Awake, Not Woke Series

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.” (Ephesians 5:7–14)

In 1638 Galileo attempted to measure the speed of light by measuring the time it took for two lanterns on separate hilltops to be reveled. He couldn’t even come close to a good calculation, only estimating light was 10 times the speed of sound. In 1676 a Danish astronomer was able to get close to measuring it at 200,000 KM per second. Today we know that light travels at 186,282.397 miles per second; some 900,000 times the speed of sound.

Now, here is the amazing part of light. In a perfect vacuum the speed is always at a constant state of velocity independent of the emitting body. In other words, the speed of light is sacred. You cannot speed it up or slow it down by your own movement.

Let’s illustrate it this way: Suppose you are standing in the freeway and your friend is traveling down that freeway at 60 MPH. At the same time your friend goes by you a police motorcycle goes by you at 70 mph. To you the speed of the motorcycle will be 70 mph, but to your friend that motorcycle will pass him at 10 mph.

Now, picture the same scenario, except instead of a motorcycle passing you and your cousin, it is a beam of light. In this case - and only in cases involving light, the light beam passes both of you at the exact same speed. No matter who you are, no matter what you believe, no matter how fast or how slow you are going the speed of light is always going to be unchanged. (Michael Guillem, Amazing Truths)

The same thing is true for God. In the Bible, God and Jesus are repeatedly identified with light. 1 John 1:5 “5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” God is constant. He never changes. His character and nature never changes. His holiness never changes. No matter what is happening in the world, God’s nature does not change, nor does it adjust or is it relative to the events and condition of the world.

Likewise God is not subject to the limits of space, matter or time.. Revelation 1:8 “8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” For Jehovah God (the God of the Bible) there is no past, present, or future. There are all one and the same to him. Whereas we are always developing, always changes, always different than we were yesterday and will be different tomorrow, God simply is… he never changes - Period. Exodus 3:14 “God said to Moses, “I am who I am.”

I. Express the Light (vv. 7-10).

We live in a luminous society. If we were to turn off all of the lights off in this room, we would see lights from various sources, mainly electronic. Few of us have ever experienced complete darkness. Light for us is common and abundant as air and we often take advantage of that. It is also true for us spiritually. In today’s passage, Paul likens evil not to something similar or equal to light, but the absence of light - darkness. Moreover, the Apostle Paul compares those who are children of God through Jesus Christ as children of light and those who are disobedient to God as those walking - living - in darkness. This is a fascinating consideration that I want to take a moment and consider more deeply.

Paul spends much of his letter telling us what a life of darkness involves. He describes children of the world as futile, darkened, sexually immoral, alienated from God, ignorant, hard-hearted, greedy of impurity, angry, vulgar, thieves. It is an unflattering list and it is darkness that causes sinful people to be gravitated to these dark things. Just as light and darkness are incompatible, so it is that these things are incompatible with the believer in Christ.