“BE SURE OF THIS!”

A sermon based upon Ephesians 5: 3-10

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

First Sunday in Lent-C,  March 10,  2019 

(10-14) Sermon Series: Growing Up In Christ (Eph. 4:15)

Sex.  Now that I’ve got your attention...   NT Wright tells of a college bulletin board just like this.  In had one word in the middle of it: SEX.  Underneath, in small print, it said, “Now that we’ve got your attention, how about joining the college Rowing Club?”

“Whoever designed that advertisement,....were simply exploiting the fact that in contemporary Western society people are so obsessed with images of sex that the very word grabs people’s attention.”  Whether it’s in movies, music or in advertisements, advertisers know that when they describe something as ‘sexy’---whether they are selling clothes, computers, cars or dishwashing liquid, when they the idea of ‘sex’ they’ve got your attention (Wright, Ephesians for Everyone, p. 57).

The world of Paul’s day wasn’t that much different, particularly in the cities where Paul preached.  Recently, on YouTube, I heard British Historian, Tom Holland, a notable expert in Roman history, say that ‘in the Roman world of Paul a male Roman citizen had the legal right to have sex with whomever he wanted to, however he wanted to, anytime he wanted to.’  Casual sex, and all kinds of even stranger sexual practices flourished in that world.  We know this because many of the pictures on Roman walls and the images in paintings of that time indicated that, when it came to sexual morality, there was not much restraint.  

Perhaps the strangest fact of all was that some religions, particularly those with secret initiation ceremonies, included certain sexual practices as approved and necessary rituals.  In other words, Temples were built, just so prostitutes could hang around, enhancing the religious experience.  This amounted to using religion as an excuse for approving prostitution, but other times the religion actually believed that the sexual experience was the most ‘blessed’ religious experience of all.  The point was, that those who were ‘enlightened’ could do anything they wanted with their bodies; because it was ‘their bodies’.  Anyone who didn’t understand this was, religiously and culturally, ‘in the dark’. 

People still make such outrageous claims like this today?  In spite of all the broken marriages and homes, all the ruined lives and destroyed intimacy; and even in spite of the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and the breakdown of good moral common sense, there are still people today who believe that you can do whatever you want, however you want it, and what you can get by with whoever you want to be with, "as long as nobody gets hurt". 

Many people’s understanding of human sexuality reduces us to be like all other animals, like one of the young guys I knew in Germany.  He would often would come to our house, wearing a t-shirt stamped with a cartoon image of an animal mating.  He simply didn’t see anything wrong with wearing that.  It was the natural way things are.  In his way of thinking, since we scientifically classified as just animals or sophisticated apes, we really don’t need any rules, taboos or morals about sexuality at all.  As a 60’s slogan went: “All’s fair in love and war.”

What we need to understand, however, is that when we read the Bible, we had better prepare ourselves for a viewpoint that is radically different.   We also need to understand, especially in this text from Paul, is that he was living right in the middle of a world full of moral sexual confusion.  But now, being inspired by the redeeming Holy Spirit and the saving power of Jesus Christ, he wrote to the Christians at Ephesus about a new approach, that among God's people and in God's church was God's new command for a new, different, saving and redeeming way of life.  Paul writes: “BUT AMONG YOU THERE MUST NOT BE EVEN A HINT OF SEXUAL IMMORALITY… (v. 3)

 

MUST NOT BE EVEN A HINT (3a)

When Paul said there ‘must not even be a hint’ or, as the KJV says, ‘let it not be named once’, some people have taken this to mean that the church shouldn’t talk or address the issue of human sexuality at all.  In other words, when everybody else is shaping views of sexuality, the preacher, and may be parent too, should keep quiet.

King Duncan tells how a mother of two daughters, who were the ages 5 and 7, decided it was time to tell her daughters about the birds and the bees.  So, feeling a bit uncomfortable to start the discussion herself, she sent off for a booklet recommended by the PTA, and she told them both to read it.

After having them read the booklet, she called the girls in for a chat.  When she finished her talk, with her heart in her throat, she said, “Now, you may ask me any question you want to.”

The oldest said, “Anything?”

The mother said, “Yes, anything,” then she took a deep breath, thinking, “O.K., Here it comes.”

Then, the little girl asked, “Can we have a new baseball bat?

Like that mother, we in the church have been reluctant to talk about the biblical mandate for sexuality.  As preachers, and sometimes as parents too, we have been hesitant to talk about the Christian boundaries of sexual behavior to our children.   Unfortunately, while we have been silent, our culture has been shouting it’s own agenda with a megaphone.  

Way back in 1987, a study by Planned Parenthood indicated that 65,000 sexual references a year were broadcast over television during prime afternoon and evening hours and that the average television viewer sees 14,000 instances of sexual material every year. Surely, the numbers today, with the use of computers and cell phones, are even more staggering and the content has definitely become more explicit.

One place where the world’s sexual agenda was introduced into our living rooms, was through the lead characters in television dramas. Years ago, people laughed when Republican candidate Dan Quayle chided the television character Murphy Brown for bearing a baby out of wedlock.  Mr. Quayle may have mistakenly spelled potato as “potatoe,” but in this instance, he was making a valid point.  When it comes to sexual practice in our society, Americans are adopting a more secular standard of morality.  Our entertainment world now freely encourages bed-hopping, baby-bearing, and sexual experience, with whomever it pleases.  What was once called sacred or saved for marriage, can be reduced to recreation, taking little or no thought as to the consequences.  Instead of challenging the culture to a higher standard, today’s culture is being reduced to the lowest common moral denominator.

Recently, in Atlantic Magazine, there was an interesting article about one parent’s shock when their child told them, she thought she should be a he.  The highly educated parents didn’t know what to do.  They didn’t want to go against their child’s feelings, but they also didn’t want their child to be confused about their sexual gender.  

What they did, was to go along with their child’s feelings (but did not feed them), while they doubled and tripled their time with their child.  They went swimming, canoeing, biking, and on trips together.  In each possible moment they gave their child freedom to talk, to express her feelings, and also to know that, more than anything else, the parents were there for her.  After feeling the parents love and concern, the child came to realize, she said, that she was just as confused and depressed about being a him, as she had being a she .(https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/07/when-a-child-says-shes-trans/561749/).

Gender and sexual confusion is just one of the results of a ‘free’ sexual age.  In light of what is happening to many lost souls, don’t we as a society, and even as churches, need to do some serious soul searching about, not just what we’ve done, but what we haven’t done, and especially about what we haven’t said and clarified? Have we made it clear to our own children, not just with words, but also with deeds, what the Bible says about the role of sexuality in a Christian’s life? 

There was at a time, especially in the Roman world, when sexual purity was one of the clear distinctions of the Christian way of life.  As one writer has said, contrasting the early church from its surrounding culture, “Pagans shared nothing but their wives. Christians, on the other hand, shared everything but their wives.”  Bible scholar William Barclay said that ‘chasity’, that is sexual purity only within marriage, ‘was one new virtue, one new behavior, that entered the ancient world with the birth of the Christian Church.’  When Christianity was growing in the pagan, Gentile, Roman world, sexual morality and marriage purity was a practice of faith that rose up in world of moral decadence.  Christians set themselves apart by embracing higher moral standards than the world around them.

In this text, it not only says that the in the churches there should not be ‘even a hint of sexual immorality among (us), but it also says in verse 5, “For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure, or greedy person….will enter God’s kingdom.”   Did you catch the directness of Paul’s speech?  This is something he is ‘sure’ about. No immoral person will enter into God’s coming kingdom, which is God's new, redeemed, transformed world.

Interestingly, the word used here for immoral in Greek is ‘pornia’. You know that word because it is the root of our English words “porn’ and ‘pornography’.  These words are used to label specifically sexually explicit materials, movies, videos, magazines, etc.  While people often make a distinction between ‘soft’ or ‘hardcore’ porn,  the Bible makes no such distinction.   Here, of course, Paul is not referring to sexually explicit materials, but Paul means sexually immoral people.  It is the people who are sexually immoral, along with the impure, and the greedy, and also those who constantly involve themselves in ‘obscene’ and ‘foolish talk’ and ‘coarse jokes’; none of them, Paul says, will inherit God’s coming kingdom (5), but, Paul warns, ‘God’s wrath’ will come on ‘those who are disobedient’.

WHICH ARE OUT OF PLACE (3b)  

Paul goes on to explain, that not just 'sexually immorality' but ‘any kind of impurity,’ like ‘greed’, is ‘improper for God’s holy people’.  Although we are going primarily speaking about sexual immorality today, we need to remember that Paul means a whole lot more.  Constant, continual sexual immorality is only one symptom of falling short of God’s glory.  But it is not the only symptom.  Sexual sins don't make us any more or less a sinner than being greedy does.  Today we are talking about sexual immorality because it is at the top of Paul’s list, but there is a lot more to be talked about.

And this is certainly strong language too, and Paul even adds that he is ‘sure’ about this.  He is 'sure' that the sexually impure will not 'inherit God's kingdom.'  How can Paul be so sure?   How can we be ‘sure’?  How should we still take such direct, moralizing, ethical instruction, especially when it goes so strongly against the current of our world too?  Do we talk Paul seriously, when he speaks of ‘God’s wrath’, idolatry, and sexual immorality?

Since there so much moral confusion these days about what is right and wrong, who is moral or immoral, and what is normal or abnormal.  Since there are so many questions about what it means to be an ethical person, and that even Christians get mixed-up about what kind of behavior is ‘proper’ or ‘out of place’ (v. 4) for themselves, I want us to zoom in on what Paul means when he says that ‘immoral’ behavior is ‘out of place’ (v4) and are ‘improper for God’s holy people’ (v3).  I want us also to consider more closely what Paul infers when he says “God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient’. 

Once I heard a confused youth question such moral demands, asking, “Does this mean God hates people, when we are the only people God has?”  How do we take such strong language, such moral demands and commands, when Paul also declares that ‘all have sinned and come short of God’s glory” (Rom. 3:23), or says that we are not saved by ‘good works’, nor are we saved by good behavior, but we ‘have been saved by grace, through faith…” (Eph. 2: 8-9)?  Didn’t Paul just state this at the beginning of this very letter?   So, as the gospel of Jesus says “God so loved the world… (John 3:16) and Paul has just said that God saves us unrighteous ‘sinners’ (Rom. 3:10), why would Paul now say that ‘immorality’ is ‘out of place’, or ‘improper’ and that ‘God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient?’  If God loves us, and saves us ‘by grace…through faith’ (Eph. 2:8), why then does Paul now say that ‘immorality’ brings ‘God’s wrath?’

While it might sound contradictory, it is exactly because God loves sinners that now says that he now says there is ‘not to be a hint of sexual immorality’, or impurity of any kind among God’s people.  This God who loves us requires us to clean up our act, to change our lives, to ‘put off’ the old, and to put on a whole and a new quality of life---a holy new life so that we no longer live as the world or the pagans do.  Why does God command that?  Does this mean God is against sinners, or does this mean something else?

The short answer is that God commands (Karl Barth) that his ‘holy people’ not live as the world does, because this God, the God of Jesus Christ, the God of Israel, who is the ‘one true God’ (Isa. 65:16) is a moral, ethical, and holy God.  “Be holy, as I, the Lord your God, am holy  (Lev. 19.2, 1 Pet 1.16).”  You can’t get any clearer than this.  The God of Israel commands and demands a moral life because this is what it means to live in relationship with a moral God.  God does not demand morality because he is against people who are immoral, but God demands a higher morality among his people so that God's people can be a holy people who are 'salt' and 'light' in a broken, fractured, and confused world.   

From the very beginning of everything the Bible is about, Israel is about, and everything Christianity is about, at the heart of all that is revealed, taught, and commanded is that this God is a God who demands, commands, and reasons with his people, all the way back to Cain in Genesis, ‘If you do what is right, will you not be accepted’ (Gen. 4:7).   Also, from Abraham, to whom God demands, ‘walk before me and be blameless’ (Gen. 17:1), to Moses, through whom God commands, not only ‘be holy as I am holy’ (Lev. 19:2), but God also says, “Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in obedience to him, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the LORD's commands and decrees that I am giving you today FOR YOUR OWN GOOD? (Deut. 10:12-13 NIV).  Underline that last line, ‘for your own good?’  What God is doing in Israel, all the way up to what God was doing in Jesus Christ, and up to now, God is calling Jesus' disciples to ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' (Mk. 12:30 NIV).  

This love for God from the time of Moses, up to Jesus too, was to love and be loved by a moral and ethical God; a God who still calls his own people to live holy lives, separated from the confusion of the world, so that they can challenge, and bring hope to a fallen world.  Isn’t this what being a believer, a Christian, and a person of faith means; that we not only give hearts, but we also give our bodies and all our lives to God?  Now, through Jesus, the God who created our bodies, calls us to learn how to ‘control our bodies’ for our own good.

Paul wrote about this fuller form, in an earlier letter he wrote to the Thessalonians, which was passed around by all the churches: “For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.  It is God's will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality;  4 that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister. The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before.  For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.  Therefore, anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God, the very God who gives you his Holy Spirit (1 Thess. 4:2-8 NIV).

It is clear, that in the New Testament that Paul was uncompromising when it came to insisting sexual purity is the only proper lifestyle for God's people.  He wasn't writing to pagans or to unbelievers, but he was writing to the churches, who constantly being pressured by the world around them.  Why was Paul so insistent the churches were called to a different way of life?  Let me answer with a true story.  When we were missionaries, we were required every year to go to a mission meeting with all our colleagues to share Christian fellowship, to present mission plans, and to adopt our annual budget.  Since this was a required meeting, we would have to take our whole families, children and all.  Because our Mission Board required this, they would often ask mission volunteers to come from the states to take care of our children while we were in several days of meetings together. 

One of those volunteers was from western North Carolina.  She was a wonderful elderly lady, who had a heart for missionaries and she gave good care to our children too.  Because she came back each year, we developed a relationship with her, and later, when we came home on furlough, she invited us to come and speak to her church.  

During our time there in that church, we encountered an East German girl, who was an exchange student, that lived not very far from where we were working in Germany.  After getting acquainted with her, I asked this German girl what she had learned from her time as an exchange student.  Do you know what she told me?  She said that one thing that she had learned that was different between German church youth and American church youth, particularly church youth is the Bible-belt-south, is that while German Christian youth sleep around and experiment and call this normal, American youth go to church, hear that it is wrong, but they are doing it anyway.  Then she concluded, “At least we are not hypocrites about it.”

Does that story shock you, as much as it did me?  That was certainly not my experience as a Christian youth, but there were only 4 or 5 of us who were serious about our faith.  Still, I had no reason to doubt her.  The question of what is moral, right, and pure is still a very relevant question today, not just among youth, but among all of us.  We live in a sexually free, and according to God's design, a sexually confused world, where secret stories about sexual struggles about hidden immorality, sexual abuse are coming to light almost constantly:  We hear sordid stories about Harvey Weinsteins, Bill Cosby’s, Pedophile Priests, Bill Clinton’s, and from many unknowns too.  This stories should start to give us some idea why a moral God demands and commands from a moral life from his people, which rises above the ‘lowest common denominator’ of how things too often are?  Can't you at least begin to understand why, in a pagan world,  a moral God called forth a people who were called to ‘be holy, because (he is) holy?’  

DO NOT BE PARTNERS WITH THEM (7)

Perhaps the strongest, most confining and demanding word of all, from Paul is in what he concludes: “Therefore, do not be partners with them” (v.7).  Other translations read, ‘don’t associate’ (RSV), or don’t partake with them (KJV) or don’t have anything to do with them (CEB). 

Paul continues to spell out why we should ‘come out from among them’ and be separate’  (2 Cor. 6:17) from immoral behaviors and from immoral people too.  But here, Paul insists on this because it was in this ‘darkness’ (v. 8) that ‘they once lived’, but now, he says, ‘you are light in the Lord’, and you are to live as ‘children of light’.   Paul insists, in the most personal, encouraging, and positive way: ‘you must (now) find out what pleases the Lord (v. 10).’

What I want you to see here, is that the main reason Paul is so insistent, so direct, and so strong about Christians living the moral life---especially when it comes to sexual immorality---is because this was the kind of lifestyle that was destroying the world he knew.   A new kind of morality, was the only way to save that world.  And it was this Christian form of morality that was so promising to the Romans, that they finally came to see it was the only way a sexually permissive world could be saved.   So, we must understand that what  Paul was doing and saying here, was not to condemn people in the world , who were living dark, immoral, abusive lives,  nor what Paul intending to condemn or lay a guilt-trip on Christians who made mistakes, but what Paul believed was that in the moral truth of God and through the amazing, redeeming, transforming grace of Jesus Christ, even a confused, sexually immoral world, could still overcome the heartbreak, the hurt, and personal and societal pain that immoral living had created. 

Paul was not condemning, but Paul was declaring that this moral God, the Father of Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit, was alive and at work in the world, is calling people to be moral people for their own good; to rise above the darkness and ceaspools of the world, because of Jesus Christ to show us the light and can save us from all this darkness.  

This is why is so important to treat sexuality, not as something dirty or immoral, but to make it what it is, something so sacred, so special, and so important to God’s good creation and life-giving design, that we must, as Christians, live in such a way that we do not allow God's gift to be corrupted and confused by human sin.  God's ‘wrath’ and moral law, is not intended to punish, but God’s law and wrath is a boundary that proves how God has created this world to be a moral, just, living-giving place.  It is because of the idolatrous, bad, immoral, and impure human choices humans wrongly make, that turns something so beautiful into something destructive, deadly, dangerous, dirty and hurtful.  While we Christians can't change the world, we can change our lives and we can show the world a way of life that is redemptive and constructive.

When I was just coming out of my childhood, I was visiting my cousins, who lived in Virginia, where my uncle was serving as an evangelical Methodist pastor and camp leader.  When I visited the camp, one of the strange rules was that they did not allow what they called ‘mixed bathing’.  In other words, they did not allow young boys and young girls to swim in the pool together at the same time.  In those days, we didn't go to 'camp' at my church, so I had never experienced something like this.   I had only been to Skyview Lake near my home, where everybody swam together.  I remember thinking to myself, when I visited my uncle's camp:  ‘Are these Christians children so weak minded that they can’t swim together without getting the wrong idea?’  I thought to myself, I’m glad I’m not so narrow-minded, since I know how to swim without getting the wrong idea."  

Today, in our world, we see how strange it is to us, that some fundamentalistic Muslims force their women to wear Burkes, or at least to cover part of their heads and their bodies with 'coverings'.  So often, people today, here is the West laugh at this as 'extremism', just like I thought it was when I visited my uncle's Christian camp.  In both situations, it looks like the weaker, and less disciplined we are on the inside, that is in our hearts, the more people need outer safeguards against the weakness of our flesh.   Our western society used to solve a lot of this with modesty and formal dress in public, but this is practically non-existent today, even among some Christians?  Where do we draw the line?  How do we fulfill our calling as Christians, to 'be in the world', but not 'to be of the world?'   How do we live, in such a way that we challenge all the sexual confusion and abuse that is ruining more and more lives?

Now, when I observe what is taking place today, I'm not as critical of my uncle's view of running a Christian camp, as I once was.  Today, as I look around this culture, I realize more and more what my Uncle was working against.  I may think differently about how to establish Christian boundaries of decency, but I do understand what he was trying to do.  He was not against 'mixed-bathing', but help his youth think beyond their hormones.   It's something we are all still trying to help, not just youth, but it's something we must show our culture that in Christ, this is something we can do.  In Christ's power, with Christ's presence in us, and with Christ's promise before, we can do better than what we see falling apart all around us.  While I don't think we have to dress like Muslims to do this,  I do think more modesty and more restraint is needed.

Today, when I visit a co-ed dorm in a state university, and I see what boundaries are missing, I'm always in shock.  For you see, I went to a Christian school, a Baptist College, which is now a Christian University, where they still separated girls into their own dorms and guys into theirs.  You may think that is as backward as a Muslim Burke, but I still think to teach some forms of modesty, discipline, and restraint, is a much better idea for students, especially when they are leaving home for the first time.  Even some very sophisticated studies in morality and ethics suggest that the sexual behavior and abuse that can be linked to the loss of some of these boundaries which were once enforced because, even secular people, once understood the ‘weakness’ of the human flesh.  

So, finally, let me say again, that Paul is not calling Christians to ‘separate’ or ‘disassociate’ from immoral people in any hateful or extreme way; but he is calling God's people to maintain a higher standard, not because we better than anyone else, but because God wants to work in us to bring 'salt' and 'light' to this culture.  God is calling us to ‘disassociate’ from the immorality and the immoral choices that drive a culture downward so we can assume the necessary role as God’s ‘priestly’ people who can point the world to ‘hope’ and ‘promise’ for the future.  It is only in such a moral space, that people can discover a life that brings gratitude(v. 4) and receive the gift of hope for what God has in the world to come.  Amen.