Class Lesson January 8, 2012

Hey Gang,

Our lesson series says that Americans live in a culture that has drifted off course. Many adults base their thinking and lifestyles on what the popular culture endorses. The good news is that believers can stand for Christ and what is right in the midst of a culture that no longer understands truth. This week we look at the impact SEX in our culture has on our daily walk. 

Love & Sex

FLAME - Rob Bell
Click Here to Watch

Hebrew and Greek words for Love: Raya (Phileo), Dod (Eros), Ahava (Agape).

What messages does our culture send about sensuality? How often? What’s the problem with buying into these messages?

• A vast majority of the estimated 3,000 advertisements that reach consumers daily use sensuality to sell their product. Selfish insistence on physical pleasure has torn apart families, churches, and nations. 

• Television, movies, and music promote sexual immorality as the norm and ridicule the notion of reserving sexual intimacy for marriage.

• Distracts me from my spouse; takes advantage of others; leads to more sin; rejects love.

• Our culture is against purity.

Our lesson says that we should identify how we have been influenced by sensual messages and choose to walk a life of purity in love, light and wisdom.

• Have we separated the flames?
• 2nd Half of Marriage

 Ephesians 5:1-16

Most of the time when people think of Ephesians chapter 5, they go straight to verse 22, where it says wives submit to your husbands. And verses 22 - 33 do take into account wives and husbands relational roles, but it's important to understand verses 1 - 21 leading up to this infamous section of scripture because it sets the very tone of the remaining verses. Verses 1 - 21 are a Wake-Up call to believers that are submitting to the Wrong things. The culture's way is not the way you are to submit to and verse 21 sets the right tone for the following verses: "Submit to one another out of reverence to Christ." 

True Ahava is submission to one another in Christ!

America and the Greco-Roman World

The city of Ephesus – to whom Paul wrote this letter to – likely, reflected a society similar to 21st Century America. Ephesus was the capital of the Roman province of Asia. Ephesus’s greatest claim to fame was her responsibility as the official “temple keeper” of Artemis, a fertility/mother goddess. Scholars are divided on whether fertility rites (sexual orgies), were part of the worship of this idol. However, all agree that sexual immorality was rampant in Ephesus. Extramarital affairs, prostitution, promiscuity, homosexuality, and bisexuality were common. It was just as difficult for the Ephesian believers in 61 A.D. to seek purity as for Christians in 2012. Yet Paul told every believer there must not be even a hint of impurity in their lives. Christians cannot use the moral degeneration of their culture as an excuse to relax the moral standards God has clearly laid out in His Word.

 

I. WALK IN LOVE – EPHESIANS 5:1-5

1 Therefore, be imitators of God, as dearly loved children. 2 And walk in love, as the Messiah also loved us and gave Himself for us, a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God. 3 But sexual immorality and any impurity or greed should not even be heard of among you, as is proper for saints. 4 Coarse and foolish talking or crude joking are not suitable, but rather giving thanks. 5 For know and recognize this: Every sexually immoral or impure or greedy person, who is an idolater, does not have an inheritance in the kingdom of the Messiah and of God.


How does the sexual overload in society invade our view of self, our view of home, or our view of relationships?

• We tend to imitate where we spend our time.

• Paul opens in the first two verses with the standard for love – imitate Jesus. This means walking in love and behaving in a way that God will be pleased to see what you do and say. If we understand the “how” of living in purity then it will help us recognize the “how not” in life. Kindness, sharing, and respect help us understand the rules.

Has anyone ever demonstrated this kind of love behavior to you? How did it affect you?


The next three verses lay out a list of intolerable behaviors. You may practice them for a time, but in the end these behaviors will steal rather than deliver. They are counterfeits. We should avoid and be intolerant of such behaviors in ourselves and from others – these behaviors are sexual impurity and greed. Each is a form of idolatry because each worships self and pleasures.


Sexual immorality and any impurity covered every kind of illicit sexual activity – all sexual intercourse outside its God-ordained context in a loving marriage between a man and a woman. Moral life in Paul’s day had sunk so low that people who engaged in sexual immorality met no opposition. Impurity, a more general term, referred to a full range of unclean thoughts, ideas, fantasies, and any other form of sexual corruption.



Now, a good question would be, how do we show a lack of tolerance without a lack of love? How do we engage in such conversations without condescension with anyone? How do we help in ways besides talking? What gives someone the courage to stop or to refuse greed and sexual sins? 

• Believers are to imitate God in His love and forgiveness.

• To walk in love as Christ did, we must learn to imitate Him. How did Jesus show the value of people?

How would you respond to the following?

1. I’m in a social gathering and someone says something offensive or dishonoring to the Lord - everybody laughs what should I do?  
2. An adult family member decides to move in and live with someone they intend to marry – what should I say or do?

Why isn’t sexual immorality love? 

• Sensuality sees people as sexual objects. When we walk in Christ’s love, we see people as having great physical and spiritual value and consequently seek to give them what they need rather than what we can get out of them.

• Sex is a spiritual thing.

Why did Paul make a big deal out of our speech anyway? Why is thanksgiving an effective antidote to vulgarity’s poison? 

• Language is a gateway to behavior. When we make light of sexual sin with joking and innuendos, it’s easy to assume people are there for our pleasure and to move toward using them.

• Thanksgiving focuses attention on God. Rude and crude talk focuses attention on self.

How do you interpret verse 5? 

• This verse does not mean that a believer may lose salvation due to a sexual sin but that someone participating in these actions is not living and acting as a child of God.

• No one who persists in such sins is part of God’s kingdom.

Points:

1. Sexual sins are especially serious.

2. Such sins may be committed by what we think, what we say, or what we do.

3. Such sins are totally inappropriate for Christians.

4. Christians should avoid relationships that are potentially compromising.


II. WALK IN LIGHT – EPHESIANS 5:8-12

8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light— 9 for the fruit of the light results in all goodness, righteousness, and truth— 10 discerning what is pleasing to the Lord. 11 Don’t participate in the fruitless works of darkness, but instead expose them. 12 For it is shameful even to mention what is done by them in secret.


Oil and water, sand and sea, light and dark – these cannot coexist. Paul used light and darkness to contrast our lives before and after our saving faith in Christ. As we learn to trust and obey Jesus, then our lives will become a delightful journey of goodness, righteousness, truth, and fruitfulness.



What does light accomplish? How does living as light result in those accomplishments? Why use darkness as a metaphor for sexual impurity? Why use light to describe believers?

• Impurity contradicts love.

• Light produces fruit. Light helps you see where to go. It shows the good stuff.

Why are the works of darkness fruitless? How does participation in this sensual culture dim our light? 

• Sexual misbehavior, whether committed in body or mind, cannot produce anything that benefits you or others.

Why are some topics better left unmentioned? How can we expose shameful deeds if we’re not to mention them? How can we leave our light on?

• We don’t necessarily have to speak up to expose sexual immorality and if we do it needs to be in love. Explore what works and doesn’t work.
• We expose the darkness of immorality by shinning the light of a consistently pure lifestyle.
• Turn off the dark. Replace any form of impurity, including speaking and viewing habits, with good activities. Expose sexual immorality; don’t excuse or rationalize it. Show genuine care.

Paul says in verse 8 that not only should we be different but we must also walk differently.




Are sexual, crude, or coarse jokes harmless?

• We cannot consider sensual talk harmless. We cannot assume crude jokes are funny or coarse talk is hilarious. Verse 12 takes an even harsher stand against those acts of darkness: We are not to even mention them.

We won’t defeat the darkness, so we must focus on deliberately conducting ourselves in Christ’s light.


Points:

1. When people turn to Christ, they are changed from darkness to light.

2. Christians should live as children of light.

3. Christians should rebuke the works of darkness.

III. WALK IN WISDOM – EPHESIANS 5:15-16

15 Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk—not as unwise people but as wise— 16 making the most of the time, because the days are evil.

The Internet is full of videos that have captured people tripping. Hilarious, right? Certainly – unless you’re the one who fell. Falling is even worse if it’s a relationship fall, a work fall, or a character fall.



In what ways are you wise in how you walk in relationships, work, character, or other areas? When are you tempted to dabble in darkness?



By heeding Christ’s wisdom, we can truly walk with loving actions. Most of us can recall when one careless step – tripping over a toy, sliding on ice, stubbing a toe – led to suffering because we were not paying attention. How much deeper the pain is when we’ve mistreated a person or made a foolish choice.



The unwise will always walk differently from the wise, simply because the goals and focus of the two stand in stark contrast to one another. Fools despise wisdom and resist discipline. They want what they want when they want it. Therefore, if our walk – the way we conduct our actions and relationships – cannot be differentiated from those who do not know God, we don’t walk in wisdom. We must daily analyze our words, actions, and thoughts to be sure they imitate Christ. We discern what pleases the Lord to choose goodness, righteousness, and truth. These are just a few indicators that God guides our steps.



How regularly should we as believers confess our sins and invite Christ to expose our weaknesses? How can the evil of society propel us to walk more closely to Christ, not pull away from Him?



Describe a believer living wisely in our sensual culture. Why can even a believer lose focus? Why is seeking pleasure an unwise way to spend life?

• Wise believers purposefully seek purity, or sin will snag them. Our default mode gravitates to self-indulgence and doing what feels good. Even though Christ has changed our default mode from darkness to light, we need to keep the light on.

• We live both in the light of Christ and in a dark world. Satan will put people and events in our lives to trip us up. We must stay on our guard. Never arrogantly think, I’d never do that.

Why would using our time wisely keep us from getting tripped up by impurity? Some think the best use of time is to work until they collapse. How might that result in impurity? What activities and attitudes make the most of time?

• Our use of time is not neutral.

• Watching a clean TV show or reading a book that doesn’t compromise God’s moral standards may be a wise use of time if it recharges our batteries and helps us refocus.

• Investing in people who make you wiser.

Points:

1. God gives wisdom to those who seek it in Him.

2. Those who receive wisdom should walk in it.



Our culture evidences many of the sins of the culture of the first-century Greco-Roman world. Theirs was a sexually immoral society, so is ours. Sensuality was its leading sin, but other sins were involved also. These included drunkenness and selfishness. Paul delivered God’s message about being pure in a sensual society. He called Christians to walk in love, to walk in light, and to walk in wisdom.



Will we seek purity in this sensual culture by default or by choices? What conscious choices must we make to enjoy purity? 

• God’s pure plan for intimacy provides security, satisfaction, love, and safety.

Prayer of Commitment

Lord, help me to be faithful to You in the midst of our sensual culture. Amen

This may not be the easiest topic to discuss, but no one can ignore that it is an important issue that Christians face everyday. Put this lesson in prayer this week as we come together this Sunday to discuss.

See you on Sunday!

In His Love,

David & Susan