Ephesians 5: Walk as Children of Light

 Okay, friends, if you have a Bible, would you please open me to Ephesians chapter five. Remember, out in the narthex and the lobby and the narthex in the book Nook, are these ESV. Journals, that's Interleaf like Edwards, Jonathan Edwards Bible. Every other page he had sewn into it, a blank page and that he could take notes.

They're these, uh, scripture journals are available for you. They're free. Please take one in order for you to take notes as we go through the book of Ephesians. Together, they're out in the book Nook, uh, for you. If we come to Ephesians chapter five, and as you remember from last week, Paul has turned from three beautiful chapters of telling us all that Christ has done for us to then tell us who we should.

Therefore, in light of what Christ has done for us, the. And he comes to this beautiful metaphor of walking, which he begins in verse one of chapter four. He picks up another metaphor here of light. And so if you're willing and able, would you stand for me, uh, with me this morning for the reading of God's word?

I'll read Ephesians chapter five verse. Down through verse 14, this is God's word. It is giving to you in love. Men and women have died to translate it into English. And so let us not take it for granted that we get to hear it in our native mother tongue.

For at one time you were a darkness. Now you are. Light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. For the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true, and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them for the shameful, even to speak of the things that they do in secret.

But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, awake, oh, sleeper and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. The grass withers and the flowers fade. The God's word stands forever. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks for you to God.

You may be seated, please.

When CS Lewis got to the very end of his children's adventure, stories of Narnia. He had to figure out what, uh, he was gonna call the final chapter, and he titled it Farewell to the Shadow Lands

in Narnia. He cried. He summed up the cry of every human heart's belonging because the Lewis meant that the world is filled with hints and longings, but never with the full brightness of reality. We see closely, but in truth, we still experience pain. We still stumble in the dark spiritually. We think we see clearly, but our hearts know that we are oftentimes chasing shadows amidst a light full only of partial light, looking for a home in places that cannot satisfy us.

And we don't have far to look to see evidence of this darkness this week, do we? Friends our nation was shaken by the assassination of a young man named Charlie Kirk. And whether you followed him closely or you didn't know much about him, this was a horrific at a violence, a sign of how dark and divided our nation has become.

Paul resonates with us. Paul, this one who himself was once a killer, asked Stephen who himself had participated in assassinations.

Paul says after his conversion that it says, though, we look through a glass darkly out into the world. He says in the first Corinthians, it's just a couple of years earlier before he wrote the book of Ephesians, and so when he comes to Ephesians chapter five, three years later, he doesn't just say, human beings are wandering in the shadows.

He says that apart from Christ, we were darkness. That is our fallen condition. And though you who believe the gospel here have been rescued from the darkness and placed in his marvelous light, you have been rescued in Jesus. Your hearts like mine are so often tempted to drift back into the darkness to live as though the light has never dawn.

And here Paul reminds the church in Ephesus and us in Christ. We are no longer shadows, but we are light in the Lord. And because that is who we are, Paul urges us to walk as children of light. And so here's the sermon in a sentence. This morning, these verses teach us, because Christ has brought us from darkness to light.

We joyfully. Walk, we expand, we share, we communicate. We expand his goodness, his righteousness, and his truth. 'cause Christ has brought us from darkness to light. We joyfully walk in his goodness, his righteousness, and his truth. So point number one, remember how you are in Christ. For you were darkness. Paul begins with a sunny reminder of our identity.

In verse eight, he says, for one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. Listen, notice carefully. Paul does not simply say you were in darkness. The Greek word is you. Were darkness. It's an imperfect indicative that means to be. You are continually walking in dark.

You are continually darkness. All says it is an ongoing state. We didn't just go through it dark seas in one supply at a time. We were darkness and to listen to the contrast, but you are light in the Lord. And again, he doesn't just say, you now walk in the light. As though it's some kind of behavioral modification, or somehow you got a new app that teaches you how to live better.

You have a totally new nature, darkness, now light.

He says in fur, in the Lord, in Greek, you are not light because you cleaned yourself up, not because you're a morally superior person compared to someone around you. Because of your union with Christ, he's declared that you are light. Why? Because Jesus is the light of the world. Every time we worship in this space and we leave every week, you should raise your eyes to see these seven sections of his back wall.

To ask yourself, who do I say Jesus is? He's the bread of life. He's the light of the world. He is the door. He is the good shepherd. He is the resurrection, the truth, he's the way, the truth and the life, and he's the true divine. He is the light.

Is he that for you? I'm so glad some of you're here. You don't believe he's yet the light, and you're here because you've seen the evidence of the darkness of the world this week and we are so glad you're here. Christians are not people who just leave darkness and enter light because sometimes we're just a hot mess even after we're Christians.

We are people who have been given a new nature in Christ because we knew that we could not clean ourself up. It's called faith in the work of what Jesus has done for us in his death and in his resurrection. For us, this is covenantal language. Oh, Christian, because the outside of Christ, we shared in Adam's fallen condition.

It says, God has transferred us in Colossians chapter one. Transferred us from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved son. Our identity as covenant people has been radically transformed. You have a new nature. Many years ago, Saint Augustine, who lived from 3 54 to four 30, told a story in his famous confessions.

The first real psychological, honest. Journal ever written in Western civilization. He confessed when he was a teenager and he and his friends would go to the care orchard and they would steal pears just to give them to the pigs. And later when Augusta is writing, he says, we stole them not to eat them ourselves, specifically to throw them to the pigs.

And perhaps we ate some, but our real pleasure consistent in doing something that was forbidden. In other words, he stole, not because he was hungry, not even because he looked bears, but because he delighted in the wrong itself. He didn't just do dark things. He loved darkness. Why? Because all of us since then, or darkness, if you're not in Christ, that is what Hall teaches.

He loved Augustine loved darkness because sin has an alluring power. And that is something of what Paul means here when he uses the word darkness. If Augustine feels far away from some of you, just think of the illustration I gave to the kids this morning thinking about when the power goes out. PSO is working on trying to restore power in your neighborhood and it's black in your house and you can't see your hand in front of your face, and you stumble upon things that once seem very, very familiar to you.

But Paul says to power has come back on in Christ, he has left the world for us to see it. Though we look through a glass darkly, he has lit it so that we can see the world. Truly not, not completely. We can see it as it truly falls. And so Paul Al's point here is that in Jesus Christ, we are light in him.

And this light changes the way we see everything. Just our living room when the power comes back under our house, but it changes the way that you understand money and success and relationships and your place in the city and your role as a father or a mother, or a grandfather, or a grandmother raising your children or a foster parent raising these permissions kiddos in your house.

It changes everything about your life. And I wonder, I wonder if the Holy Spirit and he is doing it now, where to shine a light in your heart to reveal the dark things that you have tried to keep hidden from him, which he already knows. I wonder what he would find in your heart, even as I wonder the same about me as I prepared this sermon this week.

We are to be children of light. And the first point Paul makes in verse eight is to remember who we are in Christ. You are light for we were burs. Point number two, we are to walk in the light with spirit born fruit. This takes us from the last part of verse eight to verse 10. Paul reminds us who we are and then he moves straight then to how we should then live.

He says, walk. As children of light para in Greek for you, get the word para for a walker. Someone who walks the word in Greek simply means an ongoing pattern. It means that you continue to walk and the Lord, you don't just walk, sign a card, become a Christian, and then live your life the way you normally would have if you didn't.

Jesus know you continually to walk in the gospel all the days of your life. And in fact, the older that you get, some of you in the room know this for walking with Jesus for many, many years. You're still finding things that are revealed in your heart, you thought you might know, but they're still coming out live because we want more in darkness, and now we are light, not in ourselves, but in the Lord.

And he is slowly and carefully and so lovingly pulling out our own blind spots so that we can be able to see them against the beauty and the backdrop of his cross where he died for us and Rose again in the third day. And he just brought you into a community called Trinity. Like he's helping you learn to be able to be more fiercely honest with yourself, not not in a self-aggrandizing way.

In a way that allows you to have deep and meaningful relationships with people, because that is a skill that many of us have forgotten how to have, especially with those with whom we might disagree and dare I say it, even this week, some of us have a hard time communicating with those with whom we disagree about the idol of our hearts, which is something called politics from which many of us need to walk in repentance because we have walked in a way that has perhaps raised our political point of view.

The amount of time we think about it, talk about it. We come to the sacrament of the six o'clock news and we bow out and prospering in worship, and Jesus says, you are children of light.

You wear darkness. Walk as children of light. He says, walk worthy of the calling you have received. Don't walk at the Gentiles have walked. He points us back to the first part of chapter four, and then he says in verse nine, the fruits of light is found in all that is good and right and true. That's the Greek word for fruit is carpas.

Its as though you're seeing the very top of this room. You see fruit hanging down from these king beans. It's as though we long to be the fruit, the figs and the pomegranates and the grapes that hang above us. We long to be the fruit of goodness. Long to be the fruit of righteousness. We long to be the fruit of truth in this world.

And God, don't you see how much he thinks of you. He is instilled in you and His Holy Spirit to be those things in the way that you operate and not operate on greed in the way that you do your business, but to operate in trying to extend the beautiful work that you do to the world in a fair way so that people can be blessed through you to not operate in a way that tries to seek control.

Do not operate by your power or your fear or dominion, which reminds me of a book that just came out a couple of weeks ago by a man named William Galston who writes, he's a political, uh, commentator and he writes about the fact that there are things he calls dark passions. The dark passions are things like anger and hatred, and humiliation, and resentment and fear that drive for domination, and there are bright passions that the philosophers used to talk about.

These are compassion, solidarity, love, courage, truthfulness, hanging in there in a conversation, keeping the conversation going, even when you might disagree. Listening to each other, not just to win the argument, but to know the person and to fight for truth. He says that civilizations like Edward Gibbon might teach us about the fall of Rome and civilizations, perhaps like western democracies.

They rise and fall on the demonstration in the public square of either bright passions or dark passions. Right now we have an amazing opportunity to demonstrate the bright passions just for all of those in public square, everybody in your community roof, and all of those in your family. To operate as though we are in the children of life and we live by a thred way.

It's called the Gospel. Amen. And we do that as a church. Will you be misunderstood? Of course. Because everybody wants you to get there to their passions, and it is so luring to do that. The anger. You know, anger is reacting to something that is done. Hatred is reacting where someone oil is. You can be angry at an event when you can let your heart be full of hatred because that you're angry or you're, when you, you see somebody, something that they cannot chose.

You hate them for what they re up. So all situation of my people handle, we. To can live in the light of the world, to be spread the blood must.

Paul says, as children of light. And then he says, discerning was pleasing to the Lord. We don't wanna downplay the dark passions of our heart, so we want again to be able to move. So those bright passions, he says the goodness. This is the generosity, the benevolent attitude, the delights, and the good of others.

Righteousness in covenantal terms. Une. In Greek, this is a word that means living in line with God's character and his will. So we have generosity, benevolent attitude, the delights and the good of others. We live as covenant people in light of God's character and of his will, and in truth, Olathe. Not deception, not spin, but living transparent lives aligned with the reality as God defines it, a reality that is centered in Jesus himself.

And this takes a radical kind of skill that is needed today.

This is the family resemblance of God's people. And how do we cultivate it? Verse 10 says that we continually discern what is pleasing to the Lord. The part of simple, continually discerning comes from the word of testing, metals to purify, examining things for purity, and the Christian life is not on autopilot as though it simply reaffirms our own proclivities.

It is a daily discernment in my conversations, in my spending, in my choices am I raising to my children What is pleasing to my savior, who is the light of the world and the fruit of Christ's light must be different. In a world where our opponents are demonized and where violence erupts out of political hatred, Christians are called to bear the fruit.

That proves that we belong to another kingdom, a kingdom of goodness and righteousness and truths. And as we think through that lens, we begin to act as children. Of light, and you've experienced that even a little bit this morning. As you come to worship and you hear your brothers and sisters sing of goodness and righteousness and truth, it does something in you.

We belong to be able to swim in those waters together. That's why worship every week is so important for your sanctification in your.

Other side, the Mediterranean from Augustan, John Sto, who lived from uh, 3 47 to 4 0 7, he was preaching to the sur amount to his congregation in Antioch, and he made this point. He says, notice Jesus doesn't say show them. He said, but let your white shine. That is let your virtue be great, that the fire in you be abundant.

Let the light be on. Ably powerful for when virtue is so great. It cannot be hidden. Though its pursuers shade over it 10,000 fold. Present them an IR reprehensible life and let them have no true occasional evil speaking of you. And then though there be 10,000 evil speakers, no man shall be able to test any shade upon you, any shade upon you.

The system says way before our time. Urged us not to believe as we, not the evil, but to adorn yourself with the gospel of lives that are march by goodness. We end on his shoulders. If you ever walk through a tree farm, it's a real trip when you go in, especially with like great things. Have you ever gone when your eyes were drawn, like great things and your eyes are drawn, just beautiful blackberry?

You won't notice the, you don't notice the font. All you notice.

Where with fruit power one, when it sight of the whole,

you see all's got full logic here. If you are light in the Lord, then you walk his children of light who bear fruit, but you keep on testing, you keep on discerning. What places is your father? You are not walking friends to prove yourself worthy or prove yourself right here, m walkie. Because in Christ, you already are his beloved child.

And in a world where darkness promises quick thrills and empty success in this Machiavellian world where you want instant gratification, spirit borne light, and as produces a real fruit that lasts and rattle. Hold our, I wonder if we could beat that.

One of you are inclined, walk in the light with spirit warm fruit. And lastly, find the light that expose us, that will transforms. Find the life that expose us and transforms. Look at verse 11. Take no part in the UN works and blackness, but instead expose them. The key, uh, verb here is good means to keep on shining light, keep on exposing.

It's not about harsh shaming or public humiliation. The word has a sense of conviction because the light is first shined on our own hearts. We bring wrongdoing and to be open so that it can be seen for what it really is. We don't shine light on someone to crush them. We shine light. North through symptoms and can become possible.

And how do we show the world what that looks like? They only you that you are the model for what symptoms looks like. This is why it's so important to not urge you to long, you argue you to keep the relationship moving and going as you bring them to the right notice. To Paul contrast, prove some unfruitful.

He says darkness makes big promises, pleasure and. Freedom and success, dominion, but in the end, it gives you nothing that leaves plenty of people empathy, but light by contrast, it's never sterile. It always produces fruit, which means that when we are Christians and we live openly for the glory of Christ, we can help but expose what is barring in the lies of darkness.

Just by contrast, in verses 12 and 13, we're the shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. When anything is exposed by the light that becomes visible. For anything to become visible, it words light. There is both a warning and a hope here. The warning is that darkness thrives in secrecy

and hope that when Christ Light shines, even that which was one star can itself, can itself become light. I wish. I wish he knew all the stories in this room that I know and many of you're learning them in their community group. Stories of something that once was so dark. Now it's become a platform upon which you were able to talk about the gospel and piercing ways far better than I or even Pastor Mark can because what was once dark has become light in you, and you are living examples of that.

If you will live as children of light, it's a flashlight out of your pockets, and don't just turn them on if you're in Christ regenerate in him born again than you yourself. Are light. Then he quotes from Isaiah at chapter 16. He says, awake, sleeper, it arises from the dead. Christ will shine on you. This was drunk from Isaiah 16 as an early Christian hymn.

It's a song maybe like I'm no longer expecting teens. It said they may have even sung in the first century. It's a resurrection language. To live in Christ to limit his light is a step out of the spiritual super in which we live. It's a new creation life as you Jane Peterson says it is to practice resurrection Monday through Friday, wherever you find yourself, and they delivered again on Saturday and to be renewed in on Saturday if the died of Burns in 1521.

Martin Luther stood before the array might of European powers, and he was asked to recant and in a moment where. He was asked to recant God's word. He exposed the darkness of a corrupt system that had developed in the Roman Catholic Church. He shown the light never to leave the church. He himself was excommunicated from it, but to shine the light, to expose it and the wrath and period that came after him almost costing his life.

And he had to be, uh, hidden away for years when translated the New Testament into German, which is probably his greatest gift to us, to those in Europe at the time. Out did that dark situation, he might able to translate the Bible into the native colonies of his German countrymen and friends. An amazing gift in the war Word castle.

He exposed the light. When, um, I was a teenager, I grew up, I grew up at First Baptist Church to Wichita. There was a youth power. Name was Chris and that was back in the day. You remember the day when, when you didn't have to wear seat belts. It was also back in the day when churches were a whole lot looser with, um, safety with children.

And so some of us had to go back and the bus was full. And so Chris decided to take four or five of us sixth grade boys back in his trunk. Some of us were in the bed of his truck in the back, some of us were in the cab of his truck and we're heading back 25 minutes to our church. And he would go around these windy dirt roads in Texas and we were going back at night.

It was already dark. The buses had left and we were the last ones outta the camp. And Chris would drive down that dirt road and he would come to a time where you could see the turn up in the front, maybe a hundred yards away, and he would turn off his headlights. And you wanna see a group of sixth grade boys?

Go wild. We, we'd scream with joy and then we realized, oh my gosh, there's a turn. And then we'd scream with terror and we'd go turn it back on, turn it back on, and he would turn the lights of that truck back on just in time. And he would turn and we would make the next run. And then he would go a little further.

And then, listen, some of your parents are horrified right now. We, we do not do this at Trinity. That is against our child's safe, fall asleep. Yeah. But back then when we were illustrated for me, the joy of driving fast into the darkness without light and then allowing the light to come on at the very last second, listen, we, it's a funny story we look back on, and Chris is still, still a dear, dear friend, but some of you live your life like that, and it's crazy.

You see a turn to the front and you say, Hey, I think I can handle this myself. And you turn off all the gifts and instruments that are at your disposal that are there to help you, namely the sacraments. Namely the preached word, and you think, you know, I'm gonna turn the light off. I don't really need to go to church on Sunday.

I really don't need to go to community group or invest into the relationships in this church. And it says, though, the Lord says French, turn the lights on the road. Turn them on so you can see what's in front of you. Except it is not you who always control the lumen level of your lights. It's your brothers and sisters around you who are light.

And as you walk together, what happens when there are more lumen in the room? The place gets brighter, and when you don't quite feel up to snuff, who is it that lights the way? It's the person next to you. Even next to you this morning who you may not even know but are getting to know better, they begin to light the road ahead so that we can continue to pair Aate to walk as children of light.

And so Friends Lewis was right. We live in the shadow lands and Paul reminds us of something far better. He says that we who once were darkness, now have been made light. In ourselves. No. No, in the Lord. And by Jesus' death and resurrection, he carrie us into his righteousness by his worth, not by

hope. The good, the gospel.

For you and where was it going on the third day So that he could stronger in nature from the to wall, he could bring you into community where this part might. So that and I

new.

It's better than the wrong. This is our hope, right?

Although the storms may rain from the shadow, what we, we, no power against you, but what we of our resources that you have given to us before and we come to your table with joy. As your light has shown or you have through your

Amen.

Sermon transcript is computer generated.