What is the key ingredient of a strategic marketing campaign, one that will get you noticed, make people sit up, such that they really will read your advert or notice your campaign. Get it in the media, but that only pushes the noticing back one stage. What is the key ingredient of a strategic marketing campaign?

Now I’m not in advertising and if anyone here is then you’ll just have to bear with me, but I suspect I am not a million miles away from guessing the perceived key ingredient of a successful marketing campaign. From this week’s newspaper, just one example of the magic ingredient (slightly masked, in other words not overly obvious):-

No dribbling, please, it's time to play Naughty Netball
(There’s a bit of chat about who is behind this venture – and it contains some known people – and then the latest marketing strategy is revealed – an appropriate word)
Cheekymoon offers, among other things, the chance to play Naughty Netball - online or in the flesh. Viewers bet on tournaments between teams of scantily-clad girls and vote on their favourite players.
Girls with the most votes "take off an item of kit". "Don't worry" Cheekymoon reassures players, "you get to keep on the essentials!" What do winners receive in return for their exhibitionism? A seven-night holiday and spending money.

SEX: as far as the promoters of this extraordinary website and audience participation game could do, they brought in the sex element. Frankly, they were doing what so much else in contemporary Western society does.

People are so obsessed by sex that the very mention of it, or clear allusion to it, attracts people’s attention. Anything associated with it seems attractive as well and advertisers queue up to say that ‘sexy’ describes their car, their computer, their carpets, almost anything.

This is nothing new – only the sheer number of ways of disseminating its presence is new to the 21st century. In the world of Paul, it was much the same: sex sells and Greco-Roman society was obsessed by sex, casual sex and any number of sexual practices. We’ve only to look at the wall paintings of Pompeii, or to study pictures on ancient pottery. There was no restraint then as there seems now. For the Roman, if it seems fun, go for it.

Many Greeks and Romans went further. Sex was fully part of secret initiation ceremonies and religious services, so that it would seem that sexual experience was the very summit of the religious quest. Enlightened people could do what they wanted and only repressed people, those still in the dark, practiced any form of restraint.

Many people today proclaim that everybody should throw off their repression and restraint and embrace sex. In fact, they bring God into it by proposing that because God made us sexual beings, he must want us to experience sex and to enjoy whatever our inclinations are.

Now comparatively few Christians would take this extreme view, but others do welcome sex outside marriage, occasional ‘recreational’ sexual experience or same-sex practices, and ask that Christians celebrate these.

Paul pulls the carpet from underneath such comments, by declaring that we should not be fooled (v.6) by the empty words, which sound clever, which resonate throughout our culture, but which have no truth or life in them.

Precisely because God created sex as good and important, precisely because it promotes tenderness and intimacy and procreation between husband and wife, precisely because it offers great blessing and emotional fulfillment, Christians must avoid all cheap imitations. Casual sex in whatever form – whether 1st century or 21st century – is like drinking from a muddy stream instead of clear, fresh water.

The pursuit of new experiences nearly always ends up in bitterness and disappointment. The emotional danger and electricity of an illicit or casual relationship may be exciting, but it’s the same sort of excitement that you get from drugs. It promises you the earth and ends up killing you – if not physically, then certainly emotionally.

As Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, writes, “Every time two people make love physically, their bodies are saying, ‘We belong to each other, totally, completely and forever.’ If that isn’t true, and if it isn’t known by both to be true – if it’s just an experiment, a nice idea at the time, a trial arrangement – their bodies are telling a lie. Sooner or later, the lie will out.”(Paul for Everyone, Ephesians, p.59)

How does Paul deal with this with the Ephesians? Of course, as our reading conveyed quite amply, Paul told the Ephesians not to do a lot of things: no immorality, no impurity, no greed, no obscenity, no foolish talk, no coarse joking, no fruitless deeds of darkness, no lack of wisdom, no foolishness, no drunkenness and no debauchery.

We could have a good look at each one of these and I’m afraid to say that none of them are far from any of us. They at least lurk at the door of our lives and all too often we have let them in.

Sarah and I have done our best to create a beautiful garden and thanks to Sarah’s parents we have made great strides in creating a garden in which the flowers and shrubs and trees can flourish and complement one another. But it is a ceaseless task.

However, to ease our way in this and indeed to provide for my ‘one-day-long-off-I-pray’ successor, we have taken care to keep the garden well stocked with sturdy and strong flowers and shrubs, which cover the ground and reduce the chances of weeds coming through.

So when we look at Paul’s long list of prohibitions, each one flying in the face of our society’s values, and if we want to ensure that our minds and hearts do not wander off into the realms of darkness, then we should seek to keep our minds and hearts well stocked with wise and thankful themes, so that words of comfort, sound doctrine and good teaching come bubbling up unbidden from our memory.

Paul’s practical advice for such well stocking is rather surprising at first: we are to sing and make music in our hearts, and to one another (v.19-20). I find that a remarkably 21st century answer. With the fact that fewer Christians are good at reading and studying the Bible, never mind memorizing it properly, worship songs and hymns become a well of support. It may frighten you but it is the words of the worship songs that reinforce Christian teaching and instruction.

As the children’s song writer, Ishmael, wrote on a recent CD release, “12 scripture songs packed with more than 40 Bible verses to help you learn and believe the truths and promises of God. … these are definitely Ish songs by the very catchy tunes that children and adults alike will instantly enjoy and find hard to get out of their heads after only one hearing!”(It’s Party Time CD)

I think he’s almost right: adults may not actually enjoy them as much as their children! But, he has a good point when it comes to memorizing Biblical truth. Think of the songs and hymns that you recall and sing to yourself sometimes.

But, and here’s an important point, that immersing in Biblical truth will help us to turn from the values of our society and to embrace God’s values for our lives, God’s values that promote within us goodness, righteousness and truth (v.9) and which open the gate to our inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God (v.5).

Paul’s command to the Ephesians is to ‘live a life of love’ (v.2) and to ‘live as children of light’ (v.8)

Live a life of love
Goodness, righteousness and truth are not virtues often considered, but they remain central to Christian understanding and their implementation in our lives is one of the purest forms of imitation of our God (v.1). What would it be like for us if God was not full of goodness, righteousness and truth? What would worship and prayer be like if we feared that God would not be always good and righteous? How would we feel if we thought we couldn’t trust God to tell the truth?

In fact, how do people feel about us when we are like that? Wouldn’t be better to be like God, to be imitators of God?

So to ‘live a life of love’ – or as our advertising strap line puts it ‘Living to love God and you’ – means that we need to take a keen interest in what our hearts and minds feed on, what is whispered in our ear. If we learn to recognize the empty words (v.6) and the fruitless deeds (v.11) whispered or indeed shouted at us, and to name them and expose them (v.11) and reject them, the first vital step will be taken in this way of a life of love, imitating the love that Christ had, and pleasing to our Lord (v.10).

Live as children of light
There’s a new restaurant in London, called Dans le Noir – describing itself as a totally new sensory experience in dining. You dine in utter darkness – not even a luminous watch dial or mobile phone is allowed. As one reviewer wrote:-
I felt as if we had fallen into a stellar black hole. I was uneasy, with a sense of oppression and flutters of panic. Claire reached for my hand, knocking over a wine glass. It was 10 minutes after ordering a house wine that we discovered the bottle had been placed promptly between us. Our next discovery was that knives and forks were virtually useless. After dropping them a couple of times in fruitless probing for unseen food, we left them where they were and resorted to fingers. I had not the faintest idea what I was eating, and however alert my taste buds may have been they were confused.

The confusion of utter darkness is not for the believer. Darkness was our previous existence and how could you not prefer the light? As the reviewer of Dans le Noir concluded:
When … led … back through the curtains, even the reduced light in the bar seemed harsh and glaring. But it was good to see people again, and colours and expressions.

Now we have seen and understood the beauty of living in the light of God’s ways – the purity, goodness and hopefulness of them, we need to cultivate ways of filling our hearts and minds with such purity, goodness and hopefulness.

Our world lives in sex obsessed darkness, but we are called to live in God’s light, filling our hearts and minds with songs and hymns (v.19), with wisdom (v.15) and with the Spirit (v.18).

What then do you need to change in your life? What do you do which you know does not show the life of love and the reality of being a child of light?

What attitudes do you need to change, what actions do you need to cease and what goodness, righteousness and truth do you need to put on, to the glory of God and the extension of his Kingdom, so that you may be a mature follower of Christ, who experiences and lives out God’s love in every part of your life.