Idolatry and the Kingdom of Christ and God - Brandon Scalf

Heritage Church Tulsa

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All right, everyone, grab your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Ephesians.

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Ephesians chapter 5, as we will be continuing on in our series, through Paul's letter to the church or churches in Ephesus.

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And we will be primarily focusing on Ephesians chapter 5, verses 3 through 5.

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Ephesians chapter 5, 3 through 5. And the title of today's message is

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Idolatry and the Kingdom of Christ and God.

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Ephesians chapter 5. And if you would stand with me for the honoring and reading of God's holy and fallible and all sufficient word.

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And for the sake of context, I will begin reading in verse 1. Ephesians chapter 5, verse 1.

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This is the word of our Lord. Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love, just as Christ also loved us and gave himself up for us in offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.

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But sexual immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you as is proper among saints, nor filthiness and foolish talk or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks.

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For this, you know with certainty that no one sexually immoral or impure or greedy who is an idolater has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.

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The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Amen. Amen.

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Go ahead and have a seat and get your eyes on verse 3.

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If you are not aware, let me remind you that Paul here is not writing some sort of theological treaties that he simply is wanting to puff people's minds up with.

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He is writing a letter, a pastoral letter to a church or a group of churches in and around Ephesus.

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And the reality is Ephesus is much like, although much different than the world we live in now.

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It is steeped, like our world, in false religion and idolatry.

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They were given over to sexual immorality. They were given over to sorcery.

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And they were given over to the worship of false gods in the form of wooden creatures and or metal creatures.

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And when I say the word idolatry, and I say that the Ephesians engaged in idolatry, many of us can walk away with the idea that idolatry is simply a relic of ancient past.

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But the reality is, idolatry is everywhere even today.

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So Paul's message here to the Ephesians, though particularly relevant to them, is exceptionally relevant to us.

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Today, behind every shadow of our daily lives, idolatry is waiting for us to grab hold of, to love, and to cherish.

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And it does so by twisting God's great gifts into tools of destruction.

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What happens in idolatry is that we worship created things rather than the creator

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God Himself. This is made evident when Paul is writing to the church in Rome, and he says in verse 25 of chapter 1,

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For they, speaking of humanity, exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and they worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.

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Amen. And idolatry occurs not because, even though I personified idolatry, it's looking to essentially pull the wool over our eyes and trick us, but rather it's something that we chase after and we love.

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And we love because we love lies more than we love the truth. We love ourselves more than we love

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God. And we love our lusts and our flesh more than we love Christ.

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That does not mean, however, that the enemy is not present. Satan is the great counterfeiter.

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And he delights in taking the good things and the beautiful gifts that God has given us and twisting them into things that we worship.

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You see, the enemy, Satan himself, is not so concerned with you not worshiping him.

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Or rather, let me put it this way. He's okay with you not worshiping him so long as you're not worshiping

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God. And so that is what idolatry is.

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And so as we look at today's text, I want you to understand a few things. And the first thing that I want you to understand is that those who are living according to idolatry do not inherit the kingdom of God in Christ.

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That is what is being said on the front end. And it's something that should govern the way that we think about this passage.

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And so the first thing that I want you to see, though, is, and this is my first point, God's saints kill idolatrous conduct.

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God's saints kill idolatrous conduct. We have been walking through chapters 4 and 5, which is the turning point of the book of Ephesians.

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And it's where Paul is moving, as it were, from doctrine to doxology. He's telling us how to live the

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Christian life. And he has been doing that from the middle of the book until now.

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And what he is doing is he is laying forth a Christian ethic.

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This is how you are to live if you are going to live in the church in a way that guards the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace.

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Last week, we were told positively that the way that we do that is we imitate

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God and we walk in love. And then he gives us what love looks like. It looks like Christ dying for us.

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And today, we're going to see the negative, the same truth in many ways, but negatively spoken.

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So instead of positive ethics being put out, he's going to say, don't do these things because they are not fitting for the saints.

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People who have been renewed, people who have been resurrected to spiritual life from spiritual death, the new man.

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He does not engage in these things. He does not engage in such conduct.

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And he does not engage, as we will see as we move on, such speech. But before we can move on, we might ask, what is idolatry?

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I've hinted at it, but I want to drill down just a little bit so we can kind of get our wheels on the track.

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Idolatry is in many ways antithetical to holiness. It is literally to trade the good things that God gives us for lies.

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The Bible tells us and defines idolatry in many different ways. Firstly, idolatry is loving anything more than God.

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So if you're asking, well, how can we be idolatrous if we don't have wooden figures in our homes or in our churches?

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Well, an idol is anything that you love more than God.

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John Owen, a Puritan of old, says it like this. Whatever the heart clings to and relies upon, that properly is its

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God. Jonathan Edwards says it like this. A man is guilty of idolatry not only when he worships a false

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God, but also when he loves, desires, or delights in anything more than God.

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Matthew 22, 27 says, and he said to him, you shall love the

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Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. So very simply and very pointedly, to be idolatrous is to be a person who does not love

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God with all their heart, with all their soul, and with all their mind. If God is not everything to them, if they are not

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God enthroned, enthralled, those people are idolatrous.

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Secondly, idolatry is trusting in something other than God. So not only is it loving something more than God, but it's trusting in for safety, for security, for wealth, whatever the case may be, to be the thing that not only saves and satiates you, but protects you and sustains you.

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Jeremiah Burroughs, another Puritan, says if you trust in your wealth, your wisdom, or your strength, you are guilty of idolatry, for these things have taken the place of God in your soul.

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If your plan is to get yourself out of whatever mess you find yourself in, is at the foremost of your, forefront of your mind, you are an idolater.

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This is why Jeremiah says in chapter 17, verse 5, cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from Yahweh.

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If you don't trust God, you don't love God. And if you don't love God, you don't trust

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God, and you become an idolater. Thirdly, and importantly, but also not really in the scope of this text, is that idolatry is replacing

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God's worship, corporate worship, with man -made religion.

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That is almost like a duh thing, right? Thomas Watson says we must shun all invented worship, for the

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Lord will not be worshiped with any device of man's brain.

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Fourthly, idolatry is serving sin rather than God. The great theologian

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Bob Dylan once said in one of his songs, you're going to serve somebody, and that's the truth here.

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You're either serving God because you love God and because you trust God, or you're serving your appetites, your belly, or your desires.

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And fifthly, and this is really what our text is ultimately aimed at, is that idolatry is seeking joy in the gift rather than the giver.

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Stephen Charnock, another Puritan, says it like this, to seek our happiness in anything but God is to make that thing our

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God. We rob him of his glory and give it to another.

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And this really points back to, as I was saying, Romans chapter 1, verse 25. To be idolatrous at heart is to love, appreciate, care for, trust in, and put above anything, anything, over and against God.

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Children, would you look at me? I want to drive this home a little bit to you if I can. I want you to imagine, if you would, a balloon.

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You guys know what balloons are. You go to the circus, they float in the air, all that good stuff. If you keep blowing it up bigger and bigger, it'll get bigger.

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But if you blow it too big, what happens? What happens if you just keep blowing a balloon?

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It eventually pops. That's right. It pops. Boom, it bursts.

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You thought maybe the first time that you blew a balloon up too big, that it was just going to continue to get bigger.

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But what you come to find out is that it gets destroyed. When we chase after other things in this life, other than God, when we love other things more than we love

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God, like money or toys or friends or even being liked, those things will ultimately blow up like that balloon.

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They will not get bigger and better. They will actually become harmful.

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Because God is the only one who can get bigger.

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If he doesn't get bigger, he is the biggest, right? But he will never pop.

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He will never let you down. So look with me here. Now that we've got that understanding under our belt about what idolatry is, look with me at verse three.

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Paul continues on after saying that the Ephesian church needs to imitate God and walk in love.

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He says, but sexual morality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you.

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This word but here is very important. Conjunctions are very important. And what it shows us is a transition.

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Like I said, once between the positive and the negative, between how one ought to live and how one must not live.

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And what we're going to see here is actually the reality that sin must be put to death. Idolatry must be killed.

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It must be put away. As R .C. Sproul has said, Christianity makes no peace with idolatry.

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And the scene he says specifically at Ephesus was that of the triumph of the gospel over pagan idolatry.

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So what we're about to examine here is a lifestyle that is diametrically opposed to the

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Christian life. It says, but you've got to do some things.

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You've got to put away. But sexual immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you.

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So it's not even that it just shouldn't be practiced by Christians, but it should not even be named among those whom call themselves saints.

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But let's take this one word at a time. He says that sexual immorality is not even to be named among us.

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This word here in the Greek pornea is where we get the word pornography. It is used 25 times in the

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New Testament. It is used 10 times by Paul. And it is used only one time here in the book of Ephesians.

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And quite honestly, this is a rare word in antiquity. It wasn't used very often, but it was very pointed in its application.

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The word was most often used in conjunction with prostitutes.

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And this is something that the Ephesian church would have understood completely because they had one of the seventh wonders of the world.

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And they had this God that literally had cult prostitutes in the very city of Ephesus.

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So when you went to go worship this God, you could also engage in prostitution. And he's essentially saying here that kind of sexual activity is not even to be named among the saints.

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It oftentimes speaks of, to use the new American standard word, harlotry and spiritual and faithfulness.

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More often than not, this word is used to conjure up the type of sexual activity that would be outside of heterosexual marriage.

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For instance, in Matthew 5 .32, Jesus says, but I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for the reason of sexual immorality, same

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Greek word, makes her commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

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And so many commentators actually try to stress the reality that's what's being talked about here is the kind of sexual activity that betrays the people that you are in fact supposed to be married to.

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But many other commentators, and I tend to agree with them, also see it as a general expression of abhorrent sexual conduct.

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So anything that has to do with a sexual nature. This word is used this way in Mark 7 .21,

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where it says, for from within, out of the heart of men proceed the evil thoughts, sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, and adultery.

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So you see here this list, and it both includes porneia as well as adulteries.

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So in other words, what I'm trying to say here is, yes, this has a very pointed application in scripture, but really what's happening is

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Paul is trying to sum up something that they would understand because it was in their culture everywhere. It was in their face. It was normal.

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And he's saying that this term here, which encompasses all sexual sin, is to not even be named.

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Not even to be named among the saints. Now that's important for you guys to consider because we live in a world much like the

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Ephesians did. And that is that every time you turn on the TV, every time you pick up a magazine, every time you scroll through Facebook or whatever the case may be, the world is trying to normalize that which is not normal.

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They are trying to put images in front of your face that make you think the sexual sin is really not all that bad.

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That it's seen as some type of virtue not to be monogamous. That it's some sort of virtue to engage in premarital fornication, which is where a lot of this word stems from.

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But all sexual sin of any kind is not to be named among the saints.

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Secondly, impurity. So not only does he speak of sexual morality, he also goes forth and broadens that out to impurity.

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Look with me again at verse three, but sexual morality or any impurity or some translations say any kind or something to that effect.

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Every kind of impurity. So lest you think that there was some sort of impurity that might be okay, he's including this all up in this umbrella situation here.

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All of it. Now this same word we looked at when we looked at chapter four, verse 19, where it says that the

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Gentiles had become callous and they had given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.

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I hope you noticed what's going on there and you weigh it against what we're looking at because there's kind of a parallel happening here.

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Essentially, Paul is saying you're not to act like unsaved Gentiles. If you are in the church of Christ, you act like Christ who loved him, who loved you and gave himself up for you, which means sexual morality and impurity go away.

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This word impurity means literally the defilement of the whole person and every thought and intention, in other words, is vile.

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Now I want you to imagine with me a beautiful, carefully crafted sculpture placed in the center of a room and this sculpture was meant to adorn that room, but over time, it becomes the center of attention.

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The light that was originally meant to shine on the beauty of the entire room now falls solely on that statue.

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People stop admiring the room itself and instead they focus entirely on the statue. Slowly, the room's purpose, its design becomes irrelevant because the statue has taken its place.

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Paul is wanting these things to go away. One, because they dishonor

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God. They do not reflect his character. But immorality and impurity, and as we will see, greed, they can't take the place of holiness in a believer's life and they rob us of our purpose to reflect holiness to one another in the body of Christ.

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You see, sex is not bad. This is why I said at the beginning that Satan counterfeits.

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That's what he does. He can't create. He can only deform. And when we engage in these sorts of things, we wind up turning a gift into perversion.

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Let me ask this question. In your life, and even in the life of the church, how often do we as Christians sanitize the things that God hates?

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How often do we sanitize evil, sexual morality, immorality, and impurity?

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The reality is this is far more dangerous than any of us give it credit for.

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Do we recognize how much we are tempted by the idolatry of lust, the idolatry of money, and so on?

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I don't know. I think we do. Now, many of us,

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I think, in this room, would probably come to this text and they would say,

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I'm not going to cheat on my wife. I'm not going to cheat on my husband. But Jesus raises the standard of the

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Gospels and said, if you look at a woman with lust, you've committed adultery.

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You've been sexually immoral. More than that, in the church today, we give pornography a pass because it's not a real person.

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And then it becomes this struggle that we kind of build into the life of the church, as opposed to calling it what it is.

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And the most alarming thing about this text, friends, and I want you to hear me as this, is it's not just saying like, we need to make sure that we literally wrap our arms around it and coddle it and let it move along with us.

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No, it's saying that if this is what you do, then you have no inheritance in the kingdom of God and Christ.

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Yeah, this is huge. This is forceful. This is loving what Paul is doing right now.

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And the second thing that I want you to see is that God's saints kill idolatrous heart postures. So not only do

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God's saints kill by the power of the spirit, their conduct that is idolatrous, they also kill idolatrous heart postures.

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So in many ways, what's happening is, if we look down at our verse, verse three, but sexual morality or impurity or greed must not even be named among you.

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He switches from external things that can be seen with your eyes and touched with your hands to more internal, which by the way, is far more heinous because if you remember the verses that I just read, it's out of the internal, out of the heart that we do these things.

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But here he's going to cover greed. He doesn't stop at immorality. He doesn't stop at just saying.

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That impurity should not even be named, but also greed.

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What does greed mean? Well, this word can also be translated as covetousness.

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The idea here is a strong desire to have more, more of everything.

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Nothing can satiate more money, more sex, more food, right?

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More influence, everything. It's an insatiable craving for more stuff, more status, more power.

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One commentator put it this way. Very simple to the point, very helpful. Extreme selfishness.

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That when you look at the world, it's about you and what you can get. Some commentators say in context, it might be speaking of the type of greed that exists with sexual gratification at the expense of others.

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It doesn't care who it hurts, right? One commentator postulated that he had the 10th commandment in mind when he was speaking of this to kind of tie this theme together of sexual immorality.

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But the reality is, it's probably more likely that he's speaking here of just being selfish in all ways and gathering up wealth, gathering up possessions, making it all about you.

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Now, why would that be important when writing a letter, for instance, to the church in Ephesus?

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Because we're one body. It's not about me. It's not about you. It's about us.

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And so sexual morality defiles the place and greed keeps unity from expanding.

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So when you do this, you wind up worshiping material things at the expense of spiritual realities.

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This is why Paul says in Colossians 3 .5, therefore, consider the members of your earthly body as dead to sexual morality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which is idolatry.

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Now you might be saying to yourself at this point, why do you keep saying the word idolatry? Why have you explained it?

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Well, if you look with me down here, getting a little bit ahead of ourselves in verse five, toward the end here, he uses the word idolatry in connection with the people who practice such things.

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He says in verse five, for this you know with certainty that no one sexually immoral or impure or greedy who is an idolater has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.

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So Paul here has connected idolatry with those who practice these things.

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Thomas Mantinez said, men make an idol of their wealth and their hearts cleave to it as if they could not be happy without it.

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But wealth is a miserable God. It cannot bless us nor comfort us in our distress nor redeem our souls from death.

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You see how this is so important to consider.

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When you put your hope in other things, when you trust other things, when you love other things, sexual morality, impurity and greed, you wind up destroying not only yourself, but everyone around you.

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And you've given yourself on the altar of things that can't save, can't satiate, can't bless, can't comfort, and can't save you from Satan's sin, death and hell.

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So he says, but sexual morality or an impurity or greed must not even be named among you.

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The idea here is friends that we are not just not to practice these things in the church of God, but there should not be an occasion for these vices that are mentioned to even come up in conversation.

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They should be so absent from the body of believers that there should be no occasion to associate them with the church.

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That's so far from us. This is why it is so damning for pastors to show up, for instance, at the gay pride festivals that we show up at and for pastors to stand out there and say,

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God loves you. And he's OK with you being the way that you are and OK with you practicing the sin that you practice.

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They're ensuring that those who are walking without the possibility of the inheritance and the kingdom of God to not receive that inheritance.

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They're coddling them in their very sin.

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But not only are we not to engage in that, like I said, it is also not acceptable to subject ourselves or one another to conversation about these things between people of God who have been brought together by the spirit.

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They should not be entertaining conversations and making light of these things because we are saints, right?

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That's what it continues on to say in verse three, as is proper among saints. There's a proper way to behave in God's church.

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That's what 1st, 2nd Timothy and Titus is all about. It's what the Bible is about in a lot of ways. And that's just what it is.

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Everything has an ethic. Every false idol will have you do certain things and whatnot.

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So if you're thinking, wow, he's just being really legalistic this Sunday. Well, first of all, wait till the end. But secondly, every ethic is ethical.

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Every idol will have you give yourself to it in some sort of way. So God of the universe who loves his bride and who has given

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Christ to us has a way for us to behave in the household of God.

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Saints here is just like saints that was used in chapter one in verse one and two.

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And it just means literally to be separated. Holy ones, agios.

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It refers to every believer who has been set apart for the purposes of God.

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So we must make sure that as God's saints, we must kill idolatrous conduct as well as idolatrous heart postures.

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But more than that, and Paul continues on, and this is my third point. God's saints kill idolatrous speech.

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God's saints kill idolatrous speech. Look with me, beginning in verse four.

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He continues on and says, nor filthiness and foolish talk or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, which is another way to say, as is it's not proper.

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It's proper to behave rightly and to not speak about such horrible things.

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But it is also fitting or proper to not have filthiness in the way that we speak, nor foolish talk or coarse jesting.

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Luke chapter six, verse 45. Jesus tells us that the good man of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good.

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And the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil for his mouth speaks from the abundance of his heart.

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You see, Paul is revisiting over and over again, this concept of us guarding our mouths, because our mouths reveal our heart.

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And not only do they reveal our heart, but they steer people in certain directions, which is why

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James chapter three says that not many people should be teachers. Because when you open your mouth, you have the tendency to change things around you.

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Now, I don't mean like the weird charismatic stuff where you speak realities into existence. That's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about is if you respond in anger, there's a good chance other people are going to respond in anger.

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If you teach the wrong things, people will believe the wrong things. If you sow discord and disunity with your words, it will sow discord and disunity in the body.

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It's like a disease that multiplies, a plague, much like the one that is inherited just isn't even experiencing the last couple of months.

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It's just literally just over and over multiplying and multiplying itself. And so we must make sure, as Paul is saying here, to guard our speech, to kill idolatrous speech.

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The word filthiness here literally means obscenities. In antiquity, it meant ugliness or deformity.

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So words that are ugly, deformed and obscene. The New Testament, when it uses this word, it expands upon this and it speaks of words that cause shame or dishonor.

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So you're tearing people down, seeking to dishonor them. This same word, for instance, is used in 1

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Corinthians 11 verse 6. It says, for if a woman does not cover her head, let her also have her hair cut short.

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But if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut short or her head shaved, let her cover her head.

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You see here, he uses the same word to talk about something being disgraceful.

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Or dishonoring. And Titus 1 .11, this word is used by Paul again when he says that certain people must be silenced because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach for the sake of dishonest gain.

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They're upsetting whole families. Dishonest gain. But more than that, not only are you not to have filthy, obscene, ugly language that seeks to cause shame or dishonor, upsetting people, but also not engage in foolish talk.

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Well, what is foolish talk? Foolish talk, and this should be really easy for you guys to remember because the

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Greek word here is melagia. And you're saying, well, how in the world is that going to be easy to remember?

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Bear with me. It joins two words. The words that make up the word moron and lagos, the word.

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That means one who talks like a fool. Now, one of the things that you realize when you start digging into this word, it's not even about intelligence.

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When the Bible speaks of a fool, it's generally not because they're an idiot or because they don't study or because they don't think rightly.

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Now, they don't think rightly, and they are stupid, but it's not because they just inherently have that situation going on.

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It's always tied to morality. This is why the LSB in the Old Testament oftentimes translate when it translates certain words like fool, says wicked fool or evil fool.

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The reality is, is most people are not fools because they just don't have enough information.

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It's because they are morally twisted. They prefer the creature rather than the creator.

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They, as Romans 1 also says, they suppress the truth and unrighteousness. So they are ignorant, but they are willfully ignorant.

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And so, yes, of course, this word here, foolish talk, does include the idea of just being silly all the time.

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One of the ways this is also brought out in the lexicons is to talk about the idea of talk that is empty.

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It doesn't really have any substance to it. And also speculative in nature.

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Speculative in nature. Now, why is that important? Because all of us think that we are mind readers and we understand people's motives.

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And in the church, people really upset us sometimes. They're doing things that we don't want them to do. And so what do we do?

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We start running our mouths to other people. Not based on any actual facts that we know, but we've speculatively decided that we know all things, that we are, in fact, omniscient.

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And we begin tearing our brothers and sisters down and making other people think less of them.

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That's foolish, Paul is saying. It detracts from the faith and the unity in the body.

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So don't be speculative. Don't be just having empty chatter that's silly. The opposite of edifying.

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In the sixth vice here, the final vice is coarse jesting. Coarse jesting.

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Now, this one is convicting. Especially for me. Coarse jesting here is not necessarily talking about sexual joking, although it's certainly included, especially if you follow certain commentators who will go from beginning to end trying to tie this into kind of a sexual understanding of things.

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So it's not void of that, but really what's being got at here is the idea of sarcastic ridicule.

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Being abusively, as one Puritan put it, abusively witty. In other words, to be a coarse jester is to be one who jokes, but takes jokes way too far.

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You might get a little laugh and so you keep going and you keep going and you keep going and you keep going.

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Until the person on the other end of that joke is completely undone. They're embarrassed.

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They don't want to come back. They're fearful to be around you because you have taken humor and you have used it to tear down.

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Now, is humor a bad thing? No, everything else in this list. It is a gift of God, but we're to use it to build up and not to tear down.

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Now, when I was in the military, that was upside down. In the military, the more you made fun of someone, the more you felt like you were showing them that you love them and the more that people made fun of you, the more you felt loved.

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And the reason for that is because people don't even notice people in that environment.

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And so if you're being picked on and being made fun of, you're getting noticed. And then it's just also really fun.

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But Paul says, that's not really that fun. It's not really that good.

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It's not godly. And it doesn't make us look good to one another.

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And the world watching it doesn't look good either. It destroys unity.

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It destroys unity. And so we need to think about this.

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Our speech is a reflection of our heart as well. So when we do that, there's certainly elements of truth there.

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There's certainly things going on internally to you that would even enable you to do that something. Callousness towards your brothers and your sisters, so on and so forth.

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Richard Baxter says it like this. The tongue is but the instrument of the heart. Did you catch that?

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The tongue is but the instrument of the heart. Oh, those are just words. No, no, no. They're revealing something about you.

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If the heart be full of venom, the tongue will be full of poison.

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Children, would you look at me? I want you to understand what I'm saying here about how speech kind of gets into everything.

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Have you ever had a glass of water? Of course you have. Now, have you ever had a glass of water?

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And have you ever put dirt in it or some kind of powder that's like really coarse or like kind of chunky?

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And you try to stir it up? That water, what does it do?

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It becomes dirty. No matter how much you shake it, no matter how it settles to the bottom, it's still there.

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It's still there. It stays gross.

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Our hearts are like glasses of water. If we fill our hearts with bad thoughts and bad words, only nastiness will come out.

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So we got to take the things that we say seriously.

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And here's this idea too, what we take in. So like what shows we watch, what movies we listen to, what people we surround ourselves with.

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So how do we do that? So right now I'm coming out the gate, sounding like an IFB preacher. Here are all these sins, put them to death.

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And if you don't put them to death, you don't see Jesus. You don't get out of hell free. You don't pass go.

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You don't inherit the kingdom of God. And all of those things are true.

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But Paul gives us a way to behave. We eject these things. We kill these things.

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And then here's my fourth point. God's saints kill idolatry with gratitude.

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God's saints kill idolatry with gratitude. Look at me at verse three again, and I'm going to finish this out with four.

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He says, but sexual morality or impurity or greed must not even be named among you as is proper among saints, nor filthiness and foolish talk or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather alternative way of living.

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You've heard me say this a million times, but rather do this instead, giving of thanks. Now, if you're paying attention, that seems like a really hard left turn, but having a robust theology of thanksgiving will make you the type of church member, the type of brother, the type of sister, the type of spouse that you need to be in order to put these idolatrous things to death and start contrast to idolatry.

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Paul calls the believer to live in gratitude for the good gifts that God has given him.

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I want to say something. This text here, whether it sounded like it or not over the last 20 minutes or so, is not simply about abstaining from all pleasure or denying the good gifts that God has given us in creation.

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But we're not talking about stoicism here. We're talking about putting things in their proper context, worshiping the creator

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God over his creation and using the gifts toward the end that he has given us to use them.

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Think about it this way, especially children. If I gave you a saw as a gift, you wanted to do something like hang up a picture frame.

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Well, what good is a saw going to do you? It's probably not going to help.

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You need a hammer. And you need some nails, not screws, nails.

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You need nails. But a saw is perfectly fine if you're trying to cut some wood.

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And so in the same way, all of the things spoken about thus far all have their proper place in God's economy in us living the

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Christian life as image bearers of God. We are supposed to have sex, but sex that honors

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God in a heterosexual marriage, right? We're to use money and things like this for God's purposes, but we're not to hoard it and we're not to be selfish.

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We're to talk, but we're to build up and not to tear down.

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And so many people, once you get to verse five, when he says, for this you know with certainty that no one sexually immoral or impure or greedy who is an idolater has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ.

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And God is tying it back to the other and doing like a parallel chiastic thing showing that there are in fact good ways to use this thing.

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Just don't do it in an idolatrous way. To live as saints is to recognize the goodness of God in every single gift, but also to keep our hearts centered on the giver of those gifts.

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And this is precisely why Paul says the remedy to idolatrous hearts, the way to kill idolatry in your heart and in the community of believers is to be ridiculously thankful for God, for who he is, for what he has done, and for the good gifts that he has given us this side of heaven.

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Show me a person who engages in all of these things with abandon, reckless abandon.

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I'll show you a person who is not very thankful for the life and breath that they have been given, for the salvation that they have been given.

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It's pretty alarming when you look back at Romans chapter one, verse 21, when he's talking about how

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God is giving people over and his wrath to their rebellion.

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He says something very interesting. He says, for even though they knew God, so there's no such thing as an atheist or an agnostic.

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Well, there's probably, you can choose not to believe in God, but that doesn't do anything, but you definitely can't be an agnostic.

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I don't know. Yes, you do know. Romans one says so. For even though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their thoughts and their foolish heart was darkened.

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So their foolish hearts were darkened. Their minds became futile. Why? They weren't thankful.

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They weren't thankful. They didn't worship God. They didn't thank him for his gifts.

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Matthew Henry says it like this. Thankfulness is a way of worshiping

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God. The devil does not so much care what we enjoy as long as he can keep us from being thankful to God for it.

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You get that? What Paul is saying is, do not live for the creation.

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Do not live for yourself. Do not live for your disordered lusts and passions. Do not live for your sin because that's idolatry.

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But if you don't want to be idolatrous and you want to live unto God for God, be thankful to God.

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And in context, he's trying to say, look what God has done and be thankful for that.

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Remember, this is not just starting here. This is why expository preaching is so great because we've been following an argument for the course of the last year.

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And the argument is this, before the foundation of the world, chapter one of Ephesians, God has predestined to adopt a people for himself and he has gone after them.

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They weren't going to say no, he was going to get his man. He had made a covenant of redemption in eternity past with the son and the spirit.

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And the son had said, I will go and I will live the perfect life. I will die the death that they deserve to die.

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I will take their names to the cross and the spirit will apply that salvation and he will make us trophies of God's grace in Christ.

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And this was planned before anyone had a breath. And then in real space and time, chapter two,

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God creates Christians with the same power that rose Jesus Christ from the dead.

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That's Ephesians chapter one toward the tail end there, 17 through 20. That he rose the spiritually dead to spiritual life, that he gave them new hearts, that he caused them to be born again, not to an imperishable hope, but a hope that is imperishable.

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As Peter says in his letters. And not only did he plan to save a people for himself, he actualized it in the cross of Jesus Christ, applied it by the spirit in real space and time so that we might live unto

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God and be sanctified. And oh, by the way, sanctification, that's God's doing as well. He is working in us and through us to make us more like his son so that we can stand before him in glory.

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And for him to say, well done, good and faithful servant. But if that wasn't enough,

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Paul says, as you keep reading, those who were alienated, the Gentiles, the people who were not

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God's chosen people have become in Christ God's chosen people. And he has brought us together, the

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Jews and the Gentiles into one new man, one new body who is going to be lavished upon with grace and love over and over.

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And not only has he brought them into one, they are one and they're functioning underneath the unity of the spirit.

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And they're functioning underneath the unity spirit in a place like this and local churches where we lean into one another, where we're helping one another, where we're loving one another, where we're pushing on sin, where we're having our sin pushed back on, where brothers and sisters are reconciled unto

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Christ after falling into great sin so that we might look more like Jesus and share in his holiness as Hebrews chapter 12 says.

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And he's given us, if you keep following the logic, right? He's given us people to watch over that church.

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He's given them apostles and prophets. He's given them pastor teachers.

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And what's even more mind blowing than that is that he's given every single person by the virtue of Christ's merits, gifts to serve the body.

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Every single person in this church is not only saved since before the foundation of the world and in space and time, but has been given a gift to serve one another that we might endeavor to look more like Jesus together.

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And then he's given us his word to direct us on how to live alongside one another. And then he says, is that not enough for you to live a life that is worshiping to God?

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Is that not enough to give all of yourself to him and to his body? Is that not enough for you?

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You need all of these other things? That's all you ever had in this life,

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Christian. That's more than enough. That's more than you deserve. And so he's saying, if all of that is true, be thankful.

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Be thankful. Do you know how you guard yourself away? Guard yourself from all of these sins to kill an idolatrous heart?

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Be thankful. Thanksgiving is not a holiday.

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It's a way of life. Be thankful, be thankful, be grateful for what you have in Christ.

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Because you have something, hear me on this, that you did not deserve and other people don't get.

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Some people, as Romans 8 says, are left in their sin. And God uses it to display his power and his wrath.

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They have a purpose. But it's not to dwell in the house of the Lord forever. It's to be underneath the wrathful arm of the

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Lord Jesus Christ for the rest of eternity. What could you possibly want more of, right?

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He just got done saying, in verse one of chapter five, be imitators of God, what? As beloved children.

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You're not lackeys of some powerful God. In Christ, you are his child whom he loves, which is mind blowing.

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Because Psalm 5 says, God hates all who do iniquity. But guess what? In Christ, there's no hate pointed at you.

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It's love. Once again, what more do you need?

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If you want to kill idolatry, if you want to kill idolatry, give thanks.

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Because the reality is, if we're not living that way, we are excluded from Christ and his kingdom.

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Which brings me to my fifth point, which is my last point.

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And that is this, the saints of God are the ones who inherit the kingdom. Saints of God are the ones who inherit the kingdom.

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He begins in verse five and he says, for this you know with certainty.

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Now, that causes us to pause.

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And the reason that causes us to pause is because this is something that Paul is very certain that if we have been changed, if we have been transformed, if we have believed the gospel, if we've put faith in Jesus Christ, and if we are a new man in Christ Jesus, then this is what we are going to know.

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Because he taught it before. And he's already been talking about it. For you should know this with certainty.

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This is not a debate. This is a truth on truth on truth. And it cannot be removed.

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It cannot be revoked. This is how it is. And see, we live in a world where nothing is as it is.

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We live in a world that if your phone bill gets too high, they're changing it on you.

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If you're on the phone long enough and you want to argue long enough and you want to turn up the volume loud enough, they'll fix something for you real quick.

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You can go to any fast food restaurant and you can have it your way. Nothing in this world seems to be set in stone.

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They're erasing gender. They're erasing regular, normal, biblical sexual ethics. I mean, they're erasing everything.

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They're trying to erase history. But this is not erasable.

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It is certain and it is true. And you should know it as certain and true.

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And what is that thing? You should know this, he says in verse five, with certainty that no one, there's no exceptions to this rule.

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No one, no one sexually immoral or impure or greedy who is an idolater has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.

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Do you feel that? In other words, what he's saying is, if this is what you have given yourself over to, if this is the way that you continue to behave, then everything

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I've said from Ephesians one all the way up to this point does not apply to you. Now that's not going to be on a lot of coffee cups or t -shirts, but it's true.

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There are only two paths to Christ and his kingdom.

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There's the broad path and the narrow path. There's the path to heaven and Christ.

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And there's a path to hell. What will you choose?

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With all the proper Calvinistic nuances there, right? You should know this with certainty.

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God, in other words, as you've seen thus far, does not tolerate sin. And when you pervert the love that has been shown in Christ Jesus, it will lead to punishment.

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Sin, in other words, according to Paul here, has no place in his kingdom and no place in his family.

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None, not even to be named about. Not to make, flip it, not to give excuses for.

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How many of us engage in sin patterns and we make every excuse in the book for why we did that?

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And we're going to try harder next week. And we're going to, Paul says, if you live life like that, there's no inheritance for you in the kingdom of Christ God.

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In other words, the way you live your life has eternal consequences.

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Those who continue in idolatry, whether it is the idol of sex, money, or self, will not inherit this kingdom spoken about.

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I want you to hear that. I say that over and over again on purpose, because Paul is not saying here that if you live like this, that you'll miss out on certain blessings, that your life won't just go a little bit less good.

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He declares that people who live like this will be excluded from the kingdom altogether.

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Now, this is a whole nother sermon, so we don't have time to get into it, but it is the kingdom of Christ and God.

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Some translations say of God. Some early church fathers took this to mean that Christ was

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God. So it's Christ and God, as if they were the same. Of course, that's true. But I think what's happening here is

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Paul is trying to show these people, especially after talking about the bringing of the two people together, that God's kingdom is

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Christ's kingdom. And it's not even just some future thing, right? Because we learned early on in chapter one, right, towards the end, verses 19 through 20, that we have been as saints when we were saved, right?

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We have been risen with Christ and we are citizens of this kingdom. So he's also not saying that you're not going to, although there is an eschatological element to this, but he's also saying you're not in it right now, which brings me to the thing that I want to close with.

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And I thought about not doing it because I wanted to just have you think about this as you went home. But what you need to understand is what

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I'm not teaching is this. But don't let this run. Don't let your heart run away from the truth that I'm saying right now.

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But what he's saying is if you live like this, then you were never in the kingdom in the first place and you're not going to get the inheritance.

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In other words, if you live like this, you're not going to inherit the kingdom because you're not a

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Christian. You don't know Jesus. And Jesus doesn't know you.

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And why is he going to let someone he doesn't know into his kingdom? No. And so what

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I'm not teaching and what Paul is not teaching, and it's always important to kind of get that on the map as well, is that you could really mess this thing up.

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Because I'm not saying that. He who began a good work in you,

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Paul says in Philippians, right? 126. He will bring it to completion until the day of Jesus Christ.

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So does this mean that anyone who has ever sinned in these ways or ever will sin in these ways ever again will not inherit the kingdom of God?

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No, I'm not saying that. You're going to sin. I'm going to sin. You're going to sin against me.

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I'm probably going to sin against you. And by probably, I mean, I will. Because I'm a sinner.

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You're a sinner. But it's those idolatrous people who make it a pattern of their life that it's speaking about here.

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They're unregenerate. They don't know Christ. And the question that you should be asking at this point is, is that me?

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Because there's no better defense attorney for you than you.

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And you will continue to make excuses for every which way that you make a pattern out of these types of sin.

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You just will. How do

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I know if that's me? Well, do you keep doing the same thing over and over and over and over again? Or are you working to slay that by the power of the spirit being thankful on?

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So if we live as idolaters and not as imitators of God, which we spoke about last week, we prove that we are not truly saved.

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And friends, the reason that Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 3, verses 14 through 45, that he is to do the work of an evangelist is because there are probably more people sitting in pews who have deceived themselves than who actually love

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God. So do you love God? Do you worship God? Or are you an idolater?

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Are you fine using his stuff and believing his promises? Or do you love

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God? Are you thankful to God? And are the things that you do in this place with these people, right?

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Because that's the context. The book of Ephesians, he's writing to a local church. The things that you do here, are you doing it out of a thankfulness?

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Or because that's just what you're supposed to do because you're in Oklahoma. Or because you have some title or you had some title or whatever.

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Are you doing it out of a thankfulness? I don't know, examine your life. When you got certain packs in the back, had certain titles or whatever, you were all over the place and then you just aren't.

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Why? Not thankful. Are you more invested about what the church can do for you or what you can do for your church?

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Are you more happy with getting stuff or giving stuff?

01:09:33

Do you like living with your hand out or your hand closed? Are you okay giving certain sins a pass?

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The Bible says, sort out your salvation with fear and trembling. And I can't tell you if you're good with God.

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But I can tell you the fruit of your life should indicate to you, and it certainly does to other people, whether or not you do know

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God. And so what you need to understand, what I'm trying to say is to indulge in idolatry, to prefer

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God's creation rather than himself, is to demonstrate that you've not been transformed by the gospel.

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In other words, and I want to say this, I know I'm going a little longer than usual. Holiness is not a condition, in other words, to get into the kingdom.

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It's not something that we drift into. But rather, as we live our lives, it is the byproduct of God working in us.

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So what Paul is saying is, look, if all of Ephesians 1 through 4 has been true of you, and if it is true of you, then your life should look different than the rest of the world.

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Your life should look different than it did before. You should be able to fight sin.

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Why? Because you've been given the Spirit. And he's guarding this place in the bond of unity.

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Well, I can't put that sin to death, pastor. Your Holy Spirit is too small, and he may not be there.

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But if you desire with all of your being to slay sin, even if you fall on your face, then you will continue to grow.

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So as we close, the call today is clear. Kill idolatry.

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If we want to be kingdom people, we have to live as those who are kingdom people.

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And if we live like kingdom people, we prove that we have, in fact, come underneath this kingdom, and this

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Christ, and this God. Amen. All right, everyone, grab your hands, put them together.

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I don't know why I said grab, and pray with me. Father, thank you.

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We thank you for your word, and we thank you for your Christ, and we thank you that you are working in us and through us, and we ask that you would help us to be thankful, thankful, so that we might kill idolatry in our hearts.

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Lord, if there are people out there who have not bowed their knee to you, who do not love you, who do not cherish you, and do not see you as the great treasure that you are, we ask that you would put that on their heart this morning, that you would cause them to throw down their self -made crown, and they would throw themselves prostrate at your feet.

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For those of us who know you, who love you, who care for you, who want you, desire you, and desire to put forth you in all places, we just ask that you would help us to be grateful, more grateful than we've ever been, just to be filled with thanksgiving for what you have done for us, and in us, and through us, in Christ.