From Darkness to Light

Bible

Ephesians 5:3–21 NLT

3 Let there be no sexual immorality, impurity, or greed among you. Such sins have no place among God’s people. 4 Obscene stories, foolish talk, and coarse jokes—these are not for you. Instead, let there be thankfulness to God. 5 You can be sure that no immoral, impure, or greedy person will inherit the Kingdom of Christ and of God. For a greedy person is an idolater, worshiping the things of this world. 6 Don’t be fooled by those who try to excuse these sins, for the anger of God will fall on all who disobey him. 7 Don’t participate in the things these people do. 8 For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light! 9 For this light within you produces only what is good and right and true. 10 Carefully determine what pleases the Lord. 11 Take no part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness; instead, expose them. 12 It is shameful even to talk about the things that ungodly people do in secret. 13 But their evil intentions will be exposed when the light shines on them, 14 for the light makes everything visible. This is why it is said, “Awake, O sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Christ will give you light.” 15 So be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise. 16 Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. 17 Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do. 18 Don’t be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit, 19 singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, and making music to the Lord in your hearts. 20 And give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. 21 And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Story

Before we start, let’s pray: Lord Jesus, please shine your light on this passage. Set it deep in our hearts. Amen.

I have a story about my own powerful experience with light and darkness. You’ve probably heard part of this story before—it’s such a potent memory for me that it links to so many ideas.

It’s the story of one of my first hikes in Japan: I ended up hiking in the snow-covered mountains, after dark, with just a cheap torch to light my path.

I started off from home too late, and by the time I got to the top of the ridge I would be walking along, this is what I could see. You can’t see the sun in this photo, because it has already gone down, off to the left of Mt Fuji there. From here I walked along a snowy, ridge road, lit only by my torch.

Near the end of the road I would have been able to see this, if it was daytime (and the air was clear).

Instead, a few hundred metres on, all I could see was this. Notice how dark the foreground is. That’s what I was walking through. Darkness. Thick, black darkness. My tiny torch could only light a few steps ahead of me. I could see so little that at one point I took a wrong turn and ended up in a village, trying to read Japanese, and wondering whether people would let me sleep the night in their living room.

This is a more recent version of the sign I was trying to read. Don’t you love Google Street View? (I didn’t take a photo of it myself because, well, because it was dark!) I did eventually figure out where I’d gone wrong and got back on track.

Of course, being in the dark meant that I didn’t realise just how steep and scary the slope was as I hiked down it. This is what is looks like in the daylight. Steep, isn’t it? I still have vivid memories of that descent.

After I returned home safely, if a bit shell-shocked, I was thoroughly persuaded of the need to hike in the light. It’s one thing to walk around your apartment or house in the dark, and quite another to be lost in the steep, snowy mountains of Japan in the dark. Especially if no-one knows you’re there.

Darkness and Light

It’s important to think about darkness and light like this. When the Bible was written, it’s authors and readers didn’t have electric lighting. That seems to go without saying, but we do take our lighting so much for granted that it’s hard to appreciate the dangers of darkness.

But let me ask you: If you were in the midst of darkness, completely unaware of your surroundings, and you had a light, would you shine that light? Would you turn on your torch or light your candle?

Of course you would! Darkness leads to stumbling and falling and getting lost and hurt. Light leads us home.

And the brighter the light, the better, right?

Christian Light

And yet, how often do we forget the scaryness of the moral darkness around us? How often do we forget how penetrating and liberating is the light that lives within us?

What else but forgetfulness and ignorance can excuse the way that we indulge in obscene stories, foolish talk, and course jokes? We feel no horror of these because we’ve forgotten how dark they are. But when we turn to the light of Christ in his Word, the Bible, we discover how comfortable we have become in the shadows.

It’s so easy to let the darkness creep over us until we don’t see sexual immorality as a problem. We join the chorus, “So long as its between consenting adults then no-one gets hurt.” But we forget the light that God shines on this that reveals that people always get hurt from sexual immorality.

The same with greed. “You deserve it,” we chorus with L’Oreal and every other consumer products company under the sun. Me Bank appeals because, well, it is all about me, right?

Our Call

This is hardly a new problem. The Greco-Roman culture of Ephesus was obsessed with sex, as ours is, and as greedy and filthy as our culture, too. And yet the Christians of Ephesus weren’t called to abandon their culture, to isolate themselves. They were called to something much harder, and so are we.

Paul says,

Ephesians 5:6–9 NLT

6 Don’t be fooled by those who try to excuse these sins, for the anger of God will fall on all who disobey him. 7 Don’t participate in the things these people do. 8 For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light! 9 For this light within you produces only what is good and right and true.

Our call is simple: be light in the midst of darkness. The pressure we feel to share in the works of darkness is real, but we don’t need to give in. As we each live as people of light, our light will catch on with one another—we’ll keep each other safe from falling off a cliff in the dark, or getting lost in the night snow.

Ephesians 5:13–14 ESV

13 But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, 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.”

Paul encourages us that our light does catch on with others.

We are not just exposing dark deeds, we are chasing the darkness away, protecting one another from the pandemic. Isn’t it strange that we protect one another from COVID-19 by isolating ourselves from one another? But the far more deadly pandemic of sin, wickedness and darkness can only be defeated by gathering together and lighting one another up!

Our life

So how, then, do we live as light?

Well, carefully!

Ephesians 5:15–18 NLT

15 So be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise. 16 Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. 17 Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do. 18 Don’t be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit,

There are really three key attitudes that Paul talks about in verses 15 to 21. The first one here is thoughtfulness.

Christians, as children of light, should be considered in the way we live. We don’t stumble about doing whatever we feel like at the time, indulging in our own laziness or lust, careless of other’s needs or desires. Instead we think about life, think about how to behave, how to live. These are evil days, so, like a soldier carefully scouting enemy territory, thinking about how to achieve their strategic goals, we proceed with care and thought. You may not have heard many sermons advocating a thoughtful life, but that’s precisely what Paul is advising us to do. We need to use our time wisely. We need to “trust God and get going,” as we said last week.

Ephesians 5:19 NLT

19 singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, and making music to the Lord in your hearts.

The second attitude is joyful community. Hymns and psalms are theology in song. We sing them together not merely to worship God, but to train our hearts and minds. And singing together is crucial to encouraging one another. Of course, we also take song away into our own private spaces. We can be filled with joy because we know that light overcomes darkness.

Ephesians 5:20–21 ESV

20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

The third attitude is one of grateful fear. It’s hard to understand exactly how our relationship with God should work, because God is sui generis—one of a kind. But the Bible often speaks of the fear we should have of God. When you think about the fact that God upholds the entire universe by his will—every atom’s existence, every gravitational pull, every molecular bond, they are all sustained by God’s will. On top of that, our existence as souls—thinking, living, individual beings—is completely dependent on God. Fear is an appropriate response. At the same time, God is so good, so loving, so faithful that we can completely rest in his presence. This strange combination of assurance and fear is, like God, unique.

And it affects how we treat one another. But that is a topic for after Christmas.

Takeaway

What can we take away from this passage?

I think the key image is the contrast between a person of the dark and a person of the light.

A person of the dark, someone who rejects Christ, is like a drunken fool, stumbling around in their vomit, swearing and cursing and doing other unmentionable things to themselves and anyone they bang into. It may be hard to see many of your non-Christian friends in such a light, but dig deep enough and that’s, sadly, what you’ll find, to some extent or another. We are all like that without the light of Christ.

A person of the light, on the other hand, is someone who is mindfully walking through life, gratefully taking every opportunity to serve and benefit others. They demonstrate their love by their thoughtful attention to everyone they encounter, genlty helping them and lifting them up. And, of course, such a person is filled with joy. How could they not be, when life is so productive and rewarding? Doesn’t that sound like Christmas spirit?

Now, if you don’t match that second definition, don’t be discouraged, neither do I. Remember that sanctification, the process of becoming holy, becoming like that image of a child of light, is a life-long, gradual process that we need to support one another in. But that is what we have to look forward to.

I don’t know about you, but I for one really do look forward to being such a person, even if it means having to leave my self-indulgence behind. And I pray that God would work on my heart and mind to mould me into that sort of person. Let’s encourage each other to all work to be a child of light over this Christmas season, especially in the midst of its tensions and frustrations.

Let’s pray.

Lord, you have given us new hearts. Please give us the strength and love to nurture these loving hearts to grow, to shine more and more brightly. Help us to light one another up, so that the darkness in our neighbourhood is pushed further and further away.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.