Walk in the Light
Notes
Transcript
Good Morning
What is the worst thing about ancient history class?
The teachers tend to Babylon!!
It is such a blessing to have baptisms, to see young people come to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Today is a good day!
After today, you get a two week break from my sermons!!
Next Sunday, Kyle will be bringing the message and the following Sunday Trey will be bringing the message. It will be a blessing I am sure. We will be thinking of you guys while we are at the SBC annual meeting and at the beach!!
As we have been walking through Ephesians, I have been reminded that it is work to walk in the light. We are called to be doers of the Word. While I have been thinking about all the work that it takes to walk the talk, I am reminded of our walk through Mark. We saw that the disciples and Jesus never got to rest, even when they went to rest, there was ministry there waiting for them. We are called to constantly choose the light, the walk that Jesus showed us. It will be work, it will make us tired. Jesus tells us that all who are tired and weary to come to Him and He will give them rest. Our rest in not in not doing things, it is in Christ Himself! That gives me encouragement and gives me the spark to keep on moving and walking in the light.
Today we are going to be in Ephesians 5:8-14.
Last week we look at our speech. Tuesday night in our men’s study, the chapter we covered was the discipline of the tongue. I want to share a couple of things from that chapter.
Taking James’s words seriously, we recognize that the tongue has more destructive power than a hydrogen bomb, for the bomb’s power is physical and temporal, whereas the tongue’s effects are spiritual and eternal. Walter Wangerin Jr., gives us an example from nature. He tells of the female spider and how she is often a widow for embarrassing reasons - she regularly eats those who come her way. Lonely suitors and visitors alike quickly become corpses, and her dining room is a morgue. A visiting fly, having become captive, will appear to be whole, but the spider has drunk his insides so that he has become his own hollow casket. That’s not a pleasant thought, especially if you have a touch of arachnophobia, as I do!
The reason for this macabre procedure is that the female spider has no stomach and so is incapable of digesting anything within her. Through tiny punctures she injects her digestive juices into a fly so that his insides are broken down and turned into warm soup. This soup she swills, says Wangerin, even as most of us swill souls of one another after having cooked them in various enzymes: guilt, humiliations, subjectivities, cruel love - there are a number of fine, acidic mixes. And some among us are so skilled with the hypodermic word that our dear ones continue to sit up and to smile, quite as though they were still alive.
This is a gruesome but effective metaphor to describe the destructive power of evilly intended words. Words do not dissolve mere organs and nerves but souls! This world is populated by walking human caskets because countless lives have been dissolved and sucked empty by another’s words.
The boneless tongue, so small and weak,
can crush and kill, declares the Greek
the tongue destroys a greater horde,
the Turk asserts, than does the sword.
The Persian proverb wisely saith,
A lengthy tongue - an earthly death!
Or sometimes takes this form instead,
Do not let your tongue cut off your head.
The tongue can speak a word whose speed,
Say the Chinese, outstrips the steed.
The Arab sages said in part,
The tongue’s great storehouse is the heart.
From the Hebrew was the maxim sprung,
Thy feet should slip, but ne’er the tongue.
The sacred writer crowns the whole,
Who keeps the tongue doth keep his soul!
The tongue is so powerful, so often we let it go without thinking first. We must control our tongue and make sure that our speech is that which will honor our King.
Here are some resolutions to make regarding the use of our tongues.
To perpetually and lovingly speak the truth in love. Eph. 4:15.
To refrain from being party to or a conduit for gossip. Prov. 16:28, 17:9,26,20.
To refrain from insincere flattery Prov. 26:28.
To refrain from running down another James 4:11.
To refrain from degrading humor Eph. 5:4.
To refrain from sarcasm Prov. 26:24-25.
To memorize Scripture passages that teach the proper use of the tongue. If you want a list of these, see me after service.
We also talked about those who are living in the sins of sexual immorality or are impure or greedy, they will not have an inheritance in the kingdom to come.
We ended by talking about not being deceived by empty words by the sons of disobedience. God’s wrath is coming for them and we as a child of light, we should have a partnership with them.
Today we are going to be talking about walking in the light and exhibiting the fruit of light.
Please stand as we prepare to hear God’s Word.
8 for you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), 10 as you try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. 11 Do not participate in the useless deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them; 12 for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret. 13 But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light, for everything that becomes visible is light. 14 For this reason it says,
“Awake, sleeper,
And arise from the dead,
And Christ will shine on you.”
Pray
Paul tells us that we were once in the darkness and now as believers we are in the light. No, he says that we were darkness. It is that we were just in the darkness, we were darkness, we were God’s enemy, we were evil, full of sin. After salvation we are made into light through our Lord Jesus. There is no stronger text that explains the stark difference, and change that happens during our conversion. There is no greater opposite than darkness and light. Darkness is the absence of light and light is the absence of darkness. We go from one extreme to the other. Other than the absence of something, these two have nothing in common, as we should not have anything in common with the world, with the unbelievers. Darkness and light can not coexist. You see the bumper stickers that say coexist with all the symbols, that is not biblical. There is only one truth and one light, Jesus Christ. All other is darkness and we should have nothing to do with them other than trying to tell them about Jesus and showing them the love of Jesus. We are not to have fellowship with the darkness. 2 Corinthians 6:15
14 Do not be mismatched with unbelievers; for what do righteousness and lawlessness share together, or what does light have in common with darkness? 15 Or what harmony does Christ have with Belial, or what does a believer share with an unbeliever? 16 Or what agreement does the temple of God have with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said,
“I will dwell among them and walk among them;
and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
17 “Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate,” says the Lord.
“and do not touch what is unclean;
And I will welcome you.
18 “And I will be a father to you,
And you shall be sons and daughters to Me,”
Says the Lord Almighty.
Now that we are light in Jesus, we are to walk like Jesus did. We are to be perfect because He was perfect. Matthew 5:48
48 Therefore you shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Perfection is our goal. It is possible through the work of the Holy Spirit that is in us. We have to be completely sold out for Christ and surrendered to the Holy Spirit. It is hard, but if it wasn’t possible, why would Jesus tell us that is how we are to be. These were Jesus’ words when He was giving the sermon on the mount. It is work, but it is work that is worthy of the effort it takes. We should be so different that even those who call themselves believers and they are not sold out, call us Jesus freaks. Remember the difference between light and dark!
Paul tells us since we are light in Jesus, we are to walk as children of the light. He tells us the fruit that we should be producing as children of the light. All goodness, righteousness, and truth.
Goodness is love in action. When we love like Jesus loved, it will move us to action. It will move us to go and help those who are in need. It will cause us to go and tell others about our Saviour. Love will always cause someone to action. If you are not doing something for others, the lest of these, whom Jesus came and dies for, you are not loving and you are not producing the fruit of goodness.
Righteousness means rightness of character before God and rightness of actions before men. Both of these qualities are based on truth, which is conformity to the Word and will of God. Living a life that is righteous is a life that is lived before the eyes of God, not hiding anything. It is easy to hide things from other people for they can not see our hearts and minds. Hebrews 4:13
13 And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him to whom we must answer.
Living a righteous life is a life that is completely surrendered to God. It is like going to the airport to get on a plane. When you walk up to the TSA check station, we have to surrender ourselves and our luggage to a special inspection. This is a good thing because it helps us have confidence that the flight is as safe as can be. I have never been afraid to go through one of these inspections because I know that I do not have anything illegal on myself or in my luggage.
That is how we should be as we live our lives before the eyes of God.
By our conduct and character, we bring God’s light into a dark world. As God’s light, we help others find their way to Christ. The mind of the unsaved person is blinded by Satan and sin. Only as we witness and share Christ can the light enter into their darkness. A child of God can lead the lost out of the darkness into God’s wonderful light. Light reveals God; light produces fruit; light will also expose what is wrong.
No surgeon would ever operate in the darkness, lest he make a mistake and take a life. How could an artist paint a true picture in darkness? Light reveals the truth and exposes the true character of things. This is why the unsaved person stays away from the church and the Bible. God’s light reveals the true character, the exposure is not very complimentary. As we are walking in the light, we should refuse to fellowship with the darkness, and we expose the dark things of sin for what they really are.
As children of the light, we are to expose the evil that is in the darkness. It is through this exposure that the truth can be revealed and people can be lead out of the darkness and into the light.
Walking in the light does not mean that we are to avoid contact with people. It means living a holy life and it means confronting the darkness. We are to confront people with their sins in love just like Jesus did. We do this with our words and our deeds. We need wisdom, discernment, gentleness, and courage to know how to confront and expose the works of darkness. The life and actions of a true believer are to expose the works of darkness in the world.
Exalting Jesus in Ephesians Expose the Darkness (5:11–14)
J. B. Philips’s paraphrase is helpful: “It is even possible (after all, it happened to you!) for the light to turn the thing it shines upon into light also.”
The believer is called to expose the darkness in the corrupt places of our world—like where young children are trafficked, enslaved, and forced to work against their will, and where power is abused in other ways. We must bring the light of justice, exposing shameful, secretive sins, and bring the transforming light of the gospel to everyone—including the guilty enslavers themselves.
V14 is what happens when a person who is darkness comes to the light!
Exalting Jesus in Ephesians Expose the Darkness (5:11–14)
The last part of verse 14 is about the transforming light of Christ. It seems to combine passages on the resurrection and light such as
Exalting Jesus in Ephesians Expose the Darkness (5:11–14)
To summarize 5:7–14, when awakened Christians, who were once darkness but are now light, shine the light of truth and righteousness in a dark world with their words and deeds, they make visible the shameful and secretive deeds of darkness; they may also be used to help those in darkness come to the light themselves.
I hope that Jesus is shining on you and as a result of that, you are shining on others. I pray that you have the love that moves you to action, to live out that love that was shown to you in the Messiah.
I pray we have the courage to call out the sins of the darkness and to shine the light on them and those who are committing them.
Church, lets choose every day to walk in the light! Let’s be so different from the world that they say those people at Liberty are Jesus freaks!!
I love you and I am going to miss you!
Let’s pray.
