1. "If you teach people about poison and even about how food can be poisoned, then maybe you can convince people to be so scared to eat that they will even starve themselves."

2. "Any idea of God's love which leaves no space for His wrath coming on unrepentant unconverted sinners is clearly contrary to what the Bible teaches."

3. "Sexual morality and purity mark us as God's people, but they do not make us God's people. Sin causes judgment, but our attempts to avoid sin will not bring forgiveness."

4. "If you're here today and you are not a sinner, heaven is not for you. Christianity is not for you. This church is not for you. This church is exclusive in that sense—we are only for sinners. But even more exclusive than that, we are only for repentant sinners."

5. "Did you really think the 21st century was so avant-garde and advanced and going where no humans had ever gone before? Friends, we're going around in a circle in the Garden of Eden."

6. "The most recent philosophies are returning simply to the very temptations that Satan has laid out for us from the very beginning."

7. "Our age says permission is liberation and that it's life. But God's Word says such permission is deception and that it's deadly."

8. "There aren't enough accountability groups in the world to reign in a heart with its desires increasingly set on sin. So we must pray for God to change our desires."

9. "A church is like an assurance of salvation cooperative where we all get to know each other and allow others to get to know us in order to help us be able to know that we are truly trusting Christ."

10. "Looking out over the sexual landscape of our time, I see a terrain of unutterable sweetness despoiled by unmentionable pain. Yet who knows? Perhaps it's not too late to redeem the unutterable sweetness."

Observation Questions

1. According to Ephesians 5:5, what three types of people does Paul say have "no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God"?

2. In verse 5, what does Paul call the person who is covetous, and what does this identification suggest about the nature of covetousness?

3. What phrase does Paul use at the beginning of verse 5 to emphasize the certainty of what he is about to say?

4. In verse 6, what does Paul warn the Ephesians not to let anyone do to them, and with what kind of words?

5. According to verse 6, what comes upon "the sons of disobedience," and what is the cause ("because of these things")?

6. What two contrasting outcomes does Paul describe in verses 5-6—one that certain people will not receive and one that they will receive?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why does Paul use nouns (the sexually immoral, the impure, the covetous) rather than simply describing occasional sinful actions? What does this suggest about the difference between struggling with sin and being defined by it?

2. How does Paul's identification of covetousness as "idolatry" help explain why all three sins mentioned in verse 5 are fundamentally about worship and what we place at the center of our lives?

3. What is the relationship between "having no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God" (v. 5) and "the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience" (v. 6)? Are these describing different groups or the same reality from two perspectives?

4. Why would false teachers use "empty words" to convince people that God's wrath would not come upon them for unrepented sin, and how does this connect to the original deception in Genesis 3:4 ("You shall not surely die")?

5. How does understanding God's wrath as "sober, consistent, reasonable, and appropriate" rather than ill-tempered or random help us see His wrath as consistent with His goodness and love?

Application Questions

1. What specific habits, entertainment choices, or relationships in your life might be slowly shaping your identity in ways that could eventually define you rather than just describe occasional struggles? What would it look like to address these before they become characteristic of who you are?

2. The sermon mentioned that Christians can let "the world's normalization of sin aid you in justifying your own disobedience." What is one area where you have noticed your conscience becoming quieter or more tolerant toward something it once resisted, and how might you recalibrate your thinking according to Scripture?

3. Paul warns against being deceived by "empty words." What voices, messages, or philosophies in your daily life (media, entertainment, conversations, social media) are telling you that certain sins have no serious consequences? How can you become more discerning about these influences?

4. The sermon emphasized that the church functions as "an assurance-of-salvation cooperative" where believers help each other know their true spiritual state. Are you currently in relationships where other Christians know you well enough to speak into your life about sin and growth? If not, what is one concrete step you could take this week to pursue such accountability?

5. How does understanding that Christ bore God's wrath as a substitutionary sacrifice change the way you approach your own sin—both the guilt you feel over past failures and the temptation to continue in present struggles?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Colossians 3:1-11 — This parallel passage provides similar warnings about sexual immorality, impurity, and covetousness as idolatry, along with the call to "put to death" earthly desires and "put on" the new self.

2. Galatians 5:16-26 — Paul contrasts the works of the flesh (including sexual immorality and impurity) with the fruit of the Spirit, showing that those who practice such things "will not inherit the kingdom of God."

3. 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 — This passage lists sins that exclude people from God's kingdom but adds the hopeful declaration "and such were some of you," emphasizing transformation through Christ.

4. Genesis 3:1-7 — This account of the serpent's deception ("You shall not surely die") illustrates the original pattern of "empty words" that deny God's promised judgment for sin.

5. Jude 1:3-7 — Jude warns against those who pervert grace into sensuality and cites Sodom and Gomorrah as an example of divine judgment on sexual immorality, reinforcing the sermon's warning about God's wrath.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Challenge of Discerning Right from Wrong in a Morally Confused World

II. What Is God Like? (Ephesians 5:5-6)

III. What Should I Be Like?

IV. How Can I Know?

V. The Good Surprise of God's Truth and the Call to Believe

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Detailed Sermon Outline

How do you tell right from wrong?

Oh, you'll know. Yeah, but what if you don't?

If it feels right, do it. That's a common piece of advice. But it doesn't hold up well to scrutiny. Too many examples of horrendous things zealously done by people who we would clearly say are wrong for that to hold up.

Manipulations and extortions, abuses, even murders.

Whatever freely expresses your inner self, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone.

Well, but then what about the unborn baby? Are they anyone?

Or what about yourself? In terms of surgery that would seriously compromise your body's functioning or even end your own life?

If we try to crowdsource the answer to this question, how do you tell right from wrong? It seriously depends on who your crowd is. So many American Christians in the past defended racially based slavery. Many Hindus defended burning to death widowed women along with the cremation of their late husband's body.

Nietzsche's followers think the strong should rule over the weak and even exploit them and even eliminate them. And Marxists think that the end justifies the means, that we're only flesh and blood and that owners must inevitably fall to be replaced by the workers. And that that includes even killing the owners.

And since 1999, Peter Singer has been employed by Princeton University to teach its students that it may be right to kill some infants, unborn and born. He advocates abortion and infanticide. And euthanasia. He is the professor of bioethics at Princeton, a school that grew up among the Presbyterians during the Great Awakening.

How do you tell right from wrong?

Well, for a less exalted question, just simply grab your grandmother's recipe.

Or your IKEA instructions, or your Ford owner's manual, or hop on YouTube to find out how you fix something. But for the larger questions, what should I do in my marriage? How should I conduct my relationships? What is God like? For those larger questions, we need to hear from Him.

Many people, especially in the West today, are deeply suspicious of the idea of hearing things from God.

Because of the rainbow of horrors that they can point to, which have come from religious zealots, some of which I've just mentioned, all the way down to those who 20 years ago flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, someone claiming to act with divine authority alarms us.

But if there is a God, and if He is good, and if there are forces of spiritual evil, as the Bible tells us that there are, can we be surprised that those spiritually opposing God Attempt to discredit him by terrible, perverted imitation and substitution? Like the cloaked, hidden, hungry wolf in the children's story Little Red Riding Hood? If you teach people about poison and even about how food can be poisoned, then maybe you can convince people to be so scared to eat that they will even starve themselves.

So here we sit as morally hungry people. We're at church, after all, wanting to be nourished by the food of truth. How is it? How can we get it? How can we tell right from wrong, especially in these bigger issues of life?

What is God like? What should I be like? How can I know? And so we turn once again to our study passage in God's Word, Ephesians chapter five. If you're using the Bibles provided for you, turn to page 978, page 978.

If you're not used to looking at a Bible, the larger numbers are the chapter numbers, the smaller numbers are the verse numbers, and we're looking at just two verses this morning. In Ephesians chapter 5, we're looking at verses 5 and 6, verses 5 and 6.

For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure or who is covetous, that is an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you. With empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. If you'll leave your Bible open to that text, we'll be referring to it the whole time. Three questions to consider this morning.

Number one, what is God like? What is God like? Number two, what should I be like? What should I be like? And number three, how can I know?

How can I know?

I pray that as we study these verses, you'll be able to answer all these questions and you'll make sure of your own inheritance in the coming Kingdom of Christ and God. First question, number one, what is God like? These two verses bristle with divine punishment. Considered negatively by deprivation here in verse 5. You see what the unrepentant sinner will not get, the unrepentant sinner will not get any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.

And considered positively, that is what the sinner will get, verse 6, the unrepentant sinner will get the wrath of God because of those things they've done against God and against their neighbor. You see there at the end of verse 5, has no inheritance. In the kingdom of Christ in God. And then at the end of verse 6, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. This use of Christ in God reminds us of Christ's relationship with His heavenly Father.

They are one. Jesus said, if you've seen Me, you've seen the Father. The single King over the single kingdom is the triune God. We read in Revelation 11, the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever. Friend, to know what God is like, look at Jesus Christ.

We read about Him, we study His teaching. We realize that when Paul writes to Timothy, charging him in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, Paul doesn't mean two different presences. He's reinforcing what he's saying with the weightiness of it by referring to God more fully as He has revealed Himself as Father and Son. You realize the kingdom of God is not a place, but a people. It's His reign.

It's His ruling. Christ came preaching about the kingdom of God. Paul in Colossians 1 referred to the kingdom of God's beloved Son. Or just look back in the first chapter of Ephesians, the exalted way that Paul has talked about Christ already there at the end of Ephesians 1.

Starting in verse 20. That He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him. Who fills all in all. So Paul has already referred to Christ as reigning and we Christians are already in one sense seated with Him in this reign.

If you look just a few verses later, chapter 2 verse 6, he says, and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. There is an inheritance though which is to come, which we don't yet fully possess. There is more to come. But even this present part, even this anticipation now of a greater, we don't possess even this if these actions here are describing us.

This inheritance that he's referring to is our eternal salvation. And Paul is saying that all of this is precisely the reigning that such covetous or impure people are not doing. Such people, as he describes here, have no such inheritance. They will not inherit the Kingdom of God. They're the ones in Revelation 22 described as being left outside of the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem.

That final reality is a future hope which the Christian has when Christ returns to judge the world. As one theologian, Louis Berkhof, put it, Essentially the future kingdom will consist like that of the present in the rule of God established and acknowledged in the hearts of men. But at the glorious coming of Jesus Christ, this establishment and acknowledgement will be perfected. The hidden forces of the kingdom will stand revealed. And the spiritual rule of Christ will find its consummation in a visible and majestic reign.

Friends, this majestic reign of Jesus Christ is what Paul is telling us here that some people will have no part in. And to have no part in this is like having no part in Lot's exit from Sodom and Gomorrah. Having no part in this inheritance is to be left out and is, as Paul says in verse 6, to have the wrath of God come upon you. It's like two sides of the same coin. Those people who are left out, who have no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ in God, are those people upon whom the wrath of God is coming, the sons of disobedience.

This is the privative and the positive way to say it. What you don't get and what you do get, but it is the same set of people being described.

Now I know for many people today, this aspect of God's character seems the most alien we could imagine, and it's the most often denied. Yet one of the most basic ways that these verses inform our understanding of God is that they let us know that God has wrath or anger.

Sometimes people distinguish the two when talking about God saying that He has wrath but not anger. And I appreciate what people are trying to do when they do that. But yet in our study last week up in chapter 4 verse 26, Paul was perhaps allowing for an anger which was not sinful but righteous. And even if that wasn't Paul's point there, we certainly see such righteous anger exemplified in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. I appreciate that by distinguishing between wrath and anger, some are trying to separate God's wrath from the kind of ill-tempered, sudden, seemingly random, unjustified, destructive, lashing out verbally or physically that can mark the lives of too many people.

But the Bible's depiction of God clearly includes A wrath or anger which is sober and resolved and consistent and reasonable, a negative judgment, including punishments on those who deserve them. God's anger is righteous and good. It is appropriate given who He is, the offended is, and who the offenders are. In fact, the more God's anger or wrath is considered, the more it seems consistent with His own inherent goodness and even with His love for Himself and His love for all of those made in His image. In that sense, the opposite of His anger might not so much be, or rather the opposite of His love might not so much be His anger, for His punishment of sinners evidences something of their significance.

Now the opposite of God's love would be an apathy or an indifference toward what we do, what we make of ourselves, what we do to others, what we have wrongly suffered.

Pray that our church will continue to be clear about what the Bible teaches that God is like. Work to make sure that any church you're a part of will be honest and clear in its presentation of God. We gain nothing from being a part of a church which redraws God as simply a summary of our passing cultural values. It's a waste of time and a deception. God was being kind to the Ephesians.

He's being kind to us. To let us know this truth about Himself now. Because if God is really like this and we're not told, we may enjoy parts of the short trip that is this life in ignorance and self-serving, but we will have a rude awakening forever. God's grace is shown even in the hardness of presenting the truth to us. Thank God for His grace and kindness in telling us in His word about His wrath.

I pray that each one of us here will come to receive an inheritance in God's Kingdom and not have his wrath come upon us. We should move on to our second question, number two, what should I be like?

Not like the sins listed here in verse 5 and referred to there in verse 6. We should be the opposite of them. Look at what Paul describes here.

In the middle, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous, that is, an idolater, and then down in verse 6 he references those things when he says, We're because of these things. This is part of how these Ephesian Christians were no longer to walk as Gentiles do, as Paul put it up in 4:17. This is part of Paul's instructions to them we've been considering about putting off the old up in 4:22 and putting on the new, 4:24. It's part of how we were thinking about last week, chapter 5, verse 1, they imitate God. They were to put off the vice described here in verse 5, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, who is covetous, that is an idolater.

So in one sentence there, Paul cites violations of the second commandment, the seventh commandment, and the tenth commandment. And yet I think to best understand these, we have to realize that this is not a random list of sins occasionally committed.

But these are all basically getting at one thing and getting at it by means of these verbs that are really actions which have so typified the people that they've become nouns. The person who drinks regularly too much is called a drunk. Well, here it's not just a person who commits a sexual sin or who covets his neighbor's wife, but a person who has become so characterized by this sin that they can be called by it. The sexually immoral, the impure, the covetous. And that's why it's appropriate to call them idolaters.

And I think that idolatry there is not just referring to covetousness. It's referring to all of these sins when they come to typify a person, worshipers of something other than the one true God. They have given themselves over to them. These sins now define them. And Paul says in verse 6, Because of such things, So not just thoughts, not just unbelief, but these actions, God's judgment comes.

People are damned. It's not only because of unbelief, but because of disobedience, because of wicked works. Up in chapter 2, verse 3, Paul has mentioned that we are all, like the rest of mankind, by nature objects of God's wrath. As sons of Adam. Now here we see that it's our own actual sins that further provoke God.

So, friend, you see, our problem is so much worse than low self-esteem or low self-image. Our problem is low divine image. We were made to bear the image of God, and yet all of us, by our sins, have twisted that and turned that, we have become unfaithful to even the way we've been made. We so poorly reflect a God in whose image that we're made that we seem to carry His image in vain. We even kind of lie about what God is like.

That's our problem. And so the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Paul has been clear that this is at least what we have been like. That's all of us. Up in chapter 2 verse 2 Paul said that we were once spiritual zombies when we lived among the sons of disobedience.

See that up in 2:2? Among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind. Friends, the Bible tells us that we're to be different from what this world is telling us where to be like.

Colossians 3 verse 5, Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. These are actions that the Bible calls wicked, and for which it promises God's judgment, a graphic example of which, within history, we read earlier in the account of God's judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah. Jude cites Sodom and Gomorrah as a warning for us today in Jude 7, Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. Friends, any idea of God's love which leaves no space for His wrath coming on unrepentant unconverted sinners is clearly contrary to what the Bible teaches here.

Part of God's moral excellence is shown in His hatred of sin and in His compassion on sinners, set in the context of His good and right hatred of sin. Paul knew this by personal experience. Paul later wrote to the pastor of the Ephesian church, Timothy, and he said, the saying is trustworthy and deserving of all acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. Paul calls the devotion to these sins, there in verse 5, idolatry. You see why that could be a good description of them?

Check out your own life for a minute. Not what you tell others. But what you do.

What gods are you serving? What keeps you up late at night?

What do you give your energy to early in the morning?

What are you serving? Paul knew that among those in the Ephesian church who were being unrepentant, the sexually immoral were the ones whose very sins would be sowing seeds of division in the body.

You realize that coveting another man's wife isn't good for your marriage and it's not good for his marriage either. Impure and immoral habits act like crab grass in the yard of your life, driving out the fruit you would like to see prospering there. Is it any surprise that in this garden of God's great goodness to us, Satan would try to plant weeds. You know, the Bible's vision of our gender and sexuality is good and even great. Following God's laws and our sexual practices drives out so many dehumanizing, manipulative, exploitative, and destructive actions.

In order to even think that thought, we have to engage in a kind of countercultural imagination these days, that marriage is good, that marriage is the appropriate place for the expression of sexuality. And don't miss God's kindness to us in our being told about this before we would finally be judged. It's precisely this that gives sinners like us the chance to flee from the coming wrath of God. We flee this wrath by repenting of our sins and fleeing to Christ by faith. I wonder how even that kind of appeal sounds to some of you.

Do you seem morally legitimate to appeal to you, to act a certain way, to do a certain thing because God will judge you?

Friends, do be careful.

The world today uses the word phobia as a kind of intellectual bullying to stop you from thinking about something. When you are put in the category of being phobic, anything you say is dismissed. You are viewed as mentally ill. You don't have a legitimate right to think or to express dissent or even raise a question socratically. But friends, just question that. Has there ever been a phobia that may be something more than merely an irrational fear.

Is it possible that the last person who wrongly called you phobic themselves may not know something about God? Is that even possible? Do you think it's ever crossed their minds?

The people described here It says clearly, Do not inherit the kingdom of God. They do receive God's wrath instead. That is true. We should also understand that the way you do inherit the kingdom is not by being sexually moral and pure.

Sexual morality and purity mark us as God's people, but they do not make us God's people.

You understand that? Sin causes judgment, but our attempts to avoid sin will not bring forgiveness.

Our only hope for acceptance, for inheritance, for receiving the redeeming love of God in Christ is not our own actions, it's Christ's. It's what He has done. Friend, if you're here and you're not a Christian, this is very, very good news. This God who truly and rightly hates sin has caused His punishment to fall upon His only Son, His only Son, the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ, came and lived a life of perfect virtue, a perfect love for God and neighbor. And then laid down His life as a sin-bearing, wrath-bearing sacrifice, substituting for the place that all of us who would turn and trust in Him deserve.

God has laid that wrath upon Him. And the good news is He raised Him from the dead. He ascended to heaven where He presented His sacrifice to His heavenly Father, and it's been accepted. So for all of us who would have new life, forgiveness, this is good news. This is the news this church is about.

This is the news any of us at the doors would like to talk to you more about afterwards, if you would like to know more about what it would mean in your own life. Realizing that God cares so much about sin helps us to understand God's giving His only Son as a sin-bearing, punishment-bearing, substitutionary sacrifice. And friends, the reason I'm leaning into that is there are a lot of people who will talk about Christ's death, refer to it in a vague way, positively, kind of like a morally admirable do-gooder, martyrdom. But I just want to be clear, if Christ's death is not as a substitutionary sacrifice, What good was that death? James Denny, the theologian 100 years ago in England, illustrated it this way.

He mentioned a famous seaside resort in England, Brighton, and a long pier that went out. He said, Imagine somebody sitting on the end of the pier, and some man comes running along and screaming, I love you, and to show you how much I love you, I'm going to jump into the sea and die. And he does. But then Denny asked the question, what love does that show? That self-sacrifice?

To what end? What purpose? He said, But ah, imagine that I'm sitting on the end of Brighton Pier and I can't swim and I slip and fall in and start to drown. And then the man comes and runs and he shouts that he loves me and he jumps in and at the cost of his own life, succeeds in saving mine. Oh, now that shows love.

That death accomplished something. So vague notions that somehow Jesus' death is a good thing won't cut it. You need to understand what was achieved by Christ's dying and how it in fact does example and show his love. Friend, I pray that God will turn your heart away from your sin and to him, that you will trust in Christ. My Christian friend, just a brief word to you on this.

Do you realize that you are in danger of letting the world's normalization of sin aid you in justifying your own disobedience? Do you see areas of life where that's true? Things you listen to or watch or say that you would have at some period in the past been indignant about, but now somehow you've made a truce with it. Have you told your own conscience to kind of calm down, to not get so excited?

Do you feel less bad giving in to a sin that others do too around you and that many around you wouldn't even say is wrong?

Friends, promiscuity is not harmless. In sexual promiscuity, you hurt yourself and you hurt someone else. And you're certainly not helping to draw them closer to God, which you would be laboring for if you were genuinely to love the person as God commands you to. And you're certainly not loving God as you could and should. What we're doing together as a church is in part helping each other to live as followers of Christ.

Last question, how can I know? Number three, how can I know? How can we know? How can you know what God is like and what you should be like? Friend, the answer is simple.

Don't listen to empty words. But listen to the Bible. Listen to God's Word. Positively, you see how Paul starts it out in verse 5, For you may be sure of this. In the original, this is put there for emphasis at the very beginning of the sentence.

It would be literally this for you may be sure of. He's leaning into it. So in verses 3 and 4 that we looked at last week, we saw Paul said that imitating God and walking in love had no place for such sexual immorality or even crude joking about it. And now Paul is leaning in here in verse 5 and he's saying that you should be sure of this, that anyone who is given over to such doing or talking isn't about to lose their spiritual inheritance. They don't have one.

They never have. That's not what a Christian is like. Negatively, Paul repeats himself in verse 6. He says, Let no one deceive you with empty words. Now we don't know exactly what the false teachers in Ephesus were teaching, but that there were false teachers threatening the church is clear.

So Paul says here in verse 6, Let no one deceive you with empty words.

What empty words? Well, he doesn't say. It would seem to be denying that the wrath of God will come on them because of their sins. That they haven't repented of. Now, it's only for sins they haven't repented of.

You understand, if you're here today and you are not a sinner, heaven is not for you. Christianity is not for you. This church is not for you. This church is exclusive in that since we are only for sinners.

But even more exclusive than that, We are not for all sinners, frankly. We are only for repentant sinners. Repentant sinners is the group for whom hope is held out in Christ. You realize that our inclination, I think naturally, is to believe the best. And that inclination leaves us all a little gullible.

A little willing, maybe too willing, to be open to being fooled. Just think about our first parents in the Garden of Eden and those infamous empty words of deception that Satan spoke in Genesis 3:4, you, shall not surely die.

Wow. Taking exactly what God had said and exactly what they were scared of and lining it up with what they kind of wanted to do. I mean, it's just, there is a kind of sick reverse brilliance in the simplicity of the deception. You shall not surely die. It's almost an economy in it where he could take the very words of God, you shall surely die, and just stick in one short Negative.

You shall not fully die. You shall not surely die.

How interesting that this first denial of God's promise was a denial that He would judge them for their sins as God had promised He would. Did you really think the 21st century was so avant-garde and advanced and going where no humans had ever gone before? Friends were going around in a circle in the Garden of Eden.

The most recent philosophies are returning simply to the very temptations that Satan has laid out for us from the very beginning. Paul regularly reminded early Christians not to be deceived. He wrote to the Colossians, See that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit. He wrote to the Christians in the churches in Galatia, Do not be deceived, God is not mocked, for whatever one sows that he will also reap. To the Christians in the church at Rome, he warned, Watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught.

Avoid them, for such persons do not serve our Lord Christ but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive. And the subtlety and deception has not waned with the passing of ages. You know, the other night several of us saw a new superhero movie. You have to understand, I had over 600 comic books when I was a kid.

Cross-filed three different ways. The movie was a visual extravaganza with rapidly moving plot and compelling characters. And when we were talking about it afterwards, and they asked what I thought, I said that I felt like I just paid the devil to catechize me for two hours.

The movie ended with a beautiful scene of lit candles floating out on a body of water and the omniscient narrator voice saying soothingly something like, We've always been together and we will always be together. Together. As if to say, death is nothing. Nothing you've done really matters that much. Everyone will always be okay.

There's nothing to worry about here. You will not surely die.

Let no one deceive you.

With empty words. I know that our age likes satisfying appetites and philosophies that approve of our passions. Our age says, Permission is liberation and that it's life. But God's Word says, this such permission is deception and that it's deadly. In the passage that we're to come to next time, Paul will even tell the Ephesians, to have nothing to do with such people.

Look down at verse 11. We'll just cheat ahead for a moment.

Maybe Paul is even implying here that if such teachers were in the church, they were to be put out by an act of discipline.

Brothers and sisters, you see what all this means for us. You and I are to live in such a way as individuals and as a church that the honor of Christ's name is foremost in our lives. And how can that be? Only through our desires being sanctified. There aren't enough accountability groups in the world to reign in a heart with its desires increasingly set on sin.

So we must pray for God to change our desires. That's how we live in such a way that is not unbecoming to the honor of Christ. And we must realize that to surrender to sexual immorality is a revolt against God and a raising up of an idol in his place. And that's why Paul calls such people here idolaters. Not because they have literal idols, statues, though they could have, but because the sexually lusting are obsessed with gratifying themselves through having some possession or some person or persons at the center of their existence.

They are worshiping them and not God. They are idolaters, sons of disobedience. Characterized by disobedience. I pray that not be true of any of us here today. If you have any question about how serious this is, just consider our verses again.

For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure or covetous has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Such people are unsaved, out of whose numbers we have all come, among whom we all still live. He is warning, Do not join with them. That path is not the way of God's grace, but the way of his wrath.

Now, if you don't like this message, ever since Eden, you can find people to teach what you want to hear in your rebellion. They are out there aplenty, that you can have an inheritance in the Kingdom of God and live like this. But Paul here dismisses that out of hand and he calls such teachings empty and he warns these young Christians against being deceived by them. Brothers and sisters, please realize how dangerous such teaching is. These are very severe words here.

Ponder them carefully. No such person, he says, has any inheritance in the kingdom of God. None. Calling yourself a Christian is not good evidence that you are heaven bound. Living like one is.

None of us will ever live perfectly as Christians. But to give ourselves over to sin without shame or repentance is not the life of a Christian. Such sin should separate them from the kingdom of Christ now because it will separate them from the kingdom of God forever unless they repent. So take heed. As Paul will go on to say in verse 7, Do not be partners with them in their life of sin.

You choose one Lord or the other. Now friend, if you're a member of the church and you're struggling with sexual sin, please don't misunderstand this message. I've tried to say repeatedly, this is the sin that characterizes them. So much so that these verbs are turned to nouns, like the man who drinks regularly too much is called a drunk. Christians struggle with sin in this life.

If you've got a struggle with serious sin that you're not sharing with others, you're playing a very dangerous game. Talk to others. Let mature Christians know what's going on. Talk to some of the elders here about it. Let them pray with you and bear the burden.

Don't let sin reign in your mortal bodies. Don't let sin rule us, define you, or summarize you. How can you know the truth about yourself? Here's my best answer: join a Bible preaching church, or at least try to join one. Let me explain.

If it's like us, you're gonna have membership classes that you'll need to go through. Anybody can do that. But then comes an interview. You're medical with the doctor, you're spiritual with the pastor, you know, where you meet. And the pastor hears your testimony, hears your understanding of the gospel, and asks you some questions.

Then based on the responses to that, the pastor will talk to the other pastors, they'll bring it to the congregation as a whole, like we'll do tonight. At our members meeting, it'll be summarized and the members then will affirm the elders recommendation to bring you into membership or if not, it'll probably be stopped before that period when the pastor's talking to you to try to help you address an issue that you've exposed clearly and we're trying to help you with. That's exactly what a church does. A church is like an assurance of salvation cooperative where we all get to know each other and allow others to get to know us in order to help us be able to know that we are truly trusting Christ. That's why we don't practice the modern idea of coming down the aisle at the end of a service or praying a prayer, but instead we practice the Jesus idea of biblically being baptized and joining a local church because we want to give you not quick assurance that could be wrong, but we want to give you more solid understanding of your own spiritual state.

Based on real conversation and relationship. In all things we try to trust God and His Word, not empty words. Friends, we should conclude. I'm sure that being critical about following your passions sounds strange to many today, even oppressive. Some today label my words of disagreeing about desired behavior as hate speech.

Directions seen as only restrictions and guidance just as bondage. Well, if that's you, could I just ask you to wait for a moment and realize it's possible you have a wonderful surprise in front of you. Have you ever heard of good surprises? We know that there are ominous surprises. Here on Capitol Hill in politics land, people refer to October surprises.

There's always a surprise right before people go to the polls. But friends, there are good surprises. I'll tell you one from a year ago today. I was with the CHBC interns. We were in a kind of layover in Minneapolis coming back from a conference.

And we had several hours free. And so we drove around in a car. We got a car and drove around.

Unbeknownst to them, I had arranged for them to meet a good friend who lives in Minneapolis. But we just drove around and they wanted to see where his house was. I couldn't remember exactly, I said, not exactly lying, kind of renting the truth a little bit.

And as we drove by the house that I was pretty sure was the house, One of the interns, his name sounds like Costin Easling, said, Hey, I think I see a guy in the backyard that looks like him. And so we pulled up, got out, I let John know that this was just a... I was doing a ruse, letting him know that it seemed to be unlikely, once they saw that he had like eight chairs set out in the backyard in a circle, and let alone inside the house, special copies of books left there, a sign for each of them that they knew something was up. But anyway, small example a year ago today of a good surprise. There are good surprises in life.

For some of you who hear language like this, you hear only threat and darkness. But you realize on the other side of that, and what would be so typical of God, would be for there to be something immeasurably better than you had ever understood or imagined. A few years ago, J. Budziszewski wrote his book on the Meaning of Sex. And he has one comment in there where he says, Looking out over the sexual landscape of our time, I see a terrain of unutterable sweetness despoiled by unmentionable pain. Yet who knows?

Perhaps it's not too late to redeem the unutterable sweetness. Sometimes the truth is a good surprise, even better than we thought it would ever be. These verses may seem far away from the world we live in today, but when you put them in the context of the message of the whole Bible, then friend, is there something that just seems right to you about what we're being told in Jesus Christ? Is there any flicker of a conscience there that causes you, even though you may call yourself not religious, that causes you to think, There's just something that seems right about this.

Some of you will know the comedian Norm Macdonald who died last week. He was a funny comedian and a strange comedian in that if you ever saw him interviewed, he often talked about very serious things. I read one interview in which he said, Some people believe that man is divine, like kind of a hippie idea. I can't believe that because I know my own heart and I know that's not true. Other people believe that we're wretched like the cynics or the atheists would believe we're all just wretches, nothingness, just animals, just creatures.

I can't believe that. It doesn't make any sense that we're just beasts. I will say that Christianity has this interesting compromise where we're both divine and wretched. And there's this middle man that's the Savior that through Him we can become divine, but we're born wretched. I kind of like that one because it sort of makes sense.

I don't know what McDonald finally ended up believing, but I will say that the Bible and its promises are they are not empty words. They are God's words. I'm not surprised that there are residences of the truth, even in the most unreligious souls, when the truth is told. And just like the first words spoken in the garden by God to our first parents were true, even when the devil told them the lie that they wanted to believe, So God's Word is still true today.

What are you doing to help your conscience wake up today and hear God's words and believe them?

Let's pray. Lord God, we pray that in your love you would undermine our unbelief, that you would make the truth obvious to our minds and hearts. Work now by your Holy Spirit, we ask, in Jesus' name, Amen.