Yes, thank you, May. Good morning to everyone. Beautiful morning. I see I have the halo again today. So the leaves will come before too long. Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers. And just thinking this morning, praying a little bit about what a challenging job that is and how vital and important it is. And a special thank you to the mother of my children, who has done such a faithful job in raising children and persevering, persevering at times, I would say.

Okay, well, we're working through Ephesians chapter four. The song we just sang really is the essence of the message that the secret to the Christian life is Christ. Only Christ can live the Christian life. And Christ is in you, living his life out through you as you abide in him. That's really the message that you need to hear. But fortunately or unfortunately, you're gonna get a lot longer message than that coming now, all right? 

So I have to tell you, as we begin our study this morning, that I believe that this is one of the most important sections of scripture that we could ever study, that we could understand and apply concerning the Christian life. We studied in the first three chapters, as well as in other scriptures, such as Romans 5 to 8, what it means to learn Christ, to know the truth that is in Jesus, as Paul puts it here. That is, we have come to know him through faith, through regeneration and the new creation, to be in him, in Christ, and all that this means. 

And in chapter four, verse one, we began to understand and study and know how these truths of who we are and what we have in Christ affect how we live. We saw last week the purpose that God has for his church, the local body, and our meetings here together. We saw the grace that Jesus has given, gifts given to the body for its edification and preparation for the work of ministry in this world to reach lost men. 

And as we come together to study verses 17 to 24 this morning, we come to a real application of all of these great truths and God's intention for how we should now walk, how we should live in light of who we are, and the great power and grace of God that we have available to us to accomplish his will and purpose. 

But wrapped up in this application section, these great instructions and exhortations, we find the core of the truth doctrines. And my friends, this is so crucial for our understanding, so vital to our fruitful, productive lives as believers in Jesus Christ, and I am afraid so very misunderstood in the evangelical church. We have some abundantly clear, very straightforward teaching and application here from Paul, and yet we have great preachers of the word, good, conservative Bible teachers who just seem to ignore what the words are clearly saying. 

It absolutely confounds me, I don't understand it, but it's very pervasive. And we're gonna dig deeper into this in detail as we go this morning, but just by way of introduction, look at verse 20 with me of our text, Ephesians 4.20. He says, but you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard him and have been taught by him as the truth is in Jesus. 

Here's the truth that is in Jesus, that you have put off concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lust, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you have put on the new man which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness. 

Paul's just laid out a vivid description of the lost man and Adam, what he calls here the rest of the Gentiles, those who are unsaved. And in verse 20, he makes a stark distinction, a contrast. He says, but you, and here's the emphasis in the Greek, but you set in contrast to those lost men and Adam who you used to be. And his very point is that you are not who you were, and therefore you must no longer walk, live the way you used to walk. 

And he's referencing here regeneration, our union with Jesus in his death, burial, and resurrection, the putting off or dying of the old man and the putting on of the new man in Christ. This is a clear and deep doctrine in the New Testament. Turn over to 2 Corinthians 5 with me. 

2 Corinthians 5, we'll begin at verse 14. Paul writes, for the love of Christ compels us because we judge thus that if one died for all, then all died, and he died for all that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again. 

So we all died with Christ in order that we might live for him. Therefore, he says, verse 16, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh, even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. 

We could look again at Romans 6-7. We could look at Galatians 2 or Peter's letter or many other texts, but here in 2 Corinthians 5, we see this great truth made clear. The man who believes Jesus at the moment of faith dies, is crucified with Christ, buried and raised to newness of life. 

He is a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come. The old man was crucified and died, as Romans 6-6 tells us. Nowhere in the scriptures do we see anything about having something added to us in Adam. It is not addition, it is transformation. 

It's not that we have a new nature added to our old nature. Such horrible, misleading words anyway. The Bible never talks about an old nature. The Bible makes clear that in Adam, sin indwelled us and dominated and controlled our spirits so that we were dead in our spirits and trespasses and sins, continually producing dead works, fruit unto death because of the controlling power of indwelling sin. 

In the new creation, in our death with Jesus, we died to sin so that indwelling sin no longer controls and dominates us. It's still there, my friends. The believer in Jesus still has the power, the principle of sin dwelling in him, just as he did in Adam. 

Sin did not die, sin did not change. It is I, I who died. And the result is that my relationship to indwelling sin changed at that moment, at that point in time when I believed Jesus. And now I have been made alive. My spirit was quickened and I am no longer a slave to indwelling sin. 

I now have the divine nature, Jesus Christ living in me. I have the power of the Holy Spirit, the life of Christ in union with my spirit and sin no longer controls and dominates me. I have died to it. So this idea, this false doctrine of the two natures of the believers is completely foreign in the Bible. 

It does not say that a new nature was added to me when I was saved. There's no talk of addition in the Bible, only recreation, transformation, death and resurrection to new life. I despise this language of old nature. It's so misleading, so confusing, and it's not biblical. 

The Bible speaks only of my spirit, the I, who I am, and its relationship to indwelling sin. And this is a total transformation from the man in Adam to the man in Christ. If I have an old nature and a new, then using biblical language, that must mean that I am in Adam and in Christ. 

This is not possible. This is nonsense in light of Paul's teaching in Romans 5 to 8 and in our text this morning. I understand that those who teach these things are trying to explain the believers' struggle with indwelling sin, the fact that we are not glorified, that we are not free in presence, though we are free in power from indwelling sin. 

But this is a badly misguided teaching, that we have two natures. And it undermines the very basis of the teaching here and throughout the New Testament concerning why we should live a new life, and as well as how God intends this to be a reality in our lives. 

So I just had to get that off my chest as we begin this morning, away with the idea that we are two men, that we have two natures, because the heart of the teaching before us is that we are comprehensively new men, new creations. 

This is the truth that we have learned in the very essence of what it means to be in Christ. We have put off the old man. We have put on the new, and therefore we must be continually renewed in this truth in our minds so that we might live according to who we are. 

Let's look at our text. There's so much more to say here. Ephesians 4.17. This I say therefore and testify in the Lord that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart, who being past feeling have given themselves over to lewdness to work all uncleanness with greediness. 

But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard him and have been taught by him as the truth is in Jesus, that you put off concerning your former conduct the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts and be renewed in the spirit of your mind and that you put on the new man which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness. 

I've given you five points on your outline. First, the Gentile walk. Second, learned Christ. Third, truth in Jesus. Fourth, have and being. And fifth, therefore. 

Well, first in our text we see the Gentile walk. Now this may be the easiest doctrine for us to understand. We know this, we have lived this, we see this more clearly than ever before us, all around us. We see a progression here in our text that is similar to Romans 1:18 and following. It's a willful choice on the part of the unbeliever to continually reject God and his grace and his truth, resulting in a judgment by God that leaves this man in a settled state of spiritual stupidity and inability to discern good or evil and a resulting descent into the depths of the immorality and carnal living. 

Those words we just read are quite stunning. Giving themselves over to lewdness to work all uncleanness with greediness. This is the end of the choice to reject God and make bad decisions about how to conduct yourself in the world. You can see the progression here just like Romans 1. First notice that Paul says, I testify in the Lord. This is what Jesus taught. He says, I got this directly from Jesus. 

The teaching is therefore based on all that we just learned about who you are and what you have in Christ and especially concerning God's intent for you in the church and the grace given by Jesus. Therefore, he says, you must no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, the unsaved. You are not who you were, therefore you must no longer walk as you did. That is the simple teaching here. 

But notice his description of how they walk set in contrast to the believer. First of all, they are futile, useless in their mental processes. They cannot think God's thoughts. They cannot reason according to truth. They cannot think rightly, clearly about themselves, the world around them, good versus evil. 

Ricky texted me last night. He said he was in downtown Ironwood and here's a bunch of protesters in the town square in Ironwood and they're chanting from the river to the sea. So Ricky went over and asked them, what river, what sea, what does that mean? None of them knew. What are they doing? 

Can you imagine being so motivated? I mean, I don't know, maybe they got nothing to do. I got like a farm I'm running and kids and grandkids, but can you imagine having so much compassion, being driven to get up, drive to town, hold a sign, stand in a town square, chant your chant and you don't even know what you're doing? They cannot think. They are futile in their mental processes. 

They are wholly alienated from the life of God, the divine nature with which comes understanding and discernment and grace and power to see things for how they are. They profess to be wise, Paul says in Romans 1, but they have become fools. Go back to that 2 Corinthians 5 passage. I want you to see something. 

2 Corinthians 5, 17. We're familiar with this verse. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. Now look at verse 18, the first words there. He says, now all things are of God. 

Now, all things are of God. I was raised in a church, went to church services six days a week, spent my first seven years of education in a parochial school. And then I went to a public high school and on to university and I was trained in wildlife biology. And I was taught that we evolved from some primordial ooze over billions of years and that we were all just products of natural selection and random chance. 

At the core of this nonsense was a lack of moral authority. As Jeffrey Dahmer famously said, if we all evolved from nothing and there's no God, then you have no right to tell me that I cannot eat people. And he's right. There is no morality apart from God. 

And the system that I knew and understood and believed the theory of macroevolution allowed me to follow after the carnal lust that drove the way I walked in Adam. But here's my point. I was an avid outdoorsman. I studied and lived and breathed nature and animal behavior. I was not only a hunter, but I was a trapper and I had to know everything about the nature, for example, of a wolf in order to get him to put his foot in a two inch square space on the whole of the landscape so that I could put the cuffs on him. 

I studied, I spent my life in the woods, on the water in an effort to know and understand the creatures that live there. But my thinking, my mind, was based on a total lie, evolution. And when I looked at an animal, I thought about livestock even. I saw them as masses of cells and biomass that operated by instinct alone, driven by ages of evolutionary programming. 

I saw the stars in the heaven as a result of the Big Bang, set in motion by natural forces and operating by those forces alone. In my mind, all things were according to nature, the natural, and could be explained by science. But my brothers and sisters, the moment I turned in faith to Jesus, when I heard and understood the gospel and chose to believe Jesus, I died. That old man, his old thinking died. 

And my eyes were opened. My understanding was enlightened. When the sun rose that morning, when it set that evening, and everything in between each day as I walked in the woods, on the streams, saw the life all around me, when I started raising livestock and saw the individuality, the creation, the design, the personality of each individual and how they related to the world and even to me, my thinking was wholly changed. 

My mind was transformed. And now, all things were of God. All things were of God. No longer was a pig just a mass of cells meant to be manipulated and utilized by man to grow him bigger, faster, fatter, cheaper. But a pig was a wonderful design and creation of God, who was meant to be in the grass and the woods to root and to forage and to rest in the shade of the tree. And in the end, the pig is sacred because he gives his life that I may live. 

This is the value of the pork chop on my plate, a life an individual died so that I might live. All around us, in this profoundly amazing creation of our great God, are lessons, patterns, that teach us spiritual truths. Now, all things are of God. 

And the lost man and Adam, the rest of the Gentiles, do not see this, do not understand this. They operate in the futility of their minds. They are unable to think and to reason because they have rejected God and God has given them over to their sin. And now they walk, they live under total domination to the sin that dwells in them. 

And the end result that Paul highlights here is what Peter notes when he says they carouse in the daytime. This is what we see in our world now. They carouse in the daytime. They have no shame. They have no fear of God. They have no ability to know that the things that they do are wretched, are abominations to God. And now they have no self-control and they live in lasciviousness in the open. 

We see it all around us. Go to Walmart about 10 o'clock on a Friday night. We used to have to pay at the carnival to see that. That's the truth. Or go to the local churches, the mainline denominations. Listen to the sermons. Talk with the people. Maybe check out the recent convention of the United Methodist Church and its delegates speaking. 

At the recent conference in North Carolina, they just officially changed their policy to fully recognize not only LGBTQ ordinations of pastors, but also performing marriages in the church of those practicing these lifestyles. You'll see futility. You'll see utter unthinkingness. Men driven only by their carnal lusts, controlled and dominated by indwelling sin, absent the very life of God, as Paul describes in Romans 7:5, for when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. 

This is what we see described in our text. 

Verse 19 says, they have given themselves over to lewdness, to practice all uncleanness and greediness. They can't get enough. It's like in Sodom when the men came, the angels came in the form of men, and the men of the city crashed on Lot's house and forced themselves to want to have relations with these men. And Lot gave them his daughters. This is the world we live in today. This is the condition of man in Adam, what Paul calls here the rest of the Gentiles. 

But you, but you, my brother, my sister in Christ, the glorious contrast here in our text, and the emphasis is the contrast, but you, you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard him and have been taught by him as the truth is in Jesus. 

The Greek order of the words is, but as for you, not thus did you learn the Christ. The heiress tense marks a specific time. It was at their conversion. The truth is in Jesus. This they were taught and experienced at the point of their conversion. And here is the truth, that you have put off concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lust, and you are being renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you have put on the new man which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness. 

That you put off gives the sense of the teaching given. It's connected to were taught. The connection is you were taught that you have put off. So the very truth in Jesus he's talking about is the truth of our regeneration. That's the whole point here. 

And here's the significance of these statements. We find the verbs for put off and put on are in the heiress tense. So again, this happened once in the past. It is an accomplished fact, and it happened at our conversion. When we believe Jesus, we put off the old man and put on the new man. This is what Paul is emphasizing back in Romans 6:1 to 10, where he talks about how our old man was crucified in order that the body controlled by indwelling sin, the body of sin, might be rendered powerless so that we should no longer be slaves of sin. 

When we believe Jesus, we were crucified with Christ. The old man, the eye, was crucified, was buried with Jesus, and raised to newness of life. We have a new mind. We have a new heart. We have a new will. We have a new life. Now all things are of God. 

In fact, we have received the divine nature. And our relationship to indwelling sin has changed. Our relationship to the law has changed. Our relationship to death itself has changed. Do you know that it was a greater transformation the day you believe Jesus than the transformation you'll experience the day you die? 

Because when you die, you're just going to leave this body and be given a new body. But when you were saved, you were totally transformed, taken from the realm of darkness and Adam, and conveyed into the kingdom of the son of his love. 

And our relationship to indwelling sin has changed. It no longer dominates. That's why Paul in Romans 5 characterizes the old man and Adam as under law, sin, and death. And he characterizes the new man in Christ as under grace, righteousness, and life. 

We are new creatures. We are totally transformed. We have put off the old man. We have put on the new man. These are accomplished facts. That's why he uses the aorist tense. It's a very meaning of the words. Done once in the past at the point of our conversion. 

Now I want you to pay close attention. I want you to focus right in here and exercise your mind and understand what Paul is saying because it's important. You see, there are two major issues at hand here doctrinally. The teaching of the text is super simple, what we just covered. But there are some implications to doctrine that's commonly believed. 

And I want to address that. Paul's been laying down the truth of who we are, what we have in Christ. Now he's imploring us to apply these truths in our lives to live in light of them. In our text, he gives the example of the life of the old man, the rest of the Gentiles, what their thinking is like, the futility of their minds, their bondage to indwelling sin, and constant hedonistic pursuit to satiate their consuming fleshly desires. 

Then he says, these things are not true of you because you were taught the truth about what God did when you believed, that he crucified you and your old man died and you were released, that you have, if you look at the top of your outline, I've given you a literal translation of this, that you have put off the old man and have put on the new. 

So what Paul is doing here is laying down succinctly again the truth of our salvation, our regeneration, our union with Jesus, and the transformation we experienced in our death, burial, and resurrection with him before. It's like you might say, John, he just keeps going back to this. He just can't get off of it. Guess what? Paul can't either. He just goes back to it again. 

He's going to lay it down before, notice, before he begins to give instruction. We don't see any imperative commands in our text. But we do beginning in verse 25. After laying down, reiterating, emphasizing this truth, he writes in verse 25, therefore, therefore, putting away lying, let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. 

Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your wrath nor give place to the devil. Notice the amazing transformation contained in verse 28 alone. Look at verse 28. Let him who stole, that was your old life. You were a thief. Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor working with his hands. 

I just heard yesterday on one of these financial news shows 100 million working age people in the United States who aren't on the employment rolls. There's only, what, 400 million tops? 100 million not working. Here's what the Bible says. Let him work with his hands and labor in what is good, that he may have something to give him who has need. 

That's a transformation, isn't it? Stealing for myself to satiate my greed, or rather, working with my hands, laboring, minding my own business, so that when someone has a need, I can give it to them. That's a transformation. 

So the two major doctrinal issues at hand that I want so desperately for you to understand are as follows concerning what we have learned in Christ and the truth that is in Jesus. First, we've already briefly mentioned the issue of two natures. This teaching totally undermines all that Paul has been teaching us, and it undermines the basis for holy living throughout the New Testament. 

Now, I wanna be clear again. I don't think most men who teach this have ill intent, and I believe they're trying to deal with the presence of indwelling sin in the believer, but it's not biblical teaching, and it's very damaging. 

We illustrated this back in 4.1. Go back to Ephesians 4, verse one, the heading of this whole section. I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called. Remember, these words are an exhortation to live out who we are, right? 

Literally, to walk in equal weight outwardly with who we are inwardly, as laid down in the first three chapters of the book. In other words, our understanding of who we are in Christ is the basis, the why we can live a new life. 

If indeed who we are, listen now, if indeed who we are is the bad dog and the good dog, more properly in Adam and in Christ, if indeed we are two men torn between two natures, sometimes good, sometimes bad, if we are half evil, sinful in our nature, if this is who we are, then how shall we understand Paul's admonition to live out who we are, to live in consistency with who we are, to be transformed outwardly to who we are inwardly, Romans 12. 

You see, with this understanding of the two natures view, I must, at least half of the time, expect to walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk. Sin must be a daily expectation of my life continually with constant and utter defeat and only glimmers of hope and victory. 

My friends, this is how it's taught and preached, and it's certainly how it's applied. On the other hand, if I am dead to indwelling sin and its power, if I'm totally transformed and now a new man, a new creation, if I have the divine nature and the power of God working and living in me, then my expectation should be holiness, should be the fruit of righteousness. 

And if this is who I am, then living in consistency with who I am means Christlikeness. It's the whole basis of his argument. It's kind of important. 

The second issue at hand is very interesting to me, and I believe it gathers many more believers in misunderstanding how we live the Christian life. I just listened to a sermon on this text from John MacArthur yesterday, and I like to listen to his older stuff. This one was from like 1972. 

And I so appreciated what he said about the two natures. He explicitly explained that this is not a biblical view, but the new creation is what is taught, as we've just outlined. It's not that something was added to us in salvation, but that we are holy and totally transformed. 

It was most encouraging to hear this rare perspective, which I believe is totally biblical and vital to understanding the living of the Christian life. However, when he got down to application of these truths, here's what he said. 

He said, if it is true that you are a new creation in Christ and dead to sin and so forth, why then do you sin? That's an important question, right? But here was his answer. He says you still sin because you are still wearing a coat of sin called the flesh and the old man. 

And what you need to do is strip it off and cast it away, that old man, and put on the new man each day. He said it is not a one-time thing, it's something we do every day. Now raise your hand if you've heard that kind of teaching, you've thought that, you maybe believe that right now. You cowards. Okay. 

I'm afraid. He ignores the aorist tense of the verbs, put off and put on, that explicitly say that this is a one-time event already accomplished. He defines the flesh as the body, the flesh and bones, the physical body, saying we, the eye, the spirit, is incarcerated in this body, giving the negative connotation to the term sarx or flesh. 

See, sarx can just be the body, it can just be the flesh and bone neutral, or flesh can be negative, depending on the context used in the scripture. But concerning the negative aspect, he describes that as this body, and he says we're in this body and that's why we still sin. And he implies that the reason we sin is that we still live in it, and the application he takes from this text is that the battle of the Christian life is to continually, daily put off that old man and seek to put on that new man. 

My wife hears a lot of stuff when I listen to these sermons. I walk around the house grumbling. I want you to stick with me though, I still got this sign up here, it says, don't be afraid to preach longer, we will listen, okay? 

First of all, the physical body is not regenerated, I agree with that, and it's corrupting, dying, I can, amen, I give a witness right now, right? But the physical body in and of itself is not good or evil. 

The term flesh does not, in its negative sense, refer to the physical body alone. Rather, the term flesh, in its negative connotation, refers to this physical body controlled by indwelling sin. This is so important, my brothers and sisters. In Romans 6.6, he says, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with. 

We've already shown that the old man is the man in Adam who was crucified with Christ. The important phrase here in this verse is the body of sin, and this defines the term flesh in its negative sense. The flesh is this body, or our members, as Paul often says, controlled by indwelling sin. 

The reason that we sin as believers is not because we live in these bodies, neutral bodies made of flesh and bone, but because we choose to deny what God says is true about us, we choose to believe the lies of our emotions, feelings, and experiences, along with the wisdom of the world, and then we choose to present our bodies, our members, to the sin that still dwells in us. 

The opposite of that is reckoning yourself dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. The opposite of that is reckoning in your mind, counting up the facts. Like I've said before, my wife comes home, she says something crossed to me, and I feel emotions rise up, and right here's where the battle is, right? 

Do I say, Jesus help me, I love this woman, I want to honor this woman, Jesus. If I do that in my mind and I say I'm dead to sin, what I want most is to lift her up and love her. If I do that in my mind at that moment, I won't say something crossed to her, but if I say, dirty, rotten, scoundrel, she deserved it, then it's gonna come, right? That's the battle. 

As we'll see shortly, the battle of the Christian life is one of the mind, of how we think and what we believe. As a man thinks in his heart, so he is. Notice in the first verses of our text, Paul emphasized the flawed thinking of the man and Adam, the futility of their minds, their understanding darkened, their thinking is off. 

So first of all, the outer body is not the flesh in the negative sense, it's the body controlled by indwelling sin that defines the term flesh. And next, the application of this thinking, that being that the battle of the Christian life is to put off the old man and to put on the new, is absolutely contrary to the text before us. 

First of all, let me ask you this, I just think, I didn't put this in a sermon, but I've been thinking about it, and think about, how do you put off the old man? Can you do that? What's it mean when it says put off the old man, like in our text? It's talking about regeneration, who did that? Not you, right? You can't put off, I don't even know what that means. How am I gonna do that? I can't put off the old man, put on the new man, God did that. 

As I said before, and this is so vital, the verbs translated put off and put on are in the heiress tense, this means that they are a one-time event accomplished in the past. You can look at your translation again, you have put off the old man, you have put on the new man, I have given you this literal translation here at the top of your outline, so go back to that, look at that, understand that. 

We see the same thing in Colossians 3.9. Colossians 3.9 says, do not lie. Why, Paul? Because it's bad? Because it's wrong? Because it hurts people? Because it's one of the Ten Commandments? All these things are true, but why is it that I, as a believer in Christ, should not lie? Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and you have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him. 

The Bible clearly teaches that in the new covenant, in regeneration, at the point of conversion, my old man was crucified with Christ, I have put off once at salvation, complete, done deal, the old man, and I have put on the new man. To teach that the instruction here of Paul is for us to take off our old stinky clothes and put off the old man and put on the new as a way of life is to miss the entire point of what Paul's saying, and to cause us to fight the battle at the wrong point, to try to accomplish something we cannot do, and to do something God has already done. 

Let me try a feeble illustration, okay? Be patient with me, all right? We feed our cows grass. We rotationally graze the cattle in order to promote the ecology under the soil, which in turn grows more grass more efficiently. 

There are many old fallow fields that used to be farms in our area, and sometimes landowners will allow us to graze our cattle in order to keep open and improve their fields. Now to effectively graze the cattle and have an impact on those fields, we need a fence to keep them in, and a water system that will reach each daily paddock as we rotate them. 

Just this spring, we spent several days fencing in a field near us, and we're going to hook up a water system soon. These are the necessary elements for grazing the cattle and impacting land. So you following me? You with me? We've got to have a fence, we've got to have a water system. 

So the desired end is grazing cattle to feed them and produce t-bones, but the end result is the fruit of better pastures regenerating the soil ecology. That's our goal as grass farmers. So let's say Sam and I, and maybe another person or two go help, go out and start digging post holes and driving t-posts and stringing electric wire. 

We complete the perimeter fence, hang the gates, hook it all up, hook up the charger, test it, we got 6,000 volts, we're good to go. And then we run out black pipe and troughs and float valves so that when Ashley moves the cows from paddock to paddock every day at four o'clock, they have water wherever they go. 

Okay? So all of this is done. The pasture is prepared. The work is done. The fence is in place. The water is ready. And I tell Ashley, load the cattle up out of the barn in the trailer, take them over there and put them in the first paddock, let them graze and aerate the soil and fertilize and trim the biomass and all that God designed cows to do. 

And I go over later that day and the cows are still sitting in the trailer. And Ashley's back in the woods somewhere and I track her down and I say, what are you doing? You've been here all day. Cows are still in the trailer. She says, well I have to build a fence. I'm digging holes for posts. 

I need to get a well dug and run some water lines. And all the while the cows are in the trailer. Everything's done. We have all things necessary for grazing cattle, improving the lamb. Remember, that's our goal. It's done. It's finished. It's ready. And the cows are in the trailer. And she's still trying to build a fence. 

And she's digging a well. There's water in the troughs. This is what's going on when we believe that the battle of the Christian life is putting off the old man and putting on the new. 

And so many are trying to live by the law, follow the Ten Commandments, seeking to crucify the old man, striving to put off the old man and put on the new. And this is the battle for them. A battle they cannot win, and a battle that is already won by God. 

These things are done. You have to put off the old man. You have been crucified with Christ. Or you have put off the old man. You have been crucified with Christ. You've put on the new man. You are new, transformed, a new creation, dead to sin, law and death, alive to God, standing in grace, living in righteousness, destined for eternal life. 

My friends, do you understand that this is the goal? This is God's intent in saving you? That you might be conformed to the image of Christ? That you might glorify Him in all that you do? That you might be a witness to the power of the gospel and the Christ life? He has already given us all things. 

How many things? All things that pertain to life and godliness. He now wants us to live it by His grace and power. The lost man and Adam cannot put off his old man. He cannot put on a new creation. What can the lost man and Adam do? 

Can a leopard change his spots? Can a man change who he is? No. And the problem is this very thing, who he is. That's why religion is useless. The only thing that a lost man can do is believe Jesus. When he hears the gospel truth, he can turn to Jesus in faith and then God will save him. 

God will justify him. God will regenerate him. God will cause him to be born again and make him a new man. And to ask the believer to put off his old man and put on the new is to ask him again to do something he cannot do and something that God has already done. 

That's the whole point here. It's done. It's finished. When I believe Jesus, God transformed me, gave me a new heart and a new spirit, crucified my old man, buried me with Jesus, raised me to newness of life, and now I am not two men, I am not in Adam and in Christ, I am in Christ and Christ lives in me. 

It's who I am and therefore, therefore, therefore, it must be how I live. Therefore, Paul says, based on these truths and what God has accomplished in His very life and power working and living in and through you, therefore, do not lie to one another, do not steal, but rather work with your hands and mind your own business. Provide for your own and to him who has need. 

This is who you are. Therefore, it must be how you live by God's grace and power. If we are to understand the Christian life, we must understand and believe what we have, what has been done, and we also must understand what is being done. 

You might have noticed that I skipped a verse, verse 23 in our text. Paul says, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind. We've pointed out the vital truth that the verbs for put off and put on are in the aorist tense, one time, finished, complete, but what we see in verse 23 is that the verb translated be renewed is in the present tense, which connotes a continuous ongoing action, and it's passive, so this action is being acted upon you. 

The word spirit refers to individual human spirit, that part of him which gives him God consciousness that makes him a moral agent. Paul says we are renewed in the spirit of our mind. My friends, it's how we think, it's how we see the world, ourselves, and God. 

Remember the instruction back in verse 2 of chapter 4, the word lowliness, walk in lowliness, remember that that word meant to make a right estimation, to make an accurate estimation of who we are, of who God is? So my friends, the battle of the Christian life is one of the mind, it's how we think, it's what we believe. 

This is why in 2nd Corinthians 10, Paul says the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds and casting down arguments, philosophies, arguments of men, things like evolution. Mighty in God. 

And then he says this, taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. That's what you have to do. Sometimes those thoughts come from influences in the world or from the spiritual realm, sometimes they come within you and the sin that still dwells in you, but when you have that thought, what do you have to do? 

You have to line it up with the Word of God. You have to allow the truth of the Word of God to conform your thinking, so that your thinking is right, so that your living is right. That's the battle. 

I've often heard people say that the Christian faith is not reasonable, that it's not of the mind, of thinking, but one must take a leap of faith, must experience God. I even heard a man say the other day that he found God through an experience taking LSD. He said you cannot think your way to God, you must experience God. 

Well, no. The Christian faith and salvation is first and foremost of the mind, of thinking, of reason, based in truth and logic. I love this truth. It's not that we do not have experiences and wonderful emotions, but these must flow from and be guarded by truth, by doctrine, by thinking, by reason. 

God says, come, let us reason together. Though your sins be as scarlet, they can be made white as snow. And the Christian life is no different. The very essence of the battle of the Christian life is based in knowledge, and then choosing of our own volition to believe the one who knows all things, rather than believing fallible men, including my own thinking, emotions, and experiences. 

To take those thoughts captive in obedience to Christ and His Word. As we've been studying for some time now, we must first know and understand the doctrine, the truth, the basis, the indicatives, who God is, who man is, what salvation is, regeneration, the old man, the new man. 

These are all facts. These are all truths to know, and then we must choose to believe. We must reckon. We must count them up. Logizomai, right in that word, is logic. Right? God knows all things. He created me. He sustains all things. Maybe I'll listen to what He says rather than, like, NPR. 

Logic. Logizomai. Count them up. And this is how sanctification comes. How? Sanctify them by your truth. Your word is truth. And as we know and as we reckon, as we depend on Him and His life and power and grace, then we see Jesus produces His life, He's living in me, the fruit of righteousness out through us. 

Because without Him, we can do nothing. This is all based on who we are and what we have in Christ. These great truths of our salvation. This is who you are. This is what you have in Christ. And then we come to the last point. Therefore, therefore, this is how you must live. 

This is the message of our text, the message we must know and believe as we abide, as we trust, as we depend on Jesus one day at a time, one moment at a time, looking unto Him as we run this race. 

Let's close in prayer. Father, we're so thankful for your Word. We're so thankful for the Holy Spirit who guides us, teaches us. Father, we're so thankful that we have the mind of Christ, that you've given to us the divine nature, that we can now see things for how they are, that now all things are of God. 

Things make sense when we go to your Word, when we listen to what you say, when we see the world, the men and Adam, for what's going on, for who they are, where the world's going. Help us to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, to take every thought and line it up with the Word of God and choose, make a volitional choice to believe you, to reckon what you say is true, and help us always to be digging, to be studying, be praying to understand what you say in your Word, that we might believe you and trust you and then depend on you and your power to work out your will in our lives for our good, for your glory. 

In Jesus' name, amen.