©2005 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

10-23-05

Turning Back The Tide

10/23/05 Turning Back The Tide

I have run into a problem

and I think it is only fair

for me to let you know about it.

For more than two years now

we have been in involved in a study of the book of Ephesians.

The letter is not a long one,

in fact it’s only six chapters.

Of course we’ve taken some detours along the way

that have taken us out of the book for a while,

but still we’ve been joined to this book

for a considerable length of time as a church.

Our study of the book

has brought us to Paul’s concluding comments

in the second half of the sixth chapter.

It is reasonable to assume

that we will soon finish our study of this letter

and move on to something else.

But here’s my problem.

Last week I began writing up

what was intended to be a nice, concise summary of the book

in preparation for our return to our study of the sixth chapter.

But as I began writing up my summary

I noticed so many things in the letter

that we skipped over

or failed to focus on in what I would consider to be a proper way.

If you were here last week,

you saw what happened.

Within the first few minutes

I gave up all pretext of offering a brief overview of the book

and we never even came close to making it out of my introductory comments.

And now this week

I once again ran into the same problem.

As I was glancing through the letter

I noticed the most remarkable passage

that I don’t believe we did anything with

when we encountered it in our movement through the book.

It is found in the 4^th chapter

in that section in which Paul is describing for us

how God’s creation of this new life within us

and our being the physical body of Jesus Christ here on this earth

should play out in our lives in a practical way on a daily basis.

And keep in mind

that these verses are deeply rooted

in the three chapters that come before them,

chapters in which Paul reveals to us

our true spirit identity in Christ,

chapters in which Paul explains how God has now joined us to Christ,

and equipped us with the Spirit of God working in and through us

so that the manifold wisdom of God Himself

can now be revealed to all of creation through us.

He then tells us

that our fulfillment of this calling

is directly linked to the degree to which we are “... able to comprehend ...what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

And what I want us to see here

are the dual messages

that we see running through this letter,

the first telling us about the change Christ has already accomplished within our spirits,

and the second talking with us about the way in which that change

will affect the life we live in this physical world here and now.

In the first half of the book

we have Paul presenting to us

a vivid picture of changes that he tells us

have already taken place within the life of every Christian.

It’s all past tense.

It’s all a completed work of God within our lives.

We WERE dead in our trespasses and sins,

but God has NOW made us alive with Christ,

and raised us up with Him,

and seated us with Christ in the spirit world.

He has already formed us into a new, holy creation of God.

These truths,

and our acceptance of them

then form the foundation upon which Paul builds

everything else he tells us in this letter.

And yes, I do understand how confusing

and how difficult this is to our minds.

Everything we know,

everything we feel,

everything our human logical processes tell us

seems to contradict these truths.

If I really am a new creation in Christ,

if I really have died to my former life

and been joined to Christ

and am now seated with Him in heavenly places,

then why do I have to begin every day of my life

by consciously fighting my way back into some sort of mental peace and hope in my God.

And why do I have to wade through all of this internal sewage

day after day after day?

Why do I still fear?

Why do I still doubt?

Why do choices of trust in my God still sometimes come so hard?

Perhaps the most vivid nighttime experience of my life

took place around 2:00 a.m.

one night when our daughter, Joni, was still in grade school.

Both Sandee and I were deeply asleep

when, all of the sudden,

our little girl began screaming in absolute terror.

We both bolted out of bed

and I frantically felt my way to the door

and then fumbled with the knob

in an attempt to get to her room

to find out who was trying to kill her.

When we entered her room

and turned on the light

we found her curled up in a terrified ball in the corner of her bed,

and as soon as she saw me

she screamed, “Daddy, the bees! The bees! Kill the bees!”

She’d had a hideous nightmare

in which she knew that all the blankets and sheets in her bed

were swarming with bees

and she wanted me to find them all and kill them.

Her heart was racing,

her bloodstream was filled with adrenaline,

her mind was full of vivid images of swarms of bees everywhere,

and her emotions were flooded with all the terror that comes with such images.

And the first thing I said to her

after seeing what was going on was, “Sweetie, there are no bees.”

That is the kind of communication situation

that we have going on

between us and our God

in the first three chapters of Ephesians.

When I told my daughter that there were no bees,

my words seemed to contradict

everything she knew to be true at that moment.

Every aspect of her being - her mind, her emotions, her will

were all engaged in a frantic battle

against the swarm of enemies around her.

She knew what was true,

she felt what was true,

and what was true to her at that moment was a swarm of bees in her bed.

And when our God tells us

that we were dead in our sins,

but we are now alive in Christ

and that we are seated securely and eternally with Him in heavenly places,

the words seem to deny everything our mind and emotions know to be true.

The great difference between Joni and the bees

and us and what our God is telling us

is that when Joni was finally fully awake

she knew the truth,

whereas we, on the other hand,

will not be fully awake

and will not know the truth with absolute clarity

until the instant we depart from these bodies

and leave all of our mental and emotional lies behind.

And for now,

as long as we remain in these bodies,

every single day when we open our eyes in the morning

we will once again have to fight our way back through our own personal swarm of bees,

back into the acceptance of a truth

that will seem to contradict nearly everything we feel

and nearly everything we see going on around us.

So why, if we really are recreated in Christ,

with hearts forever united in love with our God,

why do we still see such corruption in our lives,

and why does doubt come so easily,

and why does trust and rest in our God come with such difficulty?

Because our spirits have been reborn,

but our minds, memories, and ingrained emotional responses have not.

And as a result,

most of our reasoning processes,

most of our memories,

and nearly all of our emotional responses

seem to deny the truth of who we really are in Christ,

and of who He really is

and how He relates to us.

For us

the bed still swarms with bees.

Which brings me to the passage in Ephesians

that I got stalled out on this past week.

It is positioned half way through the letter,

and it is designed by Paul

to give us a concise statement

of how the truth contained in this letter

will play out in our lives in a practical way.

He talks with us

both about what has changed

and what has not,

and what we can expect as we seek to bring our daily living

into greater and greater conformity with the truth.

It’s found in Ephesians 4:17-24

and it reads,

So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

And maybe the best way for me to show you what I want us to see here

is to walk through these verses phrase by phrase.

Paul begins by repeating the call

that he used to introduce this second half of his letter.

After sharing with us the truth about who we now are in Christ

and who Christ now is in us,

in Ephesians 4:1 he said,

Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called...,

and then here in 4:17 he says it again,

“So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk...”.

Our calling will not change,

it cannot change.

We are the physical body of Christ on this earth.

And we will become effective in fulfilling this calling

as we keep our daily life

in line with that calling.

His purpose is clear.

He’s not asking us to become anything.

We already are what we need to be - the holy ones of God on this earth.

He’s asking us

to bring our daily choices

in line with who we already are.

But here in verse 17

he approaches this calling

by way of a contrast.

He says that we are to walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk...

And for this to make sense

I need to let you know

that Paul is using the term “Gentiles” here

to refer to all of us prior to Christ’s entrance into our lives.

What then follows is quite simply

Paul’s description of the normal course of life without God,

a description in which he lists five internal characteristics

and three external characteristics

of a life lived outside of Christ.

The first time I attempted to write up notes for this morning

I spent most of one whole afternoon

immersed in an academic study

of each of these progressive steps laid out by Paul in this passage.

It made for a rather nice academic study,

but in the end it missed the point

and, I think, would have wasted our time

because Paul’s point is simply

that when we enter this world

with our spirits turned away from the Light

it is inevitable that our lives take on a futility,

and a darkness,

and a level of self-imposed ignorance

that keeps us ever learning and yet never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

Trying to find purpose in life,

and a reason for getting out of bed each morning,

and true self-acceptance,

and a sense of hope for the future both for ourselves and for those who come after us

without peace with God through Jesus Christ

is a terrifying business.

In a brilliant one-line statement

the Apostle John captured the three places we always run to for our God substitutes.

1JO 2:16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.

The lust of the eyes...

What will make me happy?

What can I get,

what can I buy,

what can I possess that will make me feel really good?

What’s on your “If I Only Had It I’d Be Happy” list right now?

We all have one, don’t we.

What was on it a week ago?

A year ago?

Did it make you happy when you got it?

Did it fill that emptiness inside?

Did it quiet the demons

and give you the deep sense of fulfillment you were looking for?

The lust of the flesh...

The exhilarating adrenaline high

that comes from a conquering sexual relationship,

the physical thrill

that occurs in any form of intense competition,

the more subtle pleasures of fine dining,

the seductive, destructive blast of addicting drugs,

these and an endless variety of other physical pleasures

all have the potential to appeal to the same need within us -

our longing to find a purpose for our existence apart from our Creator.

The boastful pride of life...

We try to control others or

to manipulate them so that they bestow on us their affirmation and praise.

We seek positions of power and recognition

so that we can look at ourselves and say,

"See, I have value! I matter! It is good that I was born!"

Some of us try to affirm our value

by gaining control over our marriage partner or our children.

We may rule them with an iron hand,

or we may use more subtle techniques of manipulation,

making certain no one in our little kingdom acts without our approval.

Deep inside, our fear of insignificance

drives us to grasp at anything that may help to affirm

that we are really in control,

or that we are really respected and honored.

We hang plaques on our walls.

We take pictures of ourselves with famous people.

We collect trophies and certificates.

See, world! I matter! I'm important! I have value!

And please understand, my friends,

I’m not saying all these things are necessarily wrong.

I’m simply saying that apart from Jesus Christ it’s all we have

in our desperate attempt to find peace with ourselves

and purpose for life,

and it is never ever enough.

And this is what Paul is talking about

when he tells us that outside of Christ we live...

in the futility of our mind,

darkened in our understanding,

excluded from the life of God,

filled with ignorance about the way life really is,

because of the hardness of our heart.

And it doesn’t take too many years into our adult lives

before we begin to realize that nothing we do

will ever fill the aching emptiness within us.

It doesn’t matter how many people may sing our praises,

or how many things we may accumulate,

or how frantically we search for fulfillment in physical pleasures,

none of it can ever bring us peace with ourselves.

In fact,

most of the time

the moral compromises we make

in our futile search for fulfillment

leave us feeling even more empty.

And outside of the intervention of the Spirit of God in our lives

Paul tells us that rather than recognizing our helplessness and need,

we will harden our hearts

and intensify our search for meaning

in the same empty pits that failed us before.

EPH 4:19 and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.

But then Paul turns a light on in the darkness

as he reminds us

of what we entered into

when we entered into Christ.

EPH 4:20-24 But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

And the main thing I want us to see here

is the way in which Paul prepares us

for the remarkable ongoing redemptive process

that God seeks to lead us through each day

as we live our lives in Him.

And first of all

let me point out

the crucial attitude he wants us to have

toward that old life we lived prior to our union with Christ.

Paul knows that all of us brought with us into our life with Christ

our own personal Gentile history.

He calls it our “former manner of life”

and then labels it our “old self”.

But he doesn’t stop there.

He then tells us that even now

the principles that governed life in this old self

continue to exert tremendous pressure on our lives.

Our learned emotional responses,

our filtered memories of the past,

our reasoning processes upon which we base our choices -

all of these continue to war against us.

And when you see this happening in your own life

don’t be surprised.

Every one of us

invested years into trying to figure out

how to live life without our God.

We each created protective defensives,

emotional hiding places from our pain,

and deeply imbedded lies about ourselves.

It was that pain

and those lies

that caused us to build up those protective callouses around our souls

that Paul was talking about.

But then he offers us the two key phrases

that form the foundation for our turning back the tide of our lives.

The first is that phrase, “just as truth is in Jesus”.

And with that phrase

he is pointing us back to the first three chapters of his letter,

back to what he’s already told us

about the way in which our Savior

has already picked us up in His almighty arms,

about how He now holds us close to Himself in love,

and about how our spirits are right now seated with Him in heavenly places.

He is pointing us back

to all those things we heard Him say to us,

things that sounded so good,

but we couldn’t really hear or believe.

There are no bees.

“I sought you for myself before you were even born.

I called you to myself when you thought I was the enemy.

I eagerly wait for you to open your eyes each morning

so that we can live another day together.

I delight in you, my precious child,

in My Spirit’s presence in you,

and in your unique expression of Me in this world.”

...just as truth is in Jesus...

And then the second phrase

that forms the foundation for us

in our turning back the tide of our Gentile lives

is that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind.

And right here is the battleground

on which we are called to fight each day.

Knowing that truth is in Jesus,

Paul then tells us

that our great calling comes

in each day choosing once again

to remind ourselves of that truth

and then choosing to believe it.

And most of the time

they will be choices that we make

that will seem to be in direct contradiction

to what we feel.

We feel like the bed is full of bees.

But what we feel

simply is not true.

And then just two additional comments before I close.

The first is that frequently

we need to allow someone else into our nightmare

enough so that they can tell us the truth

that we cannot tell ourselves.

Sometimes we need to allow someone else to believe for us

until the adrenaline subsides

and we can begin to believe ourselves.

And then second,

I would just say

that after 40 years in the family of God

this mental renewing process

is still very much of a daily active necessity for me.

Every night when I close my eyes in sleep

I once again forget the truth.

And every morning

I must once again remind myself of it all over again.

As long as I remain in this body,

on this earth,

my default setting in life

is always in the lies of my flesh.

And reclaiming the truth each day

is the battle we are called to fight.