So let's pray together then, shall we? Father God, once again into your presence we come with rejoicing in our hearts for we have been singing again of following the Lord Jesus and what a delight it is to each and every one of us. We pray that as we're together this evening we might capture something more of what it means to walk with the Lord Jesus Christ in our daily lives. We're so surrounded on every side by sin, sin that so easily besets us. And yet, our Father God, we just praise and thank you for the divine person living within each one of us, the Holy Spirit, teaching us the things of Christ, displaying the beauties and perfections of that lovely man to each and every one of us. And so, we just pray tonight, our Father, that we might rejoice much in him. We thank you for bringing us together, for giving us a desire to be here, for giving us the means of being here. And we just thank you for health and strength, our Father, for every good blessing that we've received of your hand this day. We just pray, Our Father, that this time might be a blessing to us as well, as once and again we pray the Holy Spirit will take of the things of Christ and minister them to each and every one of us. So be with us on that to bless, Our Father, we pray, and be with those unable to be with us for one reason or another, those who would normally gather with us. Be with us and bless, Father, we pray, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we ask it for his sake, Amen. So, Ephesians, please, and we'll commence our reading, although we'll be looking into Chapter 5 this evening in the Book of Ephesians. We'll start our reading, please, at verse 30 of Chapter 4, just to get the connection. So, Chapter 4 of Ephesians, reading at verse 30. Paul writes, and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamour and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice. And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. Be ye therefore followers of God as dear children, and walk in love as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour. But fornication and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you as becometh saints. neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient, but rather giving of thanks. For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no man deceive you with vain words. For because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. Be not ye therefore partakers with them? For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord, walkers, children of light. So reads God's precious word. He will bless that reading to us. The first two verses of Chapter 5 of the Epistle to the Ephesians links us with Chapter 4. It's a link between what Paul has been teaching us in Chapter 4 with what he intends to reinforce and teach us in Chapter 4, these first two verses. In Chapter 4 we read, Grieve not the Holy Spirit. And last time we were in this consideration of these chapters, we were thinking about our ability and the necessity of us to bring a smile to the face of the Holy Spirit instead of a frown of grief. And in those last verses of Chapter 4, we learnt that we should live a life free from falsehood, free from lying, a life that is free from anger, a life free from theft and a life free from corrupting talk. We were enabled to do this by the power of the Holy Spirit living within each of us as born-again believers. Kent Hughes in his commentary says this of the Holy Spirit. He says, the Holy Spirit is not a phantom, he's a person. In infinite love he has condescended to indwell us and to suffer pain and joy through us. Is he grieved with us or is he singing over us? And so we come to chapter 5 and we find that Paul is going to develop this theme. In verse 1 he says, we're to walk in love. And he says the standard of that love is simply this. It's the love that Christ has for us. That's the standard of the love that God sets before us as being the love that he wants us to walk in. And the measure of it, he says, offering and sacrifice to God. A sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour. What he's saying here is that the standard of the love is that love which Christ loved us with, and the measure of it is the offering of a sacrifice to God. And here in thought, in view, is the burnt offering from Leviticus in chapter 1. That thing that was holy for God, that offering that was a sweet-smelling savour to God. The burnt offering. But as we come to verses 3 and 4, we find that Paul abruptly returns to the theme of chapter 4. And now he's going to put particular emphasis on purity of life. If I don't mind admitting that as I studied these verses this week, it came as a real challenge to me. It came as a real inward look at myself and to ask myself the questions that Paul raises as he makes these particular claims. And in these first verses he's going to speak about the prohibition of Christianity's sexual ethics. One has likened this chapter to the Sweetie Jar Syndrome. Mother comes home from the supermarket, and she packs away the goods that she's brought into the larder and the freezer and the fridge. And she has a bag of sweets, and she puts them into the sweetie jar. And her son is there, a young son, and he realizes that she's put these in the sweetie jar. And of course, he desires a sweetie out of the sweetie jar. Mother says, no, not until after dinner. When we've had our meal later, you can have a sweetie out of the sweetie jar. She puts the sweetie jar on the sideboard in the sitting room and goes back to the kitchen to prepare the meal. It's not long before she hears the tinkle of the lid on the sweetie jar being moved. And she calls out, son, what are you doing? Ah, I've got my hand in the sweetie jar, but I'm resisting the temptation to take a sweetie." And this is a lovely illustration, I feel, of what Paul is saying to us here, what he's saying to us. He's saying, in effect, that there are sweetie jars all around us. We are inundated these days, it seems, as much as were the Ephesians in their day. We are inundated with sweetie jars. And, of course, it's a natural reaction, a human reaction, to want to put our hands in the sweetie jars. And then to try and resist the temptation to take one of the sweets out of the sweetie jar. You think about life today. Think about your television set in your home. What we watch on our televisions. What we watch, or are able to watch if we want to, on our computers, the internet. What we can read in books, magazines. What we see when we look at advertising material. What we see and what we're touched by and what appeals to us quite often in society itself at large, the things that other folks are doing, the way they are behaving. I can remember as a young lad when televisions first became, and some of you will as well, became easy to buy, became affordable, and we were able to have one, I think it was about 1957 when we had a first little television. And I remember the elderly saints of the day then, the preachers, saying what a dreadful thing it was and how it was going to affect the lives of Christians in a very downward way. And, of course, in many ways it can. Because, of course, with television we can become addicted to it. We can become addicted to the soaps, to the quizzes. We can become addicted to the shows where they interview people. And so often they're full of things which are not edifying for Christians to be looking at, to be taking note of. I can remember, and I say it myself on an occasion long, long ago now, that for a very short time, fortunately, I became addicted to EastEnders, the programme on the television. If I happen to catch just a snippet of it these days, it makes me feel sick to think that I ever sat and watched it and followed the various storylines. But you see, I was putting my hand in the sweetie jar. It wasn't going to harm me. I was a strong enough Christian, I thought, to be able to stay clean and not be touched by the sin that was being promoted on those programs. And fortunately, by the grace of God, I dropped it fairly quickly and never went back to it. But you know what I'm talking about. You know how you can surf the internet and one thing leads to another, to another, to another. And that can become a sweetie jar full of sin. And it's going to damage our Christian lives. Magazines that are full of other people's lives, and particularly the seedy side of their lives, the so-called celebrities of this world. Isn't it wonderful? I mustn't digress too much, must I? I haven't got a clock here, so I'm all right. I can keep going. We haven't got a clock. When we were thinking a few weeks back in Ephesians, we were thinking about the Christian, the believer, being God's workmanship. being God's masterpiece. Amazing, isn't it? And yet we've become so wound up sometimes, perhaps, with celebrities, so-called celebrities. They're not celebrities at all, are they? We're the celebrities in this world. We're God's workmanship, his masterpiece. Paul is saying here, this has got to have an effect upon your life. Believers are assorted on every side by open, living, sweetie jars. And it's impossible not to be tempted and put our hands and our minds inside those sweetie jars and be contaminated by the sin that there is in there. Paul, of course, knew exactly what he was talking about, and so did the Ephesians. For the Ephesians in their day were Christians, born-again believers. But they were living in a notoriously sinful city, Ephesus. The dominant religion of that city was the worship of Diana, the multi-breasted goddess. Ritual prostitution was a way of life in the city of Ephesus. Sexual perversion was validated and even exalted. That was the situation there. We think we have it bad these days, don't we, and how awful the world is and society is and how much sin and wickedness there is around us. These people knew all about it. They lived in exactly like circumstances. And Paul says, there must be no sexual immorality amongst Christians. There's got to be purity, no impurity. There mustn't be covetousness, he says, in these early verses, in verse 3. What does he mean by covetousness there? The word that he uses there for covetousness is greed for someone else's body. It's lust. And so Paul says, these are not just to be avoided. They're not even to be spoken of. Again, I go back to my youth and I remember that preachers would have never, ever used the word prostitute. They would have never used words that we use perhaps today readily for describing sin and all the rest of it. But nowadays, these words are just common parlance. You only have to, as I say, put your television on, open your newspaper, and you're assaulted by a sinful, wicked world. Paul, of course, as you read through his epistles, there's no doubt at all that he had no difficulty naming individual sins. But what he did regard as unacceptable was extended conversation about them. He says that that is dangerous to our spiritual health. So don't even mention it, he says. Don't talk about it. Don't discuss it. It's so easy for us, isn't it, to grab a magazine and find the salacious bits about people's lives and to become engrossed in it and to read it and be interested in it. You know, it's a sweetie jar that it's so easy to get drawn into. Imagine, imagine Paul living today and writing today. We can easily, easily name the sweetie jars that he would be advising us not to put our hands into, not even to take the lid off. Television, as I say, the soaps, celebrity magazines, newspapers, internet. He would say, that it's too easy for the believer, for the Christian, to take the lid off of these things and to, like the little boy, put our hands in and say, we're resisting the temptation to get involved with them. It's quite nice to read a little bit of it and see a little bit of it. I remember one very, very pious, I would say, Christian lady. She told us on one occasion that she would watch the television But if she heard the name of Christ blasphemed twice, she'd turn that programme off. Why would she wait for truths to... Didn't the first blasphemous mention of her saviour bother her at all to the point where she would switch it off? You know what I'm talking about. It's so easy, isn't it, as we move around in this world, to accept these things. dare we ignore the scriptural warning from Paul here and from others of falling into sin. The opportunity of the enjoyment of wisdom for the soul is to be found only in the scriptures. But we're dragged away so often by the things of the world. Paul says don't indulge in it and certainly don't discuss it. In verse 4 he turns his attention to the purity expected in the Christian's speech, in the way we talk to one another, to others outside, the way we converse one with another. And he says, neither filthiness nor foolish talking nor jesting which are not convenient, but rather giving thanks. He says it's not only filthy language that you should avoid, but it's just foolish talk. And the strength of the word there in the original is that it is moronic talk. It's crude jesting and joking. It's empty. It's wasteful. It's idiotic talk. Paul says, avoid them. Don't indulge in it. Just make the point here that scripture, of course, doesn't condemn laughter, humour, merriment. Proverbs 17, verse 22, has the thought that a joyful heart is good medicine. Of course, they tell us often that if we laugh a lot, we'll be far healthier than if we're miserable. So they say. I don't know whether that's true. Ecclesiastes, the writer, says there's a time to laugh. However, Paul says, crude joking, vulgarity, and innuendo is poison to the soul. So what makes it so bad? Well, first of all, it's humour that flirts with the boundaries of good taste can easily degenerate into worse and worse speech, worse and worse behaviour. Secondly, laughing often at something which is no laughing matter. will gradually blur our perception of moral good and what is right. It becomes the norm. It just becomes acceptable. Thirdly, improper or inappropriate speech is indicative of a sinful heart. It shows us up for what our hearts are like if we indulge in this sort of behavior, Paul says. Remember how the Lord Jesus told the religious leaders of the day that they were whited sepulchres, wicked inside, beyond measure, and yet outside appearing to be very good and upright people. And it's possible, of course, for us to be like that. And then fourthly, we have to realize, and perhaps this is the strongest reason for not indulging in this sort of behavior, we will one day have to account to God for every word that we have spoken. Sobering, isn't it? As I say, it challenged me enormously this week. And remember that we will not be giving an account to God of our lives, we will be giving account. God knows our lives. He knows every foolish thing we've said, every wrong act we've committed. He doesn't need us to account for, to give an account of it. He knows everything about us. But He will take into account everything that we have said. in our Christian lives. It's sobering, isn't it? So Paul is crystal clear. It's very stark here, isn't it? He's saying that we are not to read, watch or talk about immorality. There's to be no moronic talk, no obscenity or coarse joking. And he says, in effect, if that's part of your life, if that's part of your daily life in any way, then your hand is in the sweetie jar. Pull it out and put the lid on. He forbids it entirely. Don't think that you won't be contaminated by those sins. You will be, he says. Rather, he says, give thanks. So he's saying here that Christians are not to be repressive about their sexuality, but rather to hold it in the highest respect and regard. He says joking degrades spiritual life. Thanksgiving preserves it. This is what Paul is saying here. So what then are the reasons for Paul's prohibition of these Christian sexual ethics, as we might call them? In verses 5 and 6 he lays them out for us. For this ye know, he says, that no whoremonger nor unclean person nor covetous man who is an idolater hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no man deceive you with vain words, for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. Be not ye therefore partakers with them. Here are the reasons for not indulging in these particular sins. Foremost, he says, no sensualist will go to heaven. No lustful person will find themself in heaven. The peoples whose lust has become an idolatrous obsession, he says, will not be part of the kingdom of God. And of course, it's a truth that is repeated to the Corinthians and to the Galatians. Let me just read you what the Apostle John said in 1 John 3, verse 7. Little children, he says, let no man deceive you. He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He that committeth sin is of the devil, for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin, for his seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil. Again and again scriptures tell us that we are not to be sensualists, we're not to be full of idolatrous obsession with unhelpful things. No practicing sinner, no unrepentant sensualist has eternal life. So what Paul is saying here is that if we fall into these sins, we must repent of them. We preach that in the Gospel. We preach to folks that they are sinful in their ways and they're separated from God because of their sin. And the only way back to God is not to come to Jesus and say, sorry, I've done a few things wrong, will you forgive me? The Bible is quite clear that we preach the Gospel of repentance. Repent, the Lord Jesus said, and be baptised. And repent means to turn your back on the sins of your previous life. And Paul is saying here, if you've fallen into sin, if you, in some way or other, have had your hand in the sweetie jar of sin, you've got to repent of it and determine not to go on in those sins. So do Christians fall into these sins? Of course they do. It's very obvious to us. The news bulletins make that clear to us with all the problems that have been aired in the news bulletins about the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England, the priests, and all this sort of thing. Yes, of course, Christians fall into it. But Paul says, true Christians, truly born-again believers, will not persist in them. Because that's the hard thing, isn't it? We can fall into a sin. It's fairly straightforward, fairly simple. But to break that sin, to actually give up that particular wrongdoing is so easy. So, the conclusion is that anyone who is living a lustful life of sensuality and is unwilling to turn away from it is lost. Paul says, has no inheritance in the kingdom of God and Christ. Such a person, he says, is an idolater because they have put their sensual desires in the central place which only God should occupy. And then he says, don't be deceived. Don't be deceived, he said. God will not turn away his wrath. There's a big movement these days amongst Christians to say, well, of course, we all sin and we can't help it, but God will forgive us these sins. There's no need for us to worry about it. Believe you me, there is every reason to worry about our sins and the sinful life that we so often get dragged into. Paul says, don't be deceived. God will not turn away from his wrath. If we continue in sin and we persist in it, we do not repent of it and turn away from it, then we will suffer loss. Yet, there is hope. We can finish on an upbeat note. Let me read you what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6 and verse 11. Paul says this, and such were some of you. In the first ten verses of that chapter, he's laid out many of the sinful practices that were there in the Corinthian church. And he says, such were some of you, but you are washed. but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. There is hope. So as we move around in the world in which we live, and it's It's going to touch each and every one of us even if we stay locked in our houses and don't go outside. We could become a monk or a nun and lock ourselves away. We will still in our houses these days be touched by these sins. These open sweetie jars are around us testifying to the misery of those who have helped themselves. That's true, isn't it? As you look at the folks who've indulged in these particular practices in the world, these, as I say, so-called celebrities, they are the most miserable people on earth, often towards the end of their lives, and many of them indeed shorten their lives and take their lives because they feel they've got nothing to live for, there's no hope for them. So what are we to do? Paul says in verse 7, he says, Be not therefore partakers with them. The negative side of it, don't join them in their sin. But then that casts us back to verse one of chapter five for the positive side. Paul says, be ye therefore followers of God as dear children. Walk in love as Christ also hath loved us and has given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice for a sweet-smelling savour. This is what we are to do. Positive and negatively, don't join them in their sin. positively imitate God as dear children. Imitate the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ, as he moved amongst us nigh two thousand years ago, never came close. Never came close to having his hand in a sweetie jar of sin. He was never obsessed with lust. He never uttered an obscenity. There was no foolish talk, no coarse joking, no innuendo, no vulgarities, no laughter over what ought not to be laughed at. Some people say, well, you know, we never read about the Lord Jesus laughing. And that's true. I don't believe we do. If you can show me somewhere in the scriptures, I'd be glad to revise my opinion. But I don't think we read anywhere that the Lord Jesus laughed. I'm sure he did. I'm sure he had some very, very happy times where he would have been very joyous in himself. But we don't read that. We read an awful lot about him weeping. And he's weeping over sin so often, and the result of sins as he comes to Lazarus' tomb, and on other occasions. So this is the Lord Jesus Christ, the supreme example for us. And you say to me, and I'd agree with you, it's a tall order. How can we live lives like that? We're surrounded by all the possibilities to fall into sin. How can we possibly combat that? But Paul says you have the possibility of living a godly life. Why? Because he says you have the divine person of the Holy Spirit living within you. A divine person, Jesus said, just like himself, living within us. giving us the ability to be those who can live lives not exactly like the Lord Jesus Christ, but we should be endeavouring to live lives like Him as best we can. So, to finish, hands out of the sweetie jars. and rather endeavour to put that smile on the face of the Holy Spirit rather than to grieve the Holy Spirit. Amen. 706 please, 706. Search me, O God, my actions try, and let my life appear, as seen by thine all-searching eye, to mine my ways make clear. 706.