like we’re doing the right things, to do things in our own strength and according to our own way goes against what he is doing in our life.
Know the Word, read it, listen to it, study it, memorize it, meditate on it. There’s so many ways that God wants to use it in your life to, to make you complete and to make you equipped. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, in our battle that we have against this flesh that we continue to carry with us, we just ask that you would work in our hearts and our lives. Father, we just have to submit to you, to allow you to direct us, to get rid of things, to guide us, to help us make decisions.
Father, we pray that you would instill in our minds and our hearts the need to put good things into our minds. Remind us to continually spend time in prayer because you’re continually walking beside us. Father, we don’t have to call you, we don’t have to text you, we don’t have to send an email. You’re there listening every step of the way, willing to help us. And Father, give us a desire for your word.
Show us how we can incorporate into our lives more and more that we might be fully equipped through it to do good works for you. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.