Ephesians, 5:3-10

Alright, well I have Ephesians 5, 3 through 10, which is only part of a passage or a stretch here in Ephesians where Paul decides he's going to dig into some moral choices that seem to be areas that he's concerned Ephesians might stumble and fall. And then he's going to take them from the depths of that to a heavenly perspective and then cap off the chapter with a great passage on marriage, one that I'm just eagerly waiting to see how we get to co-teach that because it's such a rich passage. But would somebody mind going ahead and reading out loud Ephesians 5, 3-10? Well, not everybody at once. I'll go ahead and do that.

But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you as is proper among saints. And there must be no filthiness and silly talk or coarse jesting which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know with certainty that no immoral or impure person or covetous man who is an idolater has an 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 be partakers with them. For you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth. Try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.

Alright, well that's a whole lot of material to cover here. I hope that I've picked some good highlights to cover this morning in the class. What I was... Bob? Here we're thinking about filling three months with Ephesians related topics. What we could do is extend the entire study three more months. Well, that has crossed my mind more than once. If the other teachers are agreeable to that, I am certainly on board for that decision.

But when we take a look at this, I'm going to kind of reorder the verses so that we can have a heading to which we're working. Not reorder the verses, reorder the parts of this first verse in three here, where he says, must not even be named among you as is proper among saints. I want to talk about that first and then go over this list that Paul has structured of things that we need to be concerned with.

Not even named among you is one of those phrases that on the surface is simple and I certainly don't want to make it complex but as I spend some time meditating on that there are a lot of applications in this world in a conditional sense of wickedness and sin not being named among the body of believers.

Let's, just for fun, let's take a few moments to brainstorm what are some of the benefits in a conditional sense of us not having these kinds of activities that we just read as we read through the verse as part of the body. What are some conditional earthly benefits to not having immorality and perversity and coarse joking and rudeness being described as part of the believer's lives in the church?

The world will see you as being different, and you'll identify yourself without word. You were talking conditionally, and I was thinking of ourselves. We don't have guilt, and we have the freedom to be happy, shall we say, or freedom to just be what the Lord wants us to be. It's such a freedom, it's just such a wonderful freedom. One of the things that I began to think about as I looked at this, some, at least some if not all of you were at the Potluck Fellowship time we had a couple weeks ago on Wednesday night, and Roy brought up evangelism.

One of the worst things that I have come across as I talk to those who are lost is that people that they saw as Christians were doing things that they didn't associate with doctrines that were taught in Christianity. Now, they're pretty ignorant of those doctrines, but even still, they have a moral compass that is broken as it is, is able to determine that there's some sinning going on in the lives of those who are in the church. And they don't understand how to reconcile those things. They don't understand that we needed Christ to reconcile those things.

But if we have the things that are on Paul's list here going on, it's evangelistically a stumbling block. Why would I trust you that any of this is true? I can't even see that this had a change. Now, I'm not trying to be legalistic, so I want to be careful that as I go over this, nobody thinks that Randy's trying to bring in the law and beat anybody up. But I want you to explore with me the idea that there are consequences for sin in our own lives personally and sometimes broader for the body.

You know, adultery is massive as a problem in the church. How many churches show up in the headlines when everybody's abiding in Christ? How many churches show up in the headlines when one of their leaders gets caught doing drugs or having an affair or doing things like that? Oh, suddenly now the national news cares Colorado Springs got hit really hard that day.

Ted Haggard is the guy's name. They were in the news for weeks. Oh, those Christians always trying to talk about morality and now they're out there having drugs and gay sex. And it's like, oh, jeez. There's a guy in Nevada right now. He's in the news. A senator.

Yeah. So anytime we have something that's morally compromising, it gets attention. Bob? Yeah, Randy, I'm thinking about, you know, turning this around a bit and thinking about how effective that is as an evangelistic tool, explaining to the unbeliever that we all have sin natures. Sure. We're all saved by God's great grace.

And yes, you're expecting too much out of every believer for every minute of every day when you're surrounded by these people. I mean, in other words, I think, you know, that can be a very, I think, convincing conversation with an unbeliever to try to understand that we all are saved by grace, and we all stand out of that sinful nature, and mistakes will be made. That doesn't condone them. It simply explains to them why the believer is not perfect. I would agree completely. I'm saying from a high-level view for the lost person. I'm just saying we can turn that around and put that to the advantage to the evangelistic message. Absolutely. There's quite an opportunity.

Well, and that's the thing with my friends, that generally when I have shared the gospel with them, they say, well, you are abnormal for what I've seen as a Christian, which I'm not sure if that's good or bad. But I'm going to take it in a positive way.

But the thing is that I want I've never found myself short of opportunities to apologize and ask for forgiveness, and I think that is the thing that's kind of shocking for them. As a believer, if you make a mistake and own up to it, because you understand grace and you know what sin is, that's shocking, because the world wants to cover that up. Alright, let's keep moving, because I can tell that for me this is something I like to talk about, but we'll never get through all the material. So we have Saints Without Hangups is the way I've titled that section, but the idea is that as believers we're reflecting God's righteousness, and we'll definitely get into that more for this passage.

And that has an impact on evangelism, but it also has an impact within the body. It was a month and a half ago when I had the opportunity to teach during the main service, we talked about older men and younger men and the relationships that exist there. One of the things, as you're saying, you know, older men, you need to be this way so that the younger men can look up to you and they can see what a godly man looks like. The same thing goes in this situation.

If godliness is not happening in the body, I don't care how much you know on a technical level, people are less likely to approach you if they're not seeing things lining up. It's like, well man, this guy can talk. good theology for hours and days, and now... Crystal just did that for me. I don't think she missed me responding.

They could talk for hours and days about theological things, but they don't see the application of it. And that's a problem. So let's start digging through this list, because there's nothing quite as fun and as exciting as studying sin. Because I'm pretty sure all of you are ignorant of it and have never heard of such a thing.

Paul starts off his list and he says, but immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you. Immorality, the Greek word there is pornea, and of course when I hear that word it makes me think of pornography, which is obviously a similar word. Pornea actually has to do with sexual activity, not just pictures. The printing industry wasn't so big back in Rome, but the sex industry was.

The temples had it. In our culture, in the United States, we've got a generally Puritan, Christian-like heritage for the most part, and that's a broad generalization. There's plenty of exceptions. And so with that, there's been a hampering of cultural acceptance of sexuality until more recently. In Roman culture, that wasn't the case. Our religious culture tells us sex is wrong. Their religious culture said sex is great with anyone, or at least with the temple prostitutes.

And when Paul writes, hey, for husbands to be a lover of one woman, or a husband of one woman, That was unique. There was a reason for that. Because it was culturally acceptable to have multiple partners. I always love teaching about sex when my mom's in the classroom because it's like, oh no. No, it's a joke. It's an easy, low-hanging fruit joke. The truth of the matter is that here, sexuality is not looked at in a biblical, godly perspective. Instead, sexuality is looked at as selfishness. Selfish sexuality, not within the confines of the biblical description of a godly marriage.

For example, let's turn, if you will, to Romans 1, 26 through 28. Obviously, when Paul writes to Ephesus, it's to a different city than when he writes to the city of Rome, but I think we can look and see culturally some things that were acceptable when we cross over here. So Romans 1, 26 through 28.

Bob, would you mind reading that out loud? burned in their lust one towards another man, with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was fitting. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not seemly. I mean, I happen to really think Romans chapter 1 is one of the best condemning arguments against the sin nature, just absolutely. But he goes into the stretch talking about sexual sin. If we jump forward to 1 Corinthians 5, 1 and 2, I don't know why we would jump forward there, but anyway, you'll turn there in your Bible. To me that passage that was just read is very distressing. Absolutely. Because it looks to me like God gave up on them. He washed his hands and he was done and you know their chances were over.

No that's not I don't think we should look at it in that perspective. Well, I don't either, but that's the way it makes me feel. What we're going to look at next I think helps give us a little broader context on how this can work together. So 1 Corinthians 5, I'm going to read 1 and 2.

It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, an immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father's wife. You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that one who has done this deed would be removed from your midst. Okay, verse 5, he says, I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. And this is possibly its own lesson, so I want to be careful that we kind of pull back shortly after this.

But in the context of believers, we can see that if someone follows the passions of the flesh far enough, in the context of knowing Christ, even if they're not abiding in Christ, the Lord can still use that for them to realize how wicked the flesh can be and draw them back. Paul doesn't question their salvation. For the lost person, they only know sin. They can only walk in sin, and we're going to talk about that in a few verses, to the point where that's why we have so many opportunities to evangelize.

You're lost. God says, okay, Explore the wickedness so that when the light comes in, you're going to see the contrast. Go ahead. I'm going to give you over to the wickedness. Walk in the darkness, and when that light shows up, you're going to notice it.

It's a kid's movie reference, so you'll have to forgive me if you haven't seen it. Has everybody seen the movie Finding Nemo? Jeremy has obscure references to movies that fewer people have seen, but I feel like Finding Nemo is pop culture enough. There's one scene where they're down in the deep depths of the ocean, and one of those rare fishes that has a light built into it.

You can fluoresce and shine light in the darkness there. In the movie theater, it's dark. The screen is dark. At our house, the lights are rarely off. In fact, usually when no one's in the room, the lights are still on. I'm working on that. But the light shines, and suddenly it's a high contrast. in the dark place. And it's a tremendous thing. So the sexual immorality is dark. It's dark perversion of something that God put in place.

Now the thing, if we're going to talk about sexual immorality, I always have to take just a moment to say that, remember, biblical sexuality between a husband and wife is not only permissible but is good. but not in the perversion like was going on here in Ephesus, and clearly in Rome and Corinth as well. Somebody looked like they were going to say something about it. What we're at today in terms of the legislative approval of gay marriages, I mean, this is really, very quickly, this has evolved over the last several decades. Well, when the marriage institution is not seen as something from God, but it's just a political contract, or it's a social construct or contract, then that makes it easy.

You've redefined it and taken it away from its original authority. And that becomes a problem. It is terrible. So Paul says sexual immorality with that first part there, or any impurity. And impurity is basically promoting lustfulness without actual intercourse. So there's one extreme of the sexual intercourse. The next layer in is being sexual in nature.

If you watch very much television without a DVR, I don't know how many of you have a digital video recorder or VCR, We watch almost all of our television filtered through the DVR, because I can skip all the commercials. I don't want to see the crud they're selling. But often when they are selling something, sex is involved. How many times do I need to see a hamburger dripping contents onto the chest of a surgically enhanced woman? I don't need to see that. Why don't you make a hamburger worth buying? But the idea of marketing things with sexual innuendo is common, even in our culture today.

When was the last time you went to the check stand at the grocery store and the magazines were talking about morally upright things that you could do to help people, instead of 120 ways to make your man go crazy in bed? Awesome. Show up and I'm pretty sure that he's got hormones and that'll take care of things. You don't need an article. You know, biblically, we have a context.

But the world just sees this, and lets explore, lets go, lets see this, lets find out where the boundaries are, and then lets cross. I think part of the problem too is that with the broader acceptance of evolution, we meaning humans, not me, But people see men and women as merely animals. They don't see them as having a higher nature, being a different kind of creation of God, in God's image. They think we're just like the animals, and what do the animals do? Most of them go around and the males try to impregnate all of the females.

Sure. It's fornication and procreation, and that's their focus. We'll keep going just simply because there's so much material to cover here. I've written more. You can read it at your leisure. The next one he goes in is greed. Again, in marketing, greed is definitely a common concept. You deserve this. You probably need this.

And everybody else has one, so why don't you get one too? Greed is a poor motivator though because it also means that if you're trying to get a customer by greed, they'll probably move on to the next person that can fulfill their greed somewhere else. That's not a great marketing strategy in the long term anyways. Sorry, that was a marketing advice piece there that no one signed up for.

But greed is important. Greed hits us in this world, especially First World America, in really different ways for each person. We've really been able to expand on opportunities for greed. It can be money. It doesn't have to be money. It can be greedy for selfish personal time. It can be greedy for, you know, in my case, technological things.

When I'm walking in the flesh, I really shouldn't walk into an Apple store. When I'm walking in the flesh, I really don't need to go look at the guitar center for new acoustic guitars, or electric guitars, or drum sets, or pianos, or anything else. Because greediness, while drawing on my carnal nature, wants me to come and do that just a little bit more. And sometimes greediness isn't even at the store.

Where else can greediness show up? Everywhere. Everywhere. We just talked about sexual sins. Coveting your neighbor's wife. That sounds vaguely familiar from somewhere. Being greedy. Being greedy is a real problem. I've got a quote from Benjamin Franklin. Obviously not a great theologian, but I thought it was an interesting quote. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.

Is our contentness in Christ? Are we resting in the sufficiency of Christ? Are we resting in God's provision? How many of us have ever asked, is it God's will for me to do A or B, and then started to walk down the paths of A or B, and gone in, and at some point in time asked myself, is doing this questioning God's sovereignty? Is A or B questioning God's sovereignty?

And you start to negotiate. I heard this often with people who are single. Do I go to match.com? Because if I go to match.com or some website where you can meet your next Christian wife or Christian husband, then maybe I'm intervening with God's sovereignty. I'm like, you can't mess up God's sovereignty. Stop doing that.

Focus on the relationship. The greediness, the resting in there is knowing that God is going to take care of that relationship. Knowing that God is going to take care of the financial resources. Our nation is in dire straits, supposedly. That's what the news wants me to be panicking about now, so I'll keep watching. That's a little facetious, but we'll get to why that's wrong in the next passage. My being facetious, that is. The problem with greed is that it calls us to do things in a fleshly way. And obviously we are not, by God, called to do that.

I want to wrap up, as I did with the sexual section, saying, hey, there's a biblical context for sexuality in the marriage. As far as possessions are concerned, there's a biblical context. I've got Proverbs 6 through 8 here. It says, Go to the aunt, O sluggard, observe her ways and be wise, which having no chief Officer or ruler prepares your food in the summer and gathers your provisions in the harvest. There is nothing wrong with accumulating things looking forward to the future. In one of his parables, Christ says in Luke 14, talking about the man who goes to build a tower, but doesn't make a plan to do so, and so because he didn't have a plan, has to stop halfway, and then the half tower is a monument to his folly. There's nothing wrong with accumulating wealth looking towards retirement. Sometimes people see the passage in 1 Timothy where money is the root of all sorts of evil, and they make money is evil. They take roots and all sorts of things out of it, and suddenly money is evil, and that's not the biblical case either.

But we shouldn't be motivated by greed, whether it's money, cars, houses, wives, husbands, iPods. It just doesn't matter. If you go to Uganda, we're giving away mp3 players with the gospel on them. Hopefully people are not greedy and jealous over the iPods, but it's been sharing it and then talking about God's Word together. So, rabbit trail, we're done with that one. No more iPods.

Moving on, we're going to talk about my facetiousness and how that's wrong. Paul continues on here, he says that there shouldn't be filthy language, silly talk, or coarse jesting. Filthy or obscene language and godless talk. Silly talk actually would mean that speaking foolish things. Things that are the words of a fool. Not just silly things. But obscene and mocking God and who He is and then foolish and going even further to say He doesn't even exist at all. would be, I think, some of the direct applications that Paul was concerned with in this.

Obviously, a sense of humor isn't a wicked thing, but there is such a thing as a wicked sense of humor, and we need to be careful. The filthy language, silly talk, and coarse jesting, coarse jesting has to do with it being able to turn a quick retort This is common in sitcoms today. In fact, I actually took a survey recently where they sent me a DVD and said, we want you to watch this new show that we're going to be airing and we want to get your feedback on it. And the whole show was full of that coarse jesting.

And it was mocking marriage and making fun of it. And they called back and said, what did you think? I said, I hated the whole thing. And they didn't have any form buttons in the telephone survey for he hated the whole thing. So I had to say that I hated the whole thing multiple times for each form question because it was course jesting. It said my marriage to my wife was ridiculous and should never be considered a fulfilling thing.

And back and forth, the bickering and the ranting and bantering and the things that went back and forth. In junior high, I was quick-witted. In high school, I was even quicker. And in college, when I got engaged to my wife, my friend had to say, Randy, you may not come over to our house if you continue to talk to Jessica that way. You think you're being funny, and you're ripping up your fiance. And that's not OK. No, I wasn't. Jessica was getting beat up.

Every time we'd go... I would only be funny like that for Tony. I don't know why, but I thought Tony would think I'm clever and funny, because I thought Tony was clever and funny, and I wanted to be funny like him. So every little thing Jessica would do, we'd run and go... Let me show you how that's wrong, but I'm funny. And it was brutal. In the body, that's not okay. I don't see that happen here at Holly Hills. I'm not concerned about it. It's not like I'm going to suggest we have to stop doing that. Because I don't see that here at Holly Hills. But that's what course-testing is.

They barely let us move into the neighborhood with Wayne. We have a weird sense of humor and that much sense of humor of that sort together could cause a vortex in the time-space continuum and the neighborhood will go downhill. But when we talk about this, Paul goes from the extreme of hating God and mocking God to the other extreme of just even dismissing him and speaking like a fool that dismisses God, but then even to quick-wittedness that can be a real problem and tear people down. As a body, when the world looks at us, if they see us tearing people down and being quick-witted, that doesn't reflect love. That doesn't reflect goodness and kindness and truth. So those things are important. But what does Paul tell us that we should be doing instead? What's the kind of vocabulary and language and speech that the law should hear from us instead?

Giving thanks. As believers, as we mature, as we grow in our walk with the Lord, as our sanctification progresses, We learn about things like the trials and suffering class that was so rich that Hal did. We learn about how God is using those things for our growth and it allows us to give thanks in those tough times. We see that every time I have a need, I need to give thanks for that need because the Lord may actually use that for my growth and someone else's growth because they're going to fulfill that.

You know, I wonder, and this is a side note, rabbit trail comment, so just take it for that. I wonder what would happen, or what would have happened in this nation, had the church, had believers be open enough to admit their needs instead of going to the Discover Card Corporation first. I went to the Discover Card Corporation, or maybe you went to Visa or MasterCard or Bank of America or whoever it is that you went to, and you went there first when you were in need. Oh, it's an emergency! Whew, plastic. Save me again. Rather than, oh, it's an emergency!

Lord, how are you going to provide this to the body? I've seen here at Holly Hills, and I praise the Lord for this regularly, a compassion and a passion for seeing needs met. Every time you walk up that ramp going into the sanctuary, instead of taking the stairs, There was there's loved I love walking up that ramp and I genuinely mean that because it reminds me of The love that we have for everybody in this body, you know, Bertha can walk in her Walker Norm can go up in his wheelchair Had we had built Your son had the accident was in the wheelchair and said we We had the other ramp there, but we could still get him up and down but that was built there. It's an I love you ramp And I'm thankful for it every time I walk down that ramp or up that ramp. I know it's a silly thing. It's wood and carpet and nails and paint. And I love it. I love that ramp because I know that was built out of love.

And I'm thankful for it. And I bet you that everybody who uses it, because they absolutely have to, is thankful for it as well. But having an attitude of thankfulness means that when the trials come, we're thankful. When we see the good things, we're thankful. We know where they came from.

You know, I rode here this morning with the Andersons, because they let us move into the neighborhood, and the Vortex didn't destroy the neighborhood. But I moved into the neighborhood and they could give me a ride, and I'm thankful for that. Not only for the fellowship I get, you know, I was saying on the way there that I take a different route normally just because it's a few minutes faster, but every time we hit a red light. That means that I get a few more minutes with the Anderson's.

Or sometimes it feels like it's going to be a few hours just because those lives are so long. But the thing is that as you go through, you get that time together and you can be thankful for it. You know, an attitude of thankfulness is a tremendous thing.

Again, that also stands out in our culture as an evangelism thing. Alan? One thing I just think about when I see giving thanks, Absolutely. It is, I was going to say, that's one of the roots of the thanks word there, is charis, where we get grace. Grace carries with it a sense of pleasure, but thankfulness also recognizes that we recognize what's good there, we see that it's good, and we're pleased by the goodness that God has orchestrated there. And that's an amazing thing. We're not going to skip 5.5, but I want to state that 5.5 is mostly a recap of what we've seen. Let's read it again.

For this you know with certainty that no immoral or impure person or covetous man or greedy man who is an idolater, which idolatry would be mocking God or making fun of the idea of God as described in the Bible, or rejecting Him altogether, has an inheritance in the Kingdom of God and Christ. Those people that own those characteristics, those people that are described in those ways, have no place in the Kingdom of God. Now that's a careful thing because we need to make sure that we don't understand that to mean that if you have those characteristics that could be described here as idolatrous or immoral or whatever else, that you're not saved and you're not a Christian. We want to make sure that we understand grace. But, they shouldn't be in the church.

Tom? Absolutely and and that's an important that's the thing that you know when you see that verse it's easy to suddenly be concerned and scared oh shoot I do that sometimes, am I not saying? And that's not what he's calling, but if you find yourself regularly practicing those things, you are walking in the flesh, you need to figure out why you're okay with that, and set your mind on things above. It's not who you are. And we're going to get into the next set of verses. Talk to us about being children of darkness and children of light. I need to get there.

I'm going to ask you to drill down on inheritance. Sure. Oh, you want me to drill down on inheritance? Okay, sorry. an inheritance and in fact see we have inherited our inheritance is given we went over that in the earlier parts of Ephesians where we talked about our inheritance in chapter 1 and we've been adopted as sons and been given an inheritance was it 13? Yeah, I know it was 13. I'm going to read down and find it.

Who has given us a pledge of our inheritance with a view to the redemption of God's own possession and the praise of his glory. Inheritance? What do we inherit? We inherit the kingdom of God. We inherit the work of God and the results of that. Whereas in, what is the inheritance of the lost person? Maybe I'm not drilling down on inheritance like you meant, Bob, but we'll come...

I mean, if you turn to 1 Corinthians 6, it describes similar kinds of behavior, 6, 9, and 10. Although it looks like those are active verbs, they're really nouns, people who do these things rather than what they're doing. I mean, it's in the same kind of context that there's these people who have acts of such, have no inheritance. There, I presume, it relates to the works also.

In a sense, I think sometimes we course around this a little bit. I mean, I know a believer can fully... Well, anytime we start seeing these, when we see works in this, it's easy, especially here at Holly Hills, where we're very concerned about grace, it's easy to see works and start to think, oh no, let's not teach that you're saved by works.

We don't want to teach that we're saved by works. But Paul emphasizes the value of works, which are happening through the Holy Spirit. We always have that context. So we need to not belittle them in our attempt to be gracious. Because their work is the Holy Spirit.

And the inheritance, the richness of the inheritance is one of those things, when we went over that in the Divine Riches of Grace, the 33 things class, who you are in Christ class, The inheritance is a rich, robust part of it. We are inheriting our relationship with Christ in godliness. We're being conformed into his image. We're inheriting the kingdom in it. That's an amazing thing. I mean, if you take another parallel path, I know you want to move on, but this is important. We won't finish, but we'll just keep going until we do.

In 1 John 9 it says, whosoever is born of God does not commit sin. Yeah. I mean the way people interpret that, oh, we're talking about a life that just, you know, is filled with sin. I disagree. I mean, old man stuff is old man stuff, and I think that's what this really relates to. I mean, the inheritance must be of godly rewards, which we don't work for. It's the life played out, right? Yeah. So, I mean, this would be a verse among many that people would claim that if you're living like this, you must not be saved, right? Oh, I've heard that over and over again, without a doubt.

But this idea of judging the degree of a life committed to these types of behaviors is really a fault of the human judgment process, but yet it still says something about a life, doesn't it? Yeah. Well, and I think one of the things is that it's easy to build a straw man argument with this that says, this person did this one thing and now they've screwed up and they're independent of the body. When do you read about the body, and we have earlier in Ephesians, where it would be right for you or me to watch somebody doing that and just watch and go, hmm, I wonder when God's going to do something about that.

He certainly isn't going to use me. Instead, we should be intimately involved, and I said intimate again, I tend to do that when I teach, I'm sorry, but we should be intimate together in a way that you would know if I was walking away and drifting away.

Hey, we don't see Randy very much anymore. And this doesn't mean anything that you guys have drifted away. But we don't see Randy anymore. We'll drift over to the white screen here. But the idea is that these people that are doing these things would not be doing them outside of the context of a body, at least more than likely. Let's take this in, he's writing to a body. If you see a brother or sister in Christ, how do you respond when they're walking in the flesh?

Galatians 6.1, that we restore such a one in the spirit of gentleness. Come alongside. Listen, I wrestle with being greedy and lustful That's the carnal sin nature. I wrestle with that. How are you doing on that? This week was just as bad as the week before.

So Peter, how many times should we forgive? You know, the Spirit convicts you, right, of this. You take it into the Lord day in and day out. And you're used to having said to you, that's forgiven, Randy. You're one of mine. That's growth and grace, even though you may not be able to measure that with your eyes. Sure, absolutely. So what I'm saying is the old man is always the old man. And that behavior never changes.

It's a matter of ultimately being lifted up increasingly and having your condition more convicted. As I was studying this, I was strongly convicted. that I need to make a very pointed effort as the leader of my household, as the husband of Jessica, as the father of Abby, Evie, and I'm not supposed to announce it, so this is not an announcement, but Jessica's pregnant again, so this new baby, so it's not an announcement, you didn't hear that. It's going up on the internet. Yeah, that's alright. But the truth of the matter is that eventually it'll be really obvious that she's pregnant, so you can hide that forever.

But the thing is that as the father of this new little baby, and Abby and Evie, and the husband of Jessica, and your brother in Christ, I need to be very diligent about making time to study God's Word outside of my preparation for Sunday school and Bible study. I spend most of my Bible study time doing one of those two things. rather than a broader study for my own personal time. I don't get enough of that. I try sometimes. But as I was studying through this, I was seeing the relationship aspect of my walk with the Lord as we talk about being children of light. Hey, I'm a child of light! This last week on Wednesday morning, I had coffee with my dad.

Why? Because he's my dad. I'm his son. Because he's my elder. And I'm under him as an elder. And I want to learn from him. Yeah, it's Father's Day, but that is neither here nor there. It's a Hallmark holiday. But I want to know my Father. Why don't I want to know my Heavenly Father with that same drive? I can't meet God for coffee. He is never going to order the small coffee and then pour whey powder in it. My dad will. But my Heavenly Father is going to draw me to him and have a relationship with him, and my choice to do something else, whether it's musical or creative or time-wasting. I talked about the DVR.

If you can fast-forward to old commercials, imagine how much television you could watch efficiently instead of studying God's Word. It's one of those things where the Lord convicted me. I was convicted going through this that I need to have a recognition that I am a child of light. I'm skipping ahead because we're We're almost out of time, so let's take a look at 8 through 10. It's not that 6 and 7 aren't bad, other than, hey, those behaviors cause the wrath of God to come down because God's righteousness demands justice. God's righteousness demands that the wickedness be punished. Verse 8, For you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. Hey, you're a child. What does a child do? A child walks with you and has a relationship with their father. Man, that's a tremendous thing for me. I was convicted.

And then he says, for the fruit of light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth. And this is, I spent some time looking at goodness, righteousness, and truth, and you'll be happy to know that if your translation says something really close to goodness, righteousness, and truth, you've probably got a really good translation. because the Greek means goodness, righteousness, and truth. There's no extra key that I can draw out from the Greek. It really means that.

Goodness, as I've got here in the notes, has to do with the purity of the character of the being, or being upright of heart and life. Because goodness and righteousness sound similar, so I wanted to ask myself, for our benefit, what's the difference between goodness and righteousness? Goodness has to do with your being. Your being, who you are, is good. Righteousness has to do with how you act in your standing before God. So we have a goodness in our being. Why? Why would we have a goodness in our being? Because God is good. And we are in Him. We have been given and accredited God's goodness to our being. We were made a new creation. Being made a new creation still blows my mind every time I think about it. Listen, I'm not going to complain about the creation I've been made here in a general broad sense, because I've been blessed so many times.

I might think differently if I was a banana farmer. I might think differently if I had to deal with some of the deeper diseases that some people have to deal with. And I might be like, phew, can't wait for that new creation. But then when I stop to think about that new creation, that grabs my attention.

You know, Doug, you'd pray on multiple occasions or ask for prayer for Francis. We would all love to go be with our Lord, but I know that your heart for your wife is that she would go be with her Lord so that she can have that new body to go with that being a new creation. Because you love her dearly. And that new creation means something. But while we wait for that new body, for the new creation we've been made, we know that we've been made good. in that new creation. We know that we've been made righteous in that new creation.

And the last thing he talks about here is truth. And truth is one of those things... I deal with truth all day at work. I'm a software developer. If something is true or false, then I've got to do something else. The code says, if this is true, then do this. Or if this is not true, then do this.

But that's not what Paul's talking here. He's not talking about binary switches. He's talking about the nature of truth. And that's where I had to stop and think because I was like, wait a minute, I've got to step back. I love philosophy. He's not even talking about philosophy. I had to step back even further. He is talking about the, well I'll just read what I've got here because I thought it took some time to put it together.

Truth has to do with the honesty of a mind that is free from affection, pretense, falsehood, or deceit. It can truly evaluate what is going on. You've got goodness. That's part of your being. You've got righteousness. You do the right things and you're standing before God as right.

But when life comes at you, you can determine how you should respond and you will be able to accurately, without affection, because of God's holding your attention, because you're beholding Him, you'll be able to accurately determine what is true. You'll be able to accurately determine what is the right choice. You'll be able to accurately determine this is from God.

The last verse here, verse 10, he says, trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. That's the new American standard. Does anybody have a slightly different translation? Like King James might word that slightly differently. Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. I think that's a way better translation, by the way. Trying to learn is a little bit awkward to me. I think of trying to learn a bike. I've been teaching Abigail how to ride her bike. It's not the same.

But the Greek word has more of an assayer type of a meaning to it where you would evaluate the quality of something. You've been given the ability to assay the quality of truth. You can tell, hey, this is fool's gold. It may look really nice, but it's still fool's gold. You can polish it, but it's still junk. But we may prove what is pleasing to the Lord. If you will, we are running out of time, but we're just going to wrap up here.

Romans 12.2, if you'll turn there with me.

This has got to be one of the most difficult verses for folks at different times, because you're going to have to involve yourself with God in a very intimate way, just like we looked at. He says, "...and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect." It's the same concept, that you may prove what the will of God is. Instead of proving what the will of God is, he's saying, so that you can prove what is pleasing to the Lord.

That feels a little weighty if it's in the flesh. I can't do that in the flesh. Cannot do it. If I'm abiding in Christ and the life of Christ is living out through me, I'm being that child of light. Hopefully I'm not being children of light, that's awkward. But if I'm being a child of light and I'm proving, I can prove that out. And if I'm not proving that out, you can come alongside me and say, hey, did you know Randy that that was off?

I've had to apologize for teaching bad theology from the podium. That came up the following week, and Kurt had to hold off on teaching his lesson, and I had to apologize, and then teach the correct doctrine. Because the elders came alongside me and said, hey, let's edify you. Do a little edification.

You thought you were proving what pleased God, but you were a little off. And now, you can correctly teach people these things. It's the correct doctrine. But trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord, or proving out what is pleasing to the Lord, that's a tremendous thing. Working through that. You can evaluate it. You've been given the tools.

But it is also an opportunity, again, for that intimacy. If somebody's walking astray, then you need to have that intimacy so you can restore them. If they're walking in righteousness, you still need to have intimacy so you can share the ways that you've learned that are pleasing to the Lord. There's no out. Sorry, you're going to have to know one another. That's not a problem in this room.

I think everybody's got good relationships together, but trying what is pleasing to the Lord and proving those things out is really important. It means that we do like 2nd Corinthians 10 5 tells us and we bring every thought captive. Bringing every thought captive is one of those things that I used to have a hard time processing that because I thought that it literally meant that I better basically somehow construct a mental gateway that anytime anything flowed in I had to stop and analyze it with great depth, and then, if that was okay, then I would move on.

The problem with that is that I couldn't function. Oh, should I tie my shoes now? No. What if now's not the time? Should I brush my teeth now? And I was analyzing it too far. That's not what Paul's talking about. But he's bringing the lifestyle before the Lord. Is this the lifestyle I'm called to live? Yes or no? Nope. Okay. What is? Bob, you look like you're going to say something. Bob, just the truth of we're once outcast and in darkness, and now we're positioned in the Lord Jesus Christ. I mean, if you think of, I mean, 2 John gets into this in great detail.

What's greater, mercy, love, or truth? And I think truth trumps everything. Because love and mercy and grace and faith all stem from truth. And the truth is, we're seen in Christ. Yeah. you know, the light should be reflected of that, I think. Yeah. Truth trumps everything. Absolutely. Truth is who we are in Christ. That's the truth. Yeah.

And, you know, truth, in all those terms, goodness or righteousness or truth, where do they get their definition? God's character from the truth. Yeah, they're defined from the truth. You can't define truth without somehow knowing that it comes from God. Well, the truth is wrapped up in Christ, is it not? Absolutely. The Word of God is wrapped up in Him.

When you look at the construct of John chapter 1 where he talks about the Word and the Word was God, that's truth. But then you start to learn that you have truth as part of your relationship with Christ, and then suddenly the richness of what's in the text, it's enough to make you just stop and do some meditating. I don't mean that in an Eastern, New Agey sort of a sense. I mean that you just stop and you start to think about who is God that he would give you truth. And you're in awe. One of the things I've got in the notes here, When Christ shows up on the earth and starts talking with the Pharisees, it ticks them off something fierce. But they can't argue with Him. Why? He's got the truth!

When we look at God's Word, and we've got to really be careful with this, when we look at God's Word and we have the truth, we have the opportunity to know God's revelation and do something with it, and we need to be handling it with great respect for that truth that it is, and not flippantly and not loosely, because we have the opportunity to know the very truth of God. That will tell us very easily, we'll be able to say, hey, Randy says this is true, what does God's Word say? This week I got an email, and we'll close with this, I got an email from a friend in Nevada. Facebook is a wondrous, mysterious website because people who are distant from your life, whom you've not connected with for many, many years, may suddenly show up.

And this friend is no exception to that, where she said, hey, how's it a Bible study? And the leader said that every time you pray, God sends an angel to be with you. Oh, sorry, every time you pray God's word, God sends an angel to be with you. She couldn't remember where that was in the Bible, Could you tell me where it is?

And I scratched my head and I said, well, that sounds really weird. Let me look it up just to make sure I haven't, you know, just not read that verse. And I was just missing out on a really key, important point in doctrine. Turns out it's not in there, which made me feel better because I thought, man, I've read the Bible over. So I don't know why I wouldn't remember that. especially it seemed like an important doctrine that people would be teaching.

Hey, if you want to have an angel with you, pray out loud the Bible. The first verse that came to mind was Judas went out and hung himself. I thought, can you imagine reading that out loud to try to get an angel? But the Lord brought it together and I could see I had truth and we were looking for truth. And she wasn't interested in praying the Bible out loud to get an angel.

She was interested in the truth. And just before that, I'd been talking to my dad in one of our conversations. And I'd said, I've been waiting for the Lord to open up an opportunity for me to share with her identification truths and positional truths, because I know she's not getting those where she's at. And it was the very next day that I got the email, and she was open for truth. She didn't care about the weird theology that I was concerned she might be getting. I don't know if she is getting it, but I had some hints that there were some strange things that she was getting. But the Lord opened the opportunity there. The Lord brought that about and he brought the opportunity to share truth. And she was really excited. Hey, this is really cool stuff. And I was excited to share truth. I'm excited to share truth with you.

We should close in prayer. Any thoughts or comments before we do that though? Anything you'd like to correct me on or throw out there? Well, I will I'll take that as a no. And so we'll pray and then you can go out and look at John's truck. Heavenly Father, we ask that you would just continue to draw our minds towards you. Pray that we would remember moment by moment and day by day that we are your children, that we are children of light. And that that exciting relationship would be the thing that draws us away from the distraction of sexual immorality and coarse jesting, and all of the things that the world tries to influence us with. Instead, Lord, that we may be alike for you, go in the other direction. We praise you and we thank you for what you've taught us. In Jesus' name, Amen.