Ephesians chapter 4, we're continuing on in our series through Ephesians. That's on page 1244 in the Pew Bibles. Here in the last half of chapter 4 and on through the first half of chapter 5, Paul's dealing in a very practical way, dealing with our personal lives and what our personal lives should look like as Christians. were to live personal lives worthy of the gospel and worthy of our calling as God's children. One of the items that he touches on, and he touches on this a few different times, is the idea of Christian sexuality and giving up sexual perversion, that we shouldn't live lives of sexual perversion. So we'll be focusing on this topic today. I'm going to read Ephesians chapter 4, starting at verse 17. I'll read through verse 24 and then one verse from chapter 5. Listen now to God's Word, which is able to make us wise to salvation. Now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. They've become callous. and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that was not the way you learned Christ. Assuming that you heard about Him and were taught in Him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life, and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds. and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God, in true righteousness and holiness. And then down to verse 3 of chapter 5. But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. That's the word of our gracious God. It's hard to find anything today in our society that's been more abused than the gift of sex. As Christians, we know that God created sex and so we know that sex in itself is a good thing, a good gift, but we've taken this good gift and we've misused it, abused it and perverted it. We're bombarded on all sides with this sexual perversion. From the inside, our sinful hearts, our sinful nature has been so ingrained into our minds and our hearts and in our hormones that we're constantly fighting against our own selves, to fight against this perversion, to fight against our own feelings and hearts and thoughts. And then from the outside, our culture bombards us with these ideas and pictures and concepts of perversion, and they've made or we've made pornography and sexual promiscuity so readily accessible and acceptable that we're constantly bombarded by them. Really, the perversion of sex is all around us, in television ads, in music, internet ads. Even if you aren't looking for it, it's around you. It flashes all around you. And so having the pressure from inside of us, our sinful nature, and also having the pressure from outside that makes sexual perversion so blatant in our face, it seems near impossible to use this good gift as God intends us to use it. As Christians, we of course aren't immune to this battle at all. There are countless examples of young children as well as long-time church leaders who've in one way or another been entangled in this perversion. Many of us are addicted to pornography or entangled in pornography or some other immoral behavior. Our marriages and our relationships are affected by this perversion. The way men view women is perverted. The way women view men is perverted, the way we view ourselves is perverted, it's all distorted, and the effects of perversion is far-reaching into our lives. Well, as Christians, Paul says we aren't to live like unbelievers do, who are calloused, who are sexually immoral, and who practice every kind of impurity. Instead, he says, we have to get rid of it. We have to get rid of it and cut it off. As we know, that's a lot easier said than done. If you've struggled with sexual perversion or really with any kind of addiction, which in one sense or another all of us are addicted to some form of sin with our sinful nature, then you know how hard it is to simply cut that sin out of your life. And we try to get rid of it just by trying harder and working harder at trying to get rid of it. just dealing with our outward actions. That's not really dealing with the fruit or the issue, the main issue. We can't fight this battle just by trying harder, trying harder to cut things off, but rather we have to dig deeply into our hearts and into our minds to understand why we're falling into this perversion. This isn't going to be a self-help sermon to help give you some techniques just to sort of help correct or adjust some habits or lifestyle choices. No, our passage today teaches us that our habits and our outward lifestyle are actually driven by the way that we think and actually reveal what we believe to be true. It actually shows us that we haven't fully realized or embraced or believed the truth as it's found in Jesus Christ. Our actions show us that we believe something else to be true. We've exchanged the truth of God for a lie. And so we can't just try harder to adapt or adjust our outward habits, but if you want to change your outward behavior to live a life worthy of the calling, worthy of the Gospel, worthy of God, don't just try harder, but rather dig deeper into the way that you think. and even deeper into what you believe to be true. Because that's where you find the lies that you've bought into, which then lead to sexual perversion. Those lies then must be uprooted and replaced with the truth as it's found in Jesus Christ. That's what Paul's calling us to do. As Christians, we are to redeem this gift of sexuality. And the only way to do that is by clinging more and more, more and more, every day, every moment, to the truth as it's found in Jesus Christ. Cling to Christ and through that put off sexual immorality. I'm working through this section here in Ephesians more topically because the way Paul writes this section is he touches on all kinds of practical topics of the Christian life. And he touches on them in different places. So you'll find different the same topic in chapter three, and you'll find it repeated in chapter four, or maybe even in a few more places. And he mentions sexual immorality in three different places in this section. And so we're looking at this section topically, just looking at what he says about each practical issue. Paul's urging us to think about how our faith And what we believe about God and about Christ is to impact the way that we live. He urges us not to live like unbelievers. In verse 19 he says, the unbelievers have become calloused. They've become calloused. What's he referring to? He's referring to their conscience. Everyone in the world is born with a conscience, a sense of right and wrong. Romans 2 mentions that even unbelievers who aren't even familiar with the Christian faith have a sense of right and wrong because the law of God is written on their hearts. And they bear witness to that because they have a conscience. When they do wrong, they feel guilty about it. But what Paul is saying here is that even though unbelievers are born with a conscience, we're all born with a conscience, their conscience has become calloused and hardened. And I'm guessing that you've had a similar kind of experience, a callousing of the conscience. When the first time you committed sin, you felt tremendous guilt and shame, but the more you did it, the more it became a part of your life, the less you felt guilty about it, and your conscience became calloused, which allowed you to do even worse things or more heinous things without the pangs of guilt. It's like over time your body and your mind build up an immunity to guilt so that you can do wickedness without feeling the pains of guilt. Well, this is what's happened to an unbeliever. When their conscience becomes callous, their wickedness increases and becomes more and more perverted because they don't have the weight of guilt holding them back. Interviews with serial killers. reveals that most of the time, beginning with pornography, they commit increasingly sinful acts or perverted acts, which builds up a callous conscience, which then enables them to do things that are just unimaginable for us to comprehend someone doing. Doing the unthinkable. And yet they do this without really the sense of guilt. They may feel bad for the family of the victim, but they don't feel guilt for what they do. Their conscience is callous. And that's what Paul's talking about here. Unbelievers have this callous conscience, and as a result, they give themselves up to sensuality, and they have this appetite for perversion and impurity, and they just can't get enough of it. Paul describes this progression well in Romans chapter 1, where he goes through this progression of perversion. He says they deny God. They exchange the truth of God for a lie. They then worship created things rather than their Creator. Their thinking becomes futile. Their hearts are darkened. They then exchange natural relations for unnatural ones. And the way the ESV puts it, which I like, is they become inventors of evil. They invent evil. God gave them over to their perversion to do what ought not to be done. It's the progression of a calloused heart. A callous conscience. We think of our society today as being very perverted, but this is the way that Paul describes society back then. We think that our society maybe is at the peak of perversion, but this is how Paul explained it back then. These words apply so clearly to us today. The American conscience is becoming callous and perversion is alive and well. Here in America alone, ten billion dollars is spent every year on pornography. Ten billion dollars. Having sex out of sight of marriage is the norm. Homosexuality is promoted as an equally good alternative. Pornographic movies and Websites and clubs are flourishing and increasing. The top word search on the internet is sex. The average exposure, the average age of someone being exposed to pornography or sex gets younger and younger. And God gives us over to do what ought not to be done. He gives us over to sinful lusts, to wandering eyes, wandering hands, pornography, promiscuity, adultery, homosexuality, orgies, prostitution, rape, sexual violence, incest, pedophilia, bestiality. Name it and you don't have to look hard to find it. You can get it anywhere at any time with a snap of your finger. A callous conscience leads to this insatiable appetite, which leads us to become inventors of evil. We invent ways of sinning. And obviously, we're not immune from this problem. It's not just a problem out beyond these walls. We are also, our lives are dragged into this filth. We drag ourselves into this filth. And our own hearts become calloused to sin, immune to guilt, and our thoughts and our words and our actions continue to progress in this perversion. And sadly, this is The Church has often proven not to be a safe place where we can actually be open and share our struggles. Instead of a place where we can actually talk about the deep struggles of our life and be received with accountability and grace and love, we're instead rebuked and sent back to our dark tunnels to struggle alone, to continue to lose the battle. And so as a result, Christians are turning to secular organizations to help them to fight this sexual struggle, because the church isn't a safe place. Not only are we entangled in it, but we refuse to deal with it or talk about it. And we don't know how to help each other. And instead of being a broken community that lives together by grace, where we walk this road together, where we fight together, where we're open and honest, instead, we produce this sort of superficial gathering. We produce this superficial gathering where you're okay, I'm okay, I'm not going to ask any questions, we're not going to go deeper. Here the church is designed as a community to offer real hope to broken people like us. We're strugglers joined together in a community where the hope and power of the gospel is repeatedly proclaimed and applied and applied and reapplied. We have a God who deals very directly with the dark tunnels of our lives, and yet we avoid them. We avoid them as a community. We need to be a place where people find great hope, where the struggler finds a community of strugglers who seek to live by faith in Christ and His promises. We may not openly encourage sexual perversion, but there is this pressure to keep your sins and your struggles hidden to yourself. And as a result, the church has become a very dangerous place where we don't deal with what's trying to kill us. So, Paul urges us, don't live this way. Don't follow in the perversion of the world. Don't be a dangerous place where perversion thrives in the dark caves of our lives. Don't live the perverted, callous life of unbelievers. Now, in the very next verses, Paul gives us a strategy to help us get rid of perversion in our lives. And he doesn't just say, try harder. He doesn't just say, try harder. He doesn't focus on the outward behavior, but rather he mentions the sexual perversion and then he goes right to the heart of the matter. He targets our thoughts and what we actually believe to be true. Paul understands that our perverted acts come from a perverted way of thinking. And so he targets the way that we think and what we believe. And if that is set straight, then it will lead to a life of righteousness and holiness, increased righteousness and holiness. And so he says in verse 20, after he mentions this idea of perversion, he says, that's not the way you learned Christ. Assuming that you heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus. That's not the way you learned Christ, the way you learn the truth of Jesus. What he's saying is this, he's saying, living the perverted life is really just inconsistent with what you believe to be true, or what you say you believe to be true. What we know is true through Jesus. And so, in order to put off sexual perversion, and to put on true righteousness and holiness, as he mentions, you have to embrace more fully the truth as it's found in Jesus Christ. To have the truth of Jesus Christ sink deeper into your heart and soul, which that then will transform the way that we live, the way we think, the things we do. It is essential for us to understand that what we do is actually growing out of what we think and what we believe to be true. Let me explain. I have had over my lifetime a high number of cavities. And I'm pretty good at brushing now, thanks to Alyssa's influence. And I'm glad for that. And I've gotten fewer and fewer cavities. But I'm not a very faithful flosser. I do it now and again, but I'm not faithful. I admit that. And my cavities, my last cavities developed in between my teeth where the brush can't reach. And they're cavities that show up on the x-ray because They show up in between the teeth where I don't floss. And the doctor said, your teeth are important. The dentist, I guess, says your teeth are important. You need to take care of them. And if you don't want cavities, then you need to floss regularly. And I'll go home and I'll be good for a little while, but then I begin to slack off again. But I realized that my slacking off is not simply because of my own laziness, which contributes to it. It's not just because of laziness, though. What happens, deep down, is I begin to exchange the truth of the dentist for a lie. The dentist says my teeth are important, but I come to the conclusion, well, you know, they're not that important. I'll just keep getting my cavities filled. Eventually I'll get dentures and I'll be done with it all. It's no big deal. And so I'll skip it. It's not that important. And I slack off in flossing. Or the dentist says I get cavities because I don't floss. And again, I exchange the truth of the dentist for a lie. And I convince myself, I'm going to give it another shot. I'm going to see if I can go without flossing and not get any cavities. Cavity-free checkup. I somehow convince myself to believe a lie contrary to what I know is true. In principle, I know what is true, but I convince myself to believe a lie. In principally, I agree with the doctor, but really deep down what drives my life is a lie. I've convinced myself to buy into that lie. Well, the same thing is true about the Christian life. Our behavior grows out of what we really genuinely believe to be true. And so, when we exchange the truth of Jesus for a lie, the result is a perverted life. And we may say that we believe in something, in principle, but our actions show that we've exchanged the truth of God, the truth of Jesus, for a lie, and we begin to live thinking that that lie is true rather than what Jesus said is true. And that leads us into sexual perversion. All kinds of perversion, really. That is the reason why we can't just focus on our outward behavior and try harder and harder to cut off our outward behavior to just adjust our habits, but we have to dive deep into our minds and into our souls to discover what really lies at the source of it all. To understand the lies that we've bought into that have produced such a behavior. And that's why Paul, And his discussion about sin points to the truth that we have in Jesus Christ. Don't live a perverted life. Don't you know the truth of Christ? If you want to put off sin, then cling tighter to these truths. And we have to think hard about this. We have to think, what are the lies that we buy into that lead to this kind of behavior? What are the lies that lead us to sexual perversion? What truth are we denying about Christ? I want to touch on two lies. There's a number of lies that we can buy into that lead to sexual perversion, but I'm going to touch on two lies, and there may be various forms of these lies, but these are two basic lies that lead us to sexual perversion. Lie number one is sex will satisfy me. Lie number one is that sex will satisfy me, or actually I should say the perversion of sex will satisfy me. And even sex itself, even used the way God intended. Sex will ultimately satisfy me. There aren't a lot of things going well in my life and this is the only thing that actually gives me any relief. This is the thing that actually makes me feel good. My life is so hard, so stressful, that this, just this little small pleasure, I need it just to make it through. And so we gorge ourselves on pornography or we hook up with someone thinking that that will actually satisfy me. That's the lie that we've bought into. What's the truth of Jesus tell us? Well, the truth of Jesus tells us that sex will never satisfy. All throughout Scripture, we're told that sexual perversion, although it may feel good for a moment, leads to death and destruction. Not only won't it satisfy you, but it will actually destroy you. It will sap you of your life. In Proverbs, Solomon very clearly says that the man who pursues the prostitute will pay with his life. Her house leads down to the chambers of death. It may feel good for a moment, but it will destroy you. We exchange the truth of God, sexual perversion will destroy you. For a lie, sexual perversion will actually give me the strength to get through this life, to get through this hard time. We buy into this lie, which then leads to perversion. A while ago, I read a book, Into the Wild, and it's a true story. about a young man who walks into the wilds of Alaska to try to make it on his own, try to get away from society. And he finds an old bus that was abandoned by Alaskan loggers, and he makes his home there. Well, four months later, he died. And he kept a journal and he took a lot of pictures of his experience. And the reason why he died is because he picked some seeds that had turned poisonous. And he kept eating these seeds, thinking that those would sustain his life. And it would make him feel full for a moment. It would satisfy the pain of hunger for the moment, but then that poison drained the nutrients of his body, out of his body, and it ended up killing him. And he took pictures of himself holding up these big bags of seeds with a big smile on his face, thinking that he found a good food source. ate and ate himself to death. What he thought would sustain his life, what would help him get him through, ended up actually killing him. We buy into the lie that sex and pornography will satisfy me and it may give me a full stomach for a moment, but it actually drains the nutrients from our lives and destroys us. Don't be deceived. Don't buy into the lie that sexual perversion will satisfy you. The truth of Jesus Christ says that it will drain your life away. It will kill you. Make no mistake. So, lie number one is that sex will satisfy me. Closely connected to that first lie is the second lie. God will not satisfy me. God will not satisfy me. This sex or this perversion will satisfy me more than God will satisfy me. God doesn't make me feel as good or satisfy me as much as sex does. Often our spiritual lives aren't very exciting. We go through ups and downs in our spiritual lives, but even when we're on a spiritual high, it doesn't produce the same kind of ecstasy that we get through sex. And so, God makes me feel this good, sex makes me feel this good, God doesn't satisfy me as much as sex does. Well, this lie denies the truth of Jesus who says that there is far greater ecstasy and pleasure and satisfaction found in God than there will ever be found in sex. The ecstasy of sex is a single drop of pleasure compared to the oceans and oceans and oceans of pleasure that are found in experiencing the true God. Jesus himself promises in Matthew 11, come to me all you who are weary and heavy burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke on you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for yourselves. We go through the pressures of life, we go through hard times and we think, ah, sex is the only thing that will actually give me relief. Jesus says, no. When you're burdened and heavy, come to me. That's where you'll find rest. You'll be refreshed and satisfied in me far more than any refreshment you'll find in sex. In Psalm 16, the singer says, You make known to me the path of life, and Your presence is fullness of joy, and at Your right hand I will enjoy pleasures forevermore. I will enjoy pleasures forever at Your right hand. God will produce a far greater pleasure than any sex can. In fact, in the Old Testament, God uses marriage and even uses sex as a symbol of the kind of relationship that we enjoy, that we can enjoy with God. The book of Hosea is a story of the prophet of God who marries a prostitute, and she becomes his wife, but yet she continues to cheat on him, and she sleeps with other men. She continues in her prostitution, thinking that will give her more pleasure than Hosea. But she ends up being abused and enslaved, and God tells Hosea, go and buy her back. And he does that, and they're reunited. God uses this story to symbolize our relationship with Him. He pursued us, He married us, but we thought that chasing these other gods would be better, would yield more pleasure. But in the end, it actually enslaves us. And so He pursued us again, and He redeemed us, and He married us, He bought us back. What He's saying here is that the joy that we find in marriage and sex, even as God intended it, is only a small taste of the joy that we find in God. He's calling us to be satisfied in Him, and He will satisfy us more than we can comprehend. Now, to be clear, I'm not saying this doesn't mean that God has sexual relations with people, with humans. That's a pagan idea, not a biblical idea. But what God is saying is that the intimacy and ecstasy of sex in a human relationship, in a loving marriage, is just a taste of the kind of pleasure and satisfaction that we enjoy and will enjoy forever with God. And so we buy into the lie that sex is the end in itself and we pursue that pleasure and forget that that's meant to point us to something far greater. We buy into this lie and then we abuse it and pervert it, thinking that's the end in itself. If we really believe that God is our satisfaction and our rest, that God will satisfy me more than anything else, then all the energy that I put into pursuing perversion will be spent in pursuing God. If I really believe that, We may say that we agree with this in principle, but by pushing God to the side to fulfill our perverted desires, proves that deep down in our souls, in our hearts, we have bought into this lie that this will satisfy me more. And the more you cling to the truth as it's found in Jesus Christ, the more these perverted habits will be cut off. They're growing out of a lie that we've bought into, and when we get rid of the lie and replace it with the truth, the outward action will be cut off. When we really believe it, it will be cut off. There are plenty of other lies that we buy into, but these are the two foundational ones. Sex will satisfy me and it will satisfy me more than God. God can't satisfy me more than sex can. Therefore, I need this. I need this to get through. We exchange the truth of God for a lie. and we invent perversion. You have to think long and hard about your own heart and life and mind. What are the lies that you've bought into that have led to this sexual perversion? What are the lies that you've bought into that lead to this life of perversion? Don't just try to change your outward behavior. You know, and I know, that doesn't work. You just try harder. What does the lie, what is the lie that you've bought into that leads to this behavior? Get rid of that lie, uproot that lie and exchange it, trade it in for the truth that's found in Jesus Christ and His promises. You know, we can talk a lot about theology and we can know the truths of scripture, but sadly, many times there's this huge contradiction. between our theology and our private lives. In our private lives, we wither away in perversion, which shows that even though we have good theology and principle, we don't actually believe it deep down. The solution to sexual perversion is not just trying harder or cutting off outward actions or thoughts. There's no simple technique that's going to solve this problem. But rather, it must begin with understanding the lies that you've bought into, uprooting them and replacing them with Christ and His truths and His promises. That's your hope. That's our hope. Our hope is in Christ. Now, many of us have struggled with sexual perversion in some form or another. And thankfully, God continues to show us grace through Christ. God continues to forgive. And He calls you back to trust in His promises. And so right now, if this is something that you struggle with, God calls you again to confess and to repent and to cling to Jesus Christ. Because only when you cling to Him will you be able to live a life worthy of your calling as children of God. cling to Christ and His truths and His promises, and it will lead you to a life of honoring God. The more we trust in Christ, the more it will drive us to live this life worthy of our calling as children of God. It's clinging to Jesus and His truths that will lead us to this life of righteousness. Now, it doesn't mean that cutting off our outward behavior will be easy, but it will be cutting it off at the root. In fact, it won't be easy. Jesus Himself says it's painful. It's like cutting off your hand or gouging out your eye. In Hebrews it says that we're supposed to resist it to the point of shedding our own blood. So it's not going to be easy. Don't think that this is just a quick and easy solution. But it's the constant daily clinging to the truth of God. Start with a lie. Replace it with the truth of Jesus Christ. I encourage you to talk about this among yourselves. those close to you, to talk about what lies we've bought into and what truths of Christ we're denying. God has done incredible things for us through Jesus Christ. He's washed us clean of our sins. He's adopted us as children of God. He's promised us life and pleasures with Him forever. And now He calls us to live a life worthy of that gospel for His honor and glory. Readjust your thinking so it aligns with the truth as it's found in Jesus Christ. Let's redeem this gift of sex that God has given to us by clinging to the truth of Jesus Christ and God will then be glorified. Let's pray together. Oh God, we confess to you that we have fallen far short in living a life worthy of the gospel. We continue to buy into the lies that we lived by as unbelievers. Help us to understand your truths in a much deeper way, the truths of Jesus Christ, and let us cling to his gospel more and more, knowing that he is the one, the only one who can satisfy us. Lord Jesus, let us find our satisfaction in you as our great husband. And please continue to give us the strength as your beloved bride. Walk with us and let us live lives that are honoring and pleasing to You for Your glory, not for our own. It's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen.