Sermon Tone Analysis

Verbal flow

House without the blueprints

A meal without a recipe

Ephesians

Paul describes what is true of the believers

Introduction: Blindfolded Kids

Situations in life...

Situations of joy and celebration

Other kids getting hit in the head by the blindfolded kid.

going out to eat at your favorite restaurants

celebrate an anaversery

Situations where you are to celebrate

you want your kids to be careful of how they walk…

Situations of great anticipation

graduation

sports game or recital

Situations of fear, stress, anxiety

you or someone you love is in danger

There are not many situations in life that bring together so many emotions as a kids birthday party when the pull out the apinyata.

Who here has experienced, either it happened to you or you saw it happen, an injury around apinyata?

There is something about a sugar crazed child, blindfolded, swinging a bat with all his power so that he might destroy something that leads to injury.

All the moms watched their kids as they move closer to the child with the bat

Every parent should teach their kids before going to a birthday party with apinyata

We want our children to be careful when they walk around a blindfolded child swinging a bat…

We want our children to walk with wisdom, and not be blind to whats going on around them.

Robert Bragg preached a great sermon a few weeks ago about how Christ should walk.

- For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

- Paul urges us to, “...walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called,

- Paul tells us to “walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us”

- Paul says we are to, “Walk as children of light”

- we are to pay close attention to how we walk, “walk as the wise and not the unwise”

We will see in our passage this morning that Paul is likewise warning the Ephesians Christians to walk with wisdom, for there are blinded folded people who are swinging their ideological bats around and can do harm if it connects.

In order to walk in the truth o the gospel, we must know what the truth of the gospel is.

Which is why spent the first 4 and half chapters teaching us the glorious truths of the gospel

before you can build a house you first have to learn the blueprints.

Before you can bake a cake, you have to know the recipe.

before you play the piano, you first have to learn to read music.

Before we can walk as Children of the Light, we must first know what the light is.

House without the blueprints

A meal without a recipe

Ephesians

Paul describes what is true of the believers

Red = Indicative verbs - what is true

Look with me at 17-32

Green = Imperative verbs - what you are to do.

The imperatives really ramp up in 4:25 which we will see in our passage this morning.

When the imperative pick up, Paul is telling us what we should do and what we should not do.

So this morning we move from indicatives to imperatives as we see Paul telling us how to apply what he has already told us.

The Blindfolded Gentiles

We see in our passage this morning that Paul wants us to walk not as the gentiles walk, we are not to live as they live

But its much worse than than that, those outside of Christ are so darkened in their understanding that they have become enemies of the light.

Paul describes the gentiles as:

Futile in their minds

Darkened in their understanding

Alienated from the life of God

Ignorant

hard hearted

and calloused.

Look with me at verse 17.

How are Christians to walk? how are they to live?

- Paul urges us to, “...walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called,

- Paul tells us to “walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us”

- Paul says we are to, “Walk as children of light”

- we are to pay close attention to how we walk, “walk as the wise and not the unwise”

So coming back now to 4.17

Before we can rightly understand what paul is saying in this passage we first have to make sure we understand who the gentiles are.

How do the nations walk?

The greek word for gentiles is ethnos, where we get our word ethnicity from.

The word is most commonly understood to be translated as nations

The greek word for gentiles is ethnos, where we get our word ethnicity from.

The word is most commonly understood to be translated as nations

Great commission, “go make disciples of all the nations (ethnos)”

When Paul speaks of the gentiles, when he speaks of the nations, he is not talking about different cultures, but rather he is speaking of those who are outside the covenant people of God.

Do you remember the story of Rehab?

She was a Canaanite prostitute who walked, or lived, apart and even opposed to the God - yet, by faith she was converted to YHWH and was no longer a gentile, but part of the covenant people of God

So to speak of gentiles, is to speak of those who are outside of Christ, no matter what your ethnicity is, if you are outside of Christ you are part of the nations that need to be discipled.

So Paul, writing to this young church made up primarily of formal gentiles, and he is telling them to no longer walk, no longer live or be identified with the lives of the gentiles, those outside of Christ.

Paul then describes the way the gentiles walk in vv.17-19.

In verses 17-19 we see Paul describing the gentiles kind of like a blindfolded kid swinging a stick at a apinyata.

In verses 17-19 we see Paul describing the gentiles kind of like a blindfolded kid swinging a stick at a apinyata.

Darkened in their understanding

But its much worse than than that, those outside of Christ are so darkened in their understanding that they have become enemies of the light.

Alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance

Paul describes the gentiles as:

Futile in their minds

Darkened in their understanding

WHY? - Due to their hardness of heart.

Alienated from the life of God

Ignorant

hard hearted

Due to their hardness of heart.

and calloused.

Look with me at verse 17.

Futility of their minds

futility is a fun word we don’t often use.

futility speaks of being useless, empty, lacking content.

to live in sin is to live not only in opposition to truth, but to live in ignorance of the truth

and I’m not talking about truth in some esoteric sense - in that you have to reach some spiritual level to understand truth - that is what the gnostic believed.

I’m talking about the truth of reality.

What is true about