Good News, Bad News

1. we are searching Ephesians 4 to discover the way church is supposed to be:
§ 9/18 & 25 we explored the strategic importance of unity
§ 10/2 I spoke about service
§ 10/9 I spoke about the spiritual growth that results from our service about growth – ministry leads to maturity
§ today – I’m speaking about the bad news that must precede the good news

Sing “Open Our Eyes, Lord” led by WTeam

2. read Ephesians 4:17-24

3. 4:17-19 is the bad news – 4:20-24 is the good news

4. we’ve all heard good news/bad news jokes…
§ doctor – I have some good news & some bad news
§ patient – what’s the good news
§ doctor – the good news is the tests you took showed
that you have 24 hrs to live
§ patient – that the good news? Well what’s the bad
news?
§ doctor – the bad news is I forgot to call you
yesterday!

§ gallery owner – I have some good news & some bad neww
§ artist – what’s the good news
§ gallery owner – the good news is a man came in yesterday asking if the price of your paintings would go up after you die, when I told him they would he bought every one of your paintings
§ artist – that’s great, what’s the bad news?
§ gallery owner – the bad news is that the man was your doctor

§ lawyer – I have some good news & some bad news
§ client – well give me the bad news first
§ lawyer – the bad is the DNA tests showed that it was you blood they found all over the crime scene
§ client – oh no, I’m ruined, what the good news?
§ lawyer – the good news is your cholesterol is down to 130

5. imagine a good news/bad news conversation between God & humanity –
§ God – I have some good news & some bad news
§ Humanity – well give me the bad news first
§ God – your thinking is futile, your understanding is darkened, your separated from my life, your ignorant, your heart has hardened, you’ve lost your sensitivity, you’ve given yourself over to sensuality, impurity & lust
§ Humanity – sounds terminal, what’s the good news?
§ God – Christ, Jesus Christ, is the good news, he’s made a way for you to leave all that behind, be renewed in your minds, put on a new self, and become like God-like in true righteousness & holiness

6. today, the bad news of vs. 17-19; next week the good news of vs. 20-24

the bad news (17-19, 22)
1. these read like pretty harsh words. Paul lays it on pretty heavy. These are not the seminal ideas for the latest Christian bestseller. The Prayer of Jabez & The Purpose-Driven Life they’re not.
2. But what Paul writes here he writes in the Lord. These words come from Christ & saddles up to the way he sees the world. The Message - and so I insist--and God backs me up on this. What follows is God’s assessment of the human condition.

3. Paul tells the church in Ephesus that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do. What he means is – quit living your life without God. And then he describes a life without God, the bad news.

4. read vs. 17-19. Not all people without God live exactly like this. But the description is generally true of cultures & societies & peoples who live God-less lives.

5. I want you to notice the downward spiral that Paul depicts – from hardness to darkness to deadness to impurity.

Hardness (18):
1. hardening of their hearts. The word for hardness is poros & means a stone harder than marble. Or, a heart of stone. In the Bible heart means your mind, will & emotions. The “core” you. Hardened, petrified.

2. these people are unwilling to respond to God’s truth. They’ve said “no” to God too many times. They’ve taken life into their own hands. They live as if God doesn’t exist.

Darkness (18):
1. darkened in their understanding. Darkness follows hardness. There is an absence of spiritual sensitivity. There is an inability to discern true spiritual reality. The truth that is in Jesus (21) is lost upon these people.

2. their understanding, their mind, their intellect, their spiritual radar picks up nothing of God, of Christ, of his Light.

Deadness (18):
1. separated from the life of God. Death follows darkness & hardness. These people are spiritually dead. Cut off from, unable to dial into the life & vitality of God.

2. what a terrible thing to be separated by the life of God. This is our word zoe life – God’s life, eternal life, true spiritual life. Wholeness, joy, peace.

3. this kind of separation from the life of God makes anything possible – spousal abuse, sexual abuse or suicide bombings or lying, cheating, deceiving or the killing fields of Cambodia & the Holocaust of WWII or the racism which surfaced at Canby High School this past week.

Impurity (19):
1. last comes impurity. John Stott prefers the word ‘recklessness’ in his commentary. Having lost all sensitivity means having lost the ability to feel. Hardness, darkness & deadness lead to a callousness & numbness of soul. These people simply no longer care.

2. 3 of the words in 4:19 have to do with our sexuality:
§ sensuality – uncontrolled sexuality
§ impurity – the opposite of sexual purity
§ lust – the desire to have more & more sex anyway it can be had, wherever it can be found

3. I want to elaborate upon sensuality, impurity & lust by talking about pornography. Pornography is running rampant & out of control in our society. Bear with me.

Pornography
1. 3 weeks ago a number of churches in our country participated in a National Porn Sunday – organized by the creators of the web site www.xxxchurch.com. The point of National Porn Sunday - confront the elephant in the pews. In other words, followers of Christ are not immune to become addicted to pornography.

2. some financial statistics:
§ pornography is a $57 billion industry world-wide with $12 billion of that coming from the US
§ US porn revenue is larger than all combined revenues of all professional football, baseball & basketball franchises
§ US porn revenue exceeds the combined revenues of ABC, CBS & NBC ($6.2billion)
§ Child porn generates $3 billion annually in this country & that number is rapidly growing

3. some internet porn statistics:
§ 4.2 million pornographic websites, 12% of total
§ 68 million daily search engine requests for porn – 25% of all requests
§ 1.5 billion monthly porn downloads between friends – 35% of all downloads
§ 89% of all youth who receive sexual solicitations come in chat rooms

4. user statistics:
§ 40 million Americans regularly view internet pornography – that’s 1 out of every 7 people in our country
§ 20% of men & 13% of women admit to accessing porn at work
§ the breakdown between male & female visitors to porn sites comes out at 72% men & 28% women
§ Focus on the Family research points out that 20% of all pastors have a pornography issue
5. in this country we are experiencing a growing number of teens & adults, male & female who are becoming addicted to pornography.

6. psychologists have identified a 5-step pattern to pornographic addiction:
§ exposure
§ addiction – keep coming back for more & more in order to get new sexual highs – experiences of emotional or sexual arousal get locked in the brain by the chemical epinephrine & become impossible to erase
§ escalation – the search for more exotic material
§ desensitization – shocking & disgusting behavior is no longer avoided but sought out
§ acting out fantasies – people do what they have viewed

Biblical perspective
1. we learn in the book of Genesis that God created both men & women in his image as sexual beings. But once sin entered into the world, sex was misused & abused.

2. pornography attacks the dignity of men, women & children created in God’s image. Pornography also distorts God’s good gift of sex, which God intends to be only shared within the bonds of marriage.

3. the following practices are spoken against in Scripture. Often these are linked to pornography – adultery, bestiality, homosexuality, incest & prostitution.

4. scripture teaches us to celebrate our sexuality in marriage. Premarital & extramarital sex lie outside of God’s will.

5. as Christ-followers ours is to work to keep ourselves pure. We are to flee sexual immorality. I believe our responsibility goes beyond our own personal morality. We must reach out to those entrapped, in this case, in pornography.

6. what can we do?
§ parents need to teach a biblical view of sex to their children
§ we need to evaluate our exposure to media with inappropriate sexual themes (magazines, TV, videos, DVDs, websites, music, etc)
§ the church should quit blushing about sex, teach what the Bible teaches about sex & make its fellowships a safe place to share struggles & ask for help
§ maybe some of us need to take up the fight against pornography in our society
§ encourage our federal & state representatives to pass legislation against the distribution of pornography

7. if you have a struggle with pornography here’s some steps you can take:
§ be honest with yourself – admit your problem
§ confide in a trusted friend who can hold you accountable
§ I would be willing to meet with you – Jeff would
§ Check out www.xxxchurch.com for helpful resources
§ The elders would be happy to pray with you – or we could arrange for a team of women to pray

8. don’t be shamed, don’t stay in hiding, don’t stay in denial. God loves you just the way you are. God is waiting to help you. God is waiting to give you good news!