Walk Acceptably in Openness

If you would turn with me in your Bibles to Ephesians, chapter 5.

Ephesians 5, we'll be reading verses 8 through 14. For at one time you were darkness, but 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. Try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, 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. Therefore, it says, Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. Let's pray together. Father, your Word is a lamp to our feet, a light to our path. We have such clarity from you through what you have spoken in your Word, and yet we walk so often in darkness and confusion, grant us grace, Lord, to trust your Word, to allow the light that you've given to shine in us and through us, be glorified even as we look tonight at your Word. We ask in Jesus' name, Amen.

You may be seated. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void. Darkness was on the face of the deep. And God said, Let there be light. And there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated light from the darkness.

God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. And when God separated a people to himself, called them out of bondage, and took them through the desert into the Promised Land, he led them with a pillar of cloud in the day, a pillar of fire by night, to give them light. As he made of them a nation for himself, he inspired the Psalmist to give them songs to sing in worship and adoration and praise, songs like Psalm 27, The Lord is my light and my salvation.

And Psalm 119, Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. And later, as the prophets of Israel reminded them of God's blessing, that it was not just for them, it was to be shared, to be a light to the nations. The prophet said that all nations would come to the mountain of the Lord, and that Israel would be a light to the world around them. And the prophet Isaiah, for example, cried out and said, Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord. The promise of the light of God shining in the darkness of this sin-cursed world was given to Israel. God said to them, I will make you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.

And then when the full revelation of God came in the person of Jesus Christ, the apostle John declared in him was life. And the life was the light of men. The light shineth in the darkness.

The darkness cannot overcome it. Jesus himself would confront the sin and darkness of this world, the darkness of spiritual pride and sexual immorality. And he would declare, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. In fact, Christ would say to his followers, You are the light of the world. Let your light shine before others so that they may see and give glory to your Father in heaven.

Well, how can that be true? How is it possible that we who are so filled with darkness and sin, who love darkness rather than light, how can we be the light of the world? Well, in fact, by God's grace and because of his great love for us, we have been called out of darkness into his marvelous light.

God who in the beginning said, Let there be light, who created light out of darkness, and this creator God who shined light into the darkness. The apostle Paul wrote of this in his second letter to the Corinthians. He said, For God who said, Let light shine out of darkness, has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. So here in chapter 5 of Ephesians, in verse 8, we are exhorted by the apostle. He says, At one time you were darkness, but now are you light in the Lord.

Walk as children of light. And then verse 10, Proving, testing, discerning what is the pleasing, acceptable to the Lord. In our previous studies through these last three chapters of Ephesians, we have heard the call to a worthy walk of unity. We have been called to the different walk of newness, new creation. We have been called to a sacrificial walk of love. We saw that in each case these outworkings of the life of Christ in us are grounded in the doctrinal truth that he has given us in those first three chapters. The walk of unity, our oneness is grounded in God's purpose that he will gather all things together in one, in Christ. And then our life is different because in Christ we are new creations. We've been created in Christ Jesus for good works. And we're to live sacrificially in love, loving just as Christ has loved us, because Christ dwells in our hearts by faith so that we may be rooted and grounded in love. Now then we come to this portion in chapter 5 verses 8 through 14 where we are called to walk acceptably or pleasingly to the Lord, walking in openness and transparency as children of light. Throughout this section of the letter, Paul's method of applying the doctrinal truth to the practical outworking in our Christian life, he's used a method of contrast. He spoke about putting off the old man and putting on the new man. Falsehood versus the truth. Stealing versus working and having to give to others. Corrupt speech versus grace giving speech that ministers to those who hear.

Foolish talk versus thanksgiving. And now here in chapter 5 verse 8 he says, at one time you were darkness, but now you are light. So let's look at the nature of the believer, the one who is called to walk acceptably before the Lord as a child of the light. The nature of this one who is pleasing to the Lord. Again, part of Paul's method is to give you the negative first and then the positive.

And so let's look for a moment at the negative side of this. What we were is darkness. We need to note that in the Greek the emphasis is on were. The order would be you were at one time darkness. And it's also interesting that he doesn't say you were in darkness.

He says you were darkness. That's who we were. It wasn't just what we were surrounded by. We are that. We're surrounded by the darkness of this sin-cursed world. But we were darkness. Paul uses this idea in other places as well. In Romans chapter 1 of Romans he talks about the fact that even though men knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they came futile in their thinking and their foolish heart was darkened. And then earlier in the Ephesian letter in chapter 4 verse 18 he speaks of the fact that the Gentiles are darkened in their understanding because of the ignorance that is in them. So when we think about the darkness, about what we were, we can say a lot of things about this.

Let me just mention a couple of things. First of all, darkness causes confusion and stumbling. The mind is darkened.

Paul points to this in the passage that we read just a moment ago. In the world around us this is so very clear. The mind is, there's vanity in futile thinking. Darkness in the thinking of man.

A couple of examples of our day. There are people who don't know the difference between a man and a woman, a boy and a girl. They don't realize that they're God-created man, male, and female, and that's it. And so we have all this confusion about whether I'm he or she or they or them. The mind has been darkened and blinded because of sin.

And what is called now gender dysphoria is rampant and on the rise, epidemic really, especially among teenage girls. But not only the mind is darkened, but our emotions, our heart is darkened as well. The area of relationship for us that should be the most loving and the most filled with what is right and good and true and the greatest expression of what God has done for us, marriage and family, and we're trying to redefine all that. And what God calls an abomination we call love. And so our minds, our hearts, our wills are darkened by sin.

And it's easy for us, I think, having been enlightened by God's truth and the Spirit of God making that truth alive to us, it's easy for us to look at the world around us and to point the finger and to talk about all the darkness that is in this world. The truth is that there is also the ever-present danger of darkness in the church. And we need to guard against darkness in our body life. Jesus warns of the darkness in the Sermon on the Mount. He says, the eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light.

But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness. I notice that in the Sermon on the Mount, he's not talking to unbelievers.

If you go back to the beginning of that chapter 5 of Matthew, it tells us that Jesus saw the multitudes and he went up on the mountain and it says, when he was set, his disciples came to him and he opened his mouth and taught them. He was teaching his disciples, those who were following him, and he warns them of darkness. And notice that because that is who these warnings go to, we need to realize that far too often, we are much too cavalier about sin and evil, about the darkness that is around us and still in us. We don't realize, I think, the seriousness of sin, how dark the darkness really is.

I think the longer I live, the older I get, the more I'm confronted with just how sinful I am and how great a hold that has in our hearts. There was a poet, James Weldon Johnson, that attempted to capture the depth of the darkness in a sermonic poem called The Creation, and he speaks of the darkness. He says, darkness covered everything, darker than a thousand midnights down in a cypress swamp. I don't know how many of you have ever lived out in the country where you didn't have lights all around you.

I was thinking early this morning I was up and it was still dark outside, more or less, but I could see clearly in the house because there's so many lights around, so many little blue lights on all the electronic devices and we have light everywhere, but you get out in the country where there's no electricity and I remember places like that as a child and at night it was pitch black, unless it happened to be a full moon. Darkness. That darkness permeates our old self. We were dark, and that darkness was who we were, not just where we were, it was in us, and it clings to us, and so even in the body we need to be guarded against this darkness and I think probably one of the most common expressions of this in the life of the body is a matter of strife and dissension within the body between believers, the way we relate to one another, the way we think about one another.

John speaks to this in his first letter in 1 John chapter 2 verses 9 through 11. He says, whoever says he's in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light and in him there is no cause for stumbling, but whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not know where he's going because the darkness has blinded his eyes. He's not talking to unbelievers here.

He's addressing how we relate to our brothers, to fellow believers, fellow Christians. Paul says that's what you were, that darkness you were, but now don't be that anymore. That's not who you are in Christ.

Now you are light. So in verse 11 he says don't have any fellowship with that. Don't take any part in that. Don't be a partaker of the unfruitful works of darkness. In verse 3 back in the earlier passage he said, these things must not even be named among you, not even once. See, we're no longer children of wrath. We're no longer children of disobedience. Rather, we are the dearly beloved children of the Father, adopted sons and daughters of God. We are in God's family. Paul uses words like fellow citizens, members of the household of God, children of light in Christ. So don't be darkness, what you were.

Be what you are. And so turning then to that positive expression, we are now light in the Lord. Have nothing to do with the unfruitful works of darkness. Light dispels darkness. Light exposes what's in the dark. The smallest light can be seen far off.

Some of you stood this morning as veterans and some of you have known what it is to be in a situation where you can't let light shine at night or you might get a bullet. It can be seen so far away. I love the clarity of the New American Standard in verse 13. All things become visible when they are exposed by the light. Look back at verse 8 for a moment. At one time you were darkness but now you are light in the Lord. And we need to realize that we are not the source of the light. The light is something that is within us.

It's the light of Christ. You remember the prologue to John's gospel. He said the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And he says earlier of that word, in him was life and the life was the light of men. It's the life of Christ within us that makes us children of light. If you're in Christ, Christ is in you. The life of Christ, the light of God is in you. Therefore, verse 14 says, awake, O sleeper, rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. We are light in the Lord, verse 8 says. Lord Jones puts it well.

I think he said this. We do not merely believe in Christ. We are joined to Christ. We are in Christ and Christ is in us, the hope of glory. So we are light in the Lord. We are not the source of the light. We're not the light ourselves, but the light is Christ in us. If we're in him, we must be the light of the world.

Walk as children of the light. In the little parenthesis there in verse 9, Paul gives us an explanation of the fruit of being like this. And he contrasts here what he speaks of in verse 11 when he talks about the unfruitful works of darkness. But here in verse 9, he tells us about the fruit of the light. And he again has contrasts with earlier things he said about darkness and sin that is in us. He first says that the fruit of the light is in all that's good, in goodness, contrasted with what he had said earlier in chapter 4 and verse 31 where he said we're to put away all malice. Rather than malice, we are to be characterized by goodness.

Of course, we're not good in ourselves just like we're not light in ourselves. Jesus said there's no one good except God. We are not good, but in Christ we become partakers of the divine nature. Colin Brown expressed it this way, through the redemption that has taken place in Christ, goodness overflows the believer. Paul said in Romans 8, we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. As children of light and the Lord, we are created in Christ Jesus for good works.

He said back in chapter 2, we are created for that very purpose. And so, as Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount again, let your light so shine before men, they may see your good works and give glory to your Father. And by the way, this word for good here in verse 9 has the idea of generosity and benevolence. We who receive God's goodness can and should pass it on, that goodness, to others. So the fruit of the light is in all that is good.

It's also the fruit in all that is right. The word is literally righteousness, in all righteousness. He contrasts righteousness with idolatry.

Back in verse 5, he spoke of covetousness, which is idolatry. Righteousness is what is straight and just and upright. It has the idea of judging and discerning. We have seen in Hebrews the fact that we are to come to a place where we discern between good and evil because we've practiced it.

We are to be judges, right kinds of judges. Righteousness is what children of light long for. It's their joy. They delight in it. Jesus said back in the Sermon on the Mount again, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

They will be satisfied. Righteousness is of the very essence of the Christian life. And Paul in Romans again, he said to the one who believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

We are counted righteous because we put our faith, our trust in Christ. And so it is the fruit of the light. The Christ in us bears the fruit of righteousness. James also talks about that fruit of righteousness and those who walk in God's ways. A third thing that he points to here as the fruit of this light is truth. What is true?

Truth versus falsehood. He's spoken a lot about this in this letter, talking about putting away lying and speaking the truth in love. Once again, this is a characteristic that is fundamental to the life of a believer in Christ.

Paul uses it over and over. He speaks in chapter 4 of speaking the truth in love. And again in chapter 4, he talks about the truth being in Jesus. In the closing section of that chapter, he says that we are to speak the truth, every man with his neighbor. Without integrity, we have no credibility.

Our message is not heard if we're not known to be people of truth and honesty. The old man seeks to deceive and to connive and he wants to live in secret and hiddenness, but children of light must be open and transparent, known for honesty and integrity. So verse 9 really is a parenthesis. We need to read that continuing sentence where verse 10 is the completion of the thought. Verse 8 says walk as children of light, and it continues in verse 10, and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Or that word could also be translated test what is pleasing or prove what is pleasing to the Lord.

Try to discern to prove what is pleasing, acceptable to the Lord. Children of light imitate their father. The father is the father of lights. God is light.

In him is no darkness at all. Children of light avoid the darkness. They don't have fellowship with darkness. They don't participate in the darkness. In verse 11 where Paul encourages not to have any part with it, to participate in it, that root word there is the word that we normally associate with fellowship, koinonia.

That's at the root of that word. And so we are not to have any participation in that, any fellowship. Paul puts it another way in 2 Corinthians. He says what fellowship has light with darkness?

There's not to be any participation in the sharing. And as he warns in Corinthians, he says I'm not talking about and when I give these instructions I'm not talking about separating from the world and becoming a monk and never having any association. You know, Jesus was known to be a friend of publicans and sinners, but he didn't participate in their darkness. Even though he walked with them and talked with them and shared life with them in a sense, he was not participating in the darkness.

He never entered into their sin. And so rather than being participants in their darkness, we are to expose or to reprove their darkness. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. Just a little grammar lesson here. That is an active present tense imperative second person verb.

And so what's that got to do with anything? Well, it's an active verb. That means it involves effort.

You've got to work at this. And then it's a present tense. That means it's a continuing ongoing lifestyle. It's something that we do all the time.

This is how we're to live. And then it's an imperative. That means it's a command.

It's not optional. And it's plural. It's a second person plural. The you is all of you. As we would say in the South, y'all, it's all of us. We are to live like this.

So how do we apply this? Just a couple of things. There are a lot of things we could talk about. But first of all, we are not like others. Paul has said this earlier when he said that we're not any longer to walk like other Gentiles do.

We are to be different, not like everyone else. And he uses that term no longer, implying, you know, this is how you used to be. But don't be like that anymore. Don't be like that. If you are what you always were, you're not a Christian.

Striking, isn't it? But how true. If you are what you always were, you're not a Christian. Because a Christian is a new creation. A Christian was darkness but now light. The Holy Spirit is the one who affects this in our lives. So we should pray, ask the Spirit to shine the light of truth on our life. Ask, am I still in darkness or do I see the fruit of the light shining ever brighter and brighter? Is there goodness and righteousness and truth? Let me close with some words of encouragement.

This is from Martin Lloyd-Jones. Many people are troubled because they cannot put a finger on a particular moment or on a particular text or a particular occasion, but that is not the point. The question that the apostle asks is not when or how exactly did you pass from what you were to what you are, but rather, can you say about yourself, I am this, I'm no longer that? The question is, are you alive or are you not? If you are the merest babe in Christ, you're alive. If you are in Christ, you're the light of the world. So walk as children of light.

When anything is exposed to the light, it becomes visible. For anything that becomes visible is light, therefore it says, awake, O sleeper, arise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. You were sometimes darkness, but now are you light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.

Let's pray. Father of lights, giver of every good and perfect gift. Grant us grace to walk in the light, to walk as children of light, to be so filled with Christ that the light of the gospel radiates to all around us, bringing glory to you.

Lord Jesus, be our strength that we may abandon the unfruitful works of darkness. Fill our hearts with goodness and righteousness and truth. Blessed Holy Spirit, illumine the word and quicken it in our hearts. Teach us, reprove us, correct us, train us. Cause us to live before the world in transparency and openness, to live a life that is pleasing and acceptable to the Father. That you may be glorified in your people and the world may know that we are yours and be drawn to the truth. We ask in Jesus' name, Amen.