Keep Yourself Clean
Notes
Transcript
Introduction:
Have you ever gotten yourself so dirty that you couldn’t stand to be around yourself? Maybe you had been working in the yard or moving things and you sweated off your DO and now you had some rank BO.
Do you remember how good it felt to get a shower and get cleaned again? Before you were smelling your own stank and knew that others could smell you too. You didn’t want to be around them and you didn’t want to lift your arms in case you gave someone an embarrassing whiff.
Now that you got yourself clean, you were good to go and had a newfound boldness to be around people.
Sometimes it can be this way with us in our Christian life. We can dirty ourselves up, even though Christ died to make us clean.
Tonight we are going to take a look at how we can keep ourselves clean through by joining forces with the Holy Spirit and letting Him work in our lives.
1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.
2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
3 But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints.
4 Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.
5 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.
6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.
7 Therefore do not become partners with them;
8 for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light
9 (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true),
10 and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.
11 Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.
12 For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret.
13 But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible,
14 for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise,
16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.
17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit,
19 addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart,
20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
1. In Purity (v.3)
1. In Purity (v.3)
3 But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints.
Notice that he names two terms here: sexual immorality and impurity
Sexual immorality = porneia = sexual sins
impurity = things that make one ceremonially impure
These things are associated with covetousness because they come from a desire to have what you do not currently have.
maybe you are single and desire to have the intimacy of marriage so you get the cart before the horse and have sexual relations before getting married
Maybe you long for another person’s wife, whether it is online through pornography or some other form of lust
You can even lust for a person in a non-sexual way where you desire what you do not have
While the main idea here is of sexual sins, we also should note that we can covet anything that we long for and this can often be things that we try to replace our longing in our hearts towards God for. This is why covetousness is called idolatry.
FF Bruce, a well-known Christian professor, said this:
Covetousness is idolatry because it involves the setting of one’s affections on earthly things and not on things above, and therefore the putting of some other object of desire in the place which God should occupy in his people’s hearts.
F. F. Bruce
There are a lot of things that we could classify here that are not just sexual sins. Theft, hatred, murder, fightings or reveling. All of these are things that come from evil desires.
However, the main thrust of these verses is still the concept of sexual sins, because Ephesus was a city that was filled with all kinds of sexual immorality and opportunities to sin in such a way.
There is no age limit where this passage stops applying to us.
In the Book of Proverbs, Solomon instructs his son to stay away from sexual temptation. Using the prostitute as an example, He writes:
6 For at the window of my house I have looked out through my lattice,
7 and I have seen among the simple, I have perceived among the youths, a young man lacking sense,
8 passing along the street near her corner, taking the road to her house
9 in the twilight, in the evening, at the time of night and darkness.
He writes the end of the man this way:
21 With much seductive speech she persuades him; with her smooth talk she compels him.
22 All at once he follows her, as an ox goes to the slaughter, or as a stag is caught fast
23 till an arrow pierces its liver; as a bird rushes into a snare; he does not know that it will cost him his life.
The concluding advice is:
24 And now, O sons, listen to me, and be attentive to the words of my mouth.
25 Let not your heart turn aside to her ways; do not stray into her paths,
26 for many a victim has she laid low, and all her slain are a mighty throng.
27 Her house is the way to Sheol, going down to the chambers of death.
So Paul also warns that we are not to have even a hint of these things named among us.
Failure to follow these instructions will make us unlike the Father that we are trying to walk in imitation of.
This is one reason why it is so scandalous that many have tried to make Mary Magdalene the wife of Jesus like the whole Dan Brown Davinci Code book came out.
Jesus is called the Bridegroom of the Church and He is not unfaithful. There is not a hint of scandal in Him.
Therefore, as His body, there should not be a hint of scandal in any of us.
Paul says these things are not proper among saints. Saints are not some special category of Christian, but are all of us who are believers. We are set apart, sanctified, as holy unto God. Therefore we ought to walk different than the rest of the world.
2. In Speech (vv.4-5)
2. In Speech (vv.4-5)
4 Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.
5 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.
What do we talk about as believers?
So often we as Christians will have as dirty of a mouth as an unbeliever.
Things we are told not to talk about:
Filthiness - anything unclean or that we would not want God to hear us say.
If we wouldn’t say it around the most innocent of ears, we shouldn’t say it at all
Crude joking - this is vulgar dirty talk (word only appears once hear)
This would be the equivalent of dropping the F bomb or calling someone a derogatory name
It can also include sharing sexual jokes or anything that is inappropriate
The idea that Paul might have had in mind here is the kind of talk that you would find at a party where there has been a lot of drunkenness. The filter is down and people say all kinds of evil things.
Application:
What things do you tend to talk about?
We can easily say that there is no harm in a little fun, but the truth is that a little sin is still big sin in God’s sight.
We can also think that these things only apply to sexual or crude language, but we ought not to talk about anything that is inappropriate.
That includes gossip, lying, yelling and screaming.
What We Should Talk About
What we should focus instead on giving thanks to God.
Later Paul will say to admonish one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs in v. 19-20, and again he repeats the need to give thanks.
Paul uses strong language when he says that no one who practices these things (sexual immorality, impurity, and covetousness) has any part in the Kingdom of God
Does this mean that if you slip up in these areas you will not go to Heaven?
Of course not
If you practice them, then you are indicating by your fruit that you do not really believe that Christ died to set you free from such sins.
3. In Thinking (vv.6-14)
3. In Thinking (vv.6-14)
The next things we have to do is watch our thought life.
Paul says in verse 6 that we need to not let anyone deceive us that these things might be okay, because the wrath f God is coming upon these sons of disobedience because of these things.
These people were probably not taking sin very seriously. They were like people who urge us on to sin so they can feel better about their own sins.
Paul said something similar in Col. 2:8
8 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
The thought life feeds the rest of the actions of the body.
We are supposed to shine as lights in the world, not continue to walk in darkness
Dr. Benjamin Merkle writes in the ESV Expository Commentary:
Ephesians–Philemon Comment
Interestingly, Paul does not say that they were once in darkness and are now in light but rather that
We are to try to discern (from the Word) what is good and pleasing to the Lord (v.10)
Again Paul contrasts the life of the believer who lives out publicly what God reveals in secret through His Word with those who live lives of unrighteousness and do things in secret that are shameful to speak about
Again, Dr. Merkle points out: “If speaking of certain sins is bad enough, how much more offensive to God is actually engaging in them?”
Benjamin L. Merkle, “Ephesians,” in Ephesians–Philemon, ed. Iain M. Duguid, James M. Hamilton Jr., and Jay Sklar, vol. XI, ESV Expository Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 91.
We are not to go along with the world, but to expose the world’s evil ways
Part of this comes by living as examples of how people ought to walk, even when no one around us may be doing so
When Paul speaks of the “fruit of the light” he is talking about the fruit that the light produces
God’s word is the light
It yields good fruit - the fruit of the Spirit - in our lives
4. In Living (vv.15-21)
4. In Living (vv.15-21)
We will cover this point next week
Conclusion:
To wrap things up, there are two things we must do to put all of these principles into practice.
We Need to Avoid Ungodly Behavior
We Need to Expose Ungodly Behavior
What about you? Are you practicing godliness and helping others come into the light, or have you switched off the light in your life?
If you have, repent and turn back to the Lord. He will forgive you and and clean you up and put you back on that lampstand to let your line shine before men that they might see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.
