SERMON OUTLINE

Live As Children of Light     Ephesians 5.7-14

Introduction

-We have the highest of possible privileges as partakers in the grace and love of God. Ephesians 1.4-5, 7, 13-14.

-That was not always the case. Ephesians 2.1-10; 4.17-19.

-We are to live out this new life in the power of the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 4.30; 5.1-2; 5.7-8

Do Not be Partakers With Them

–Them are the disobedient described in verses 3-6.

-We have a different destiny as children of God

-We have a different nature as children of light

Children of Light

-We were once darkness. More than in the dark. We were spiritually dead in sin, not just ignorant of the light. Illus: of a glass of water with ink added to it.

-This darkness blinded our minds, hardened our hearts, and directed us to fulfill our own desires.

-Only the power of God could take us out of darkness and make us light. God did this “in the Lord”. We know we are light in the Lord. We must be born-again. John 3.3-8

Light and Darkness

-The fruit of light is goodness, righteousness, and truth. The deeds of darkness are fruitless and shameful.

-We show the fruit of the Spirit and seek to do what pleases God. Galatians 5.22-23

-Light exposes the deeds of darkness and also calls the disobedient to repentance.

Conclusion

We are to walk as children of light and by that we glorify God, expose darkness and call the lost to Christ.

SERMON NOTES

Careful Living in 2010  (Ephesians 5.15)

Live As Children of Light         Ephesians 5.7-14 [read as one sentence]

-This tremendous letter to the Ephesian believers begins with a glorious description of the privilege we have received in the love and grace of God given to us in salvation through Jesus Christ. Let me read to you some of those glorious privileges. “God chose you in Christ before the creation of the world to  be holy and blameless in His sight” (1.4) “In love God predestined you to be adopted as His son through Jesus Christ” (1.5). “In Christ you have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace” (1.7). “Having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, Who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession – to the praise of His glory” (1.13-14).

-The privilege of God’s love and grace in His choosing us and adopting us as His children in Christ, of His forgiveness and the gift of the Holy Spirit living inside of us, was not always ours. Ephesians 2 tells us what we were like before Jesus Christ came into our life and saved us. All of us here were once like this. [Read Ephesians 2.1-10]

-At one time we were like many in the world still are, spiritually dead, in bondage to sin, and under the wrath of God. But something happened. God showed us His great mercy and made us spiritually alive in Christ. By grace God saved us from our sin and made us into new people. This spiritual transformation from sin and wrath to spiritual life in the Holy Spirit is the basis for Paul’s ethical commands in chapters 4 and 5. Paul has reminded us many times of this spiritual transformation. Again in 4.17-24 we are reminded of what we were before we came to Christ and how God united us with Christ and made us into new creations in Christ.

-Scattered all the way through these commands on how to live as a Christian Paul has reminded us that the source of this new life is God’s transforming work in us and the power of the Holy Spirit. 4.30, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption”. This verse points out that it is the Holy Spirit that is at work in us to make us like Christ and we are to co-operate with the Holy Spirit in working out that transformation. 5.1-2, we have a new life because we are “dearly loved children of God” by the new-birth, and so we are to imitate God and live a life a love. Now in verses 7 and 8 Paul is going to tell us once again that we are new people in Christ and therefore we are to live in a new way.

-The reason I read verses 7 to 14 so quickly this morning was to show you that this is one long sentence. Verse 7 says, “Therefore do not be partners with them”. “Them” refers to those who are disobedient to God and who live in sexual immorality, uncleanness and greed and whose destiny is the wrath of God. We are no longer to participate in their sinful disobedient ways but we are instead to follow God’s commands to be holy and loving. We can no longer live as they live because we know the destiny of their disobedient behavior and know that this is no longer our destiny in Christ. They await the wrath of God while we as dearly loved children of God and saints of God are on our way to heaven. So we are not to partner with the lost because we are on a different eternal path than they are.

-But there is a higher reason for no longer walking with the sinful world and with those who are disobedient to God. That higher reason is that we now have a different nature which is no longer compatible with their nature.

-Paul writes, “you were once darkness, but now are you light in the Lord”. Now I want you to pay close attention to what I am going to say here. Paul does not write, “you were once in darkness, or you were walking in the darkness”. Paul writes you were darkness. Nor does Paul write “you now see the light or have been enlightened to the truth”. Paul writes you are light in the Lord. You see more has taken place in your life, if you are a true Christian, than growth in knowledge and the clarification of ideas about Jesus Christ and morality. You are a true Christian only if a radical transformation of your nature has taken place. You were darkness but now you are light in the Lord.

-We were darkness because we were spiritually dead as a result of the sin of Adam. When Adam sinned he brought the whole human race into spiritual death and separation from the life of God. Our darkness was not a case of ignorance of the truth but a result of the power of sin controlling us. We were not in darkness but the darkness was in us.

-If I have a glass of water and put the glass in a dark room, I can say that the glass is in darkness. All I need to do is to turn on the light and the glass of water is no longer in darkness. But if I take a bottle of India ink and pour it into the glass of water, that water becomes darkness and whether the light is on or off or if I increase the brightness of the light, the water is still darkness. That is what sin has done to us. Darkness is our spiritual condition from birth. We are darkness in Adam and need to be made light in the Lord.

-This darkness of sin blinded our minds to the truth of God, hardened our heart toward God, and turned our will to the selfish pursuit of our own desires. Here is how Paul described it in 4.17-19. (see also Romans 1.21-25)

-Some of those selfish desires were animal lusts, and some of those desires were for money and reputation and respect and power, and some of those desires may even have been fulfilled in self-righteous service to God. But all these past pursuits were darkness and without spiritual life.

–Our need when we were darkness was not for more light, not for truth, not for knowledge and education, not for a new morality, not for religion, not for discipline, not for any self-help program. We did not need the help of Oprah or Dr Phil or Dr Oz to get us into the light. As darkness our need was for the Holy Spirit to come and convict us of our sin and to show us salvation from sin in Jesus Christ. Our need was for God to forgive us, and to make us spiritually alive, and to make us light in the Lord. Only God could transform us from darkness into light in Jesus Christ. [Read 2 Corinthians 4.4-6].

-The “but now” in verse 8 is the new-birth that came to us by the supernatural work of God in our lives. As true Christians we are not just enlightened but we are now light in the Lord. We are spiritually alive with the life of God and we now have the Spirit of Light living within us. We are light “in the Lord”. We are light in union with Jesus Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit.

-Those who are light in the Lord, know that they are light in the Lord. If you are calling yourself a Christian this morning but are not born-again by the power of God then you are still darkness and not light. If you are trusting in your morality, performance of religious duties, baptism, being a good person, you are still darkness and not light in the Lord, which means you are not a Christian. Nowhere does the NT speak of half-Christians or of a program that is to be worked on until we graduate as a Christian. At this moment you are either light in the Lord or darkness and separated from God. Make sure you know your standing before God.

-Paul says again what he has been saying all along in this letter, “Now that you are light in the Lord, live as children of light”. Paul has been giving us a number of commands on how to live as children of light. In verse 9, Paul describes in three general ways what it means to live as children of light. He says the fruit of light is goodness, righteousness and truth.

–Goodness means moral excellence. There is a branch of postmodern Christianity which prides itself in swearing in the pulpit to show the social relevance and freedom of Christianity. Many other things that dishonor God are done in the name of Christian freedom. The freedom of Christianity is not the freedom to do what I want but the power to do what is honoring to the Holy and loving character of God. Christ has set us free from sin and the world to live a godly life in good works as defined by Scripture, not by society.

–Righteousness means right behavior, doing what is right. Does the Bible tell us what is right behavior? It certainly does. The Bible reveals to us the character of God, and principles that can be applied to our circumstances, and sometimes even commands on specific behavior as we have in these chapters we are studying together.

–Truth means no lies, no hypocrisy, no false deceptions, but honesty and openness and transparency before God and others.

-Light produces fruit acceptable to God while the deeds of darkness are fruitless before God. (v11) As a true Christian your life should be bearing the fruit of goodness, righteousness and truth.  Galatians adds to this list the fruit of the Spirit which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5.22-23)

–Verse 10 commands us “to find out what pleases the Lord”. This we do by studying His Word. A couple of months back I did a quick study on what is well-pleasing to God. I looked up in my concordance all the uses of “wellpleasing” in the NT and came up with a list of things that are wellpleasing to God. I have that list in the bulletin this week. If you truly want to be wellpleasing to God then study the character of God and the will of God in the Word of God. During our time on earth the Bible is the authority that is to guide our life. It will direct us to God and to life in the Spirit.

–Verse 11, tells us again to “have nothing to do with the deeds of darkness”. Verse 7 commanded us not to be partakers with unbelievers and here we are not to be partakers in the deeds of unbelievers. As I mentioned last week we may not be as disconnected with the deeds of darkness as we need to be if we want to be fruitful Christians.

-Not only are we to have nothing to do with the deeds of darkness but we are also to expose them. Those deeds of darkness are shameful and dishonor the Glory of God. Even those seemingly good deeds of self-righteousness dishonor God, for they are not done under the direction and power of the Holy Spirit. Try and tell a self-righteous man that he is a sinner in need of God’s salvation in Jesus Christ and see what kind of a reaction you get. It will not be the reaction of someone who is poor in spirit and grateful for the grace and mercy of God. Humble submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ is the test for light and darkness.

–The light of the Christian’s life exposes darkness. As we walk in the light of God’s truth the sin, evil, and unbelief of the world, is exposed as shameful before God. Everything becomes visible when exposed by light. Darkness is seen for what it truly is and not just as how it appears on the surface.

–The light of the Christian’s life is also a call to repentance, a call for the disobedient to come to Christ, to be brought out of darkness and to be made light in the Lord Jesus Christ. So it is imperative that we walk as children of light in a dark world. Verse 14 is a sample of a call to repentance.

-We no longer have the same destiny as those who live in sin and unbelief, and we no longer have the same nature of darkness that the disobedient have. Our destiny is eternal life and our nature is light in the Lord. Therefore we are to walk as children of light, no longer aligning ourselves with the disobedient, turning away from deeds of darkness, always seeking to please the Lord. As we walk as children of light we expose the darkness and call those who are in darkness to the light.

-As children of light we have been given the highest privilege possible to mankind. We have also been given a great responsibility. We have been called to represent God and Christ by walking as children of light. As children of light we imitate God, glorify God, expose darkness, and call men and women out of darkness and into the light. So live as a child of light. Be very careful how you live in 2010.