Culture of the Kingdom

Good morning.

Today's reading is from Ephesians chapter five, verses one through twenty.

Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children, and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints.

Let there be no filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.

For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous, that is, an idolater, 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 partners with them.

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 try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.

Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.

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.

Therefore it says, Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.

Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is, and do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and forever, for everything, to God the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thank you for joining us this morning.

No, we didn't buy any smoke machines.

It's just smoky everywhere, which is kind of miserable.

So if you have a scratchy throat, that's probably why.

Thanks for joining us.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

We are moving through our sermon series in Ephesians.

And before we jump into today's big text, we are going to be, I'm going to give you a couple of announcements.

Sorry, I saw an old friend.

Made eye contact.

And then it distracted me.

He's way older now than the last time I saw him.

We've got a Bible study coming up.

It's called Redemption Story, and that begins on August 25th.

Now, this is one that we did for the first time last year, and we're going to be doing it annually.

It's really, it's a four-week class that really captures the heart of what we're looking to do here at Redemption Church Denver.

And that's help you to find your place in the story of redemption.

There's a grand redemption narrative that God is telling with Christ at the center of it.

And your life story actually fits into that grand story of redemption.

And so over four weeks will follow creation and fall and redemption and then our future glory that we have to look forward to.

So join us for that.

We're gonna be reading a couple of great books, and you can sign up for that in the Redemption Church Denver app.

Uh just go to the calendar and you'll see Redemption Story on there.

Tap that and you'll be able to sign up.

Also, on August 21st, there's a women's night out.

I'm just looking through the calendar now, so you know it's real.

Uh there's a women's night out, and uh you guys are meeting at West End Tap House.

Where's that?

That way, on the I guess the West End, yeah.

Yeah, on Tennyson.

Okay, cool.

On Tennyson.

So West End Tap House, so uh women, August 21st.

That'll be fun.

Uh the day before that is a new members night on August 20th.

That may be here, maybe at the Kellums.

Uh Kellum stand up and say hi to everybody.

That's the Kellums.

They welcome you in.

We should give them a round of applause.

For real.

Uh they're uh our welcome team extraordinaire.

And so they're uh taking their duties out of Sunday mornings into the uh uh to welcome.

So if you if you if you're like I'm kind of new here and I want to meet some people, that's a great way to do it.

Uh is attend that night.

Um and that's it.

That's all we'll announce today.

Let's pray and then we'll get into today's text.

Holy Father.

We pray that you would teach us how to embody the kingdom that you have brought us into.

Lord, you have brought us out of the world and into your kingdom of light where Christ is our Lord.

Lord, would you teach us how to live with that as our primary culture?

That our personality would begin to reflect Christ's personality.

Lord, would you show us all the details in our lives that need to be transformed into the image of Christ?

And would you give us practical ways as a church to be able to embody that and learn what that is?

Lord, I pray that you would teach us what that is in your word, and that by your spirit you would empower us to live it.

Lord, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So this sermon is titled Kingdom Culture.

And the point is that we're looking at how it is that the kingdom that Christ established by his gospel becomes something that we actually embody and live out.

So just like any other culture or any other kingdom, we have a particular way of being.

And this way of being has boundaries around it, just like any culture does.

And at those boundaries, there are interactions where the culture is preserved so it doesn't disappear across the boundary, and more people are brought in to this culture.

And so, this what we're going to look at today is the culture of Christ's kingdom, the culture itself.

And then we're going to look at the defense of that culture.

How does it maintain its own identity?

How do we, as Christians, maintain our identity as primarily coming from Christ's culture?

And how is it that we bring others into this culture?

So we see the culture of the kingdom, the defense of that culture, and the offense of that culture.

I just went straight military analogy for this one.

So get pumped.

All right.

But first, uh before we look at that, we've got to look at how it is that the culture is learned.

And this is right where Paul begins in verses 5, 1 through 2.

Paul says, Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Okay, so how is it that once you've become a Christian, you learn to live out the culture of being a Christian?

Well, it's the same way that you learned your own culture.

Nobody taught you that the way you greet is to shake, well, actually, maybe somebody did.

But the way that you learn to greet someone is by shaking hands, is you just looked at your parents.

You learned, okay, I guess here in the United States we have this symbol that we do when we just meet each other and we shake each other's hands when we meet.

And in that same way that we become enculturated and learn to live out our culture to where it's just like the air we breathe, it's the water that we swim in.

So too, do we learn Christ's culture just by being imitators of God?

As beloved children, we look to God and we imitate the way that He loves us.

So just as my son, he's riding his bike with training wheels right now.

And I I ride a bike, as many of you probably do as well.

If you don't remember, it's easy.

It's just like riding a bike.

And we uh uh but I also I I bought a bike trainer from a friend in the church, and so that's where you ride a bike, but it accomplishes nothing.

And my son's training wheels will frequently get stuck, and so he's just spinning his bike and going nowhere, and he'll say, I'm riding my bike just like dad.

Which is odd, which is hilarious.

But like, how did he learn that?

I wasn't like, the key to bikes is to go nowhere.

No, it he just watched me and was like, this must be kind of a thing.

And he knows that he's beloved, and so I'm not looking to show him things that will be harmful to him, but as a beloved child, he just watches his father, says, that's the way I live in the world.

That's the way the world is designed for me to thrive in.

And then look precisely at what it is that we're supposed to see in Christ.

Be imitators of God as beloved children, walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

This is critical for understanding the rest of the text.

This is that section, we're in those sections in Paul's letters where he's being very direct and he's explaining to you how precisely to live out the Christian life.

But if you don't get this first part, that is, you're living out the Christian life because Christ loved you and gave himself up for you.

This is what energizes our desire to live a Christ-like life.

We can have no doubt that the life that Christ calls us into is for our good.

It's because he loves us.

How do we know that he's not just trying to restrict us?

We know because he gave himself up for us, out of love for us.

And in him giving himself up, it's not that he gives himself up for us once we've proven that we're able to live out this kingdom culture that he describes for us.

No, it is while we were yet sinners.

He died for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Why did he have to be an offering and a sacrifice to atone for our sins?

And so we look to God to imitate him like children because of what Christ has accomplished on the cross.

And so, in seeing that, we step in and we say, you know what, that that's what I want to be like.

This isn't primarily a principle.

You know, you don't you don't learn your culture by somebody sitting you down and uh saying, like, look, here in our culture, you uh, you know, we eat with forks and knives.

It's and the reason is because of this, it's like, no, somebody just handed you a fork and a knife and you started eating.

You just looked at your father.

So the starting point, the starting point to understanding the culture of Christ's kingdom that we're meant to embody is that it starts by looking to Christ.

Looking to Christ, like you look to your father.

All right, now we're going to see what is this culture of this kingdom.

And uh he gets down into it in the immediately in these pretty uh gritty details.

In Ephesians 5, verse 3 through 4, he says, But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints.

Ephesians 5:3–4

Let there be no filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.

So there's a couple of phrases that I want us to capture right away.

First is he qualifies these things by saying it must not even be named among you.

And then the second thing he says is which are out of place.

Now those phrases are interesting.

He's saying these are the types of phrases that you would use if you were like a character witness in court.

We'd say, like, is this person a murderer?

And like, murder, that I wouldn't even they wouldn't even be named among them.

You know, they just of course they didn't kill anybody.

Uh it would be just so out of place to even consider that that that would happen in their lives.

You know, we're what we're bearing witness to then is not just a list of rules that are successfully measured up to.

What we're bearing witness to is a type of character, it's a personality.

See, why is it that we can look to Christ to understand how to act as a culture?

It's because a culture is basically a personality just at the level of the group.

These are the same thing.

And so we embody a culture by adopting his personality as our personality.

We become his character.

And what does that uh look like?

People would say things about a group of Christians where it's like, oh, the uh sexual immorality, impurity, covetousness, it's just not what we'd think of when we think of a group of Christians.

It wouldn't even be named among them.

Well, what about like filthiness or crude joking?

Uh like, no, honestly, that just seems pretty out of place in that group.

I think if you were to bring those things up, it's like they just don't really talk that way.

See, what he's calling us to is a changed whole mode of being, a whole personality.

So let's start looking through these words in particular, beginning with the first prohibition, which is sexual immorality.

Now, the word is pornea, uh, from which we get our word pornography.

You know, you don't have to be an etymologist to piece that together.

And it's a catch-all word uh that Paul uses to describe any sex that is outside of the covenant of marriage.

So there's one place that sex is designed to take place in uh scripture in the biblical framework, and that's within the covenant of marriage.

And so any type of sexual experience that takes place outside of the covenant of marriage falls into this term of sexual immorality.

We see that Paul uses this term sexual immorality in uh, or Paul doesn't use it, Jude uses it in the letter of Jude to describe the homosexual relationships of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Porneia is what they're described as.

In 1 Corinthians 6, when Paul describes uh somebody joining themselves to a prostitute, it's he uses the same word pornea.

And so it's this broad term of sexual immorality, which actually defines a very narrow path in which we're called to live out the sexual aspects of our lives.

Now, this term is actually linked up with in the grammar and kind of qualified with or expanded on with the next two words, which are impurity and covetousness.

So that as we move into impurity and covetousness, we're not really moving outside of the framework of sexual morality, we're just expanding how this same sort of uh cultural defect uh moves in these other ways.

So, impurity, if you consider what is a pure substance, it's a substance without mixture.

Impurity in scripture is oftentimes the opposite of anxiety.

Anxiety is a mind that's divided and torn against itself.

A pure mind is focused, it's single-minded on the good outcomes that it's pursuing.

And so it's saying that this sexual immorality is actually calling you to a sort of impurity.

It's mixing in the world's views of sex and fulfillment in sex into what the Christian perspective is of uh sex just within the confines of marriage.

So this isn't just what's important to see with impurity is this is not just like a piecemeal type of morality.

You know, it's easy for us to consider this in terms of like, okay, the the Bible just sort of randomly picks on sex.

You know, why is that happening?

Uh couldn't it have picked on like cleanliness or something?

Uh but what's happening here is a system of viewing the world is being described so that you can embody it with a particular personality that maps onto the way the world actually is.

And so with this impurity, we're being called to not mix some of these sexual prohibitions or some of the morality of scripture with some of what the world calls right and good.

Instead, it's saying you need to move totally into this system, this personality of the way that Christ has called you to live.

And finally, a word which uh clarifies these even more is this word covetousness.

And this is the heart of sexual immorality is uh a viewing of your experience of sex as something that is just for you to gain, so that you can use somebody for your own pleasure, so that there is no sacrifice, there is no self-giving in the experience.

And so what this amounts to is a covetousness.

It's desiring something that doesn't belong to you, that's out of place, that's out of the context in which it actually belongs to you, and then covetously bringing it into your own world so that it can be yours.

Paul will later relate this to idolatry.

It's a way of saying that uh the ultimate place of fulfillment in my life is in this realm of sexual immorality.

My sexual satisfaction is the highest end to which I was created.

Now, oh Paul didn't hold back, right?

Welcome to church on Sunday morning.

Uh, hope you're enjoying yourselves so far.

Now, we may think, like, okay, in a society uh uh like ours, this is such a strange thing to express, but it was just as countercultural in Paul's society that he's speaking into.

Just as countercultural in Paul's society.

We would use different terms.

Now we would say that a sex ethic that is that Paul is presenting here, we would describe as offensive, but beyond offensive, we would likely say that it's oppressive.

What this type of sex ethic is, is oppressive.

And the reason for that is because we have a concept that uh one of the main problems with religion is that it creates these frameworks which cause us to repress our deepest desires, and in that repression is where we get the anxiety and the uh sort of deformity of our personalities that we have now.

And so, true freedom is to get away from this repression of these old school religious frameworks and step into the liberty of the modern age, where we're no longer repressed by these things.

And so, once we get rid of that repression, then we'll get rid of our own alienation and discontentment, and we'll be able to live freely, uncondemned, uh, in whatever way that we would like.

That's that's a very modern narrative.

It's a actually particularly Freudian narrative, but it's something that we have just embodied as a culture where we think of prohibitions against sex as uh we think of prohibitions against sex as uniquely deformative.

Now, in Ephesian culture, the it would have used different language, but the outcome is the same.

In Ephesus, the main goddess of the city was the goddess named Artemis.

And Artemis was a goddess of fertility, and so she was worshipped with uh these like sexual festivals uh that Artemis would have been worshipped in.

And uh so at that time, to say to an Ephesian, you need to actually remove yourself from that type of sexual immorality and instead come into these constraints of Christianity, which is sex only within the confines of marriage, where your sexuality is not something that you give to the public sphere, but it's something that's actually.

Uniquely in this private sphere of this life with just your spouse.

It would have been saying to an Ephesian that your hope of transcendence I'm taking away from you.

Your hope of finding true fulfillment in your life, I'm now prohibiting you from acting in.

That's what it's saying to an Ephesian.

And how do we operate as a culture now?

We think that the highest expression of our identity is our sexuality.

Can I get an amen?

Just for that we think that, not that you think that.

And we, I'm trying to work in can I get an amen?

I don't really know when to use it yet.

But the uh we think of the highest ends of our culture as the expression of our sexuality.

It's the thing that we celebrate most, and it's the thing that we map onto the clearest liberation narrative.

But you see that we don't we we don't speak in Ephesian terms.

We don't ascribe values, personalities like ancient cultures used to.

You know, Artemis is a personality, and it's a way of it's a way of embodying the culture.

And what does the culture say?

The highest expression of transcendence that you can experience is through your sexuality.

Do you see how it becomes covetousness?

How it becomes idolatry when we say that?

Because what we're saying is that it's ultimately, ultimately, we find our greatest satisfaction not in who God is, but ultimately we find our greatest satisfaction in our own sexual self-expression.

So they they become the same thing.

So sometimes it helps to be able to see our own culture through like another culture's lens.

So when you map this onto what they would say in Ephesus, and it's like those crazy ancient people thought they were connecting with Artemis.

Well, us crazy modern people think that like by expressing our sexual identities, we will reach transcendence.

We're the same.

This is a normal human thing to do.

So that's why Paul writes it down.

Look, abstain from the sexual immorality.

He's writing it to the Ephesians, you know, nearly 2,000 years ago.

Wow, it really applies today.

How easily I could be taken in by a world that seems like it's full of such promise for where my fulfillment can actually be, how quickly I could be deceived.

Now, there's a this becomes, this takes place in our language also.

So Paul here is talking about in the culture, he's talking about action, abstain, no sexual morality, immorality, impurity, covetousness, not even named among you.

Those are actions.

And then he goes to our speech, because what is a personality?

It's action and speech.

Can I get an amen?

He says, let there be sorry, I cracked myself up, let there be no filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead, let there be thanksgiving.

Becomes a part of our language.

Okay, so why would there be, I know, I know the one you heard, crude joking?

Paul, come on.

Like, is this just the like uh four verses where it just turns out that like Paul is super boring?

So why does he zero in on crude joking?

We have to understand what role jokes play.

What does a joke do?

A joke sets up a boundary of what is absurd and what is normal.

What is unacceptable and what is acceptable.

That's what jokes do.

That's that's we're we're laughing because we're playing at a boundary.

You know, that's that's why the court jester is able to come in and say whatever he wants to the king.

It's because he's the jester.

We know he's outside the boundary.

And in him articulating what's outside the boundary, he's serving this role to uphold what's inside the boundary.

Because he's absurd, that means there's another place that isn't absurd.

So in our language, in our joking around sexuality, we're draw, we need to be careful to not draw false boundaries where we're actually calling the Christian sex ethic, this way that God designed us to live and thrive, where we're actually calling that absurd.

So I'm gonna borrow an example from Carl Truman in his book Rise and Triumph of Modern Self.

I thought it was just a really good example, um, even though it's a movie I've seen probably like a thousand times.

So he says, uh in our culture, you don't need to be told that a movie titled The 40-year-old virgin is a comedy.

If you just heard the title, 40-year-old virgin, you know it's a comedy.

Why?

Because what is more laughable than chastity?

What could be more absurd than a person who makes it to 40 without the only hope of transcendence that we have in our culture, which is sex?

At one point it might have been art.

I don't even think it's art anymore.

You know, there's a and so what does what does that do?

It establishes a boundary of what is absurd and of what's normal.

That's why Paul zeroes in on no filthiness, no foolish talk, no crude joking.

Those things are out of place.

Why are they out of place?

Because they're ways of saying this culture that Christ has freed us into to experience actually is absurd and is just a way of Christ withholding his goodness and the reality of a true transcendent life.

Christ is just withholding those.

In a sense, it's like a complaint, saying, like, Lord, you've put these constraints around me, and they are just suffocating.

All you're doing with these constraints is taking away the promise of fullness of life that I thought we could possibly live in and possibly experience.

Yet you just seem to be taking them away.

And so, why does Paul then we see why Paul then offers as this replacement to a uh foolish talk and crude joking?

Those are out of place because those are really a veiled complaint.

And instead, let there be thanksgiving.

Let there be thanksgiving.

So, what does that look like?

It it looks like a this is there's no way this doesn't land as a joke.

But it looks like a celebrating of the 40-year-old virgin.

What an incredibly challenging thing.

Uh that's actually full of this, there's like this wonder and glory in it.

Or a uh in all it becomes this, like David would pray, Lord, you have set my boundaries in a wonderful place.

You know, that's not just spatially or temporally, but it's also the boundaries and the constraints that He's put into your life morally.

Lord, this actually is the place of my flourishing, the place of my thriving.

And it's described particularly as a boundary.

Ephesians 5, 5, it says, For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure or who is covetous, that is, an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.

Do you see how this is a boundary, a cultural boundary?

Because if it were in there, how could people say, No, it has no place among them?

No, that's just not what they're like.

Okay, now that we're at the boundary, let's see how it interacts at the edges.

There's a defense.

I'm gonna start cruising.

Ephesians 5, 6.

Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.

Okay, so we're at the boundary.

This is our defense.

We've done the culture, now defense.

Next will be offense.

First of all, how do you maintain this strange view of the Christian ethic?

First of all, don't be deceived with empty words.

Look, there is a whole world shouting at you.

Fulfillment lies in your sexual expression, in your sexual self-expression.

That is the highest and best place of your fulfillment.

The world is shouting that at you.

Don't be deceived.

It isn't true.

It's simply false.

It's a lie.

And it's because of lies like that that the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.

Now, we need to get something clear about the wrath of God because we often think of it just in terms of the final judgment.

But Paul makes clear in Romans 1, this same Paul makes clear in Romans 1 a similar point where he's saying that the wrath of God is now revealed.

So the wrath of God isn't just something that's pent up at the uh final judgment and then will finally gush forth once it's triggered enough.

But the wrath of God is something we can actually look out into the world and see.

It is now revealed.

And so what does it look like?

You know, we uh we don't have Artemis, right?

We this is we don't have like a pub, uh we don't have a uh you know, a goddess of our city, and we say, like, look at the sexual ethic that she embodies of total liberation.

Uh let's parade her through the city and we'll celebrate this embodied value.

But we do parade our values through the streets, do we not?

And many people have asked, like, isn't if there's a wrath of God, why isn't it showing up now?

Like in a in a culture full of such sexual degradation, why isn't, you know, isn't God just gonna like come in and destroy us?

Look, maybe.

He lives in the heavens, he does as he pleases.

But what it what's actually happening is the sin itself is the wrath of God.

What is the sin?

Excuse me, what does the wrath of God look like in a constant use of pornography?

It looks like being given over to a constant use of pornography.

Do you see it?

That is the wrath.

What is the wrath of an affair look like, of God against an affair look like?

Well, it looks like the affair happening, being given over to this mode of life and the death that comes with it.

See, these constraints that Christ is calling us into are the very place of our flourishing.

They are what us creatures are designed to live and thrive in.

It is a fish being placed back in water after just flopping on the deck, like SpongeBob.

Excuse me, sorry.

Except for me.

And so when He is establishing these prohibitions for us, it's the same thing as Him bringing us into a place of flourishing.

Okay, so so what do what do we do?

Uh therefore do not become partners with them, it says in verse 7 through 9.

For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the world.

Walk as children of light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true.

You see, you you can't become partners with it.

Why?

Because it itself is experiencing the wrath of God.

You can't become partners with an alternative sex ethic while being a Christian, without participating in the very wrath of God in that sex ethic.

So we have to invert our views of what liberation is, of what oppression is.

The Bible describes a total liberality and freedom to express your sexuality however you want.

Do you know what the Bible calls that?

Slavery.

Because you're not the type of creature that can make yourself into whatever you want to be.

You're a thing that was made.

And you were made for a particular reason and purpose and mode of being.

And when that gets distorted, it becomes hell.

But when that's lived into, it is thriving and flourishing.

So instead, you are to walk, at that time you were darkness, but now we are called to walk as light in the world.

We are called to be light amid darkness.

And light exposes.

In Ephesians 5, verses 10 through 12 it says, and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord, which means it won't necessarily be intuitive.

Ephesians 5:10–12

We have to try to discern it.

And take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.

For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret.

So we are called at the same time to expose the unfruitful works of darkness.

Don't take part in them, but instead expose them as unfruitful and darkness.

But then at the same time, it says, even to speak of those things is shameful.

So, okay, we're called to expose it, but don't you can't speak.

It feels like our hands are tied.

What is Paul getting at here?

You are light.

The church, the the people that have been transformed by Christ that are absurdly against everything that the culture tells them, pursuing this sex ethic of sexes between a man and a woman in marriage.

And against as absurd as that looks, against the backdrop of our culture, that is light.

And a light like that, it begins to expose just in the living.

The flourishing of a life built around those values, serves as this counterexample to a life that descends into death around sexual immorality.

Now, Paul continues, when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible.

For anything that becomes visible is light.

Therefore it says, awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

When anything is exposed by the light, you know what is what is the first thing that we talked about today?

We're going to imitate Christ as beloved children.

How do we know we can imitate him and it'll work out well?

Well, he loved us and he gave himself up for us as an offering, a sacrifice.

Why did he need to be a sacrifice?

Because we're sinners.

Because there isn't a single person in here who isn't sexually broken, who isn't sexually sinful.

That's why it's like, why is Paul making this such a central thing?

Because this is universal.

And we come in, we come into him as people who need the light to shine on us that we can be awoken from the dead, raised from our sleep.

You know, if you're walking on the edge of a cliff at night, and you don't know that you're walking on the edge of a cliff because it's all just darkness, but then the light begins to shine.

All of a sudden, it says, uh, anything that becomes visible is light.

Well, when the light shines on the edge of the cliff, it becomes light.

And so all of a sudden, this dangerous thing, this terrible thing that would have brought you death, now becomes this information that's a part of your story.

And it's brought in and it becomes light for you as the edge of the cliff guides you very clearly where to walk, you know, not off of it.

Our sexual stories, our sexual pasts, these are the same thing.

Uh, or sexual presence.

Don't uh, you know, stay with me.

These are the same thing.

The light shines on them.

And it's a horrifying thing to have the light shine on it.

But what it becomes is this information.

It's brought into the light.

God is looking to redeem even those parts of your story.

All right.

Lastly, offense.

Ephesians 5, 15 and 17.

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.

Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

What does it take to walk into the world?

Don't be unwise, be wise.

Why?

The days are evil.

This was true then, it's true now.

You will not.

Here's the warning.

Don't try to intuit your sex ethic.

You've already lost at that point.

This is something that we need to be told.

We need Christ to come in and tell us this.

So a foolishness, being foolish is just simply taking the world at face value.

He gives us this example in verse 18.

Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the spirit.

Now, it's an example, right?

There's more meaning in it than it's just don't get drunk.

But what is drunkenness?

It's like a manufactured darkness.

It's a way of turning off the light in our own conscience so that we can wander around the darkness as though it were light.

Instead of that, be filled with the spirit.

It's almost as though drunkenness exists in the world as like an opposite so that we can understand what being filled with the spirit is.

What does being filled with the spirit look like?

Well, what does drunkenness promise?

Liberation.

What does being filled with the spirit offer?

Real liberty.

What does drunkenness offer?

A feeling of freedom.

What does the spirit offer?

Actual freedom.

And so we are called to, in the sense, and we're we're in a strange place here, but it's a term.

You know, look, when When the Spirit initially falls at Pentecost, the people who don't believe that it's the Holy Spirit, what do they say that it happened to everybody?

They were drunk.

Yeah.

What does this look like?

God is not saying, like, look, I'm I'm calling you out of this place of joyful self-expression and transcendence into this place of drudgery.

No, he's saying that I'm calling you into the real thing.

Now, here is the ultimate offense.

This is this is the way that the church moves forward in the world.

In verses five, nineteen through twenty, Paul says, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

How does the church move forward?

You know, these were all prohibitions.

And it's like uh Paul, Paul says, like, abstain from sexual morality, abstain from that filthiness, abstain from that drunkenness, abstain from that impurity, abstain from that covetousness.

And then it's like, okay, now that's our list of things that we don't do.

Now, what are the things, what's the thing that he's going to prescribe for us to do?

Can you believe it's singing?

What's the thing that Paul is saying?

Like, look, don't abstain from all that stuff.

Instead, sing.

Sing.

When do you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs?

It's when you've got something wonderful to celebrate.

You say, look, I've walked into these things that I used to look at when I was outside of Christ as just constraints, and they were oppression, and they were things that kept me from what I thought real life was.

But now in Christ that the light has shone on me and I've woken up, I see that this very way of living was not death to me, it was real life.

And now I'm here together, we're here together as a church, and so we sing about it.

There's a wonder in the morality that Christ has called us to.

There's a joy in it.

It needs to be sung in order for us to even be able to understand it, to be able to grasp it.

We're talking about sexual immorality this Sunday, which means that this room is full of shame right now.

Raise your hand if you're full of shame.

I'm just kidding.

Can I get an amen?

This room is full of shame right now.

I know that it is.

I know that it is.

Paul knows that it is.

Now, what news would a people like us, a sexually sinful people like us, need to get to where we would see it as sin and become a people marked by singing.

It would have to be the news of the very beginning of this section.

Things that I said, without this, we can't understand what's coming.

And that's that Christ has sacrificed for us.

Christ has made us pure.

Christ has removed our idolatry.

Christ has removed our sexual immorality.

Christ has removed our covetousness, our filthiness.

In him we are made clean.

He gave himself up for us in love.

That's the type of news where all of a sudden we become a people of singing.

And it's not a drunkenness where you wake up the next day and it's like, well, that wasn't, I just, all that joy that I had yesterday, it turned out I just borrowed from today.

No, but it's it's a real joy, it's the real thing.

So how do we become that culture?

You look to Christ.

We defend by not participating.

We go on offense by singing together for what he's accomplished.

Are there any questions today?

No?

Or one?

No.

Okay, sorry.

I'm I don't know American Sign Language.

I read it wrong.

Okay, no questions today.

Let's uh oh, let me pull up our text before communion.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, for I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

That the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Today we'll take communion together.

We'll come to the Lord's table, and we'll remember that it is because of him, his broken body, that we are made clean.

And if you are a Christian, come with confidence.

Take up the table, let it be the first act of your joyful singing today.

This is a celebration.

Nobody gets out the bread and wine to mourn.

You get out the bread and wine to feast.

And so we feast together.

Even though the light has shown in our sin, it has been brought into the redemptive story of Christ.

Because you thank him for that.

If you're not a Christian, then consider during this time.

In fact, look at the people who are coming up and eating the bread and drinking the wine.

Look, they're normal people just like you.

And what they're saying, what they're proclaiming by eating and drinking at this table, is that Christ has accomplished their salvation.

Let's pray.

Holy Father, and pray that you would bless this time.

Lord, I pray that your spirit would be working in the hearts of our church.

Lord, that the way in which you've moved in people's hearts today, that you would supply the strength needed to address the things that you've brought up.

Lord, that your spirit would be the encourager and comforter who moves into these challenging areas of our lives in which they're just riddled with shame so often.

Lord, we pray that true freedom would show in uh not what the world calls freedom, but but in the proper constraints that you put in our lives, that we might thrive in the midst of those.

Lord, you've given us beautiful boundaries.

Let us see them that way and trust you because you loved us and gave yourself up for us.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.