The Bible Study Podcast, episode 506.

Today, the Bible Study podcast continues the study of the book of Ephesians with the second part of chapter two.

Welcome to the Bible Study podcast. I'm your host, Chris Christensen. We finished the last time the first 16 verses of Ephesians chapter 4. So let's start with verse 17. Instructions for Christian living. So I tell you this and insist on it in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do in the futility of their

thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of

the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity,

they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge

in every kind of impurity and they're full of greed. So Paul is going to tell us how to live as

Christians, but first he's going to tell us how not to live. He's saying, look around you, look at the

people that you lived with. He said,

they don't have a sensitivity for the presence of God. They've turned their back on God and therefore,

or haven't heard of him, and therefore they don't notice when God is at work. Now, I really have to

wonder, do we notice when God is around, when God is at work?

Do we see the fingerprints of God in our daily lives? I think sometimes I do and sometimes I don't.

Sometimes I lose some of that sensitivity and I can certainly lose that with just getting too busy

or with unrepentant sin or all of those things

that can distract me from the presence of God or separate me from the presence of God.

And so he says, because of that, they turn themselves over to sensuality.

They want to feel good.

And there's all sorts of different ways that we abuse feeling good just in terms of the

specific sins it turns into, it turns into gluttony, it turns into sexual impurity. And he says

they're full of greed. So all of those things are things that he doesn't want us to live that way.

Greed is something we probably don't talk enough about. When we talk about other

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