Normal Christian Life IV (Part 1)

This transcript has been automatically generated

Stall at St. Helen’s very much, I can tell you. It’s terrible, that, sure.

Doug, I can’t do this. Doug, Doug’s the only one who can do these things.

I heard Doug was playing a very good game of golf yesterday. It’s just possible he’ll get into the staff team as a result. The selectors haven’t decided. The first 9 tells against him, those first 9 holes. David, I’ve got to talk to you about it.

Right, well, we turn then to chapter 5 and we’re going through to verse 20 this morning. Now, so far it’s been familiar territory as far as I’m concerned, but not now.

I’ve become familiar with it from verse 21 onwards because of course I’ve had to study that for many a wedding sermon. But the territory between the end of chapter 4 and verse 21 of chapter 5 is for me fairly new territory. And so I’m going to need your help in the study time. I take it that that’s one of the differences between the morning and the evening, that in the morning we are seeking to study, not just to receive the Word and to apply it, but to find out ourselves how to handle the Scriptures. And I want to talk a little bit about that by way of introduction.

It’s what we do very much in our curates’ conferences, and I think it’s an all-important thing for anybody who wants to be a good Bible student and get to know what the Bible is saying, is to learn how to handle it properly. You see, our A.V. heritage has taught us to be butterflies, hasn’t it? I’m sure you know that. In fact, I’m a bit like that myself.

Conversation that is butterfly conversation. I won’t try to imitate it, but the person who talks to you never stays on the same subject for more than a second. Now, lots of people in a prayer meeting are like that, aren’t they? Indeed, prayer meetings tend to be like that unless they’re guided. People jump from one thing to another.

And so because the Authorised Version has one verse after another, you get the impression that as you read it, people just pick and choose things that seem good. I mean, I don’t know how many sermons in the course of my life I’ve heard on verse 18 of chapter 5. And not really on the drunkenness with wine, but on being filled with the Spirit. And the sentence is taken right out of its context, and the preacher says, be filled with the Spirit, and then gives you a talk, excellent very often, on being filled with the Spirit, but which has got nothing whatever to do with the context. And I’m sure in the end that that is a weak way of getting to know how Scripture handles material.

We’ve got to find out the arrangement of the material, and that’s one of the things I want you to work on in your study time this morning. Now the commentators obviously have a shot at it, and one of the good ones is in this little IVP commentary by Francis Fuchs. And here is his head— here are his headings, which I think aren’t bad. For the 3 paragraphs, the one that we finished with on Sunday morning— Sunday evening, and then the 2 that we’re going to deal with in chapter 5. I just give this to you as a kind of pattern that may help you.

You see, he’s talking about living together in the Christian church, and he says in 4:25-5:2 that truth and love is replaced now by falsehood and bitterness— sorry, that truth and love replace falsehood and bitterness in the Christian fellowship. In the first paragraph of today, 5:3-14, light replaces darkness. And then the last paragraph today, wisdom replaces folly. I don’t know why I said folly. Folly.

Now that— I’m not sure that I fully agree with that, but it’s a help to have these paragraphs. And in particular, don’t worry about that one because we passed it now. These are the 2 paragraphs we’re going to do this morning. We’re going to tackle this paragraph which has a contrast between light and darkness and one which has a contrast between wisdom and folly.

Now even that I don’t think is enough. It just helps you to get your material ordered. If you don’t get your material ordered, you’re absolutely at sea. We’ve had appeals to unity, we’ve had appeals to maturity, We’ve had appeals to holiness and that appeal really goes on now in this appeal in chapter 5 for purity. It’s just part of holiness.

And all this section is on living together as Christians in the unity of the Spirit. That was the meaning of verse 30, wasn’t it, in chapter 4? I don’t think I brought that out as I ought. Whenever he mentions the Holy Spirit now, it is the Spirit that unites us. And I am sure that he is contrasting the unity that the Christians have with one another with what is on offer in contemporary society around us and around them.

Now that’s another very important point. You must apply this teaching in the first place to the first century. If you’ve sat in a parish Bible study, you will know that what happens in fact is that here is the precious verse that you’re studying, and people apply it immediately to themselves in the Bible study group. You see, now you can’t do that with the Bible. You must first apply the verse to the first-century world.

You must do that. Then you must say, how does it apply to the 20th-century world? You must do that, or you’re cutting a corner which in the end will not be helpful.

We must locate, in other words, what Paul is saying in his own day. Now, as I was brooding on this and going through this, I keep going back to material and wishing we’d done it better. You see, verse 28, why did verse 28 come in the middle of all this business about how to get on with one another? Not being angry with one another, not telling lies to one another, not grieving one another, not being harsh with one another. That’s the drift, isn’t it, all the way through that last paragraph?

Why then does this matter of stealing come in? Well, why? Well, it occurred to me in the car coming down this morning that that actually is a major issue in the early church. That there were lots of young Christians hyped up with expectancy of the Second Coming who refused to do any work. And you will know that from 2 Thessalonians 3, the whole chapter is about it.

They said the Lord is coming, therefore there is no point in working.

And this was a great strain on the Christian community because the Christian community tried to look after its own poor. So if you didn’t do any work, you weren’t helping the community at all. It was all done on the ground of spirituality.

Now you see, it’s that clue that is so important. Then you begin to understand why he’s saying what he’s saying.

Now we’re going to come then on to chapter 5:1-20, and I’ll read the 2 sections in turn as we come to them. But in a moment I’m going to make a creative guess. Now I may make a complete mess of it, and if you in the question time show that I have made a mess of it, like I did with the prophets in Ephesians for, then you tell me. But I want to tell you that without making a guess, you cannot expound the Bible. You have to make a guess at what was going on that made him write like this.

And I won’t do it yet, but I’m going to do it in a moment. And without it, I think that our study is largely wasted, because all we do is to say rather platitudinous things to one another, namely, don’t be guilty of fornication. I mean, I take it we knew that before we came into this room this morning.

So, I mean, I want to know why does Paul have to say that here in the Christian fellowship? You would have thought it would have been catechism teaching for the young convert. Why does he have to say it to the Christians?

Oh, well, let’s try and find out. Chapter 5, verse 1: Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children, and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. I’ll deal with that before we go on to the next paragraph. Here’s a kind of introductory word. Now this idea of the imitation of God is a fundamental idea that springs from the Sermon on the Mount, and basically what it means is this: it means that what God gives to me I must give to my neighbour.

This is basic to the Sermon on the Mount, isn’t it? So God forgives me my sins, and therefore in the Lord’s Prayer I’m told if I won’t forgive my neighbour, then I mustn’t expect God to forgive me. In other words, the thing goes like that: God says, whatever I give you, pass on. This is a great Bible, a great Bible principle, isn’t it? You see, the world says, whatever you get, hold on to.

The Bible says whatever you get, pass on. The whole Christian life is a matter of passing on what God has given to you, being a channel.

It’s so with everything, isn’t it? Hospitality, money, grace, forgiveness, love, everything. Whatever God is pouring into you, pour onto others, and you suddenly find that God is giving you more. That’s the principle, isn’t it? The world says hang on to it because you might not get any more.

And God says, pass on what you get because I’ll be giving you more.

So what has God given me? Supremely, he’s given me love, so I’m to pass it on to others.

When I was a curate, we had masses of posh ladies in Sevenoaks, and one of the poshest ladies met me in the high street and stopped me, you know, rather sort of like a policeman. And I mean, these very posh ladies, if they stopped you, they stopped you. Mr. Lucas, she said, I’m never going to forgive Mrs. So-and-so. That was the beginning of the conversation. I can’t remember how it went on.

I just never forgotten being confronted in this way. Now, she was actually a good Christian woman, this woman. This is the extraordinary thing. But there were masses of elderly Christian women who were good Christian women in the parish, but they’d never grown spiritually. They just— they understood the gospel.

There’s no growth. And that’s the kind of blockage, isn’t it, to growth, that we don’t pass on to others what God has given us. And actually, that’s why God has to make us so conscious that he’s given us a great forgiveness. Otherwise, we soon get held up here, don’t we, because other people are so atrocious.

So you see, when we begin to realise how people behave to us and what a lot it means to forgive them, then we begin to realise what God has done. Now that process goes all the way along, you see, and it goes through this passage here. What then is love? Now you can be quite sure that the ancient world had its pop stars, and they also talked incessantly about love. I pass the top 10 on my way to get my morning paper every morning.

It’s in one of the shops nearby. And so I guarantee that every time I look at the top 10, I have the foggiest idea what they are, but I can guarantee that the word love will be in at least 2 or 3 of the first 20. But of course the pop world really hasn’t got very much idea of what love means, and here it means, according to verse To what? It means self-sacrifice.

Because, you see, you get the phrase in verse 2, he gave himself up. Now that is going to control everything in this chapter. So husbands, wait for it, verse 25, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up. So that’s the principle. What he does to you, you must do to others.

So that is going to undergird the whole Christian community, this willingness to give myself up for others.

And so it’s a big shock, isn’t it, when we start talking now in verses 3 through to 14 about basic pornography and coarseness.

I’ll read it, and really it is a bit of a shock that the Christian should need this instruction. But fornication and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is fitting among saints. Let there be no filthiness, nor silly talk, nor levity, which are not fitting, but instead let there be thanksgiving. Be sure of this, that no fornicator or impure man or one who is covetous, that is an idolater— that means covetous, of course, of somebody else’s body in this context— has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for it is because of these things that the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.

I will stop there for a moment.

The essence of paganism, of course, of idolatry, is self-worship.

And since we are retreating back into paganism, it’s extremely important that we should understand it. I mean, there really hasn’t been any understanding of paganism in British culture for 100 years because we’ve inherited such a wonderful Christian culture and civilization, and therefore it’s still written into our educated culture what it is to be a Christian. But paganism is rearing its— is raising its head again, isn’t it? So we’ve got to begin to define it. Now, 2 things that paganism stands for are self-indulgence and self-worship.

I don’t need to prove that. Self-indulgence means that I talk more about my rights than my duties and so on, what I receive rather than what I give. And self-worship, well, that’s just narcissism, isn’t it? I mean, it’s very much coming into our culture with the young. As you remember, Narcissus, if you like soft C’s, or Narcissus if you prefer hard C’s, was the Greek youth that fell in love.

Well, you remember he knelt down and looked into a pond and fell in love with his own reflection.

And so narcissism is very, very common today, increasingly common. Many people say that jogging in Central Park, Washington— New York, is it— is an example of narcissism. I can’t spell it. Narcissism. That’s right, isn’t it?

In other words, it’s the perfect body, you see. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, look at me, I’m in great shape.

Many people think that much of the Mont Chorus singing is rather like that. It’s the cult of myself. Even get it in health foods, don’t you? It’s the cult of me, everything.

Now you see, that doesn’t matter a bit what it is in paganism, but the thing about this whole thing is that What Paul saw was that pagan religion only echoed pagan culture.

So what he saw in pagan religion around them was self-indulgence and self-worship. And he was frightened, you see, that this would come into the Christian church.

Now let me illustrate that in 2 ways. The pagan religion showed a lack of self-control.

And here we come to the nub, I think, of this passage, but I’ve only just got there myself, so I want you to confirm that I’m right. He starts in this paragraph by talking about the body, and then in the second paragraph about talking about the mind.

Now, in pagan religion of Paul’s day— and this, of course, you can’t get from the New Testament, you have to read about pagan religion in Paul’s day— The essence of their religion was ecstasy, and in it there was complete lack of self-control for the body. That’s why you had temple prostitution, let it all hang out. And also there was complete self— lack of self-control for the mind. You went zany, you were just caught up. That’s why you were able to do the things with your body that you did, because you weren’t thinking.

These things seem to work closely. Now I think, this is my creative guess, I think that the reason why in verses 3 to 14 Paul spends so much time on the sex sins and all that is because religion that lacks self-control will always move in that direction. That’s paganism.

And it says religion that is not under the guidance of the Spirit of God will always go towards zaniness.

And is it not amazing how non-Christian sectarianism today increasingly— you just can’t understand how people can believe what they believe. The answer is they just let their mind drop out.

Now if you have that in mind, I think these 2 paragraphs make sense. If you don’t have it in your mind, I don’t think they do make a great deal of sense. That’s what I want to prove to you.

So he’s talking here to Christians who are living together in close community, and they look over the hedge and they see the pagans having their religious service, and their religious service is full of a counterfeit love. You see, the pagans are putting on a counterfeit love— dancing, prostitution, ecstasy. You see, and so he says, now that you’re filled with the Spirit of God, what is God going to give you as a proper substitute for what paganism offers?

Are you with me? It’s very important. If you don’t get this background, you don’t come to these verses understanding what he’s getting at.

See, I mean, whyever should he say that these things like fornication must be named? Well, he’s talking about the community as a Christian and their worship together. Now, there was no self-restraint amongst the pagans, and I think we’re conscious with the youngsters today that we’ve got to be careful about this, haven’t we? It appeals to the youngsters today to get a form of Christianity which is zany.

Where your mind isn’t in control of you.

And that’s why a lot of conservative churches are not very happy with the kiss of peace. I’ve been to churches where the kiss of peace is a great opportunity for the boys to single out the girls that are worth hugging.

I mean, you know, we are so naive, aren’t we? We imagine that everybody is doing this on the purest principles, that they’re going to look for the ugliest person and hug them. Not a bit of it. Of course they’re not.

I won’t enlarge on that, John knows.

Because Jean might give me a black eye afterwards.

Yeah, well now let’s look at the text. I do hope this is going to be a help to you in your own study. It’s been a tremendous help to me to try to get this background. Now fornication, all impurity, and covetousness must not even be named.

So he says that these things are not even to be talked about.

Covetousness is the word for ruthless self-aggrandizement, and here surely in sexual terms. It also has the idea of shamelessness. So let’s keep that sense of shame and teach our children to keep that sense of shame.

It’s part of the world today, isn’t it, to be shameless? You start it, don’t you, on the nudist beach that you happen to run across when you’re on holiday in the South of France. And then after you’ve had that, you see, you’re less— you’re hardened a bit, aren’t you? And so the next thing is less shocking, and then the next thing is less shocking, and so you go on.

I mean, all the youngsters have come across this thing, even if you haven’t. So you see, he’s saying— he’s talking right at the beginning. He’s saying, see that within the Christian community you do not even talk about these things. I found this a tremendous help in 1 Corinthians 14:9 myself.

14:20, don’t be children in understanding, be babes in evil. That’s it, be babes in evil, you see. At a certain time in my ministry, it was all the craze to do counselling courses. It came partly from— I mean, I think the Americans are ahead of us in counselling, but a lot of our colleges got tied up with counselling, and a lot of youngsters went in for counselling ministry. And some of the material in this counselling ministry was really bizarre, and some of it was just plain filthy.

Anyway, you had to dig into all of this in order to be able to counsel your neighbour about all his problems. I don’t think that’s healthy.

I think that Paul says be a babe in evil, he really means that. He says don’t feel you’ve got to be sophisticated. So that’s the first thing, don’t name it. And then verse 4, let all men know this conversation. This is, alas, always the conversation, isn’t it, of the rugby club or the student body.

I don’t think— I don’t know about women, women may not do it, but men do. Verse 4, and he says there’s got to be none of that amongst you. Now that must assume that In paganism there was no such self-restraint because all this had been baptised, so to speak, into their worship of God. And so pagans could be religious and filthy-mouthed at the same time. And the pagans, sophisticated pagans, were telling the Christians that they were far too narrow-minded.

And they were beginning to shake the Christians as to their convictions, which is why in verses 5 and 6 Paul underlines what everybody already knows. Be sure of this, that no fornicator or impure man or one who is an idolater has an inheritance. Now they knew that, but you see, Paul says, I want you to be sure of it.

One of the battles you’re going to have to face in your life is to believe your beliefs.

Does that make sense to you? You see, that’s what Satan wants to come and wobble those. You’ve got to believe them. Is that right? You’ve got to believe them.

And you’ve got to doubt your doubts.

Because Satan loves popping those in. So if you’re sure that there is a hell and that people are on the way to hell, go on believing it because the church doesn’t believe it any longer.

So you’re going to be shaken. You’re certain to get a vicar or minister soon who doesn’t believe it. So you’ve just got to go on believing your beliefs. If you don’t, you will say, well, everybody behaves like this, God can’t be sending them all to hell.

And the answer is God is sending them all to hell if they don’t repent. Do you believe that? That’s quite a thing to ask yourself, isn’t it?

Very much needs saying today in the churches. Be sure that it is so. God has told you. He doesn’t lie. God is a God of love, but he’s made it perfectly plain that there’s no inheritance for people like this in his kingdom.

Don’t be shaken by your neighbours across the hedge.

Let no one deceive you with empty words. They are empty words. For it is because of these things that the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Yes, it is so. Don’t be deceived.

A dear lady caught me yesterday after the service. She was a Christian Scientist. She was over here for just a week to see her sister, and her sister had got a brother who’d got a friend who said that she was coming to St. Helen’s. Don’t ask me why. So she’d come, and like a silly idiot, I said something about Christian Science in my sermon without thinking, and she immediately was waiting for me like a sort of Well, anyhow, she was waiting for me at the back.

She was absolutely sweet, and it took all the wind out of my sails. I was expecting to be ticked off. She couldn’t have been sweeter. And what she wanted to say to me is, we’re all saying the same thing. And when she explained the Christian faith, I couldn’t see any difference to what I believed.

And I just had to go on saying to her, well, we’re not saying the same thing. And then gradually, as I just pressed a bit, it became obvious that we weren’t.

And see, actually what she criticised me for saying was actually right. They don’t believe there is evil because they believe a good God created everything, and a good God can’t create evil, so there isn’t any evil. Well, that’s all I’d said. It took us about a quarter of an hour to get there. And she said, oh yes, I believe in Jesus Christ.

But as we got further, she said, no, Jesus and Christ aren’t the same. The Christ came upon Jesus, but now the Christ is wherever we have a wherever you preach and wherever anybody else preaches. So we began to see we were in a hopeless muddle. But at first it sounded just as though she was talking Christianity. Terribly deceptive, isn’t it?

Terribly deceptive, but there’s no power in Christian Science. You look at the statistics, they’re very interesting. The Christian Scientists are going down like a rocket because there’s no power in it.

And there’s no real Christianity in it.

So don’t associate with them. That means not don’t have them to a cup of tea. It means don’t partake in their sins. For once you were darkness— this is interesting, that, isn’t it? Not once you were in darkness, but you were darkness.

Darkness had got into you. Now you are not just in the light, but light has got into you. Walk as children of light. That’s another characteristic Pauline incentive. Be what you are.

See, very, very important Christian psychology, this, by the way. You are light now. That’s why if you behave as darkness behaves, you twist yourself inside out. You foul yourself up psychologically. That’s why when the Christian sins, he’s so miserable, because he is light behaving like darkness.

Whereas before, when we were not Christians, we could behave like that and it didn’t worry us. So the pagan goes on cheating and lying and fornicating and being as merry as a grig on the golf course. The Christian has a breakdown.

One of the reasons Christians have breakdowns is that they are light in the Lord, but they’re behaving like darkness. So then they go flop.

See, that’s essential to healthy mental— if you want mental health and physical health, especially mental health, be what you are. You are a Christian, you’re in the light, the light’s in you. Well then don’t behave in opposite to that or you’ll— it’s like trying to cut a log of wood outside in the backyard when you’re hitting across the grain.

Ah, you see, verse 9 is so crucial, isn’t it? What do you think verse 9 means? Why does he say the fruit of the light is in this? Someone opine. I know it’s very unfair to ask you that when you just had breakfast and you haven’t thought about it, and I’ve been thinking about it for the last 24 hours.

Why does he say that?

The fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.

Fruit of the Spirit, yes. But why, why does he say fruit of light and not fruit of the Spirit?

Yes, but I mean, he’s making an allusion to the first century. Let’s apply this to the first century. What was the mark of light in pagan religion?

Knowledge without— knowledge without morality, you see. Wasn’t it? He’s— you see, enlightenment to the pagan essentially is, is being zapped. It’s, it’s having a vision. It’s getting a knowledge of God.

Whether it actually means you’re a nicer neighbour or a better parent or a more obedient child, it’s got nothing to do with it. That’s the culture he’s living in. Enlightenment to the pagan is all to do with, I’m— I’ve, I’ve got the knowledge. I mean, you know this because of Hinduism. You see, the holy man in Hinduism, the holy man you sit seeing by the— sitting there in the mud in India, is actually thoroughly bad-tempered if you don’t give him enough money.

He’s naked and dirty and horrid and ignorant, and he’s called a holy man. And he’ll put a curse on you if you don’t give him money. In other words, he’s only a holy man because he’s been enlightened, he’s been zapped. He’s been to the temple. But he’s not holy.

We cannot get this right because our whole tradition, you see, is impregnated with the fact that religion and righteousness must go together. We’ve had that in our country, thank God, for 1,000 years. But step outside this country and religion and righteousness don’t go together. You can be thoroughly religious but not righteous. So you can be enlightened but you don’t have to be moral.

You can go straight from the temple where you’ve been zapped and steal in the supermarket in the ancient world. Nobody thinks anything. That’s exactly what they do at Marks Spencer’s, isn’t it? All these Muslims and co. coming straight over from Saudi. You see, they’re mostly religious people, go straight to the temple afterwards.

And they’re offended if you say that that is something wrong. I mean, all that, as far as they’re concerned, is that they’ve been caught.

I don’t think it’s wrong. And there they are hanging on the shelves. Why shouldn’t they take them?

Now that’s paganism again, you see. So what Paul can’t help saying— it— he’s now a Christian. The fruit of enlightenment is seen in what is good and right and true. So don’t tell me you’re enlightened if you haven’t got those things, Paul says. He’s making a contrast all the time with this culture.

And now he begins, I think, to move into the mind as well. Try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness. Darkness, expose them. It’s a shame even to speak of the things that they do in secret.

When anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible. Everything that becomes visible is light. A difficult phrase, but I think meaning that as the light of Christianity comes upon these dark things, it not only shows them to be dark but begins to transform them into the light.

So don’t sleep, Christian. You’re risen now, you should be walking in the light.

So what he’s talking about is a group of Christians here who’ve been brought into the light, but there’s terrific pressure to pull them into the pagan world. And the pagan world is careless about morals, you see, that’s all it is, careless about it. And the pagan world’s religion is a religion of ecstasy. And ecstasy and immorality go very closely together.

So then what do you think the kids are doing when they’re bumping all night with hard rock and things? What does it lead to, do you think? It leads straight to bed, doesn’t it? Where else do you think it leads to? It can’t lead anywhere else, can it?

If you’ve been doing that all night.

See, so why should we want that to come into the Christian church? Well, we don’t want the youngsters to think they are as dull as ditchwater. They’re always— they think St. Helen’s is thoroughly inhibited, and when they’re at Tegeserel Bay, they’ll have a great time. Fortunately, Hugh is just as inhibited as I am, so if I’m run over by a bus tomorrow, it won’t happen. But, you know, they— you see, they say the trouble with St. Helen’s is so academic.

They’re always trying to make you do Bible study and things. Why is it? Because we’re wanting to say that a controlled mind leads to a controlled body, which means that I can live in the light with Jesus Christ but still live a moral and upright and pure and true life, which is going to be jolly difficult.

So I think we move on from the Bible. Let’s move on now because time’s running away, isn’t it? It’s getting like a scalded cat. In a pagan religion there are no absolutes, so gods commit adultery and gods have have licences. So Paul has to stress it hard.

That’s right, I’d forgotten that. Thanks, Vijay. I don’t know, of course, your religions of the East. I mean, that’s true of the Greek gods, isn’t it? The Greek gods, they cheated and stole each other’s wives and had a great old time like that.

Even the idols, that these are our main organs and things like that, it is absolutely Yeah, I mean, yes, Vijay has opened my eyes and told the General Synod this the other day. I mean, you see, it was in the National Geographic magazine for last January. I don’t know if you saw it, but a most admiring article on English religion. And there were the idols being manufactured, which is simply the male organ. And there it is in the hundreds on the floor, and that’s what you worship.

And it wasn’t called that in the article, because if you call that in the article in a Western magazine, of course people then would write to you. It wasn’t called that, I’ve forgotten what it was called. I mean, there you could see it in front of you. Extraordinary. That’s it, thank you, you know the words.

And so we were being told how religious these people were. We saw these old ducks walking up and down to the river and the men who give their whole lives to God and all this. But nobody actually told us what the coloured picture was about until you put your spectacles on and looked. Then you got the shock of your life. You see, right at the heart of religion is immorality.

You’ve got to an extraordinary time when a magazine as intelligent as the National Geographic can do that, can’t you, and think you can get away with it because nobody’s going to notice.

What— what is all creeping back on us? And if we’re not shocked in this generation, the next generation will say, Oh well, you’ve accepted that. There’s nothing— everybody accepts that because we don’t speak up. Well, Vijay did speak up. If you want to know what he said to General Synod, it’s not suitable for public conversation.

You’ll have to ask him in private.

Oh, Mr. Bannon.

See, why are all the bishops and people shocked by this? Because they don’t believe the New Testament is the reason. They actually think it’s going to happen to us. It happens to them out there in the mission field, but it won’t happen to us. It will happen to us.

If we go into paganism, then we shall find that these things will invade the Christian church.

Right, now let’s look at 15 to 20.

Now this isn’t new. I think it’s been going on all the way through verses 3 onwards. I wonder if you noticed these great incentives, these great reasons, you see. Paul’s head is always screwed on. When Paul was preaching, you couldn’t leave your head with your hat outside in the porch as you can in some churches today.

See, he says fornication must not be named. Why? It is not fitting.

Fornication leads to hell, be sure of it. Don’t let people deceive you.

This is why you don’t do it, because once you were, now you are. So he’s been talking all the time about using your mind, and now we really come to it in verse 15. Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of the time because the days are evil. Therefore do not be a fool, but understand what the will of the Lord is. Right.

Not unwise, not a fool. Now who is he talking to? He’s talking to Christians in a pagan culture. He’s talking to Christians in community together about their spirituality. And he says, look across the hedge and see how the religious people in paganism behave.

They behave like fools.

They’ve left their minds behind. The essential mark of pagan religion is that it is senseless. Senseless.

I think I must say what’s in my mind here. I feel this comes into Christianity through extreme charismatic Christianity, which allows the mind to go. And I think this foolish business about speaking in tongues, as though tongues is an ecstatic utterance, is just an example of it. I think there’s really very little evidence in the New Testament that’s what tongues were. New Testament, I think, makes it clear that they were languages.

The translation ecstatic utterance in the NEB has got no justification in the Greek. The Greek simply has the word glossa. The Greek word glossa means the organ in my mouth and a language. It can’t mean anything else.

That’s all it means in Greek. Of these early Christians, the gift the early Christians had was to speak in other languages, which was a sign to them that the gospel was for the whole world. Now once people start talking gibberish and say that that is Christianity, they are taking one step towards folly.

Now you notice that in some of them. I remember one of the fellows who’s come right back from it now, thank God. He’s in the north, but he’s a grand man today, and some of you would know him well. But he got caught up in the full gospel people about 10 years ago And he’d been converted at St. Helen’s. And he came into the office one day, and Janet said to me later that day— some of you remember Janet Pryde, Janet was very sharp— Janet said to me one day, I think so-and-so’s gone soft in the head, hasn’t he, Dick?

I said, he looked rather like that to me too, Janet. He had a glassy eye, watery glassy eye, talking rubbish. It went on for about a year, and then he went north for his business, and he, he came right back because he got into evangelism.

And finding himself the only Christian businessman in the city where he was, I think he got right into Christian work, started trying to win people, and sanity soon came back. It came back in him, and he told everybody in, in London, the full gospel people, that all this was nonsense. And his eyes now clear, I’m glad to say, and his mind has stuck on again. But I never forget Janet saying that to me with amazement. She wasn’t trying to be funny.

She said, I think he’s gone soft. It’s exactly what he had done. And in fact, there were one or two people in that day who went that way, and I honestly wondered if they would hold their jobs.

Because if they talked about their jobs as they were talking about their Christianity, there’s no way anybody would employ them.

Because they would talk in such a silly way, such a baby way.

Well, personally, I— it frightens me, this. You may not agree with me on this, and we don’t all have to be agreed about everything in the partnership, fortunately.

But, um, it frightens me, this kind of— this new, this new, um, senseless ecstasy which has got nothing to do with living an upright and true life. It’s hard enough to do that without the problem of these people who go around, uh, without, um, their heads screwed on.

Nobody challenges them. They’re seniors and they’re fearful. No challenge. Everybody’s wanting power, wanting to get on, and they’re easy with that because there’s no competition. Thank you, brother.

It’s very helpful. I think there’s a lot in that. Now let’s do 18, and, uh, we’ll be— I think this will prove my point here. Now let’s try and get verse 18 in its context.

Let’s just spend a little time on this great and, great and vital verse.

Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery. There’s no doubt whatever that that must mean that in pagan religion there was ecstasy and there was immorality and there was drunkenness.

It was felt that you were closer to God if you lost control of yourself. Whereas, you remember, the fruit of the Spirit is self-control. Christianity stands out against all other religions as calling self-control the mark of being filled with the Spirit.

Now he tells us here to be filled with the Spirit and not with drunkenness.

And some charismatic teachers 15, 20 years ago— I don’t think it’s said so often since, partly I think because it’s been rebutted— taught that this verse meant that if you were filled with the Spirit, you would also be filled with the ecstasy. In other words, they said, you were once in the world and therefore you got on the liquor. Now get on the Spirit and you will be zapped, but zapped in the right way. Now that’s a total misreading of this verse, total misreading of it. When he says we’re to be filled with the Spirit, he does not mean that that will make us wobbly on our pins and woozy in our heads.

In fact, you can see this if you look at the exact parallel in Tweedledee, Colossians 3:16.

I think this is a very, very interesting pair. If you’ve never made this parallel, take it into the garden with you after your coffee and meditate on it. It’s a very important parallel. Most of you will know it well, but it’s well worth looking at again. Verse 16 of chapter 3 is in exactly the same context, saying exactly the same sort of things.

And he says, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom and psalms and hymns and so on, with thankfulness. Back to 4:18 of Ephesians, be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. So to be filled with the Spirit and to let the word of God dwell in you richly are to Paul the same thing, the two sides of the same coin rather. They’re not exactly the same thing. I shall be filled with the Spirit as I’m filled with the Word, and the man who is filled with the Word of God will be filled with the Spirit of God.

Now that tells me straight away that to be filled with the Word is not an irrational thing, doesn’t it?

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