Welcome to this week's interactive notes.
This week, as a way of exploring this passage together there are regular opportunities in the notes for you to comment on what's being said. Don't think too hard about it, it isn't intended as any sort of test, just say whatever occurs to you to say & then you can look back afterwards and see what you think about what you said. (Remember that unless you give me your name I have no idea who says what).
There'll still be an opportunity at the end to ask any questions you want to ask.
We've just read Ephesians 5:3-20: what do you think should be happening now? Imagine that this is your chance to text the preacher with some instructions: what would they be?
Time for quiz question 1: how many different sorts of sin are mentioned in verse 3?
Everybody gets tempted to sin in some way or another. Which of these three temptations would you say affects most of the people in most of the churches in Britain today?
What is the reason given for us not to do the things in verse 3?
Which one of these three sins would you find it hardest to own up to?
If there is a kind of sin that everybody seems to commit all the time, then of course it becomes much harder for us to recognize that we are sinning when we do it: everybody does it, it's what we know. But which of the following would be true in that case?
Some sins are obvious and some go on more or less undetected but they are still sin (they're still ways in which our relationship with God suffers). When these things are brought to our attention by God's word, what should we do?
What if a preacher or teacher was able to persuade us that it's really ok for the church to be sexually immoral, impure and greedy. We might go out from church feeling a lot less challenged but, according to verse 6, what would they have done?
Repent. A word that means turn around, change the way you live. We're saying this week (we said it last week, too) that where you meet real Christians, you'll meet people who are always doing this, always being challenged, always having to change. So...
One last question, then, in the quiz: instead of hardening [4:18] what is meant to be going on in our hearts [5:19]?
