Text:  Ephesians 4: 17-24

Want an interesting discussion?  Get together a group of young and old. Bring up what to wear for worship. For my mom and dad, what you wore made a statement about what you were doing.   If you went to see the mayor, you got dressed up. Even more so, if you came into God’s house.  It said this is important.

But I have learned it isn’t the same for younger people today or here out West.  If you dress casual in worship it doesn’t mean that you are dissing God or the people you worship with. And so here we need to be careful about judging hearts by what someone chose to wear.

But it doesn’t mean that God doesn’t care what we wear as Christians. Oh yes, he cares very much. Our Lord has a lot to say on what we should wear as God’s people and what we shouldn’t.  But it has little to do with what is hanging in your closet or folded up in your dresser drawer.

That’s where Jesus’ apostle takes us today.  What’s it mean to be:

DRESSED TO FOLLOW JESUS
I.  Put off what you once were
II.  Put on what you now are

Life in the military can be tough.  It’s been a tough week for our soldiers and marines in Afghanistan. But it’s simple in one way.  You wear a uniform.  You don’t have decide what to wear.  But then you get out and you have to make those choices.  One time, I came home at the end of the day and heard this:  You wore that! I guess I wasn’t exactly coordinated.

In a way, the apostle Paul says the same to every one of us.  There are days when we need to hear:  Christian, You wore that?  You did that?  You said that?  You walked around with that attitude?     Think about it.  At the beginning of this chapter, Paul says live a life worthy of the calling you have received. God has called you out of a terrible darkness into his wonderful light.  He has called you to faith in the One he gave on a cross to bleed and die for you.   How great is the love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God and that is what we are.  That’s our great calling.

So child of God, you wore that?  I wore that!  We need to be reminded.  It doesn’t go with who we are and what we are in Christ.  It goes with what we once were. That’s what Paul told these Christians in no uncertain terms:  ¹⁷ So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. ¹⁸ They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. ¹⁹ Having 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.

Look at the life of many people around us.  They want nothing to do with Jesus.  Through their eyes things might seem to be fine.  Maybe they are getting a good education or advancing in their career.  They are getting to travel or hang out with friends.  But God sees something else.  Futility. What did Jesus say:   What good is it for man to gain the whole world and yet lose his own soul.? And that’s the terrible thing Paul is describing.  People may be callous and indifferent to God and their spiritual condition but this is the sad truth:  They are separated from the life of God. And if nothing should change, that’s how they will be forever.

And we know what happens when people push God out of their hearts and lives. So much of what makes life good and decent goes away. We’re seeing that unfold in our own country.  The fabric of our society is unraveling in so many simple ways. The presidential campaign is a sad example. The lies, the slander, the selfish ambition where almost anything goes to get what I want. And neither campaign is innocent.  They both have rolled around in the gutter of ugliness.

Here Paul could have pointed to that temple up on the hill in Ephesus.  There men and women not only exchanged the glory of God to worship an idol of stone.  They also had sex with the many temple prostitutes and called it worship.

Well today people don’t have to go to a temple.  They can indulge their lusts right in front of a computer.  Pornography, sexting. God’s gift of sex and marriage has been twisted and perverted in so many ways.

Years ago, a couple came to me to be married. The young lady was a member of our church. She was confirmed in the faith. Her fiancé, not.  I asked them write to down their addresses.  It turned out they were sharing the same address.  I looked at the young man and said, I wouldn’t expect that you know better.  But then I turned to the young lady and said:  I know you do.

Isn’t that what Paul writes for us here:  ²⁰ You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. ²¹ Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. ²² You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; Put off what you once were, dear friends– and when we find ourselves dressed like this world does, we need to put off those things.  . We need to repent and seek the Lord’s forgiveness.  And then get dressed again, dressed to follow Jesus.  Put on what you now are.

What are you now?  Let’s take a walk through this letter to the Ephesians:

+First of all, God chose you to be his own long before you were ever born:  ⁴ For [God] chose us in [Christ] before the creation of the world (1:4)

+When the time came that God chose, Jesus came, lived and died for us to make it possible for you and me to be his own  So that now in Him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.  (1:7)

+Then sometime during our life, God intervened with us who were as good as dead.  He took us who were drowning in a sea of hopelessness and made us truly alive.  Because of his great love for us, God who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ even when  we were dead in our transgressions. (2: 4)

+And the Lord brought us in.  He brought us together in a special way.  Like living stones, God has built us together in his Church where we share this one Body, one Sprit, one hope, one  Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. (4:5)

So what are you now?  You are a chosen, redeemed, forgiven, reborn child of God in whom the Holy Spirit lives.

But there’s more.  Meet the new you.  Not a new look.  Not a tuck under the chin or a Botox facial, but a new self. … the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. (24)  Meet the new you.

Of course, no introductions are necessary.  This is you.  Not that old self that keeps trying to drag us down.  This is you, the born again child of God who can say with the psalm writer:  Direct me in the paths of your commands, for there I find delight. (119:35)

For now we want to live the life God calls on us to live.  We want our lives to be filled with the fruit of the Spirit: the love and the joy of the gospel.  We want to be people who are patient with each other, who keep a lid on our temper, people who show kindness to everyone.

But that new self gets worn and weary.  We get worn and weary.  For after all we’re in a struggle.  We struggle each day to follow our Savior against the current of this fallen world and our own sinful nature.

So we need something only the Spirit can do for us.  To be made new in the attitude of [our] minds  Not once, but again and again.  We need to be filled with the Spirit so that our faith is refreshed and lifted up.  Well where does that come from?  Not from a cup of Starbucks or can of Red Bull.  NO, it comes in the Gospel where the Spirit serves up a generous portion of God’s grace in Christ.  It comes in his precious promises that reassure our doubting minds.  It comes in Jesus’ Supper where he comes to us with his body and blood, as the pledge of his forgiving love.

That’s what renews us.  And that’s what makes us, even us Californians, want to get dressed up.  Dressed up to follow Jesus. Amen.