Intro:
The other day I stumbled across a website called myheritage.com. The site is a genealogical database designed to help people reconstruct their family history. That in and of itself is nothing new, but this one is different because it uses face recognition software to do so. The idea is for people to upload photos of themselves and their family members to the site which then connects you to other possible family members based upon their facial characteristics. In order to entice you to use the site they offer a free service called Find the Celebrity in you. After you upload a current photo of yourself the face recognition technology springs into action taking various measurements of your face and then comparing the results to a database of over 3000 celebrities. In the end it presents you with a list of celebrities you supposedly bear the strongest resemblance to.
So I looked through the pictures of myself and found one what I thought was a good representation of me, uploaded it to the site and waited for the results. Within a few seconds it came back with a list of celebrites that the computer believed I most looked liked.
At the top of the list Ben Stiller who was followed by Lance Armstrong, and after him Dan Rather. I thought ok, that’s not so bad, but then the list took a sudden bizarre turn when it came up with John Cleese, followed by Fidel Castro, followed by Kim Dae jung, the President of South Korea. It get’s worse because according to the website there is also a striking similiarity between me and Gwyneth Paltrow, Hillary Clinton, and the 80’s singing sensation Chaka Khan.
It would seem that Myheritage.com still has some bugs that it needs to work out.
I logged on to myheritage.com because I was curious to find an answer to the question…
Who do I look like?
As I sat there, disappointed with my results God began to teach me a lesson. The question came ot mind “Who do you want to look like?”
Well Lord, for starters not Chaka Khan.
Then he cut to the chase…
“Who are you trying to look like.”
That’s a good question…for all of us.
We are all influenced to one degree or another, we all take our cues from someone
Whose example are we seeking to follow?
Whose life are we trying to imitate?
Who are we trying to look like?
As believers do we bear any resemblance to our Father?
In Ephesians 4: 17 Paul writes:
“So I tell you this and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do…
Ephesus was a leading commercial and cultural city of the Roman empire. It boasted the great pagan temple of Artemis, or Diana, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. But it was also a leading city in debauchery and sexual immorality.
Some historians rank it as the most lascivious city of Asia Minor.
The temple of Artemis was the center and the source of much of the wickedness. Like those in most pagan religions, its rituals and practices were but extensions of man’s vilest and most perverted sins wrapped in the excuse of religion.
A quarter mile–wide perimeter served as an asylum for criminals, who were safe from apprehension and punishment as long as they remained within the temple confines. For obvious reasons, the presence of hundreds of hardened criminals added still further to Ephesus’s corruption and vice.
It wasn’t just Christian who saw this, some of the pagans did too
In the The fifth–century BC Greek philosopher Heraclitus, himself a pagan, referred to Ephesus as
“…the darkness of vileness. The morals were lower than animals and the inhabitants of were fit only to be drowned.”
There is no reason to believe that the situation had changed much by Paul’s day. If anything, it may have been worse, and this was the climate the church in Ephesus struggled to exists in. Many if not all of the believers in Ephesus were saved out of that culture and everyday they face the pressures and temptations that came from that environment.
And so Paul writes,… “you must no longer live as the Gentiles do…”
You cannot do the things they are doing. You cannot go where they go.
There are striking similarities between their world and ours. We don’t always recognize it immediately because the sad fact is we have become accustomed to it.
Everyday we move we live, and work in a world that appeals to the worst in us. Whether it is on the tv, in our dvd player, on our computer, in the magazine or on the billboard.
Just like the Ephesians believers …Everyday we have to fight the urge to conform to the patter of the world that we were saved out of, resist the temptation to fall back into the life we lived before Christ.
Part of that process…means we have to question who we do we look to, who we hold up, and who we try to imitate. Who do we look like?
In Mark we find Jesus saying virtually the same thing to his disciples.
In Chapter10 we find the disciples jockeying for positions of power and Jesus calls them together and says,
“You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them.
Then he says in 43
"Not so with you."
He was revealing and reversing the role models they were seeking to imitate They had bought in to the thinking of their day. They were conforming to the pattern of the world. They wanted to live like the gentiles.
You must no longer live the as the Gentiles do….and to build his case he offers two compelling arguments
1.They are not what they seem.
In verses 17-18
…in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding, and separate from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Ha ving lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity,
with a continual lust for more.
Paul pulls off the veneer that disguises reality of life lived outside of God.
Using his words as brush strokes Paul paints a vivid and heartbreaking picture of a broken life. He describes a life that sin has twisted and deformed. Lives that are misshapen the depraved. Lives without dignity or direction. Lives of perversion that are fueled by the unrelenting lust for more
As I read his description I was reminded of the Morlocks… The creatures in HG wells classic novel. The Time Machine.
At one time The Morlocks were men but years of living in underground darkness had turned then in to something else, some thing hideous and frightening. The things that made them human had been abandoned long ago in the effort to survive and what was left was a just a shadow of what they used to be.
The outside looks fine but look any closer and the truth begin to come through. Things aren’t always what they seem.
They are darkened and ignorant, hardened and separated. Without any sensitivity or self control But the most heartbreaking description is that of futility.
Futility refers to that which fails to produce the desired result, that which never succeeds. It was therefore used as a synonym for empty, because it amounts to nothing.
The futility of their lives manifests itself most in the surrender to sensuality in the indulgence of impurity, and in their unquenchable lust
Have you ever notice how it always come back to sex? Have you ever wondered Why sexual immorality and perversion always the default for our depravity? Why is it that when our lives go off course we always end up there?
The desired result is for the intimacy for which they were created…but it has the opposite effect. But instead of leaving us satisfied it only leaves us empty and wanting more.
It does not bring the desired result, and that is the definition of futility
These are not lives to be envied or imitated , if anything they are to be pitied.
The second reason We should no longer live like the Gentile do is because.
2. We are not who we used to be
In verses 22-24 Paul writes:
You were taught with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by it deceitful desires, to be made new in the attitude of your mind; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. 4:22-24
Before he exposed painful reality of a broken life. Now Paul builds his argument on the beauty of the new life.
To put off your old self. V. 22
The old self the old man, the flesh, the sin nature that is in a constant state of corruption. Elab.
To take off or strip away. This was used many time with clothes. The idea was to remove the filthy rags. But it wasn’t just an outward exercise it was an inward reality.
PUT OFF: The verb is a once and forever action.
Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices
Colossians 3:9
African Proverb:
The man who walks two different roads will split his pants.
put on the new self, created to be like God… v. 24 a
Two greek words for new; one means young.
The other: distinctive/ different
The word new (kainos) does not mean renovated but entirely new—new in species or character. Distinctive
The new self is new because it has been created in the likeness of God. The Greek is literally, “according to what God is”—a staggering statement expressing the wondrous reality of salvation. Those who confess Jesus Christ as Lord are made like God! Peter says we become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4).
God became man to turn creatures into sons. Not simply to produce better men of the old kind, but to produce a new kind of man.
CS Lewis
What are the distinguishing characteristics of our lives?
These are not commands, for the construction here (and in the parallel passage in Col. 3:9-10) is not imperative. They are facts.
We don’t take off the old man to meet some requirement. We don’t put on the new self to satisfy a commandment
The old self isn’t replaced with the new self so that we can become different, but because we are different.
A misunderstanding we have is that we have to make ourselves different-
Believers must become in our daily lives what they already are in Christ.
…created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. V. 24b
The software that myheritage.com uses to make it it comparisons works of the universal characteristics of the a human face. We all have two eye a nose and a mouth. The resemblances are based on the distances between them. Here we see two characteristics that should be found in the life of any believer. Righteousness and Holiness.
Righteousness:
Righteousness means that we are rightly related to those around us we see them and treat with the respect and dignity that all of Gods creatures deserves. instead of using each other selfishely We love one another selflessly. Instead of seeing the other as an object of lust we rightly see each other as a someone to be loved.
Holiness
In salvation sin is forgiven, we are made holy, Righly related to God.
The holiness we have first and foremost comes as a gift from God.
Holy- cut or separate
"Therefore come out from them and be separate”, says the Lord. 2 Cor. 6:17
Because you have nothing in common…
Because you are not like them…
Because you are different…
Come out from them and be separate.
There is a difference between separation and isolation.
Separation- remove ourselves but our influence remains
Isolation- is the removal of both ourselves and our influence.
Vance Havner once said:
The challenge of the Christian is to be insulated not isolated.
Walking in the midst of evil, but untouched by it.
Conclusion:
In Ephesians 4: 17 Paul begins:
“So I tell you this and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do…
Reminds us of their situation and of our identity
25-32 Goes through a list of do’s and don’t’s, but then he ends his argument in Chapter 5 when he writes.
"Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice for God."
Ephesians 5:1-2
