It's About Time: Walk As Children Of The Light Series

Pastor Allan Kircher

Shell Point Baptist Church

June 2nd 2013

Eph. 5:8-14

“It’s about time! WALK AS CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT”

Intro: Eph. chap 5 is all about change.

• Designed/teach us we are different/world around us.

• Now that we are different/should live lives that/different.

The simple truth:

• Believers should be different from those/don’t know Lord.

A brief review/1st seven verses/chapter clearly demonstrate/truth.

• v. 1, commanded to live like God

• v. 2, commanded to love like God.

• V.3-7, commanded to leave this world and its ways behind.

• v. 8 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.

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/grace/God, we were delivered from our old life of sin, given a new life of righteousness.

Even though delivered/world, we still possess 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.

• Always pressure/saints/God/more like/world around them.

• The overt pressure/entertainment/other forms of media for us to do what the world does

• Subtle pressure even from people we love who would like to see us behave a little more like them.

• To see us do the things they do.

• I think these folk do what they do because our lifestyle makes them feel guilty about the way they are living.

There is pressure within us 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 rigors 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 resurrected spirit within us want us to be transformed so that we might be what God saved us to be, Gal. 5:16-17.

That’s why in Rom.12:1–2, God tells us this….

The last verse we studied, v.7, said, “Do not be partners with them.”

• Verses today teach us how to make that/reality in our lives.

I want take these verses/point out some insights that speak to us about Walking As Children Of Light.

This text teaches us how to become the righteous person God saved us to be.

• We live in a hard, dark world/dominated/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 empowered to be different.

• He has called into service for Him.

The rest of this book tells us how to make that a reality in our lives.

I. V. 8 HOW WE ARE CHANGED

What We Were - We “were sometimes darkness.”

• Meaning we were lost 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

• Sins of v. 4-5 were who we were and what we did.

• Enslaved to sin.

• We knew nothing else/wanted nothing else.

• We were lost in the dark and headed to Hell.

• We lived like the lost people we were.

What We Are - We “are light in the Lord.”

When the Lord saved us, He delivered us from darkness.

Col. 1:13 says, “For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves

• When/Lord delivered us from darkness

• He set us free from the power of sin.

• He has changed and made us children of the light.

Since we have been changed, we are to walk in light and no longer in the darkness that once characterized us.

Consider Rom. 13:12-14…. _____________________________________

Our lives once manifested the works/world/flesh/devil.

• Sin was a way of life for us.

• Darkness was where we lived, and what we loved.

• By/power of grace, the Lord/touched us/saved us/delivered us and changed us.

He has brought us out of darkness into His marvelous light.

1 Peter 2:9, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.