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[Jamie Vaughan]...the way life used to be, before they accepted rights.
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And then he goes on to tell them that there is a better way, and this morning, that's what we want to look at today,
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the message would be entitled, a better way to the Bible,
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and here in Ephesians, Chapter 4, we're going to read the beginning of verse 17,
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and we're just going to unpack this for you this morning, and hopefully you'll be able to take something with you.
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The Bible says in number 17: "This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord,
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that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,
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Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:
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Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
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But ye have not so learned Christ;"
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Father, again, we thank you for the day, we thank you for the blessings you've given us,
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we thank you for what our hearts have felt already, we thank you for the choir and those that have sung,
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and those that have just served in this service.
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God, we thank you for each visitor that's here this morning.
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God, we just pray that you would give us something that we can take into this world today.
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We pray that you will give us something that we can hold on to, a promise that we can grasp on to
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and be able to combat Satan throughout the world, with what you give us.
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Again, we thank you and we praise you for all that you do and we pray that you bless the reading of your word.
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An this, in Jesus' name, we do pray, amen.
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This morning, we can live life in default. "What does that mean, preacher?"
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Well, if you've got a computer - most of you have got computers
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and you know that the default settings are the original settings - correct? - back to the way that they work.
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Well, the default life of humanity is what we are talking about in verses 17 to 20.
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And I remember, as a young man, I was in the 8th grade and the - let me get this right -
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Desert Shield - anybody remembers Desert Shield?
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Desert Shield was just finishing up and we were going into Desert Storm.
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And in the 8th grade, my history teacher thought it would be a good idea to get these trading cards
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- they were Desert Shield and Desert Storm trading cards, just like baseball cards or anything else -
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Well, that's what got me into baseball cards, I tell a lot of people
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I would have not any money as a teenager if I wouldn't have sold baseball cards,
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but I got into these Desert Shield cards, and I remember going home one day,
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and I was counting them, and I was trying to put them in order, so I could make a complete set.
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That's what I wanted: I wanted a complete set of these Desert Shield cards.
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I wanted a set for Desert Shield and a set for Desert Storm.
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And they had all kinds off things, I mean, you know, the ......... copy (3:18)
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if you had doubles of him, you were somebody. I mean you could sell them pretty easy,
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and the Colin Powell. I remember that stuff like if it was yesterday.
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But I was trying to count them and put them in order, and I had them all over the kitchen table.
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And my grandfather was real big on - you know, he was, even to the day he died,
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he was real big into Fox News and knew everything that was going on, and he said:
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"Look, you've got them all over the table. Let me show you a better way -
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let me show you a better way to organize your cards.
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Now it's going to take some time, but once you get them organized, you're going to know exactly what you've got."
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And I believe that Christian life is just about like that. It is going to take time. Our life with Christ is going to take time.
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But once we get it right, we can walk with him, and it's going to be the best thing possible.
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So we look here and we see that there is a better way, that the default life of humanity, the Bible says, is close-minded.
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We can look in society today and see there's close-mindedness. There's close-mindedness all over.
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Why? Because we look out for numer one and our idea, our thought are the best thoughts.
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So we go around close-minded. You know, I'm sure that as I'm speaking this morning, you can think of at least one person,
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maybe five, that live a life that is close-minded. We don't - there's no room for air.
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Now in the Christian life, I believe that we don't need to live
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- any other doctrine or any other religion or any othe kind of cult coming to our mind -
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but I do believe this: I do believe we need to love, and I do believe that we need to show compassion, however not letting it change us.
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But they were close-minded here in the Church of Ephesus: before knowing Christ, they were close-minded.
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Before we knew Christ, I'm sure that you can testify as I can that we were clo... - I was close-minded. (5:33)
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Then it goes on: "through the ignorance" - the Bible says in verse 18 -
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"through the ignorance", we were close-minded, we were alienating ourselves from God.
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Then it goes on to talk about our heart. Our heart was hardened before we knew Christ.
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Our heart was of stone. The Bible talks about the heart being wicked.
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Who could know it? WHo could know our motives? Our hearts were hard.
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We know people, in our society, that have hard hearts, but we also know that Christ can break through.
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We also know that Christ has a way of penetrating the heart. Again, those things -
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those that have accepted Christ can testify to it, because we know how our heart was before we accepted Christ.
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Now, there are some of us in here that got saved and accepted Christ as our savior when they were young.
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And for us they were young - you know, I was saved at the age of 8, so it was not real-
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I don't remember my heart just being hard, but I remember, when I was 5 and 6 years old,
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my grandfather that wouldn't darken the doorstep of a church, and I remember how hard that his heart was.
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And I remember how we shared with him for years and years and years,
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and it wasn't until he was 50 years old that he accepted Christ.
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And I remember that, but I remember the day that God penetrated his heart.
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And I remember the day that God softened his heart. But up until that time, his heart was hardened.
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Just like the Prodigal Son, when he left the Father, and he took his inheritance and he went to spend it, he went to live a life of pleasure.
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We always hear the saying that life - that grass is greener on the other side, untill we get over there, and then it's crab (?) grass.
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You've heard that? That's right. It looks so much better on the other side, and that's precisexactlyely what the Prodigal Son was talking about:
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"O, it's going to be great over there, I've got the money, I've got everything that I need,
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it does not matter where I'm going. I'm going to go". And that green grass turned into a pigsty.
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Sp, living for pleasure is what we did. That's who we were. Why? Because we were ignorant.
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The Bible says: "We've given in" in verse 19, before we accepted Christ, everything was whatever we wanted:
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the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life. All of those things.
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That's the false humanity. That's who we are. That's just our flesh, because sin entered into the world,
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and death by sin: so death has passed upon our men.
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So, with that being said God created, and he created perfection, but because of the Fall of Man,
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because o the eating o the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, look what we have: we have sinful nature.
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And because of that sinful nature, our humanity, our default humanity, is sinful.
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It's not uncommon to have a hard heart. It's not uncommon to have a closed mind. It's not uncommon to live for pleasure.
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But look at verse 21: "If so be that ye have heard him," - Paul's talking about Jesus here - "and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus,
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that ye put off concerning the former conversation of the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;
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and be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness."
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Look: we have been, we had been living a default life; maybe this morning, you're still in that stage.
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Maybe you are still living in that default stage: there is not anything wrong with that. (10:02)
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However, God has given us an extraodinary life.
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Paul talks in 2 Corinthians Chapter 5: "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."
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That's what he's saying again here in Ephesians 4. He's also talking about a renewed mind and a renewed heart, he's talking about that in Romans Chapter 4 as well.
