Welcome to the Foundations Daily Podcast. My name is Helen and I am on the staff team here at STC Sheffield.

This week we will be continuing our journey through the book of Ephesians, looking at chapters 5 and 6. Rather than focusing on a particular verse each day, I am going to be exploring the key themes and ideas that span these two chapters.

REFLECTION

Our theme for today is ‘Steer clear of temptation. Stay close to God’ and we’ll focus on Chapter 5 vs3-10.

I wonder; when was the last time that you went on a slide?

The last slide I went on was a water slide. It was one of those slides that is quite gentle at the beginning, but then it went totally black, swept you around several corkscrew turns, and finished with a plunging drop. Sometimes a slide looks great fun at the beginning, but you just can’t see or know what is going to happen next. Two other slide memories also spring to mind…..

One is from a soft play centre with a large bumpy slide. Kids slide down it gleefully but adults, I discovered, slide down it so rapidly due to their heavier weight, that they lift off on the bumps and land painfully further down the slope. Sometimes a slide looks great fun because everyone else is doing it, but you don’t realise the potential harm you could cause yourself. I have also made the embarrassing mistake of getting on a slide, only to discover shortly after leaving the top that I was not quite the right shape to slide anywhere; and instead became awkwardly stuck. Sometimes we realise too late that we are just not designed, just not meant to fit, on a slide.

The apostle Paul probably never went on a water slide or visited a soft play centre, but he knew that for all Christians there are certain activities, behaviours or attitudes that can cause us to slide away from God.

In the Message translation of verses 3 and 4, Paul writes, “Don’t allow love to turn into lust, setting off a downhill slide into sexual promiscuity, filthy practices or bullying greed…..Don’t talk dirty or silly. That kind of talk doesn’t fit our style.”

Some of these things might seem fun at the beginning; but it can be the start of a downhill slide where you cannot control what comes next, or don’t know the potential harm that could happen. As followers of Jesus, sexual promiscuity, greed, gossip, and coarse language are just not what we are designed for. They do not fit in God’s kingdom.

The Christians in Ephesus were living in a wealthy city that had a culture of practising black magic, worshipped a goddess of fertility, and frequented a theatre that held 25,000 people. It doesn’t take much to imagine why Paul was speaking about sexual immorality, idolatry, greed, coarse language and, in verse 18, getting drunk. Later in the Bible, in Revelation 2 vs 5, the church in Ephesus is encouraged to “Consider how far you have fallen.”

But what about us today? How far have we fallen from God’s ideal for us? Are the temptations facing us really that different?

Is watching Game of Thrones okay, because there’s not full frontal nudity every week, and everyone else is watching it, so surely it’s fine?

Is joining in with that juicy discussion at work okay, because it’s not really silly talk, and anyway we don’t gossip for the rest of the year?

Is shouting abuse at the referee justified, because he made some dreadful decisions, and anyway that’s just what you do watching football with your mates?

Is that shopping spree in Meadowhall acceptable because it was a bargain in the sales, and not just greed for more?

So how can we avoid this downhill slide, and make sure that we stay as close to God as possible?

Fortunately Paul is quite clear about this. Verse 7 says, “therefore do not be partners with them,” and verse 3 says, “there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality.” And in verse 11 Paul writes,