February 27, 2005 Ephesians 5:8-14
8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light 9 (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) 10 and find out what pleases the Lord. 11 Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. 12 For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. 13 But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, 14 for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said: "Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you."
About twenty years ago the Army used to have a popular jingle that went, “be, all that you can be, in the Army.” As the song played you could see these studly looking young men climbing fences, jumping out of helicopters, and running around with guns. It made you say to yourself, “that’s what I want to be!” What it really did was to throw a juicy morsel of humanism into your brain - making you think that if you trained right and worked right and joined their program - you could then reach your “full potential” and look like them. Today the Army’s slogan is, “an army of one.” Again - it wants you to think that you can be your own army. All of these slogans are full of jargon that I would call “humanism.” Humanism - at it’s very core - attempts to float you so full of yourself - that you start to believe that you can do anything you put your mind to. Tune into Robert Schuller, Oprah, you name it, and you will see some very blatant humanism - all meant to praise and exalt the human spirit.
The Bible is not full of humanism. It is the exact opposite. It is the Truth. It tells men and women what they really are - not what they think they can be. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul used REALISM. He told them they were born dead in sin (Ephesians 2:1). Instead of talking about FUTURE potential based on human ability, Paul talked about expectations based on the PAST - what God had ALREADY done for them by grace. The message to them is -
Be All that God Has Made You to Be
What did God exactly make the Ephesians, and us, to be? You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. When God brings you to faith in Jesus, it’s as if an inner light is turned on - a change of character and disposition - a change of status takes place. You can’t see this light by opening your mouth and looking in the mirror. It’s a different kind of light. It first of all begins with understanding what the light is - it’s very basic characteristics. The fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth. The key to letting your light shine is to find yourself surrounded in the Light. It needs to encompass you, surround you, and fill you. You have to live completely indulged in it.
One time in Jesus’ ministry, a rich young man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?” Before Jesus could even begin to instruct him on what was “good,” he had to explain to him what “good” actually was. It wasn’t just a matter of what you DO. You can’t expect to perform a “good work” when you yourself are corrupt and living in a corrupt world. So Jesus said, “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good.” Jesus pointed the man to the only true source of goodness - the only good Person in the world - and that is God. So what Paul is getting at with this - is that in order to let your light shine - to do “good things”, you have to be surrounded in the Good One - that is in God and also in His righteousness. You can’t be surrounded by God’s goodness without His righteousness. Paul explained how this happens in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” It is only IN CHRIST that we can be clothed in righteousness. That’s why we consider baptism so important. Paul told the Galatians in 3:26-27, You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. When God brings us to faith in baptism, He surrounds us with His righteousness and fills us with His Spirit, which gives us faith. (Acts 2:38) All of these comforts and benefits are found and given through the Truth - Jesus Christ - as revealed in the Scriptures. That word for truth - it’s first meaning is an “objective truth, that which is true under any circumstances.” The Truth of the Scriptures is that we are saved by grace, through faith. This principle and rule of salvation cannot change. God has said that we are declared righteous because of what Jesus did for us 2,000 years ago on the cross - as our substitute. This truth CANNOT be changed.
So Paul told the Ephesians, “Unless you live in this Light - with this understanding and faith - you cannot let any light shine.” Christianity isn’t just some generic principle about doing what is good for goodness sake. It’s not just about passing laws and trying to get people to be moral because - as Dr. Laura would say - “it’s the right thing to do.” You do good because of the Goodness of God found in Christ. As you stay immersed in the blood of Christ, and remember your baptism, when this goodness, righteousness and truth is a part of your soul and your spirit, it then becomes the heart and core of who you are and what you stand for and why you exist. You start to see the Goodness of God in life. You look at the world as having been covered in the righteousness of Christ. You understand how this world came to be and why it exists through the eyeglasses of the Truth - as found in God’s Word. Instead of everything being meaningless, everything has meaning.
You would think that since we have been given the Holy Spirit, and we have been buried with Christ and so intimately connected with God - that we would naturally know right from wrong - that we would have an easy time letting our light shine. Yet Paul still told the Ephesians to “find out what pleases the Lord.” These words carry quite a punch. They make us understand that just because God has made us holy, we still carry around a cloud of sin in our brains and our hearts that makes it difficult for the wisdom of God to get through. We don’t always know what pleases the Lord - even with a conscience. So Paul encourages us to make sure to find out what pleases the Lord. This involves searching the Scriptures. Try to figure out from these words how to live your life in a way that pleases Him. When Abraham had the three visitors come to see him, he did everything he could to make their stay as pleasant as he knew how. He had Sarah cook some bread. He slaughtered an animal for them. He waited on them hand and food - because he enjoyed their company. When Peter was on the Mount of Transfiguration, he wanted to build a shelter so that Moses and Elijah would stay there for a long time. In the same way, when the Holy Spirit moves into our tents, we enjoy it so much that we want to do all we can to please Him.
A part of how we do this is illustrated by Paul. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. This is one of those terms that is somewhat vague again at a first read. What is a “fruitless deed of darkness”? You might tend to think of the typical “dark” sins - don’t get drunk. Don’t have sex outside of marriage. Don’t worship idols. These shameless deeds are all included - especially in context. But think about the basic meaning of the term - fruitless deeds of darkness - and it hits real close to home. It is a deed that produces no fruit - which has no light - no spiritual or God pleasing value connected to it. In other words, it is a waste of time and it does no good really for my neighbor or for me. For instance -
What good fruit could come from bad mouthing a fellow worker to someone else? Is that going to help him or her be a better worker? Is that going to make me think better of him?
If I didn’t get anything out of a Bible class, what good is it going to do to complain to someone else about it? Will that help the Pastor in any way? Will that help me in any way?
How will spending my money on a new car affect my relationship with my family or my Lord? Will it make me more tight fisted? Will the payments make me more stingy with my family? Will the new car make me more worried and uptight?
How productive is it for me to play video games all day? What good does this do my parents? How does it affect my outlook on life, if I spend my time pretending to blow up people?
Is it God pleasing for me to spend a whole Saturday tinkering with my car, when I could spend it with my wife and kids?
Is watching the television at this time going to make me more knowledgeable about the world and help prepare me for temptation, or will it just lead me into temptation?
These questions can basically revolve around two basic principles. “Am I growing in love toward God and my neighbor through this?” and, “am I sharing God’s love through this?” If I’m not, then do I need to be doing this? Or is it just a fruitless deed of darkness? That doesn’t mean that tinkering with cars is always wrong, or watching TV is always fruitless. Maybe your mind needs an occasional break or a rest, in which case it could be physically fruitful. It is fruitful to take care of your possessions. It is fruitful to work as God commanded.
When God says to have “nothing” to do with fruitless deeds, we have to ask ourselves if we are separating ourselves from these deeds as much as we could. In an indirect way we often times support the fruitlessness of life. When you don’t refrain from the high dollar clothes and toys that your classmates and neighbors think are essential to life, are you in fact becoming a part of the darkness and condoning it’s behavior? When you don’t show respect to your teachers along with the rest of your classmates, or when you don’t finish your homework, are you leading a fruitless life? When you don’t take the time or effort to tell your cousin that his behavior is evil, how are you standing out? How are you making a statement - that your purpose for living is different than your co-workers and classmates? That’s the main point.
Paul takes it a step further. He even says that we are to “expose” the fruitless deeds of darkness. Jesus stood out from the Pharisees because He made statements that exposed the Pharisees sin - that exposed sinful thoughts and words that were never contemplated as evil before. On ABC last night I saw a special about these two guys who collected hundreds of photographs of people who were lynched during the last century. It was just plain awful to see crowds and crowds of people - in America - gathered around the body of young black boys and women - seeing them hang from trees and bridges. I just couldn’t believe it. Those pictures were just horrific. During catechism I downloaded some pictures of abortion off of the Internet. There were pictures of little babies torn from limb to limb - ripped out of their mothers womb - just horrid. I hesitated showing those pictures. As Paul said, For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. Evil is sometimes an ugly thing to expose.
The scary thing was is that they weren’t nearly as shocked as I thought they would be. It seems that people today don’t know what it means to be shocked any more. It is difficult to expose evil, because the whole concept of “evil” doesn’t seem to exist in anyone vocabulary. Sin is being exposed, but instead of being called sin, it is being called “alternative lifestyle.” Kids who kill their parents are called “misguided.” Drunken behavior is simply called a “disease.” The devil has one upped us by exposing sin in a kinder, gentler way. Everything has become so “common” that there is no longer a sense of right and wrong - sin and judgment. However, this doesn’t mean that we should simply stop exposing sin. When it comes down to it - we have the only tool that can really bring evil to light. That is the Word of God . Everything exposed by the light becomes visible, 14 for it is light that makes everything visible. Today, more than ever, God calls on us to call sin “sin.” We are not here to just sympathize with evil. We are here to expose it.
But why? When they asked the men who took the pictures of the people being lynched “why,” they said they did it in order that such crimes would never be committed again. Why is there a holocaust museum? In the hopes that people will see how evil it was - and never return to it again. But we don’t expose sin just to embarrass or scare people into quitting. This is why it is said: "Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." We want to wake people up - so that ultimately - Christ will shine on them! Think about how beautiful it is for us Christians - to know and see through the eyes of faith that we are already holy by the blood of Christ. What a comfort it is to know that Jesus died for all of our sins - so that in our baptisms we are completely bathed in His blood. How nice it is to know that when we die - we will go to heaven - because our salvation is not based on the lives we have led, but on the life Jesus has led. We don’t have to walk around in guilt all the time. There’s nothing like being able to face death itself - knowing that when we do depart from this life - we will be face to face with Jesus. It’s also to our advantage to live in the light - because then we don’t have to go through as many divorces, broken homes, drug addiction, arrest, health problems and the like. That’s what we want for people - a life full of the Light. But they aren’t going to see their need for this - if we don’t let the light shine.
So how are you doing? Is your light shining? Are people drawn to you - asking you questions about your faith? Are you actively exposing evil so that your loved ones see that they need the light? I know that as I look at my own life, I don’t see the light shining as much as I would like. How many times have you let unbelievers go in their blindness, without even attempting to say anything to them? It would be easy to conclude, when we examine ourselves, that we just don’t have any light. We must be dead, because we don’t expose sin as often as we should. We don’t separate ourselves from fruitlessness as often as we could.
When it comes down to it, and you get to worrying about whether you are in the light - remember what we are. We aren’t an army of one. We are - like Paul called the Ephesians - simply children of the Light, by the same grace that God gave the Ephesians. Children aren’t known to be real proficient. They love to help, but they aren’t known to be the best of workers. Give a kid a chore, and chances are he’ll do it for about five minutes and then you’ll find him in some other room messing around. That’s what kids do. Sometimes they can do a real good job. But most of the time they’re goofing around and acting like kids. It doesn’t excuse it, but we are what we are. We’re often time irresponsible. We like to help, but we don’t do a great job at it. But the important part is that we’re still God’s children - not because of how hard we work - not because of how much light we expose - but because by God’s grace He adopted us into His family through faith in Christ. Not by works. Think about that. Remember who you are. Maybe, by God’s grace, as you dwell on that truth, your light will begin to shine a little brighter, and you will be what God has made you to be. Amen.
