Yes, But  How? 

Ephesians 5:5-7 

Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason - March 14, 2004

    A man borrowed a book from an acquaintance. As he read through it, he was intrigued to find parts of the book underlined with the letters YBH
written in the margin. When he returned the book to the owner, he asked what the YBH meant. The owner replied that the underlined paragraphs were sections of the book that he basically agreed with. They gave him hints on how to improve himself and pointed out truths that he wished to incorporate into his  life. However, the letters YBH stood for "Yes, but how?"

     Those three letters we could write on the margins of our souls: "I ought to know how to take better care of myself, but how?" "I know I ought to spend more time in scripture reading and prayer, but how?" "I know I ought to be more sensitive to others, more loving of my spouse, more understanding of the weaknesses of others, but how?"

    These are all good qualities and we know that, but how can we acquire them? As Christian people, we know the kind f life, we ought to live, and most of us have the best of intentions to do so, but how? We are afraid because we know where the road paved with only good intentions leads!

     This morning we hear Jesus' parable of the fig tree, telling us to repent and bear good fruit. We know what the Christian life requires of us and yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we also know how far short we fall. So the question that confronts us this morning is "Yes, but how?"

It is obvious from this lead in that our message has something to do with how we should live. Paul tells us in Ephesians 5:8 that we should

* “live as children of light ( 9 for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth, )
* and find out what pleases our Lord.
* And…Have nothing to do with the deeds of darkness

• He has just told us in verse 5 that

* No immoral,
* impure or
* greedy person…such a person is an idolater…
* shall have any inheritance in the Kingdom of God.

The Apostle Paul identifies idolaters by these three expressions: 
* One who engages in acts of immorality
* One who is unclean in his thought life
* One who is covetous, eager to have more, especially what belongs to others, greedy for gain.
The unbelieving world has rejected what is plainly known about God in His creation…the universe and world in which we live. Romans 1:18-32.

God’s invisible qualities of power and His divine nature have been clearly seen since creation. Men can look at creation around them and see God if they will. If they don’t they are without excuse.

Paul makes it clear that man’s thinking has become futile and his foolish heart has become darkened. Though man has claimed to be wise, he has become a fool and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man, birds and animals and reptiles.

God has given unbelieving men over to the sinful desires of their hearts, to sinful lusts, and to a depraved mind.

Jesus Christ has set us free from all of that by dying on the cross for us. He paid the penalty for our sin and when we accept Him as our Lord and Savior we are set free from the law of sin and death that governs the fallen world in which we live.

Think back if you will to the people of Israel after they had crossed the Red Sea to freedom. Moses led Israel to the Mountain of God. It was there that Moses was to be given the law, which was summed up in what we call the 10 Commandments.

While Moses was up on the mountain, the people became restless. They were sure something awful had happened to Moses and that he was not coming down from the mountain. So they had Aaron make them an idol of a calf to worship. Their unbelief led them into sexual sin and into out right idolatry. Their idolatry involved two things…worship of their bodies created in the image of God and of other created things symbolized by the golden calf. Implied in this is that their thought life had become sinful because thought always precedes the act.

Jesus made that clear when he was speaking about adultery when he said that the sin was in the looking upon another with lust…long before the actual act of adultery itself. “In the head or in the bed, its all the same, all the same.”

What other gods could we have besides the Lord? Plenty. For Israel, there were the Canaanite Baals, those jolly nature gods whose worship was a rampage of gluttony, drunkenness, and ritual prostitution. For us there are still the great gods: Sex, Shekels, and Stomach (an unholy trinity constituting one god: self), and the other enslaving trio, Pleasure, Possessions, and Position, whose worship is described as "The lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life" (1 John 2:16). Football, the Firm, and Family are also gods for some. Indeed the list of other gods is endless, for anything, that anyone allows to run his life becomes his god and the claimants for this prerogative are legion. In the matter of life's basic loyalty, temptation is a many-headed monster.

Some years ago, Donald Grey Barnhouse was counseling a young woman on the sidewalk in front of Tenth Presbyterian Church following an evening service. She said she was a Christian and that she wanted to follow Christ. But she wanted to be famous too. She wanted to pursue a stage career in New York. "After I have made it in the theater, I'll follow Christ completely," she said. Barnhouse took a key out of his pocket and scratched a mark on a postal box standing on the corner. "That is what God will let you do," he said. "God will let you scratch the surface of success. He will let you get close enough to the top to know what it is, but He will never let you have it, because He will never let one of His children have anything rather than Himself." 

Years later, he met the girl again, and she confessed that this had indeed been her life story. She had dabbled in the stage. Once her picture had been in a national magazine. But she had never quite made it. She told Barnhouse, "I can't tell you how many times in my discouragement I have closed my eyes and seen you scratching on that postal box with your key. God let me scratch the edges, but He gave me nothing in place of Himself."

True biblical worship so satisfies our total personality that we don't have to shop around for man-made substitutes. William Temple made this clear in his masterful definition of worship:
For worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose -- and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.

Today's idols are more in the self than on the shelf.
Goudzwaard's three basic Biblical rules:
1. Every person is serving god(s) in his life.
2. Every person is transformed into an image of his god.
3. Mankind creates and forms a structure of society in its own image.
That for which I would give anything and accept nothing in exchange is the most important thing in my life. Whatever that is...is my god (cf. Isa. 44:6-20).

It's a dilemma that has confronted God's people throughout the ages.
Even Saint Paul found himself trapped. In Romans 7 Paul writes: It seems to be a fact of life that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I love to do God's will so far as my new (redeemed Christian) nature is concerned; but there is something else deep within me, in my lower nature, that is at war with my mind and wins the fight and makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me.

In my mind, I want to be God's willing servant, but instead I find myself enslaved to sin. So you see how it is; my new life (the redeemed life in Christ) tells me to do right, but the
old nature that is still inside me (my sinful human self) loves to sin. Oh, what a terrible predicament I'm in!

Who will free me from this slavery to sin? Thank God! It has already been done by Jesus Christ our Lord. He has set me free.

10 Commandments  Exodus 20

The first four of the ten commandments, which concern our duty to God (commonly called the first table ), we have in these verses. It was fit that those should be put first, because man had a Maker to love before he had a neighbor to love; and justice and charity are acceptable acts of obedience to God only when they flow from the principles of piety.

The first commandment concerns the object of our worship, Jehovah, and him only (v. 3): Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
The second commandment concerns the ordinances of worship, or the way in which God will be worshipped, which it is fit that he himself should have the appointing of.

Here is, (1.) The prohibition: we are here forbidden to worship even the true God by images, v. 4, 5.
It is certain that it forbids making any image of God (for to whom can we liken him? Isa. 40:18, 15), or the image of any creature for a religious use.

Our religious worship must be governed by the power of faith, not by the power of imagination. They must not make such images or pictures as the heathen worshipped, lest they also should be tempted to worship them.

The third commandment concerns the manner of our worship, that it be done with all possible reverence and seriousness, v. 7. We have here, (1.) A strict prohibition: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

* By hypocrisy, making a profession of God’s name, but not living up to that profession. Those that name the name of Christ, but do not depart from iniquity, as that name binds them to do, name it in vain; their worship is vain (Mt. 15:7-9), their oblations are vain (Isa. 1:11, 13), their religion is vain, Jam. 1:26. [2.]

* By covenant-breaking; if we make promises to God, binding our souls with those bonds to that which is good, and yet perform not to the Lord our vows, we take his name in vain (Mt. 5:33), it is folly,

* By rash swearing, mentioning the name of God, or any of his attributes, in the form of an oath, without any just occasion for it, or due application of mind to it, but as a by-word, to no purpose at all, or to no good purpose.

* By false swearing
* By using the name of God lightly and carelessly, and without any regard to its awful significancy.

Verses 12-17 We have here the laws of the second table, as they are commonly called, the last six of the ten commandments, comprehending our duty to ourselves and to one another, and constituting a comment upon the second great commandment, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

A Fan Club or a Concert?

Bob Dylan is one of the few singers in the world who sings better when he has a cold. Those who don't like him can't understand those who do. Go to one of his concerts and the air will be heavy with the scent of illegal substances and the anticipation of his fans. The lights dim, the band starts playing, and out walks the Master himself and launches into his music.