Sermon Tone Analysis

What does this new walk, this new way in Christ look like?

Father Dies Sheltering His Daughter

During a severe blizzard in Japan, a father froze to death while sheltering his daughter.

The story reads, "Mikio Okada died as he tried to protect his only child, Natsune, against winds of up to 109kph and temperatures that plunged as low as minus 6 degrees Celsius."

Mr. Okada called his relatives to say that he was stranded and that he and Natsune would try to walk to their destination.

But they were both found just 300 metres from the truck.

The story continued, "Mr.

Okada was reportedly found hunched over his daughter, cradling her in his arms and apparently using his body and a warehouse wall to provide shelter.

He had taken his jacket off to give to the child, a broadcaster said.

The young girl was taken to a hospital near their home … where she was found to have no serious injuries."

This story that rips your heart out while providing an insight into the Atonement.

The apostle Paul wrote, "and walk in love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant sacrificial offering to God” (Eph.

5:2)

1.

How do we show that we walk in Love?

Be Imitators of God

“Be imitators of God as beloved children.”

Christian Ambassadors

For the watching world, we ourselves serve proof that God is alive.

We form the visible shape of what he is like.

What does it look like to be a Child of God?

We are a Royal priesthood, a Royal Priesthood, a Holy Nation....

We have an adoption that compels our soul to cry out Abba! Father!

In the New Testament Christ is described as the expression of the image of God.

Note: In the person of Jesus and in the life he lived, we see what our humanity is to be like.

We go all the way back to creation where God created mankind in His image, in His likeness.

Not in the sense that God has a body but he has a nature.

We are called living images that should reflect the very nature of God.

Imago Dei of God:

Image in Greek is the same word for which we get icon.

It is like when you click on an icon on your phone, ipad, or tablet what do you expect to happen?

You expect it to open up the fuller application that you are wanting to see.

It is the same with us being the image bearers of God.

When the world looks at your life they should see the exact icon or representation of what the fuller God is like, the authentic picture of God himself.

So, as Christians we have all inherited the Ft.

Knox of treasures into the kingdom of God, adopted into his royal family.

We have hit the biggest lottery in the Universe.

(not to trivialize it)

Love like the Son

Note: Christ’s love was a sacrificial love.

We will read in Ephesians 5:25 that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the Church.

Now, Paul is expounding on how we should be imitators of God.

Jesus love was the prefect example of how we are to imitate Christ.

The sweetest and most beautiful fragrance that God has ever detected coming from this planet is the aroma of the perfect sacrifice of Jesus that was offered once and for all on the cross.

Note: Love is not merely a sentimental feeling for someone.

LOVE INVOLVES 2 THINGS

(1) Sacrifice

(2) Action

As Christians imitating the Father we are called to give the same fragrant offering to the Lord.

(OT, sacrifices and aroma of the alter of sacrifice)

2 Corinthians 2:15-17 “For we are the aroma of Christ to those who are being saved....”

Joseph Fletcher’s book “Situation Ethics”

In our generation, we have witnessed the advancement in both the secular culture and the Christian church of what is called ‘the New Morality.’

In Fletcher’s book in the 1960’s it linked with the emergence of the somehow called new morality.

The situation thesis ethic was this: the Christian faith is not based chiefly on a list of rules, commandments, and laws.

There is only one moral imperative, only one overarching law, to be found in the Christian life.

It is the law of LOVE: to love God and do what love requires in any given situation.

Fletcher appeals to Paul’s statement in Romans 13:10; love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore, love is fulfilling the law.

The famous quotation of Augustine that is many times misunderstood: ‘Love God and do as you please’, this was twisted beyond any recognition beyond its original intent.

Augustine meant that if our hearts are motivated internally by the proper spirit of love for God, then we will be able to do as we please because love for God will constrain us to do only those things that please the Lord.

(led by the spirit)

Augustin never had in mind the idea that if you have some feeling of affection for God in your heart, then you can go ahead and disregard the commands of God.

Fletcher however, does allow for the following situation: if the overarching consideration is love, extra-marital sexual relationships may be quiet acceptable in the sight of God.

There are various studies on human sexuality produced by commissions and committees of mainline denominations which have set forth the possibility that withing the context of love, it may be all right to engage in sex outside of marriage, even in the context of homosexual relationships.

The overarching picture then is, if you love then your behavior can be determined and justified by that Love.

We must resist the temptation to rename sin.

(we say, it’s for mature audiences, it’s the gentlemen’s club, if it feels good do, it must be good.”

We must not merely try to manage sin.)

The Real message of Unmarried Sex

If you are sleeping with the person you are dating, you are telling each other two things.

First, you are telling each other that your relationship with God is not your primary commitment.

Second, you are telling each other that you are the kind of person that will sleep with someone you are not married to.

Do you think that repeating vows to each other will somehow change that?

It doesn’t.

You will enter into marriage, if you end up marrying the person that you are sleeping with, already telling each other that you will sleep with someone you are not married to.

You already know that each of you is not first and foremost committed to God.

(Story of Andy and His declaration)

Note: Online dating is becoming the new Hook-up!

vs. 3 “But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among the saints (god’s holy people)”

A Christian's Body is on Loan from God

I try to drive carefully.

But when I happen to borrow a friend's car, I drive very carefully.

I don't want to damage the property of a friend and return it to him all banged up.

Even so, our bodies are the personal property of someone else.

The only way we could say, "Who does he think he is, telling me what to do with my body?" is by not belonging to him at all.

Did he shed his blood to cover our sins?

Has he given his Spirit to make us new?

If so, then we should glorify him even in our physicality, especially our sexuality

(When you submitted your life to the Lord you became part of Christ’s body, much the way we are joined to our husbands and wives in a wedding ceremony.)

Note: Here Paul clearly defines what it looks like to walk in a way to live and walk in a life of Love.

What could be further away from the life of loving like Jesus loved than to engage in sex outside of the marriage covenant.

However, it is becoming more, and more, common place today among Christians.

anti-love shown: This is how we show a lack of love.

Paul does not say, ‘Love God and do as you please anyway.’

He says, ‘if you want to know what love demands, then pay attention do what love requires.

vs 4 ‘Paul comes back to the theme of chapter 4 which is the importance of our speech as a Christian.’

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

Paul now turns from treating Sex in a joking way, as something culture has made into it’s own language and used to make light of what God made beautiful between a husband and wife.

How have we cheapened God’s beautiful design.

Note: Remember that Jesus says that it is not what goes into a man that defiles him, it is what comes out of his mouth.

Where sexual impurity and covetousness both express a self-centered, self-gratifying of the former God-centered, God-glorifying act of sex.

Paul, says, instead that we should be thankful, and give thanks to God for the beautiful thing he has given to his creation.