Ephesians 5:1-7 • The Smell of Jesus

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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)

Would you open your bibles this morning to Ephesians chapter 5 as we will be looking at verses 1-8 of Ephesians 5?
For those of you who are paying very close attention, that's going to seem wrong, because you're ready for us to be in Ephesians 4.
But in a world of everything's connected to everything, because we had that snow Sunday where you slept in, remember?
You did get to sleep in.
Remember?
[Laughter]
A consequence of that snow Sunday is it moved the sermon such that we were going to be breaking up the marriage series that we have for March if we're just going through the book of Ephesians.
So that March can be devoted to marriage, that's the goal, and not be broken up by Palm Sunday and Easter, we're going to move forward into Ephesians a little bit so we can keep those messages together.
So just in your minds, March is for marriage, so marriage and family messages as we look at that portion of Ephesians in days to come.
But for now, Ephesians chapter 5.
And if you've been paying really quos--, close attention, you have recognized that the title for today's message is "The Smell of Jesus."
Now, that is not original to me.
That title was actually put together by a friend of mine, a pastor in a town, and there was a billboard on a major street announcing the title of his messages every week.
And he put that title on the billboard, "The Smell of Jesus," and the one most to object was his wife.
She said, "You can't talk about the smell of Jesus.
You can talk of the fragrance of Jesus or the aroma of Jesus.
If you talk about the smell, you sound like you're talking about gym socks, not Jesus."
[Laughter]
My friend replied, "You know what?
If that title gets half as much attention as you're giving it, we're going to have a packed house on Sunday."
[Laughter]
"So I'm leaving it the same."
[Laughter]
Actually, the title is meant to be offensive.
Because what is described in this portion of Ephesians is even more offensive.
The smell of Jesus is the smell of sacrifice.
If you were a Jew in an ancient society, then temple and town would regularly smell like the fires of sacrifice.
But God is saying here through His apostle that it was Christ's own sacrifice that was a sweet savor to God, as He delighted to save us by the work of His Son.
But now we're told one more thing:  that that smell of sacrifice is to be on us too.
We're the cologne of Jesus.
Not Axe, not Old Spice, not Irish Spring.
But rather the sacrifice of Jesus is to be what characterizes us so that the world notes in us His character, His care.
Let's stand and read of Christ's work in our behalf and what it means for us.
Ephesians 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.
But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints.
Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.
For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous, that is, an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.
Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.
Therefore do not become partners with them; for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.
Walk as children of light."
Let's pray together.
>>> Father, we pray for Your mercy this day.
We cannot deal with these topics without there being cause for virtually every one of us to hang our heads.
But we are here to hear the gospel, to be convicted of sin, yes, but also to be convinced of grace.
For it is Your word that would change us, the word that washes us and strengthens us and equips us for the life of godliness to which you call us that the world about us might long for the Savior because they have seen in us such love and joy that they long for it.
Away from the passions of this world, draw them and us, that we walking with Christ might know the beauty and the joy and the peace that You intend.
Grant us we pray this, in Jesus' name.
Amen.
>>> Please be seated.
I was at a Thai restaurant in Malaysia, talking to a pastor friend there about the progress of the gospel in his nation.
In Malaysia, which is predominately Muslim, it is a crime to convert.
And so the progress of the gospel is challenged there.
And we were talking with fervency and earnestness of how we might minister in that particular nation.
And as we talked, I kept getting distracted.
For a while, I couldn't quite think why.
And then I began to have a certain awareness of an odor in the room of this Thai restaurant.
And I began to look around and I noticed that there was a young woman in the corner of the restaurant who was shelling sweet peas into a basket.
And suddenly when I saw what it was, that odor transported me to a back porch and the swing that was there under a shade tree where my grandmother would sit to shell sweet peas.
And that odor suddenly put me on that swing with her, looking out over the garden where the butterflies and the bumblebees worked, all framed by the fields where the milk cows mooed and the watering ponds where the bullfrogs croaked.
Just the smell took me from where I was across oceans and continents and time to a distant and dear place, the place of my home, the place of my identity.
And the apostle Paul is doing something very similar here for those who are at Ephesus.
He is talking to Christians who know a culture very much like our own:  a culture that is rampant with sensuality and sexual images that tempt us and try us and pull us away from the lives that even we want to live.
It's not a mystery to the apostle Paul that those that he is talking to in the church at Ephesus would face terrible strains upon marriage, upon purity, upon holiness.
We think that the internet or the allures of our time are something new.
Listen, if you think it's tough now, for the people of Ephesus, the pornographic images were put on billboards down major streets.
It was major commerce and major business that everybody was appealed to.
It wasn't just pagan people of low means.
I mean, even the religious elite sought to bring people into the temple by rituals of sexual fantasy.
It was hard to be a Christian and to be pure.
And so the apostle Paul says, "Listen, walk in love by remembering Christ, that fragrant offering, that sacrifice to God."
And maybe that seems odd, but if you were a Jew, if that had been your background, then temple and town would just all the time be filled with the smell of sacrifice.
It was, it would be the smell of home.
If you've walked down a street in the wintertime and smelled the barbeque of some brave soul out trying to, you know, cook a meal and you suddenly even in midwinter are taken to a summer picnic by that smell, you know what the apostle is doing.
He's saying, "Remember what's good.
Remember where the warmth of your heart is.
Remember your identity and let it take you from a distance from God back to nearness with Him."
The way in which the apostle is drawing people back in closeness to God from a place of temptation is first simply telling them, "Savor your identity."
Verse 1, "Be imitators of God, as beloved children."
The words echo so much for us the children's song, "Behold, what manner of love that He has lavished upon us that we should be called the children of God."
And that is what you are.
The message from 1 John is even John, here with Paul now, is uniting to say, "You are the beloved of God."
Paul has said it here already in Ephesians 2 in verse 19.
"You are no longer strangers and aliens but you're fellow citizens with God's people, even members of the household of God."
If you're part of the family now, if you are precious to God, it means that He holds you, that He loves you.
He knows the worst.
He knows the bad.
He knows the temptations, and yet you are God's beloved.
I can remember the first time that it happened to me.
I'd been told that it might happen.
In visiting the Holy Land that there in the crowded marketplace in Jerusalem, a little child of four or five hit my leg and kind of ran past me, running through the streets, trying to catch up to a parent, saying, "Abba, Abba, Abba," trying to get the attention of his father.
And it was the reminder of scripture that we have been given a spirit of sonship whereby we are able to cry out to God, "Abba, Father," Daddy, Daddy, knowing that we are the beloved.
And that's meant to draw us close to Him, to recognize that He has not turned away from us because He knows things about us.
I don't know if you've paid much attention to the 200 girls who have been kidnapped by Boko Haram in northern Nigeria.
This past week, there was another effort being pushed by their parents, many of them Christian parents, to renew the awareness of the government to go after their girls.
In some ways, that's been surprising to those who kidnapped, because the culture says if you sexually violate those girls, if you force them into marriage, then they will be unacceptable to their families anymore.
It's a way of shaming and disintegrating a family.
Shaming and disintegrating a culture is to take their children away.
But it was amazing to see these Christian parents reflecting the thought of their own God to say to the girls even as they are saying to the captors, "It does not matter what you have done or what you have been done to, or what has been done to you; you are mine."
I watched a father hold up the picture of his daughter and say, "This is my daughter.
Bring back our girl.
She is mine."
It's what Jesus has said to His people.
It's what Paul has said for the Savior.
You may have been in the distant country.
You may have done wrong.
It may have been done to you.
But God has said through Jesus Christ, "You are the beloved."
And it is that reality of our relationship with God that is meant to draw us back to nearness with Him.
The second verse talks about not only our identity but how our identity is supposed to lead us.
We're not just to remember who we are:  Who we are is to lead us to God.
Verse 2, "Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us."
I hope you recognize there's a wonderful order in which these words are being said.
It's the reflection of verse 1 again:  "Be imitators of God, as beloved children.
Walk in love, as you have been loved."
The reason these verses are so lovely is they are not stated in the reverse.
God does not say, "I will love you after you have walked with Him."
He doesn't say, "Walk with Me and then I'll love you."
Always the relationship comes first.
It's an identity that is established in an activity of the Christian.
It is not activity that establishes our identity.
We are made right with God by faith in what Christ has done.
And what that means is God is not saying, "You get your life straightened out; you get everything fixed; you walk with Me and then I'll love you."
He is saying, "You come to Me.
You are Mine.
And when you know the goodness and the security and the love of My embrace, you'll want to walk with Me."
The reality is even in the church we confuse our who and our do, right?
We think what we do will establish who we are, but the gospel says who we are establishes what we do.
And I know that's a familiar refrain to you, but it changes absolutely everything in the Christian life when we recognize that what we do is a result of who we are and who we are is not a result of what we do.
There was a time in Kathy's and my life when these truths of the gospel began to affect us in more profound ways than they had before.
It's not that we couldn't answer kind of on a test somewhere or write out the facts of the gospel.
But there was something in the DNA of our own upbringing, of our own raising, that we recognized was not consistent with the way we were addressing our children and what we believed about the gospel.
There was a time in my life, even as an adult, that I would say something like this to my oldest son.
I would say, "Colin, you're a bad boy because you did that."
Now, it's easy to say, but I want you to think biblically about what I just said.
"You're a bad boy because you did a bad thing."
In which case his activity establishes his identity.
What he did established who he was.
That's not the gospel.
The gospel is the reverse in which who we are establishes what we do.
W--, it may strike you as silly, but Kathy and I put ourselves under a discipline of saying to our children, even in times of correction, things like this:  "Colin, don't do that.
You're my son, and I love you.
I want what you do to be based upon who you are.
I don't want your sense of who you are to be based upon what you do."
The gospel is saying, "You are made right by what God has done, not by what you do."
Put your faith in that and let that identity steer you into the activity.
It's not just for children.
It affects all of us at every phase of life.
I think about marriage relationships.
When Kathy and I are in tension with one another, yes, it does happen.
[Laughter]
And, you know, I'm of the generation where, you know, a western male, you know, my heroes are John Wayne or Harrison Ford, which means, you know, if I'm upset I've got two responses that I can turn to.
I can get really mad.
Well, I can't do that, because I'm a preacher.
[Laughter]
So the other alternative is I can get really quiet.
She'll know what she did.
[Laughter]
In which case, what I'm doing is I'm treated her according to her actions.
But biblically, she is an heir together with me of the grace of life.
We are in a covenant relationship.
That is what establishes our identity, which means there are things to work through, yes, but we work them through on the basis of the covenant that we are in with love and respect for one another.
Not on the basis of the actions of disappointment:  on the basis of the reality of we are drawn together into a covenant and we are treating each other according to that, not on the basis of the activity.
Who we are establishes what we do.
What we do does not establish who we are.
And that reality of the covenant is what the apostle is now going to use to drive our thinking into the most difficult areas of Christian experience as he now begins to talk about what it means, not just to savor your identity but to savor your pure--, purity.
You know these words.
Verse 3, "But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints."
You should recognize that where verse 2 began, "Walk in love," is now in context and contrast with where verse 3 begins, which is, "But sexual immorality and all impurity must not even be named among you."
A few observations at just seeing these words in this context.
The opposite of immorality in this passage, the opposite of immorality is not morality but love.
Why would the apostle not say the opposite of immorality is morality in Ephesian culture?
Because in Ephesian culture, if morality is simply being described by social convention, by what's acceptable in the culture, then everything goes.
Instead, what he is saying is, "You are not called to immorality but to love," which is saying that immorality is by definition in this context taking advantage or using another for self.
That love is the opposite of immorality.
Now, that, of course, excludes some obvious sins if we're going to avoid this immorality:  affairs, pornography, assault, sexual expression outside of marriage.
But if we're defining immorality as lovelessness, then we also should understand that this lovelessness is forced or selfish love, even inside of marriage.
Simply because the culture accepts it, the apostle is not going to accept it.
Immorality is using anybody else's body or their passions or their insecurities for the sake of self.
Which ultimately the apostle is saying even another person's consent does not make it moral, because the believer is to be motivated primarily for the spiritual good of another, for them to understand their preciousness to God, for them to be maintained in relationship with God, so that what we are doing in our relationships as we are caring for others is caring for them.
Well, what's the example?
The example he's already said:  "As Christ loved us and gave himself up for us."
What's curious here is not only is the apostle saying the opposite of immorality is not morality but love, he is saying the antidote to immorality is not strength, "I'll just resolve to do better; I'll just be stronger."
The antidote to immorality is not strength but sacrifice.
To yield, to give one's self for the sake of another.
It's Luther's theology of the cross.
Where Martin Luther said that a true follower of Christ, to be like Christ, we must also sacrifice ourselves for the sins of others.
That to some extent, we give of ourselves so that the reason that I would not engage in pornography is not just because I know it deadens my own senses or may damage my marriage or become addictive to me, but I'm actually thinking about the impact upon those who are being consumed by the customers of pornography, who are in sexual slavery, who are being made to do things that no one in their right mind would want to be in.
To be put in that position by my observation, by my money, by my facilitation.
The concern is not just for me but just for others as well.
The reason that I turn away from an affair is not just because it won't hurt my family but because I'm thinking about the other person and their family.
The reason that in dating life I'm concerned for sexual purity is not just to keep myself pure but because I'm aware for a Christian brother or sister that they themselves, at some point, if God's planned it right, if God has planned it according to His plan, that they will be in a relationship with someone else and that part of the union of an early marriage life is people in innocence discovering sexual expression in trust with one another.
And that to take somebody away from that is actually to hurt their ability to be united as God intended.
The whole notion in our culture today that regardless of what the Bachelor or the Bachelorette says, that we're going to find out if we're sexually compatible before marriage so that we'll find out if we're sexually compatible in marriage is ridiculous.
There is no study that confirms that.
Every study says that if you're sexually active before marriage, you end up in the comparison mode with other people and you end up in some ways questioning the relationship you're in now that you're in it.
It doesn't stay the same.
It's damaging before you even get there, not just for yourself.
The sacrifice of Christ means I'm thinking of the other person too.
That how I dress and how I behave:  All those things are part of my responsibility not just for me but for the other person, because I'm called to walk as Christ did in sacrifice for others.
Purity is actually part of mission.
We know that in the ancient Roman world, Christianity spread so rapidly in some ways because the Romans themselves had grown so sick of their own profanity and obscenities.
And they looked at Christians as those who, in all their innocence and naivety and seeming kind of non-sophistication, had glorious, wonderful families.
And there was something deep in the heart of the Roman culture that wanted that special treasure again:  of a family of love and innocence where people truly lived for one another.
How do we live that way?
These are not particularly rocket science types of ideas.
The apostle says something like this:  "Sexual immorality, verse 3, "purity, covetous--, covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among the saints."
Now, you say, he says it shouldn't even be named among you and he just named them.
No, it's the notion of these things should not be labels upon you.
This should not be the label of Christians:  that you are immoral, that you are involved in covetousness, that is remembering coveting somebody else's wife.
Verse 4, "Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving."
I must tell you, when you read those words, you think, "Well, is the Lord really so petty that He's bothered by a dirty joke?
I mean, it could be really funny."
No, I don't think that's the point.
I don't think the Lord is terribly offended by words that He knew before you said them.
I think the Lord is recognizing that what happens in human endeavor is we see what we say.
So if from the time that we're young, if--, the time that we are paling around with other people we begin to identify certain people or body parts or sexual functions with words that are vulgar and profane then when there is that time of treasured intimacy with someone that you love most in the world, it's hard to see that person as the treasure, as the beauty, as the sensil--, as the sensitive one that you intend, because you've got other words and images in your mind.
Satan knows what he's doing.
I mean, listen, why is it on Valentine's weekend that one of the more profane movies of recent years is getting the most press in our culture so that, you know, everybody feels they can go see it?
I mean, the evil one knows what he's doing.
If I can get you to think in images and words and phrases that now make you see another person as object so that you're wiling to take advantage of them for your own pleasure, even though they're consenting, do you not recognize what lovelessness now will do if the sexual act itself becomes just something of satisfying self instead of honoring and respecting, pleasing and cherishing another?
As God is talking here in just plain words, He says this.
Listen:  The other thing that you must know is you will not only see what you say; ultimately you will do what you say.
If in a culture the conversation just becomes common filthiness, if the entertainment and the arts and so forth get turned and people just make it part of their everyday conversation, that it gets more and more coarse and coarse and coarse, then we will lower our inhibitions by the way we talk to one another.
The sexual predators know it even if we don't, right?
What are the ways that you work your way into the lives of young people?
Well, you speak in friendly terms and then you kind of introduce them to a little filthy joke, a little dirty talk.
And then you move the next step to showing a few dirty pictures and a movie here and there.
And then you move them into the sexual predation, which was the intent all along.
We're just looking here at the apostle saying, what--, he says what the Bible says in Proverbs, really.
Don't put your foot on the path of the wicked.
Don't go near the path of the wicked.
But turn and go the opposite direction, because there is a progress of sexual sin.
And so the apostle ultimately is saying to us not only, "Listen, you need to treasure your identity; you should treasure your purity."
What God intends by His character and care for you and your family.
>>> Parents, I would just encourage you to think of your home as a temple.
I recognize that you can bring all kinds of things in that you have every liberty to do as an adult.
But if what you're saying is, "Listen, I'm going to control the TV and I'm going to control what my kids see because I'm concerned for their eternal identity," then learn the value of the DVDs.
Learn the value of you choosing what they see rather than somebody else choosing what they see.
We make choices for our children.
And we look at our homes as a place of spiritual oasis for our children.
We can't protect them from everything.
But we can in our homes establish what is saying this is what is safe and this is what is good and this is the treasure that God means for families to have, even as a husband and wife love each other in intimacy and warmth and unity, which unites them in such beauty as God intends.
>>> To make that point, the apostle finally ends by saying, "You need to treasure even your security before God."
That's what will help the most.
Verse 5, "For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or is covetous, that is, an idolater."
Now this is just a reminder.
If it's sexual immorality, it's impurity because it's against God.
That's temple language.
But it's idolatry as it's also sin against neighbor, covetousness, coveting your neighbor, coveting someone that God does not intend for you to have.
If what you're doing is you are saying, "I need that person's body or attention or passion in order for me to be happy, even though God has not ordained it for me, I need that person to be happy," that person or that passion has become your god.
To covet what God does not intend for you to have, in anotherper--, another person's body, relationship or being, is actually to make them your god.
They are my form of happiness.
And so God says that's idolatry and it's got consequences.
Do you remember?
"For these people, the sexually immorale--, immoral or impure or the covetous have no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God."
Verse 6, "Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience."
These are stern warnings.
To be persistent in immorality, to turn others into a path that is going to damaging to them, to their future and to their families:  There is wrath being promised.
God is simply saying, "Do you not recognize that the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience for these very things.
Why would you go do that?"
Then if you're a thoughtful person, you're saying, "My goodness, I thought Pastor Bryan was the pastor of grace.
Where is grace in all of this?"
Listen, if the Lord did not love you, He would not warn you.
The wrath of God is coming upon people for taking advantage of others like this.
How can we possibly think we could do the same thing with total, total lack of concern?
Because God loves us, He says, "You should recognize God's judgment is coming upon the unbeliever for these things.
Why would you think you could do it with no consequence?"
Now, what's so precious is verse 7 that follows right on those words.
"Therefore do not become partners with them."
>>> English teachers in the crowd:  This is the wonderful third person.
>>> "Do not become partners with them."
Here the apostle has said, "Yes, the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience.
Yes, you should know that this is horrible for people and that's why the wrath of God is coming.
But you are not them."
"Do not become partners with them."
The apostle has said there is a line of demarcation.
There are those who they're beloved of God who He knows can be tempted, who knows they can be hurt by this sexual temptation that's in their culture.
And, yet, he knowing the worst about them, says, "You are not like them.
You're on this side of the line, not necessarily because you've never engaged in the sexual problems but because you believe something different.
You have a different life."
And that life is so wonderfully spelled out in verse 8.
"For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.
Walk as children of light."
What's your real identity?
You are children of light.
Walk that way.
Be what you are.
You have been saved from this impurity.
You have been sanctified.
You have been made right.
Live as you are.
It's meant to be a powerful corrective to recognize how secure they are, so that it's actually in God's hand that they are willing to grab and come back to Him.
Just to make the point, I'll tell you my own weakness.
Some years ago, there was a child in our family who had really done wrong things:  embarrassed and hurt and betrayed our family.
And I was very angry.
An anger that gripped me that I had trouble dealing with and at some point, my wife Kathy said to me, "Bryan, you want to hurt him, don't you?"
And I said, "I honestly do."
And she said to me, "That is not who you are."
It was like ice water thrown in my face.
That's right.
That is.
What am I?
Wait, that is not who I am.
That type of anger toward my own child:  That is not who I am.
Would it be a surprise to you I can't even remember what he did anymore?
All I remember was my anger and how good it was that Kathy reminded me, "That is not who you are."
What the apostle is doing to people who are here are those who are caught in another kind of passion, who are drawn into sexual sin and he is saying to them, "That is not who you are."
Why would you go back there?
Why would you hurt yourself or others in that way?
That is not who you are.
You're a child of light.
You have been claimed by God.
You are the beloved.
Remember who you are.
An old movie made current again by the terrible events of our culture tells the story of a young man in south Africa who is kidnapped by terrorists and by brainwashing and threats and torture and finally just by the familiarity of hurting people becomes a murderer himself.
And this child turned murderer is ultimately taken back to the village from which he has been kidnapped and is forced to face his own father, intending to murder him.
And the father responds to his son, who is caught in such terrible sin with these words, "Dia, my son.
Look at me.
Dia, I know they made you do bad things.
But you are not a bad boy.
I am your father who loves you, and you will come back home with me and you will be s--, be my son.
Dia, you are mine."
It is the word of God to us by an apostle.
Remember who you are.
You are the one who has been saved to save, given light so that you might be light.
You are the beloved of God.
Now that you know that, live that way.
Remember who you are.

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