Awaking From Sleep And Arising From The Dead

AWAKING FROM SLEEP AND ARISING FROM THE DEAD

Study Text: Ephesians 5: 1 – 17

Introduction:

- We live in a hard, dark world, a world that is dominated and driven by sin. In the midst of that darkness and depravity, God has redeemed a people.

- He has redeemed a people that He expects to be different. He has redeemed a people He has empowered to be different.

- Somebody that sleep and the one that is dead have something in common: they have both lost control of conscious activities and have become insensitive to things happening around them.

- So many things that they could not tolerate or cope with when awaken or alive can easily be done or performed around or with them without their awareness.

- This loss of sensitivity and consciousness differ in the degree and extent, in that it is very easy for one to wake out of sleep than to arise from the dead, even though, both are possible.

- When we become spiritually insensitive to and unconscious of:

i. Our true identity in Christ.

ii. Our expected attitudes, character and lifestyle from the word of God.

iii. Our restrictions in behaviour, relationships and involvement by the word of God.

- We are described as someone that is spiritually sleeping or someone that is spiritually dead, depending on the degree and extent to which we have gone.

- The scripture that we read is all about change. It is designed to teach us that we are different from the world around us, and since we are different, we should live lives that are different.

- The simple truth is that believers should be different from those who do not know the Lord Jesus Christ. A brief review of the first eight verses of this chapter clearly demonstrate this truth.

• In verse 1, we are commanded to live like God.

• In verse 2, we are commanded to love like God.

• In verses 3-7, we are commanded to leave this world and its ways behind.

• Beginning in verse 8, the Apostle tells us why we are to be different.

- This is something we need to hear and heed. After all, we are living in this world, but we are “strangers and pilgrims” here. 1 Pet. 2:11.

- While we are “strangers and pilgrims,” in this world, there was a time when we were citizens of this world. We lived like they live. We thought like they think. We did what they do. We were part of them.

- But, when we were saved by the grace of God, we were delivered from our old life of sin, and we were given a new life of righteousness.

- While we delivered from the world, we still possess a deep familiarity with the world and its ways. There is still a part of us, the fleshly part that still desires the things of the world we left behind when we were saved, and beyond that:

• There is always pressure for the saints of God to be more like the world around them.

• There is overt pressure from advertising, entertainment, and other forms of media for us to do what the world does.

• There is subtle pressure even from people we love who would like to see us behave a little more like them. They would like to see us do the things they do. These folk do what they do because our lifestyle makes them feel guilty about the way they are living. Rom 12: 1-2

• There is pressure from within as the flesh reaches out for the things that are now forbidden to it. We might be saved, but there is still a part of us that loves sin and that hates the rigours of holiness.

- While there is pressure to go back, there is also pressure to go forward. Just as surely as the flesh and the world longs for us to conform to its ways, the Spirit of God and the word of God want us to be transformed so that we might be what God saved us to be, Gal. 5:16-17.

- We shall discuss the topic under three sub-headings:

1. Substantive Changes by our Redemption

2. Salient Characteristics of the Redeemed

3. Specific Commands of the Redeemer

1. Substantive Changes by our Redemption

- We “were sometimes darkness.” This means that we were lost and in the darkness of sin and depravity. We were blinded by the god of this world, 2 Cor. 4:4. We lived like every other lost person, and we enjoyed it, Eph. 2:1-3.

- We were enslaved to sin. We knew nothing else. We wanted nothing else. We were lost in the dark and headed to Hell. We lived like the lost people we were.