Ephesians 4:17 “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.”

Ordinarily I don’t like to dwell  upon the sins of the world around us when I preach or teach. They aren’t here to be confronted. It’s more important that we hear what God’s word has to say about us. But in order to help the Ephesian Christians better understand themselves, the Apostle Paul began by describing the way of life of the non-Christian Gentiles around them.

The basis for their problem can be found in their way of thinking. Paul tells us that they live “in the futility of their thinking.” The problem of living the wrong way never starts with the things that people do. It goes back to the way they think and believe. It is a matter of the heart and mind.

Paul calls the Gentile way of thinking, the unbeliever’s way of thinking, “futile.” It is empty, worthless, and backwards. Those things which are truly valuable are eternal and spiritual–faith and forgiveness, God and heaven, worship and prayer. Yet the unbeliever values these things least of all. Instead, he gives the highest place in his life to those things which are merely material, only earthly. Jesus says of food, and drink, and clothes, “The pagans run after all these things.” The unbelieving often value most  those things which aren’t even necessary for earthly life, things which are here and gone, things which serve no one but themselves–merely pleasure, merely recreation, merely luxury. Some of these may have some small legitimate place in life, but in the long run obtaining them is only meaningless, vanity, a chasing after the wind, as the writer of Ecclesiastes says. Thinking which enthrones earthly pleasure and ignores God is futile.

The Ephesian Christians knew that unbelieving way of thinking and living well. It was their former way of life, and they still carried it with them in their old self, the sinful nature. The old self hadn’t changed. It was still full of deceitful desires. It still desired all those sinful pleasures which promise more than they can ever deliver. No matter how long you and I have been Christians, we have that old self, too. Every honest believer must admit that he struggles with him every day.

But we don’t have to live under the same cloud of darkness as the rest of the world. That is not because you and I are so smart. It is because God has been so gracious. He has shown us we are more than talented animals that can taste and touch and hear and smell and see. We are more than consumers of what life has to offer, and we do not belong to just ourselves.

God has shown us we are responsible, moral human beings he created for himself. And though we have rebelled against him with our sin, no less than the unbelieving Gentiles, he has paid an aweful price to cancel the guilt of our sin and purchase us for himself once again. God’s one and only Son has sacrificed his life in place of ours, taking our futile thinking and futile living upon himself, and making his perfect life of love our own. He did this so that he might present us to his Father without any sin, pure and holy. He set us free from the darkness and power of sin.

Since God has brought us to repentance and faith, he has replaced our futile thinking with a new outlook on life. The Greek word for repentance simply means to change your thinking. God changes our minds about sin and leads us to find our sinful desires and actions as disgusting and repulsive as he does.

Then he takes a hold of our hearts and minds through the power of his word,  especially through his words of promise and forgiveness in the gospel. Every time we go to worship, every time we sing a hymn, every time we listen to Christian music, every time we meditate on the word, every time some Christian piece of art leads us to ponder and believe in God’s forgiving love, God’s power is present to change our minds and make us new in faith and life.

Change is never easy. God’s daily call for us to change in repentance and faith is by far the hardest of all. But he has given us his gospel to get our thinking straight, and rescue us from the futility of the faithless way of life.

Matthew 26:27-28 “Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it all of you. This is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.’”

Do you own a collection of old family videos on VHS? Do you have videos of family events stored on DVD, or thumb drives, or some other digital format? We had a camcorder for a number of years, but I didn’t remember to bring it along as often as I should. And I found that I didn’t like watching life’s major events through a viewfinder. I would rather see things happen live. We rarely watched the tapes we have made of our family anyway. I never even watched my wedding video.

The idea of reliving some of those times, however, hasn’t lost its appeal. When I was growing up my dad used to drag out the slides of family vacations once a year or so, and he never had to twist our arms to get us to watch them.

Slides and videos don’t actually recreate our happy past, though. What’s done is done. But sometimes they do extend the enjoyment we get from life’s milestones, or favorite vacations, or best performances. And they make it possible to share them with friends or grandparents who weren’t there to see it when it happened.

There were no video tapes running or cameras flashing on Golgotha on Good Friday. Christ died for sins once for all. What’s done is done. We can’t relive, or rather Jesus won’t relive, the central event of the Christian faith, and for that we can be thankful.

But in the body and blood of his Supper our Savior does extend our enjoyment of the blessings that flow from his crucifixion and death. This is more than just a video replay of happy feelings. Jesus calls it his “blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” This is a covenant, a testament, a promise from him. Jesus does more than take our minds back to Golgotha in memory. Under the bread and wine he has contained the real forgiveness of our sins that his genuine body and blood bring forward from the cross to us. For those precious moments before his altar we can smell and taste and feel the unconditional love of God, no less present than it was when he spilled his blood two thousand years ago.

Sin occupies entirely too much of our time and attention. When we think we are having a good day, we need to look no farther than our thought life to realize how constant this companion has been.

Here and there God’s spoken Word breaks into this enduring affliction with its promise of grace. But in the Lord’s Supper God’s forgiving love blessedly lingers and loiters on our lips and mouth, and we have time to savor the grace that makes us his own.

For me, one of the highlights of attending a pastors’ conference is singing a communion hymn. At home I’m usually caught up in the distribution on Sundays, making sure I don’t drop a wafer, helping communicants get their cups out of the tray without spilling. Rarely do I get to sing the truths that make this Supper so special. Martin Luther once said, “This sacrament is the gospel.” May we find it to be so, too.

1 Peter 5:6 “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that me may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

I’m not aware if you ever knew,

There’s an author I like, his name Dr. Seuss.

And of all of his tales I have come to adore,

There has never been one that I ever liked more,

Than, I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew,

The story about a young carefree chap who,

One day was attacked by his very first trouble,

Events that would burst that poor carefree man’s bubble.

A quail bit his tail, a rock stubbed his toe,

A Skritz stung him high, a Skrink bit him low.

And in all of this trouble he joined someone who

Was off on a journey to Solla Sollew

On the banks of the beautiful river Wah-hoo,

Where they never have troubles, at least very few…

Spoiler Alert! The mythical city of Solla Sollew didn’t provide our young hero relief from his troubles, either. But Peter reminds us we know someone who can, and does.

Do we recognize the kind of temptation involved with our inevitable suffering? None of us likes it. Perhaps no experience more tempts us to doubt God’s goodness. If the pain becomes severe enough, we might even be tempted to call God evil. Certainly he must know better than this! Or it can make us arrogant. Obviously we are wiser than the Lord, because we would never allow something like this to go on!

God’s strategy for coping with trouble must include humble trust. And the Lord provides us with the loving promises that create that trust. “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” Is that hard to believe? Does a God who loves us let our classmates ridicule us? Does a God who cares about us let pain linger on, and on, and on? Does a kind and compassionate God let our hearts be broken when we lose someone we care about, or when someone we love rejects us? Does a loving God leave us hanging in endless, agonizing suspense about our future?

The answer to those questions is that, even in all such experiences, God still cares for you. And underlining that promise, driving it home and making it real, is one reason that the preaching of the cross is always practical for life everyday. Remember, we are not the only ones who know about suffering. Jesus suffered, too. Would Jesus suffer for our sins on the cross if God didn’t care for you? Would the Lord graciously forgive all our sins if he didn’t care for you? Would our Lord have bothered to call us to faith and give us his word if he didn’t care for you? Even the worry and the anxiety and the cares are things he invites us to take off our shoulders, and give to him so that he can bear them for us. Humble trust in him will never be disappointed. His mighty hand has all the strength needed to lift us up at just the time he knows is right.