Dr. Samuel Johnson, the 19th century English literary critic, made an astute observation about human nature. He said, "People don't need to be instructed, as much as they need to be reminded." My task today is more to remind you than to instruct. It is not so much to break new ground, as it is to make srue the ground is weed-free and well-watered. So, I want to summarize the substance of the first four sermons in this series.

Christianity offers a distinct vision of what it means to be truly human and to be truly free. This twelve-sermon series is an effort to set forth that distinct vision. Each of the first four sermons carried one major concept. Together, the four build a context for the next eight sermons. Here are the four major concepts.

First, the vocation of the Church is to be the global community that is gathered around Jesus Christ and serves as the dwelling place where God the Creator and Redeemer lives with the human family - a kind of beachhead from which He has begun the liberation of the nations of the world from the disorders of sin.

Second, we said that to be holy means that we are members of this global community of faith. We are available for God's purpose and under His protection.

Third, it is a privilege to be this community. The appropriate response to this privilege is to live a life worthy of the Church's vocation, even though such a life has to be lieved within the boundaries of our flawed humanity.

Fourth, baptism is the act of faith by which a believer in Christ acknowledges and accepts the Church's vocation and the responsibility to live worthy of it.

It is within this context that the New Testament model of being a Christian makes sense. We will look at this model for the next eight weeks. Today, we begin with the grand pattern of human restoration. This takes us to Ephesians 4:17-24.

Out of Darkness into Light
A little over a month ago, we read most of Ephesians 1-2. It became apparent that Paul was writing to a congregation of Jews and Gentiles, who had come to believe in Jesus, the Messiah. Becoming a Christian was a much greater challenge for Gentiles in the church than for Jews. They and their ancestors had generations of pagan habits to sort through and overcome. Ephesians leaves the impression that some of those habits lingered in their lifestyle.

It must have taken a lot of patience and wisdom and time to learn a new way to think and live. It must have taken a lot of patience and wisdom and time for Jewish believers, with their well-developed moral consciences, to bear with their sometimes loose Gentile brethren. It was a dicey and dynamic moral situation.

Verses 17-19 give us a sense of that situation. So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you Gentile believers must no longer live as the Gentiles do, who do not believe in Jesus, in the futility of their thinking. 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. Having lost all senitivity to God and good morality, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.

That's not a bad description of pockets of life right here in New Castle County. Maybe some of you r have just come out of that world. Maybe others of you still have one foot in that world. The Bible says: don't live like that any more. Verses 20-21 begin to explain why.

You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. Being a Christian calls for changes in people's lives. We are under new management, and the new Owner has definite ideas of how he wants the old place renovated. In one of his great passages C.S. Lewis put into the mouth of Christ those definite ideas.

"'Make no mistake,' He says, 'if you let me, I will make you perfect. The moment you put yourself in my hands, that is what you are in for .... You have free will, and if you choose, you can push Me away. But if you do not push me away, understand that I am going to see this job through. Whatever suffering it may cost you ... whatever it costs Me, I will never rest, nor let you rest, until ... my Father can say without reservation that He is well pleased with you, as He said He was well pleased with me. This I can do and will do. But I will not do anything less,'" (Mere Christianity, 171).

The next three verses outline the game plan He has in mind for us. I call it the grand pattern of human restoration. 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; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Let's look more closely at the pattern.

The Grand Pattern of Human Renovation
First, the grand pattern involves renunciations. Verse 22 says, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires. Stop living the way you once lived, with all your hell-raising and selfishness and lying and cheating and bullying.

The second part of the grand pattern, says verse 23, is to be made new in the attitude of your minds. Something has to happen to the way we think. That doesn't mean we stuff our heads with knowledge; it means that we see like through new eyes.

Let's stop for a minute and do a sidebar that will illustrate what it means to see life through new eyes. Mark your plac here in Ephesians four, and turn back a few pages to Romans 13:13-14.

He follows roughly the same pattern as in Ephesians. In verse 13 he says, let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy.

It is verse 14 that takes your breath away. Rather than that old way of life, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ. Put on the beauty and goodness and justice and compassion of Jesus Christ, as the new mindset with which you will approach life. Start thinking like that, and keep thinking like that for the next two decades, and you will be made new in the attitude of your minds.

That leads right into the third part of the grand pattern in verse 24. We are to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. A life worthy of the Church's vocation involves renunciations. It also involves more than renunciations. We don't just say no to life. There is so much more about life to say yes to, so much to affirm.

Let me give you one biblical encouragement in this direction in Colossians 3:12-14. Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. That's what God calls us to become.

By now you can see the pattern in Ephesians 4:22-24. Get rid of the old habits, learn to think a new way, and learn new habits of life that are worthy of our vocation, worthy of our God.

It is not difficult to see you living out this grand pattern. As I said at the start of the sermon, my task today is more to remind than to instruct. Now, if we are going to continue living out this pattern and do it well, I think it is important to offer encouragement for us to do it more and more. It is not a childish task to live such a life to the end, and there are some pitfalls to avoid.

On Being Realistic
First of all, the God of Jesus Christ, who has given the Church this vocation to be holy, is not an all-or-nothing God. He is the patient God of increments, the patient God of human process. Look at Philippians 4:11. This is the great and godly apostle speaking.

I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content. The Philippians letter may have more quotable lines per page than any other New Testament letter. Those three words in the middle of verse twelve deserve to be underlined and cherished along with the golden prose elsewhere in the book: I have learned. Blessed confession of process!

I wonder how long it took him to learn it. He doesn't say. We are pretty sure that he wrote Philippians from jail in Rome, perhaps toward the end of his life. So, maybe he is alluding to a long struggle to learn contentment.

If you stay around this or any church for long, people will disappoint you. I understand that. I don't know how to stop that. But maybe we could take some of the sting out of the disappointment by being more realistic about people. We are all in process. The Church's vocation to be holy does not negate the process. We are to live a life worthy of this vocation, but we live it within the boundaries of our flawed humanity.

I often say to people who come to me for advice, "Today, you need me; tomorrow, I may need you." We are all on a long journey together. If we could cut each other a little more slack, when we fail, maybe there would be fewer spiritual fatalities.

Don't be all-or-nothing about the grand pattern of Ephesians 4:22-24. Some old habits from your past may be chronic. Don't pretend they are okay, and don't stop fighting them, and don't stop clothing yourself with Christ and learning new habits of holiness. This mixed quality of our experience brings me to a second counsel.

It is troublesome to us, when we repeat the same failures over and over. In this context there is a scripture that makes our failures more troublesome. Proverbs 28:13 says that he who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy. We hear that and say, "If I keep repeating the same sins over and over, how can I say that I renounced them? How can I believe that God will have mercy on me, if I go on repeating them?" It is only made worsse, if you approach your experience of Christian faith in an all-or-nothing frame of mind.

Stop beating yourself up about it! Of course, repeating the same old sins is not a good thing. We wish they would just go away. Their persistence, like a persistent infection, needs special attention. But why does it bother you? What has happened to your conscience that you should even care?

It is God's new life in your that makes you care. That is a powerful sign of God's continuing mercy to you. I would be much more concerned about you, if you tried to pretend it was okay, to justify the sin, or to give up. Keep calling the sin by its right name. Confess it to God. Say to God and to yourself every time, this behavior will have no place in the kingdom of God. Say to God and to yourself that you reject it as unfit for your life. Ask God for strength to overcome it, however long that may take.

Finally, scripture offers another help in working the Grand Pattern of Ephesians four into our habits. The passage is in Romans 6:13, which has the same message as Ephesians four. But in verse 13 Paul has a clever way of putting things.

Do not offer the parts of your body as sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness.

The human body is the instrument by which the world "out there" reaches our minds and spirits. It is also the instrument by which our thoughts and intentions influence the world "out there." It is more important to place this unique and powerful instrument at God's disposal to serve God's purpose.

Verse thirteen envisions the human body as a kind of tool kit: eyes, ears, tongue, hands, feet and the like are the tools at our disposal. Then, it asks, "How are you going to use these tools?" Remember the old proverb? Idle hands are the devil's workshop. These tools, like all tools, are neutral. We use them for good or evil.

Everywhere we go, we take this remarkable tool kit with us. In the old life, before Christ, we used to indule our passions. In the new life in Christ we put them to new purposes. In those sins you repeat, ask yourself which tools in your tool kit you are using. Begin to train yourself in new ways to use those tools when you are tempted. It is a powerful way to fight back.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Many years ago, when Carole and I left the hospital with our firstborn, the nurse handed him into Carole and closed the door. For a moment, we sat in our car in the snow and ice of a Syracuse winter and said to each other, "Are they going to let us take him home?" He seemed too great a trust for our small hands.

The divine experiment that is the Church is like that. As with a newborn child, all the impossibilities have been done for us. God has taken flesh. Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ has ascended. Christ rules. The Spirit has come. The Church is formed. It is as if the Divine Nurse has closed the door, saying, "What will you do with what I have given you?" It seems too great a trust for all small hands.

But we have accepted that trust. The grand pattern of human restoration in Ephesians four can easily be discerned in this and ten thousand other Christian congregations. For us the question is not if we will put off the old self, be made new in the attitude of your minds, and put on the new self. That pocess is underway here. The questions for us are: will we let Christ "seel this job through?" And will we do it with a sense of solidarity with each other?

The Church's vocation to be holy both defines and fulfills the longing of the individual to be authentic and to be free. We do that with all who have taken up this vocation at their baptism and in whom the people of God is taking shape right under the nose of the old creation and whose defining characteristic we must consider next week.