New Life/New Me - Jay Jefferson 1/1/2023

Ephesians 4: 17-24

1.       Statistics
2. Dr Tony Evans Statement

The heart of our problem in our nation today-in our lives, families, churches, and communities-can be captured and summarized in these verses found in 2 Chronicles 15, a portion of God's Word talking about ancient Israel:

 

For many days Israel was without the true God and without a teaching priest and without law.... In those times there was no peace to him who went out or to him who came in, for many disturbances afflicted all the inhabitants of the lands. Nation was crushed by nation, and city by city, for God troubled them with every kind of distress (WV. 3,5-6)

 

The first thing missing was "the true God."

The Israelites had not become atheists. Nor was their attendance at the temple down. The sacrificial fires continued to burn. Yet despite all of their religious activity, Israel had lost a correct view of the true God. They wanted a convenient God, one they could control. They wanted a kingdom without a King. They wanted a figurehead, a puppet with the trappings of kingship only. Yet any god or king you can boss around isn't the true God, or the true King. The true God does not adjust to you. You adjust to Him. Our culture doesn't want the true God either. Our culture wants to pay homage only to offer a nice little prayer before public meetings.

 

Yet any time we simply pay homage without aligning our thoughts and actions under God, we are reinforcing our culture's false view of God as a harmless deity who doesn't have anything significant to say about the educational, scientific, entertainment, civic, political, familial, legal, or racial issues of the day. Doing so, we seek to leave God the title of King in name only, but give His powers and authority to others, or even ourselves.

 

III.        Alienated From God          vs. 17-19

 

1.         Learn…Heard…Taught      vs. 20 & 21

              

              Put Off The Old Man            vs. 22

 

             Renewed                             vs. 23

 

            Put On The New Man          vs. 24

1. S. Lewis Statement

 

BLAKE WROTE the Marriage of Heaven and Hell. If I have written of their Divorce, this is not because I think myself a fit antagonist or so great a genius, nor even because I feel at all sure that I know what he meant. But in some sense or another the attempt to make that marriage is perennial. The attempt is based on the belief that reality never presents us with an absolutely unavoidable "either-or"; that, granted skill and patience and (above all) time enough, some way of embracing both alternatives can always be found; that mere development or adjustment or refinement will somehow turn evil into good without our being called on for a final and total rejection of anything we should like to retain. 

 

This belief I take to be a disastrous error. You cannot take all luggage with you on all journeys; on one journey even your right hand and your right eye may be among the things you have to leave behind. We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the center: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision. Even on the biological level life is not like a pool but like a tree. It does not move towards unity but away from it and the creatures grow further apart as they increase in perfection. Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good. 

 

I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A wrong sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot "develop" into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, "with backward mutters of dissevering power"-or else not. It is still "either-or." If we insist on keeping Hell (or even earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell.