Brethren, let us once again turn to God's Word as it is found in Paul's epistle to the Ephesians. In a moment we will begin looking at chapter 4 and beginning with verse 17. I thought I needed to just explain my jump from Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10, all the way to chapter 4, verse 17. When I left Zambia, I don't know how it happened, but my secretary is the one who normally organizes everything. And finally, as I'm about to get to the airport, she gives me a folder which has my work for me. And in that work for me, the invisibility of the church just happened to be one of those that she put on my plate. So I prayed, and I looked at my whole Bible, and finally thought, well, the Book of Ephesians fits all my responsibilities very well. There's a section for the church, and I will deal with it. So it's one of those occasions where, thankfully, just before I finally came here, in fact, yesterday, yes, yesterday, I looked at the schedule that's in our bulletin and found that, in fact, this section was going to be under better hands, under Dr. Renihan. And so I was happy for the first time. Usually when you are sitting as a preacher in your congregation, and then your fellow preacher preaches your sermon for you, it's a disaster. But today it wasn't. So thankfully, that has been done. You have had a wonderful sermon. on the invisibility of the church. And so we will skip how we are one in Christ in the church through the cross. We will skip how the purposes of God are going to be accomplished through the church and also the mechanisms by which that happens, as we have apostles and prophets and evangelists and shepherd teachers across history bringing about the church functioning, one ministering to the other. So that brings us to chapter four, and verse 17. The subject that I have is resisting the world, resisting the world. That's the one we are looking at today. And then the Lord willing, tomorrow, we'll be looking at faithfulness in the midst or amidst decay. Now, generally speaking, when we are talking about resisting the world, we tend to think more in terms of the attraction of the world, the way in which, as John, for instance, says in 1 John 2, do not love the world. So you ensure that your life is lived free of the world's blinding attraction, mesmerizing effect upon your life, which ends up numbing your real appetite for spiritual things. And in a sense, the passage that we are looking at deals with that. When you come to chapter five, if we can just quickly peep there for a moment, and verse three, the Bible says there, but sexual immorality and all impurity, and then you have that word, all curvaceousness must not be named among you as is proper among saints. We also find the same in verse five. Verse five, the Bible says, for you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, and then it says, or who is curvaceous, that is an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. So that aspect is dealt with as we go through this passage of scripture. And in fact, I love the fact that it highlights curvaciousness as idolatry. You are replacing God with something else. And really, that's what the world has done. It's pushed God out of the way and instead filled that space with either material things or simply self in terms of pleasure. And that's why in this particular case, is tied fairly closely to sexual immorality, the immoral way of satisfying sexual passion. However, we will not go directly there. What we will do, beginning with verse 17, is begin to build towards that. so that we might see where all this is coming from as we deal with resisting the world. And I think that's important, that we don't simply go straight to it, because often it's a failure for us to see the root that often makes us vulnerable. We tend to purely think in a kind of legalistic way. That's bad, don't go that way. Well, when the Apostle Paul opens up this subject, he goes deeper than that. He begins by first of all showing us something of the root that makes the world go the way in which it has gone, and then basically says, you are different, therefore you ought not to go there. And then secondly, he deals with the whole area of speech, which we'll be looking at in a few minutes. But the way he deals with it throughout this passage is by way of contrast. And if there's anything we should not miss as we go from chapter four verse 17 to the middle somewhere of chapter 5 around verse 14. It is this constant contrasting between you and the world, you and the world, you and the world. You can't miss it. For instance, in verse 17, where he is beginning, look at the way he puts it there in verse 17. He says, 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. There must be a difference. There must be a clear contrast between you who are God's children and the world. You'll agree with me that sadly that's not a very popular position in the Christian church today. One of the reasons why the Christian church has lost its power in the world is that we tend to want to be like the world as much as possible without finally, as it were, falling into the ditch. That's the attitude. It's to be like the world and still find ourselves in heaven. And in the process, the world does not notice the difference. Well, if we're going to be different from the world, we need to see the reason why. And it's not something that we are doing because we just want to be different from the world. The Apostle Paul here is making the point that you are supposed to be different from the world because you are different from the world. And you are different because God has made this moral transformation in you. that causes you to therefore think differently and therefore behave differently. He begins with the people of the world. And again, I want you to keep noticing this contrast. This is the way he puts it in verse 18 and 19. They are darkened in their understanding. So the mind alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. So we've got the mind and we have the heart and then we go to see now the fruit in the wheel. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality greedy to practice every kind of impurity. That's the world. That's the way they behave as they do. Their minds are darkened, their hearts are hardened, and consequently they chase after evil by way of practice. Notice the contrast in verse 20. But that's not the way you learned Christ, assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus. I'll just skip verse 22 for a moment. Let's jump into verse 23. 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. That's what God has done. When you came to him in repentance and faith, you were taught a completely different lifestyle, a completely different way of life from what was happening in the world, where indeed you were, and the rest of the world still remains. there's been this complete change. In verse 22, which we skipped, he said, you were taught to put off your old self, and he says, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires. The question is, do we recognize this? That when we're using phrases like, I am born again, I am a new creature in Christ. Are we recognizing the change that has taken place, that we have left a certain lifestyle by virtue of what God has done in us? Earlier we had spoken about the non-Christians as being dead in a threefold enslavement, and us as being made alive, and in that sense being God's workmanship. Do we recognize that? Because if we honestly do, then we should not want to be like the world. Because we are going into two totally different directions. Others are slaves to sin, hardened in their hearts, and so forth. Whereas for us, it is a new life altogether. It is not the way you learned Christ. When we fell there at the point of the reason, we have failed everywhere else. And especially as young adults, Because if, as young adults, we don't see this major change that has taken place, we will, in the end, fail the church, especially the church of tomorrow. We'll completely fail. We will look at our leaders who are demanding a different lifestyle altogether And we'll be saying to them, you are merely old-fashioned. That's the way we'll be speaking. You are old-fashioned. This is the 21st century. Wake up. We'll be saying to them, this is the modern America. When in actual fact, we are missing out on one thing. They are dead. We are alive. We're missing out on that altogether, and that that contrast ought to show. Now the first area that the Apostle Paul deals with in which there must be a clear difference is in the realm of speech, in the realm of speech. He puts it this way, and again I want you to be noticing the contrast, the clear contrast. He begins with the way in which the world is. And he says, therefore, put away falsehood. That's the way the world is. That's the way it functions. It is in terms of deceit. It is in terms of falsehood. And then he puts it this way in a positive way. Let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor. Why? For we are members one of another. In other words, if anybody comes within the pale of the church, or living with us in the home, they should be able to see that we have a completely different ethos with respect to the things we say. And one thing we don't do is to tell lies to one another at all. We aim to be individuals of integrity. Well, speech doesn't just end in terms of either truth or falsehood, but it's also, speech is a vehicle through which we express our passion. And that's what he spends a lot more of his time in. Notice the way he puts it in verse 26. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. I'll leave verse 28 for a moment. We'll come to it in a moment. Verse 29, let no corrupt talk come out of your mouth, but only such as is good for building up. Verse 30, And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. And notice how anger is expressing itself now through speech. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice. And often, therefore, through speech, we end up being individuals who are deliberately, and I mean deliberately, exaggerating in order to make what is gray black so that somebody can be lined up with the devil altogether. Now that's the world. That's the way the world functions. And we must be We must be different. Instead of allowing this anger in us to end up painting somebody black, we make sure we address our anger. To borrow the phrase here, within 24 hours. Handle it before the sun goes down. The Bible puts it there. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. We were thinking that resisting the world is sort of resisting the world out there. Often, the world follows us into the church. And an entire church family can become completely ungovernable, unmanageable, because individuals are failing to control their own passions in this way. They have developed a wrong spirit, a wrong attitude, anger against somebody, and it doesn't matter. If that person says this wall is white, they'll say it's black and make the whole situation impossible. That's the world, friends. And in speaking about resisting it, it is essentially the same thing. When it's making its way into the church, we resist it in the church. We say to one another, no, brother, Matthew 18 is fairly clear. Go and sit down with this person. Resolve your difference. Let's not cause the entire church to fail to function, to fail to carry out the a great commission because you are busy, I hope you've heard this Chinese phrase, you're busy killing a fly on your friend's forehead with a 10 pound hammer. Okay, you seem to have gotten the message. Obviously, you have your agenda. And then you are using this situation as a mere excuse to carry that out. Well, in the midst of this whole area of speech, the apostle brings in the area of honest labor. He puts it this way in verse 28. First of all, again, notice the contrast. Let the thief no longer steal. Again, that's the world. And then he says, instead, or but rather, let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. The way the world functions is this. Go to your job. You want to cut corners. The main thing is this, to get your income. And if you can get income by doing nothing, you will get income. That's the word. And it is possible for us to then take on the attitude of the world. We are converted all right, but we do not see that that conversion must also find its way in the way in which I function eight hours a day in the place of work, wherever that is. That I work hard and I do so as unto the Lord. that I work even harder so that I have something to spare so that I can be generous in life, but that I'm a steward of God's world. Therefore, I must pour in hard work and that out of that I may glorify God. So again, in resisting the world, we must recognize it's not simply curvaceousness. It is resisting the world's attitude completely, even in terms of the whole area of work. Work in the home, as a young person, I should be able to show that I'm a Christian. I'm different from my siblings who are non-Christians. What makes the difference? It is exactly what we saw at the beginning from verse 17 downwards. It is the fact that for them, the mind thinks wrongly, the heart feels wrongly, therefore the will does wrongly. I have had a major transformation that has taken place in me, and that's why you are seeing this difference. May I throw that back at you briefly? Whether this is the way your life is in terms of speech to begin with? Is your speech seasoned so? being helpful to other people? Or is your speech one that is full of falsehood, an expression of your fallen anger, and also one, therefore, that is full of slander? What is it, with respect to you, The Apostle ended this section by speaking in terms of being kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, and so on. But let me hurry on to the third area. And it is that of sexual purity. That of sexual purity. He speaks about love in verse one of chapter five, by the way. Verse one of chapter five. Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love. In a sense, it's what he was talking about in the previous verse in chapter four, when he said, be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another as in Christ, rather as God in Christ forgave you. It's basically the same thing. The Christian faith is a faith of love. Love being commitment to the welfare of others. However, that's not the way the world thinks. It has redefined love. It is ultimately impurity. It is an avenue of self-gratification. And that's where that curvaciousness is met with once again. So let's notice verse three. And we are talking, again, the contrast. We are with the world there. And it says, but sexual immorality and all impurity or curvaciousness must not even be named among you as is proper among saints. It goes further. Let there be no filthiness, no foolish talk, no crude joking, which are out of place. It's back to speech, but it's primarily in this whole area of sexual purity. In other words, we are not to use words or speech in terms of fostering impure thoughts in other people, or allowing impure thoughts to find expression through our words. We are not to do so. I'll just skip the next phrase for a moment, we'll come back to it, the positive, but let's go to verse five. For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, and then we come back to curvaciousness again, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore, do not become partakers with them." Again, resist them. Resist. Let me try and put it this way to you. If the Apostle Paul was living in today's world, he would have added pornography there. He would have put it in there in black and white. Because it's part of the impurity, the sexual immorality It's part of the filthiness that so often destroys young lives. For those of us who are Christians, it ought to be a no-go area. And when things like that have enslaved your mind, and they've enslaved your heart, and consequently drive you to watch what you ought not to watch, you ought to be crying out for help, that you might be as it were pulled out of such sinking sand, so that you might find your feet on solid ground. You must be different. There must be a contrast with respect to sexuality. You must resist the world in this area. You must. You must. You must. The apostle warns and says, don't be deceived. Because of such things that God's judgment is going to fall upon the world. In other words, don't hide in a cloak of religion when you know that on the inside, you are being destroyed by a failure of sexual purity. Don't hide behind it. Let no one deceive you with empty words. It's something that Any church leader will be concerned about, with respect to the Christians who are coming through the ranks, that the whole area of being different from the world in the realm of purity, sexual purity, that that must be an area that should never be compromised on, because God's judgment will fall. The Apostle Paul, writing to the Thessalonians, puts it this way. 1 Thessalonians, by the way, chapter 4. 1 Thessalonians, chapter 4. He says, finally then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification. And then he deals with the negative. that you abstain from sexual immorality. He will soon open up the various ways in which that manifests itself. But notice, that's the negative. That's being different from the world. Resist that. And then he says, positively, that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor. That's the positive. That's the new person. That's the you as you are in Christ. That's you being different from the world. That there is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, which is self-control, that manifests itself in the way you handle the appetite of your own body. Again, puts it negatively, and this is important now. Not in the passion of lust like the heathen or like the gentiles who do not know God. There is your contrast. You must be different. When the world is busy pushing its sexual revolution, you should be saying God has not changed his standard. He hasn't. And therefore, I will not follow the ways of the world. I won't. He goes on that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter. What does he mean by that? You see, in the Christian church, we are vulnerable towards one another. We are brought closer to one another. We develop relationships, brother sister relationships. And we just assume that we are all seeking to function on the same premises of God's Word. But in that same closeness comes those who pray upon others, P-R-A-E-Y. And in their moments of weakness, such individuals end up taking advantage of them. The Apostle Paul warns that when you abuse Christ's bride like that, he comes with serious wrath upon you. So he says this, Don't transgress or wrong your brother in this matter because the Lord is an avenger in all these things as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. God himself is the one who's going to deal with you because you have brought worldly sexual standards into the church. You are smoking out the innocence and purity of others by taking advantage of them. Don't do it. Don't do it. That's what the world does out there. But in the body of Christ, there must be sexual purity. And he ends by putting it this way, for God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore, whoever disregards this, disregards not man, but God who gives his Holy Spirit to you. Well, that's to the Thessalonians, but that's essentially the mind that he has, even in Ephesians and chapter five. that our love for one another must be pure. It must be. That when the world mingles with us, they should be able to see the difference, the contrast, because of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done for us. Well, I skipped one little phrase in verse four, and I want us to not miss it altogether. Still dealing with speech there, but in the realm of sexual impurity, he says, instead of our lips being filled with filthiness, foolish talk, crude joking, he says it should be filled with thanksgiving. Filled with thanksgiving. Why? halfway through verse nine, rather verse eight. For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true. And here is your responsibility. Try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. That's why You are light in the Lord. You are not darkness. That's the life that you once lived. You no longer live that way. And one of the things that I love about the picture of darkness and light is that darkness shrouds things in secrets. Light enables you to see. Light is full of integrity. What you see is what you have. Putting it a little differently, it's this. It's darkness that leaves a life of hypocrisy. It's darkness that leaves a life of hypocrisy. This is my life in the church. But when I'm elsewhere, it's a different life altogether. This is my life among Christian friends, and as soon as I turn and I'm with non-Christians, it's different altogether. This is my life when I'm with my parents. When I'm not with them, it's a different life altogether. That's darkness. Light is transparent. You can see through. That's light. That's the way we ought to be. Let's go back to our theme. When we're talking about resisting the world, one of the things we must resist is hypocrisy. We must be what we really are, Christians everywhere. There mustn't be sections in my cell phone that godly people cannot see. It mustn't be. If my phone is there, and someone I respect is about to reach it, I don't dive to get it out of his way. No. I should be able to say that with respect to morality and godliness and ethics, there's purity, because that's my life. I don't have two lives. I have one, and it's lived for Christ. The world is not like that. The world is filled with hypocrisy. We must be different. I love the way he puts it here in verse 11. Wonderful, isn't it? That Christianity is such that where we find that kind of hypocrisy, we expose it. We expose it. That's one way in which we in fact clean up the church. Take no part, verse 11, in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. He was going to say, for it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible. For anything that becomes visible is light. He's continually using this darkness, light, darkness, light metaphor. The point he's making is simply this, that where there is sin and we become aware of it, we don't look the other way. Especially when that is within the context of the body of Christ, we expose it. We make sure it's dealt with so that there is proper healing within the context of the Christian church. Whereas the world measures in hypocrisy, isn't it? Let me quickly hurry on, because in a sense, all I have dealt with is one half of what the Apostle Paul is dealing with as he goes into the practical aspects of the Christian life. The second half of it I will deal with tomorrow when I deal with faithfulness amidst decay. And the major sort of dividing line I have used is that where we are so far, the Apostle Paul has been measuring on this contrast. this contrast between us and the world, us and the world, us and the world. And then when he leaves this and goes on now, beyond this page, he's really dealing now with a lot more of how does godliness look like? And he opens it up, the life in the Spirit. May I therefore, as I hurry on to close, plead that let's not think in terms of resisting the world purely in terms of material things, and wanting to live a life that is free from the love of material things. Trust me, it's part of it. It is. But if we limit ourselves there, We are missing the major message that the Apostle Paul gives. It is this. We must be different. Once you capture that, you've captured the gist of everything. We must be different. And here is the next point. Because we are different. And we really are that regenerating work of the Spirit, which I trust is in you if you claim to be a child of God. that's taken you from death to life, from enslavement to the evil one, to become a slave of righteousness, a slave of Christ, that takes you from being a servant of all these things that we have looked at, which belong to the darkness, to being a servant of the light. That regenerating Power of the Spirit needs to be evident in us. Evident in us. The second word I'd like to give as I close is this. That although our inner person has been regenerated, we still carry with us something of our fallen nature. what the Puritans referred to as remaining sin, which easily gets attracted to that which is worldly and that which is sinful. The cry that the Apostle Paul imagines in Romans 7, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death, is one that you probably have cried every so often. In speaking about resisting the world, the point is this, that you will have to maintain this fight to the very end. The attraction of the world every so often will come your way. Temptation to sexual impurity will come your way. The doors open for your anger to come through, maybe not with fists, but generally with words. Again, that door will open. You will need to fight it. And that's where resisting comes in. Tomorrow, we will deal with the spiritual warfare that must be maintained, so that when the blast of the evil one is over, You are still standing. You are immovable. We'll wait for that for tomorrow. But I needed to say today that, yes, the fight will be there. You must continue to resist, continue to resist, continue to resist by the help of God, the Holy Spirit, through God's Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, there are many times when we feel weary because of temptation, because of remaining sin. We pray that we might be reminded again and again to resist the world, to be different because We are different. Help us, O Lord, to rejoice in that difference and to glorify You who has brought about that difference in our lives. O God Most High, for the sake of tomorrow's church, raise up a galaxy of young adults in the church. Oh, glory in being different, because Christ has made them so. For Christ's sake we pray, Amen.