Bible Passage: Ephesians 4:17-24
Pastor: Joel Jenswold
Sermon Date: August 8, 2021

Bulletin August 8, 2021

In the name of, and to the eternal glory of, Jesus,

Our culture is obsessed with the whole concept of the “makeover.”  People love the home makeover shows.  You know the ones.  There’s Fixer Upper with Chip and Joanna, and there’s Design on a Dime, and Extreme Home Makeover:  Home Edition, and Love It or List It, and on and on and on.  For whatever reason people love to tune in to watch houses be transformed.

Of course, there is also the whole realm of “making over” people.  How many commercials don’t feature a “before” and “after” picture of someone who has used the product or followed the diet or had the treatment.  And again, there is no shortage of shows that feature making someone over, from the hairstyle they have to the clothes they wear.  We just can’t get enough of makeovers!

Now, your home or wardrobe may never have been featured on a makeover show, but you have been made over.  It is the makeover Paul writes about in our text for today.  It is an extreme makeover to be sure! It is the makeover that happens when Christ and his love enter a person’s home and heart.  This morning, Paul will talk to us as those who have been Made Over…in Christ.

Every good makeover story has a “before” picture.  Paul begins with a “before” picture for the Ephesians.  He comes at it from this angle:  So I tell you this and testify to it in the Lord:  Do not walk any longer as the Gentiles walk. (v. 17)  He says “any longer.”  The implication is that at one time they DID walk as the unbelieving Gentiles walk.  And like so many “before” pictures, it isn’t very flattering!

Look at some of the details caught by Paul’s lens.  It captures this detail:  …in their futile way of thinking.   They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them.  (v. 17)  There’s a futility to the thinking of this world.  A uselessness and purposelessness.  To try to understand creation apart from its Creator will always be an exercise in futility!  Think about man’s answers to the great existential questions of life.  Who am I?  Man’s answer: “I am a highly evolved animal.”  How did I get here?  Man’s answer:  “Big Bang and a slow process of upward, beneficial mutation.”  Why am I here?  Man’s answer:  “Eat, drink, and be merry, maybe?”  Where am I going?  Man’s answer:  “Six feet under.”  This life for man is an “alien life form” from what God intended!

Paul mentions the hardness of their hearts (v. 18)  and the fact they have no sense of shame (v. 19).  Sinful hearts can become hard-as-marble, so that good sense and good advice and appeals to conscience bounce right off.  People lose their sense of shame.  They don’t blush anymore.  The Greek word used has the sense of being “past feeling.”  Sin does that.  We see a young man become a modern day prodigal son, who travels life down a reckless and sinful path.  His chosen path is destroying everything good in his life:  his marriage is failing, his children hardly know their dad, friends stay away, he will soon be fired from his job.  Everything is crumbling around him.  He doesn’t care.  He only cares about his sin!  He is “past feeling” about the other stuff. 

Paul talks about people giving themselves over to sensuality, with an ever-increasing desire to practice every kind of impurity (v. 19).  Man takes this body, created for such honor and dignity, and he gives it over to a life of “feeling good.”  He dirties his body for a time, and then looks for “dirtier dirt.”  He wallows in mud but needs to find even “muddier mud.”  He delights in filth but then wants to find “filthier filth.”     

It’s an ugly picture.  It’s the ugly nature of sinful man.  And if you look carefully, you will see a partial resemblance to someone you know.  Does it look a little like the person who looks back at you in the mirror?  Each one of us has a sinful nature.  There is a part of each one of us that is completely messed up in how it thinks about things, a part of each one of us that doesn’t blush at sin, a part of each one of us that likes sin and wants to sin more and more.

But listen to what Paul says next:  But you did not learn Christ in that way. (v. 20)   The Ephesians hadn’t learned Christ that way.  I have taught Christian doctrine many, many times through the years and not once did I ever teach a lesson called “How to Sin without Shame.”  Or “How to Give Yourself Over to Sensuality.”  The Ephesians hadn’t learned Christ that way; but they had indeed learned Christ! 

And you have, too.  You have learned Christ!  And in learning Christ, you have learned of the most stunning makeover ever!  Here I am referring to the one that happened to HIM.  You learned that God’s Son exchanged the glory of heaven to come to this sewer we call earth.  And with sin and sinners all around him, he lived as this one, holy man.  But then he is madeover…in our sin.  He wraps himself in our dirt and mud and filth.  He made himself ugly with our sin.  He became so ugly to make us so beautiful.  He wraps himself in sin’s ugliness and is punished for it so that he can wrap us in the beauty of forgiveness and righteousness.  

This beautiful makeover happens in the sight of God through faith and it is your ticket to heaven!  But this makeover of your STATUS before God in Christ also causes a makeover in your CONDUCT right now!  That is why Paul says to the Ephesians, to you and me:  As far as your former way of life is concerned, you were taught to take off the old self, which is corrupted by its deceitful desires, and to be renewed continually in the spirit of your mind, and to put on the new self, created to be like God in righteousness and true holiness. (v. 22-24)  It is not difficult to picture what Paul is saying.  Imagine two robes.  One of them is old and dirty and smells like bad BO.  The other is new and spotless and smells wonderful.  The old, smelly one is your sinful nature; the new, clean one is your new nature.  It is so special it does not occur naturally in nature; it must be created by God to be like God in righteousness and true holiness.

Here is the Christian life:  daily taking off that old, smelly robe of sin and putting on that new robe of righteous and holy living.  But now you ask, “How do I do that?”  It is the life of repentance and faith.  We take off sin –  we scan our life for dirt and filth and we confess it, we give it, to God.  And we embrace our baptism and what Paul said happened there:  For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. (Galatians 3:27)  You resolve with the Spirit’s help, “I will step out into the world today not wearing my smelly old robe, but the new righteous, holy one!  I will wear Christ today…in my home, in my school, at work, in my leisure time!”

So go forth into the world, dear friends!  Remember that in Holy Baptism you were born again and anew!  Remember that in the absolution Christ strengthens and confirms this new life by declaring you forgiven, righteous, holy!  Remember that in the Holy Supper your new life is fed by, and on, Christ!  Remember, you have been completely and eternally made over…in Christ!

Amen.     

Permission to podcast / stream the music in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-716390. All rights reserved.

If you would like to give an offering after today’s worship, click here.