God's masterpiece of walking in Love and Light (2)

God's masterpiece of walking in Love and Light

Pastor Mark Hoover

A masterpiece in Progress / Ephesians 5:1–14

What does this new walk, this new way in Christ look like?

Ephesians 5:1–7 ESV

1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.  3 But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. 4 Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. 5 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. 6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. 7 Therefore do not become partners with them;

‌Father Dies Sheltering His Daughter‌

During a severe blizzard in Japan, a father froze to death while sheltering his daughter. The story reads, "Mikio Okada died as he tried to protect his only child, Natsune, against winds of up to 67mph and temperatures that plunged as low as minus 6 degrees Celsius." Mr. Okada called his relatives to say that he was stranded and that he and Natsune would try to walk to their destination. But they were both found just 300 metres from the truck.‌

The story continued, "Mr. Okada was reportedly found hunched over his daughter, cradling her in his arms and apparently using his body and a warehouse wall to provide shelter. He had taken his jacket off to give to the child, a broadcaster said. The young girl was taken to a hospital near their home … where she was found to have no serious injuries." This story that rips your heart out while providing an insight into the Atonement. The apostle Paul wrote, "and walk in love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant sacrificial offering to God” ( Eph. 5:2)

1. How do we show that we walk in Love?

Be Imitators of God

"Be imitators of God as beloved children."

Christian Ambassadors

‌For the watching world, we ourselves serve proof that God is alive. We form the visible shape of what he is like. What does it look like to be a Child of God?

1 Peter 2:9–10 ESV

9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous Light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

‌We are a Royal priesthood, a Royal Priesthood Holy Nation...

Romans 8:15 ESV

15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba! Father!"

We have an adoption that compels our souls to cry out, Abba! Father!

‌In the New Testament Christ is described as the expression of the image of God.

2 Corinthians 4:4 ESV

4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the Light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

Colossians 1:15 ESV

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

Hebrews 1:3 ESV

3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

Note: In the person of Jesus and his life, we see what our humanity is to be like. We go back to creation, where God created humankind in His image and likeness. Not in the sense that God has a body but has a nature. We are called living images that should reflect the very heart of God.

Imago Dei of God:

‌Image in Greek is the same word for which we get icon. It is like when you click on an icon on your phone, ipad, or tablet what do you expect to happen? ‌You expect it to open up the fuller application that you are wanting to see. It is the same with us being the image bearers of God. ‌When the world looks at your life they should see the exact icon or representation of what the fuller God is like, the authentic picture of God himself.

So, as Christians, we have all inherited the Ft. Knox of treasures into the kingdom of God, adopted into his royal family. We have hit the greatest lottery in the Universe. (not to trivialize it)

Love like the Son

Note: Christ's love was sacrificial. We will read in Ephesians 5:25 says husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the Church.

Now, Paul is expounding on how we should be imitators of God. Jesus' love was the perfect example of how we are to imitate Christ. The sweetest, most beautiful fragrance that God ever detected coming from this planet is the aroma of the perfect sacrifice that Jesus Christ offered on the Cross.

Note: Love is not merely a sentimental feeling for someone.

LOVE INVOLVES 2 THINGS

(1) Sacrifice

(2) Action

As Christians imitating the Father, we are called to give the same fragrant offering to the Lord. (OT, sacrifices, and aroma of the alter of sacrifice)

2 Corinthians 2:15-17

"For we are the aroma of Christ to those who are being saved...."

‌Joseph Fletcher’s book “Situation Ethics”‌In our generation, we have witnessed the advancement in both the secular culture and the Christian church of what is called ‘the New Morality.’

In Fletcher’s book in the 1960’s it linked with the emergence of the somehow called new morality. ‌The situation thesis ethic was this: the Christian faith is not based chiefly on a list of rules, commandments, and laws. There is only one moral imperative, only one overarching law, to be found in the Christian life.

It is the law of LOVE: to love God and do what love requires in any given situation. ‌

Fletcher appeals to Paul’s statement in Romans 13:10; love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore, love is fulfilling the law. ‌

The famous quotation of Augustine that is many times misunderstood: ‘Love God and do as you please’, this was twisted beyond any recognition beyond its original intent.‌Augustine meant that if our hearts are motivated internally by the proper spirit of love for God, then we will be able to do as we please because love for God will constrain us to do only those things that please the Lord. (led by the spirit)‌Augustin never had in mind the idea that if you have some feeling of affection for God in your heart, then you can go ahead and disregard the commands of God. ‌

Fletcher however, does allow for the following situation: if the overarching consideration is love, extra-marital sexual relationships may be quiet acceptable in the sight of God.

There are various studies on human sexuality produced by commissions and committees of mainline denominations which have set forth the possibility that withing the context of love, it may be all right to engage in sex outside of marriage, even in the context of homosexual relationships. ‌The overarching picture then is, if you love then your behavior can be determined and justified by that Love.

We must resist the temptation to rename sin.

(we say, it's for mature audiences, it's the gentlemen's club if it feels good to do, it must be good." We must not merely try to manage sin.)

The Real Message of Unmarried Sex

If you are sleeping with the person you are dating; you are telling each other two things.

First, you tell each other that your relationship with God is not your primary commitment.

Second, you are telling each other that you are the kind of person that will sleep with someone you are not married to. Do you think that repeating vows to each other will somehow change that? It doesn't. You will enter into marriage if you marry the person you are sleeping with, already telling each other that you will sleep with someone you are not married to. You already know that each of you is not, first and foremost, committed to God.

(Story of Andy and His declaration)

‌Note: Online dating is becoming the new Hook-up!

vs. 3 "But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among the saints (god's holy people)."

1 Corinthians 6:15–19 ESV

15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! 16 Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, "The two will become one flesh." 17 But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. 18 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own,

‌A Christian's Body is on Loan from God I try to drive carefully. But when I happen to borrow a friend's car, I drive very carefully. I don't want to damage the property of a friend and return it to him all banged up. Even so, our bodies are the personal property of someone else. ‌The only way we could say, "Who does he think he is, telling me what to do with my body?" is by not belonging to him at all. Did he shed his blood to cover our sins?

Has he given his Spirit to make us new? ‌If so, then we should glorify him even in our physicality, especially our sexuality.

(When you submitted your life to the Lord, you became part of Christ's body, much like we are joined to our husbands and wives in a wedding ceremony.)

Here, Paul clearly defines what it looks like to walk in a way to live and walk in a life of Love.

What could be further from the life of loving like Jesus loved than to engage in sex outside of the marriage covenant? However, it is becoming more and more commonplace today among Christians.

Anti-love showed: This is how we show a lack of love.

Paul does not say, 'Love God and do as you please anyway.' He says, 'if you want to know what love demands, then pay attention and do what love requires.

Vs. 4 'Paul returns to the theme of chapter 4, which is the importance of our speech as a Christian.'

'Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead, let there be thanksgiving.'

Paul now turns from treating sex jokingly, as something culture has made into its language and used to make Light of what God made beautiful between a husband and wife.

How have we cheapened God's beautiful design?

Note: Remember that Jesus says it is not what goes into a man that defiles him; it is what comes out of his mouth.

‌Where sexual impurity and covetousness both express a self-centered, self-gratifying of the former God-centered, God-glorifying act of sex.  (tell your wife or husband tonight, we are going to have some God glorifying sex tonight.)‌

Paul, says, instead that we should be thankful, and give thanks to God for the beautiful thing he has given to his creation. Whenever, we choose to step outside of God’s design for his creation, or use the excuse that it is an act of love, therefore, it cannot be wrong. We are showing our lack of understanding of what it means to love like Christ loves us.

Never forget that God created you sexual beings. He made something perfect that the world has spent its History trying to distort and corrupt.

"Be sure of this"

Everyone who is sexually immoral, impure, and covetous will not have any part in the inheritance of the Kingdom of God.

Can someone who has committed a grievous sin against God claim to be a child of the Light? If not, why not? If so, why?

When should someone be considered an unbeliever?

‌The following text we just read may be frightening to you, for it may seem to be in striking contradiction to everything else that the Bible teaches us about salvation. ‌

Paul seems to be suggesting that anyone who covets and anyone who is guilty of immorality or impurity, has forfeited his right to the Kingdom of God. The following statement does not fully digest the rest of the picture of what he is talking about. Paul, many times takes into account that you have already been given a fuller picture. ‌

Paul is not saying that if you have ever been guilty of coveting something that is not your you are therefore, eternally disqualified from the Kingdom of God. ‌He is talking about a style of life that is characteristic of an unbeliever. That is if the basic characteristic of your life is sexual immorality, impurity or covetousness, then as long as you remain in that state, you remain out of the kingdom of God. If your default position in this world are any of the following then we would have to assume that you are not saved. ‌You may have even made a profession of faith in Christ, and then continued in a lifestyle of sin. This would reveal quicker than anything else that the profession of faith is false and the person is not in the kingdom of God.

1 John 2:15 ESV

15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

vs. 6 'Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.

"Let no one deceive You With Empty Words."

Who does the wrath of God come on? It comes on those who are Disobedient.

Do not become partners with them.

‌Paul now indicates that it is possible for people to think that they are safely in the kingdom of God because they have been given false assurances by those with loose tongues and smooth talking promises. Let no one deceive you with empty words. ‌ ‌This passage is diametrically against those who teach or believe that since we are freed by grace from the necessity of the law of Moses we can live however, we want because we have grace. This is called Antinomianism which say’s there is no abiding law we must keep. ‌Matthew 7:21-23

"Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of Heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in Heaven.

‌We have lulled a generation of people into a false sense of security that all you have to do is pray a prayer or perform a sacrament for Jesus without ever making Him Lord of your life. ‌The moment that you are regenerated the Spirit of God moves into your life He takes residence in you and dwells in your hearts to motivate you, to give you an obedient heart. The moment we embrace Him as Savior we bow the need to Him as our Lord, and seek to show our love for him by obeying his commands. (Romans 6 “Should we continue to sin that grace should abound, by no means.”)

Note: "So if anyone tells you that as a Christian you do not have to be concerned about keeping any commandments or obeying the Law of God, they are straight up lying to you and deceiving you. Paul says we do not let that happen."

Note: Result, lack of inheritance and Divine judgment and wrath of God.

Ephesians 5:8–13 ESV

8 for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit of Light is found in all that is good and right and true), 10 and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. 11 Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. 12 For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. 13 But when anything is exposed by the Light, it becomes visible,

2.  How do we walk as Children of the Light?

At one time, you were one of the sons of disobedience.

Conduct yourself as Light.

Once we have passed from Darkness to Light, why would we want to go back?

Ephesians 2:1-3

"You were at once dead in the darkness of your sin in which you once walked.

Galatians 5:16–25 ESV

16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.  25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

Your behavior must now conform to your new identity. You must radiate the Light that lives in men at home in the daylight.

‌The world today attempts to redefine light and darkness into shades of gray. ‌If you want to know what it looks like to be children of the light you must try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. There is no way of learning more accurately or more quickly about what is pleasing to God, than studying God’s word. It reveals to us what things God takes delight in and what things God hates.

We now walk diametrically opposed to the darkness.

We show how we walk by our discernment. (the skill to Godly living is learned and practiced).

We show how we walk by exposing the unfruitfulness of darkness.

vs. 13 "anything exposed to light becomes visible." (we expose darkness with the Light of truth.)

Ephesians 5:14 ESV

14 for anything that becomes visible is Light. Therefore it says,  "Awake, O sleeper,  and arise from the dead,  and Christ will shine on you."

Expose the Darkness to Light

Dead things are brought to life once exposed to the Light of Christ.

vs. 12 Paul says it is shameful to even talk about what they are doing in secret dark places.

Darkness hides the ugly reality of sin. (why do you think some of the most shameful and harmful acts are done in dark areas)

The lie we tell ourselves is that no one can see us in the depth of our sin and depravity.

Psalm 139:1 ESV

1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me!

God knows YOU!

What attitude should we have towards those who still choose to walk in darkness?

Paul tells us that we are to take no part in anything that is unfruitful works of darkness. How do we know what is unfruitful, if it doesn't line up with the truth of scripture and the fruit that is described in Galatians 6 is unfruitful and does not benefit you or the Kingdom of God.

How should we treat a believer who chooses to live in unrepentant sin?

1 Corinthians 5:11 ESV

11 But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one.

‌Here is the problem?‌

Very few churches today are willing to take this kind of stance against unrepentant sin. Why? Because it is messy and difficult. ‌

What is unrepentance? An unrepentant person knows that he or she has sinned and refuses to ask God for forgiveness or turn away from the sin. The unrepentant show no remorse for their sin and do not feel the need to change their direction.

Unrepentant is the sin of willfully remaining in sin. ‌Repentance on the other hand is a change of mind that results in a change of action. Repentance leads to life, and it is necessary for Salvation. ‌Can a Christian walk in unrepentant sin. The answer is no I do not believe they can, because first, to become a Christian you must repent and believe; a believer in Christ is one who has repented of sin.

Most likely if a Christian is living in unrepentant sin they are not saved.

1 John 1:6 ESV

6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

‌The unrepentant need to hear the good news of Gods salvation. God’s goodness leads people to repentance

Romans 2:4, and He is a God who is patient and longsuffering. Christians should regularly confess their sins, and pray for the unrepentant looking for opportunities to bring them to Christ.

CONCLUSION

Notice that our former condition in Adam is described as being asleep as in death, darkness, from all of which Christ rescues us from.

There is a twofold part of death and being brought to life.

(1) When someone's life is exposed to the Light, they are converted.

Our former condition goes into the grave, never to be picked up again, and our new self walks out of the grave, ready to put on the new life we have in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Darkness is exposed

They allow themselves to be seen as sinful creatures before a Holy God.

They become Light.

(2.) There will be a second resurrection that will take place at the end of the age.

First, Jesus Christ was resurrected and has given us the first fruits of the resurrection, i.e., the Holy Spirit that lives inside you and me.  Earlier in Ephesians, Paul reminds us that we who once were dead have been made alive in Christ.

Jesus spoke of another resurrection in John 5:25, when the voice of Jesus Christ calls the living and the dead to life, those who have done well to everlasting life and those who rejected and chose to live in unrepentant sin to eternal judgment. 1 Corinthians 15:22-26 "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all are made alive."

God is in the business of raising Spiritually Dead People to LIFE!

‌SERMON ILLUSTRATION Bono on Spiritual Formation ‌Your nature is a hard thing to change; it takes time…. I have heard of people who have life-changing, miraculous turnarounds, people set free from addiction after a single prayer, relationships saved where both parties "let go, and let God." But it was not like that for me. For all that "I was lost, I am found," it is probably more accurate to say, "I was really lost. I'm a little less so at the moment." And then a little less and a little less again. That to me is the spiritual life. The slow reworking and rebooting the computer at regular intervals, reading the small print of the service manual. It has slowly rebuilt me in a better image. It has taken years, though, and it is not over yet.

My favorite part of Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son is the picture of the Father.

Jesus said

The Father saw Him, I want you to know that the Father sees you today.

The Father was filled with compassion, I want o you to know, dear child, the Father is filled with compassion for you today.

The Father ran to embrace His child, I want you to know that the Father is running to embrace you today.