Sermon Tone Analysis

Good morning and welcome to Dishman Baptist Church.

Please take your Bibles and turn them to Ephesians 5, Ephesians 5.

In the year 1803 a poet named Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote a poem based on an early 14th century legend from the German city of Hamelin.

It seems that Hamelin had been troubled by a rat infestation and that a man in brightly colored clothing playing a pipe had offered to solve the problem for the city.

He played on his pipe and led the rats out of the city but when it came time for payment, the city reneged on their deal.

He left town vowing revenge.

He returned on a city holiday while the adults were all in church and proceeded to lead 130 of the town’s children away never to be seen again.

Interestingly the legend was depicted upon the stained glass windows of a church in the town of Hamelin.

Now why am I telling this story?

Because in many ways the modern church has become like those children of Hamelin.

The world has shown up in brightly colored clothing, playing a pretty tune on a pipe and the church in many sectors is mesmerized by the playing.

Whole congregations have been led off to the woods never to be seen again.

This isn’t necessarily new - it’s been happening for a while.

More than 20 years ago James Montgomery Boice, pastor of 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, said this in a sermon “The Evangelical church is in bad trouble today, part of the problem is that we don’t even know it.

We’ve abandoned our theology.

We’re substituting other things for the Word of God and we don’t even know this is what we’re doing.

The Evangelical church has lost its soul, and it has lost its soul because it has lost its theology.”

Let me humbly say that our condition hasn’t gotten any better today - if anything we’re in a worse position.

I approached this text this week with a fair amount of trepidation - I know I said that last week too but this week is for a different reason.

Last week’s sermon was hard to preach because it may have gotten under some of your skins and it may have hurt - and it is never my intention to hurt you purposely.

The hurt may have been necessary however to awaken your spirit to the fact that while you think you are saved, that you may still be far from God and, in fact, may not know Him at all.

This week’s text leads me to a different dilemma.

I know that I will probably upset some of you by the end of this sermon.

Why?

Because this week’s text leads me to talk about some issues that are inflammatory in our day.

That are critical for us to talk about because they are issues that the world is playing masterfully, just as the pied piper played his pipe, to lead the church astray.

It is fitting I think that the kids are here this week to hear some of this because if we aren’t talking and teaching about it in church and some of you aren’t talking or teaching about this at home, then the main source of information that they have is the world.

This morning Paul is going to continue the warning that he began to issue to the Ephesians in verses 3-5.

Let’s look at our Bibles to see what he had to say to them, what warnings he issued and then understand how these warnings come down through the intervening years to us and our lives today.

We’ll be reading Ephesians 5:3-7.

There really is nothing new under the sun.

Solomon tells us that in the great book of Ecclesiastes and he just keeps getting proven right.

If you look at the world that we live in compared to the world that Paul was writing to, we are facing many of the same issues just with a different face - and in some cases the exact same face.

Sexual immorality, impurity and greed are just as prevalent during this generation as they were when Paul sat down to pen this letter so many years ago.

Harry Reeder during a sermon this week at the Ligonier National Conference - by the way, just as an aside if you’re taking notes or if you just want to grab a contact card from the seat in front of you write this down.

If you own a cell phone that is capable of running apps, these are a few you should have on your phone - REFNET, Grace to You, G3, Ligonier, Truth for Life.

They are solidly biblical and will serve you well throughout the week as you seek to grow and deepen your faith.

Now back to Pastor Reeder’s statement - he said this we live in a culture of insanity, absurdity, immorality, lethality and it is rooted in profitability.

We live in a culture of insanity, absurdity, immorality, lethality and it is rooted in profitability.

The reason for this is that we’ve forgotten who God is and who we are.

In many sectors of society - some of which we’ll talk about this morning - man is playing on the throne and trying to relegate God to the wings if He’s allowed to be in the area at all.

And this should not be a surprise, after all this is what has always happened.

Paul tells us in Romans 1 that this is the condition of the world.

Consider these words from Romans 1:28-32.

The theological term for this is the Noetic effect of the Fall - that when sin entered the world our minds were broken to the point that rational thought was no longer a given commodity but rather a grace given by God.

This is not to say that unbelievers cannot determine or discern truth but rather to say that ultimately their capacity to attain truth will be limited by their continued distance from God and the brokenness of that relationship.

Steve Lawson recently said it this way “Sin will make you stupid.”

If an unbeliever continues in a sinful state and sinful state of mind then they will veer further away from the truth and further into madness and illogical thinking.

An example from our day may help clear this up.

One of the primary arguments that the liberal gives for supporting abortion is that it is simply a clump of cells, that it is not a real life and therefore can be disposed of any way the bearer of those cells see fit.

Recently though, the city of Portland, Oregon - a bastion of liberal thought and ideology - has instituted bereavement leave for anyone who loses a pregnancy be it by miscarriage, stillbirth or any other premature loss of a pregnancy to include abortion.

Does anyone else see the lack of logic here?

There’s a disconnect.

Why would you experience grief for the removal of something that isn’t alive?

Implicitly they are simply acknowledging what we all know to be true but their depraved minds refuses to admit - that life begins at conception and that any loss of life in utero or out is worthy of grief.

And so Paul continues his warnings to the Ephesian church and to us, writing

Let no one deceive you - the word here is apatao meaning to cause someone to have misleading or erroneous views concerning the truth.

It is the way that Paul refers to the serpent in the Garden in 2 Corinthians 11:3 “But I fear that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your minds may be seduced from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.”

The Ephesians are to be wary of all things that are presented to them lest any idea or doctrine that comes to them lead them away from the truth.

John writes that we are to test the spirits 1 John 4:1 “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”

There are some doctrines that come to us that sound right, that sound good but are far from the truth of God.

These are presented as empty arguments.

When used in a figurative sense such as here in Ephesians 5:6 the word kenos has the sense of a vain or frivolous person or futile things - opinions, boastings or speech.

Here and later in Colossians 2:8 Paul will use this word to warn the believers not to be swayed or misled by the empty, frivolous doctrines of the world.

In Colossians Paul is very explicit about where these empty words come from Colossians 2:8 “Be careful that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit based on human tradition, based on the elements of the world, rather than Christ.”

The ultimate goal of these empty words is to deceive the believers and to get them to go astray.

The worst instance of this is when it comes from those posing to be leaders in the church but instead are leading people astray and away from the Savior.

Jesus plainly warned his disciples that there would be people who sought to do this very thing.

Later in the same discourse He warns them again

Paul warns his protege and the man who he would be passing the torch to upon his death to be aware and not be surprised that this is going to happen

Earlier in chapter 3 he writes 2 Timothy 3:1-5

And we say of course - that’s exactly what the world looks like and we would be correct except that Paul is writing this to characterize those within the church.

Later in chapter 4 as he charges Timothy to maintain his course and to fulfill his ministry primarily by preaching the Word Paul writes

It would seem that there may have been those in Ephesus who were already turning their hearts toward these behaviors and beginning to listen to those who would come to them with empty words seeking to deceive them in relation to “these things”.

But what are these things?

Are they the empty words themselves or does Paul have something greater in mind here?

I’m glad you asked.

Paul is pointing the Ephesians back to the previous verses where he said that sexual immorality, impurity and greed should not even be named among them.

It would seem that there was a group of teachers who were telling the Ephesian believers that those practices were okay - that God wouldn’t really judge them if they practiced these things.

In an effort to coexist with their culture, the culture of the day was becoming acceptable in the church.

Rather than standing counter to the world, the world was influencing the church and polluting the truth.

Paul states in no uncertain terms that the wrath of God is coming on the disobedient because of these things.

The wrath of God here is a bit tricky because the verb coming is in the present tense.

The issue here is what wrath is Paul getting at - is this the eschatological wrath of God that will be poured out on all sin at the end of time or does this describe some present instance of the wrath of God being enacted against those who practice such things?

The challenge to understand this is that the word for the disobedient is the same word used to describe the former state of the Ephesian believers in Ephesians 2:2 “in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient.”

In that passage Paul is telling the believers that at one point they were this - spiritually dead in their trespasses and living in a manner contrary to God’s righteous and holy way - and now they are that - but God moved on their behalf, woke them up and convicted them of their wicked status and just condemnation under the law until they repented and received grace through faith in Christ.

The present tense is used in other places by Paul to refer to a future event - 1 Thessalonians 1:10 “and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.”

and also in Colossians 3:6 “Because of these, God’s wrath is coming upon the disobedient,” a parallel passage to our passage this morning each being in the present tense but especially the 1 Thessalonians passage points us to a future event.

While there may be a present penalty for some of those who practice these things, there will certainly be a future date when all who practice these will receive their just recompense.

Paul says do not become their partner - this is a compound word that carries an emphatic sense of the fullest participation in something.

This word only appears twice in the New Testament - here and earlier in Ephesians 3:6 “The Gentiles are coheirs, members of the same body, and partners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.”

We cannot be both - we cannot be a partner of the world and a partner with Christ.

We cannot follow the doctrines of sexual immorality, impurity and greed and follow the Gospel.

Yet there are many in the church that are trying to do just that.

Rather than calling out the inconsistency of the sexual revolution and all that it entails, there are sadly many in the church who have succumbed and listened to the “empty words” and fallen in line with supporting these ideas.

When we say that the Bible whispers about sexual sins such as homosexuality and the like we have fallen in line with the idea that God’s wrath is not promised for those who do such things.

When Christian leaders support two men who show pictures of fetuses that they will be adopting and celebrate the start of a “family” they have given over to the empty words of the culture.

And this goes for all of the letters of the sexual revolutions alphabet - LGBTQIA+.

When a church within our own convention celebrates the baptism and membership of openly gay and transgender members - they have given over to the empty words of culture.

And let me be clear - gay, transgender, any other sexual moniker they are welcome here just like any other sinner.