YouTube video sermon
Ephesians 5:6-14
Let me invite you to take your copy of God’s Word and turn with me to Ephesians 5. I read a Christian film review on a new American documentary film called Summer of Soul this week. It’s a documentary founded primarily on archival footage found stored in a basement for 50 years that highlights the 1969 Harlem Culture Festival, which took place at the same time as Woodstock. And that got me looking through some music of the past.
As most of you know, I’ve shared lyrics from two Paul Overstreet songs recently, and so I thought perhaps today I could begin with another one. In 1968, Johnny Nash had a hit that only got to 58 in the American top 100, but reached number 6 in the UK. Johnny Nash is not a household name to many. If you know of him it’s possible because you remember the song “I Can See Clearly Now,” but the one that I have in mind is from 1968 titled “You Got Soul.” The six of you that remember it will recall that it begins with these words:
Hey, I can tell by the way you walk
You got soul, soul
I can tell by the way you talk
You got soul, soul
You got somethin’ deep inside
Nothin’ in the world can hide
You got soul, babe
You got soul.
You say, “Well, that’s all fine and good, but what does that have to do with Ephesians 5?” Well, although I’m not certain whether Paul would’ve liked the music, I think that if he’d had access to the lyrics he may well have decided to do what I’m doing right now, which is to make mention of it in order to drive home the central point of chapters 4-6. And that central point is simply this: the reality of the Christian’s profession of faith is to be visibly seen in the way they walk. In other words, our lifestyle, the way we live, the way we walk in life should clearly and evidently point to the fact that we’ve been saved. In fact, we could change the word “soul” in Johnny Nash’s song to “saved” and it might be suitable as a praise and worship song.
Hey, I can tell by the way you walk
You got saved, saved
I can tell by the way you talk
You got saved, saved
You got somethin’ deep inside
Nothin’ in the world can hide
You got saved, babe
You got saved.
Now some of you are thinking, “Pastor, you’re really stretching to make a connection between Johnny Nash and the apostle Paul.” And while I grant to you that it’s a bit odd, it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility because we know – from the book of Acts and Paul’s encounter with the Stoic philosophers on Mars Hill (Acts 17:28), and a few other instances in his writings (1 Corinthians 15:33, Titus 1:12) – that Paul often referred to the poets of his day when making a point. So, it’s possible that Paul would’ve referred to Johnny Nash and “You Got Soul.”
Don’t forget how chapter 4 began, “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called…” Of course, he’s referring to the fact that they had heard the gospel of Jesus preached, and the Holy Spirit had drawn them to a place of confessing their sin and believing the truth of God, and now their lifestyles should bear testimony of that fact. And he encourages them further in Ephesians 4:17 when he says, “Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds.”
The point that Paul is trying to make is this. If we’ll just walk in accordance with the Word of God and seek to be obedient to it, then we will make a difference in the world. Because our friends and neighbors and perhaps even strangers will say, “Why do you live the way you do? Why don’t you go to the bars and clubs like you used to? When did you start listening to worship song instead of that other stuff? Why don’t you speak like a sailor anymore? You used to love those filthy jokes. What’s up?”
Well, last Sunday we looked at what Paul had to say about walking in love, and today we’re going to consider what it means to walk in the light. So, follow along with me as we read Ephesians 5:6-14:
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; 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, 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.”
“Eternal Father, we ask that You make Your holy Word real to us. Show us ourselves within Your Word, and show us our Savior – Jesus Christ. Make the Bible real to us, we pray, O Lord. Amen.”
Before I jump into the first point, it’s important that we understand something. Just because the Bible says that humans were made in the image of God and we have inherent value and dignity because of that, that does not mean that every human being is forgiven and is a “spiritual” child of God. You say, “Pastor, that’s kind of obvious.” You would think so, but no. There are some, within the universal church, that use very generic language as a way of promoting this idea that everybody is automatically forgiven and saved. The phrase that they use and that comes to mind is this: “We’re all children of God.”
Now, to be fair, there’s a general sense in which that is true. All humans, by virtue of our physical birth, are made in the image of God (that’s what Genesis 1 and 2 tell us), and in this sense we are “children of God.” But that’s very different than saying we’re “spiritual” children of God, or saying that anybody and everybody is a Christian.
Remember Jesus’s encounter with Nicodemus in John 3? What does Jesus tell him: “I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). Peter would put it this way, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you…” (1 Peter 1:3-5).
Here’s the reason we need to be clear about this, and how this issue connects with Ephesians (and frankly the rest of the Bible). If simply being born into this world automatically designates someone as a “spiritual” child of God, then:
1. Anything goes – any behavior, any lifestyle, any thought pattern and belief and conviction is fair game, and consequently there’s no such thing as sin, and
2. There’s no need for Jesus. If we’re all “loved children of God” and accepted by God just the way we are, then why send Jesus to die upon the cross? And that brings me to our first point.
A New Description
When you see this, you’ll appreciate Paul’s teaching and the distinction that I just made. It’s so important that we understand the dramatic contrast that’s represented here. Look at verse 8, “for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.” It doesn’t say at one time you were not a church-attender, and now you are. At one time you were irreligious, and now you’ve become religious. At one time you were flaky, and now you’re not so flaky. No; it’s far more significant than that. In fact, he doesn’t simply say, “At one time you lived in darkness, (although that’s true) and now you live in light (which is also true).” No; he says you were dark (skotos) and now you’re light (phós). You were, but now you are.
Please notice that the color “gray” doesn’t appear in these texts. It’s either darkness or light. There’s no half-dark and half-light; there’s only dark/light. By nature, dark. By grace, light. As long as we remain outside of Christ, we remain in darkness. It’s not that we remain in neutral territory, and somewhere along life’s journey, after we’ve learned a little and grown up a little then we decide we want to live in either the darkness or the light. No, by our very nature we’re born into an inescapable darkness. But in too much of the universal church I see a desire to find a gray area, a middle ground, a way that’s no so demanding, an area where we can be mostly in the light but still dabble a bit in the dark.
That reminds me of a prayer that St. Augustine once prayed, “Lord, make me pure, but not yet.” No, that’s not biblical. As many of us heard when we were growing up a generation ago, “There’s no two ways about it.” We’re either Christian or we’re not. We’re either in Christ, or we’re outside of Christ. We’re either spiritually dead, or we’re spiritually alive. There’s no middle ground of compromise. There’s no universal and generic talk here about “Oh, well, we’re all loved children of God.” No, you were . . . but now you are.
A New Direction
Remember, Paul’s audience is the church, not the culture. So, for those of us who have been called out of darkness and into the light we’re called in order to pursue a new direction in life: “Walk as children of light.” Verse 9 says, “for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true.” Another way of saying that is “the fruit of light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth.” In other words, if we’re in the light, then there’s a certain fruit that should be forthcoming.
“Being good” sometimes gets a bad rap, but it shouldn’t. As children of the light, we’re called to be good, to do good things, to think good thoughts. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians and said, “See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone” (1 Thessalonians 5:15). We enjoy meeting and being around good people – people who are generous, people who are dependable, people who serve others. After all, that’s why we call them “good friends.” Every Christian is to be that kind of person because he/she is in the light.
Righteousness is primarily an attribute of God. Paul tells Timothy, “So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart” (2 Timothy 2:22). Pursuing righteousness doesn’t mean taking a passive approach to being honest and dealing with integrity. It means swimming against the stream. As Paul puts it in Philippians 3, it means, “[F]orgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, pressing on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
If we’re walking in the light we’ll be good friends, we’ll pursue righteousness and we’ll be people of truth – not just seeking to know the truth, but also living the truth. This isn’t purely an academic and intellectual truth; this is a lived experience where our lifestyles are in concert with our beliefs. So, there are good relationships with other people, a right relationship with God, and a true understanding of ourselves.
Listen to how the apostle John says the very same thing that Paul is saying, “This is the message we have heard from Him [Jesus] and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us” (1 John 1:5-10). Good relationships with others. Right relationship with God. True understanding of ourselves.
A New Desire
A new description: you were, but now you are. A new direction: walk as children of light. Third, a new desire. Look at verse 10, “and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.” The desire of those who walk in the light is to find out what is good and pleasing and acceptable to God. Paul isn’t saying, here, “Let’s see what the Lord will allow us to get by with.” No, he’s saying make a thorough examination of things in life and situations you find yourself in and opportunities that present themselves and test them against God’s Word to determine if they’re pleasing to God.
Now the Bible doesn’t cover every single situation and scenario that we find ourselves in, but it does offer quite a lot of definitive things that are pleasing to God. For starters, it’s God’s desire that we repent of our sin and accept His free gift of grace through Jesus Christ. 2 Peter 3:9 says, “The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise as some count slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” Next, He wants us to “become conformed to the image of His Son” (Romans 8:29). Micah 6:8 says, “He [God] has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Jesus was asked once which commandment of the Law was the greatest. He answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:30-32). Hebrews 13:16 says, “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”
Those are just a few of the things that the Bible tells us are pleasing to the Lord. If we’re honest, the problem isn’t the difficulty of knowing what pleases God as much as it is our obedience in doing them. That’s why children of light have a new desire.
A New Distinction
There’s also a new distinction. We spoke about this last week, but it’s worth a quick repeat. A true follower of Jesus is different from the person they once were. In verses 7 and 11 Paul says that we shouldn’t partner with the sons of disobedience. That’s the name of the rock band you used to play with, but now you’re in the band called the children of light. Don’t partner with those folks. In verse 11 he says don’t take part in what they do.
Now folks, let’s get real for a minute. I know, and you know, and Paul knows, and God knows that we can’t avoid all forms of unfruitful deeds of darkness. They’re everywhere we turn. Indeed, the only way to avoid that kind of thing is to die. But we don’t have to partner with them. We don’t have to participate in them. I believe it was the great Reformer, Martin Luther, who said, “You can’t prevent the birds from flying overhead, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair.”
We can’t cut ourselves off completely with people that don’t believe in Jesus. How will they ever hear the Gospel if we don’t continue to love them, befriend them, invite them to church, and minister to their needs? Remember our theme for the year: Who’s Your ONE? Paul is warning us to be ever so careful that we don’t bring the deeds of darkness into the church because we’ve failed to draw the line. We need to guard against accommodating sinful attitudes and actions and people.
So, we have a new description: you were, but now you are. A new direction: walk as children of the light. A new desire: to please God. A new distinction: drawing a line between serving those in darkness versus participating in the darkness. And finally, a new duty: expose dark deeds.
A New Duty
Look at the end of verse 11ff, “but instead expose them. For it is 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.” Now, we have to be extremely careful here.
First, I want to point out that the word “them” in verse 11 isn’t referring to calling out people. There’s a sinful tendency, even in church circles, to see certain people get “called on the carpet” and “exposed.” In fact, that’s a popular word right now – in politics, in business, in churches, in the news. It plays on our fleshly and sinful desires of self-righteousness and wanting to see someone get shamed, or our desire to “get the scoop” or “get the dirt.” So, let’s proceed with caution here.
The word “them” refers to the unfruitful deeds of darkness. It’s not wrong for us to pray that God would expose sin, but let’s be extremely diligent in guarding our own hearts in the process. I’ve done it, and you have too. We can leave a prayer group feeling as though we’ve pleased the Lord in praying for our governmental leaders or community leaders or pastors or whatever, and in reality, all we did was worship ourselves and play up to our own selfish and sinful desires to be vindicated and proven right.
And that leads me to my final observation about exposing sin. How do we do it? One way is to pray that God would expose it. That God would just orchestrate things in such a way that sinful actions and attitudes and agendas would come into the light. But there’s another way, and that’s for us – children of the light – to simply be obedient to this passage and walk in our day-to-day lives as children of the light.
I’ll leave you with this story. Tom Rees, a British evangelist, tells the story of a man who came to one of his crusades, received Jesus, and moved dramatically out of the deep darkness he’d been living in. He stopped being a drunkard. He stopped abusing his wife and children. He started using his money for the good of his home and family and community. But all of his former drinking buddies gave him a hard time about the changes in his life. They even challenged him on his belief in the Bible, “Do you really think Jesus turned water into wine?” The newly converted man said, “I don’t know a lot about the Bible, yet, but I do know this: Jesus turned beer into furniture in my house.”
A new description: you were, but now you are. A new direction: walk as children in light. A new desire: to please God. A new distinction: between loving those in darkness and participating in it. A new duty: expose dark deeds, simply by walking in light.
If you’re here this morning and you’ve never responded to Christ Jesus, verse 14 is for you: “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” For the rest of us; may we also wake up to our world’s situation and walk in the light of Christ.