Full Exposure
Ephesians 5:8-14
INTRO:
How many of you are glad you are no longer what you were? Recently I was going through some pictures and I came across some painful reminders of what I was. [show old pictures of Dave]. I sure don’t want to go back and relive those days! Aren’t you glad I’m not what I was?
Of course, not all of us feel that way:
Some of us still act like kids, especially when we don’t get our way.
I often see parents living through their children, trying to hang on to their glory days.
What about you? What were you? Who did you use to be?
PREV: Today we’re going to find out who you used to be. Go ahead, Gwen, roll the slides. Just kidding, I don’t have any more pictures. Instead, I have a text from the Scriptures that describes who you used to be, who you are now, and what it means for your life today. It’s found in Ephesians 5, beginning in verse 8. As I read Ephesians 5:8, notice who you were and who you are.
Did you see what Paul said you were? He said you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. He’s describing an amazing thing that happens “in the Lord,” that is, when a person comes to have personal faith in Jesus Christ. When you believe in Christ, you go from darkness to light. This is a remarkable spiritual transaction that has profound practical results in our lives, as we will see.
During the season of Lent, we have been preparing our hearts to celebrate anew the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. We began with an emphasis on death – the fact that we are all dead, spiritually, because of our sin, and we all face death because of sin. Before we meet Christ, we are bound by, our futures are determined by the impact of sin in our lives. That’s darkness. When Paul says you were darkness, he means not just that you and I were in the dark, but we were the dark – our hearts were filled with darkness as a result of sin.
But when we meet Christ and believe in his death for our sins and resurrection for our lives, the lights come on. The darkness in us is removed through forgiveness and replaced by the presence of God’s Holy Spirit. God is light, the Scriptures tell us in 1 John 1:5, and so when his spirit comes to dwell in us, we are now full of light. We go from darkness to light, just like that!
I. JESUS CHRIST HAS BROUGHT US FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT
The light of Christ has purged the darkness in our lives. What once was dark in us has been replaced by light, in Christ.
If you have never taken that step before and let Christ take you out of darkness and into the light, I invite you to put your faith in him today. The darkness that holds you, keeps you from God, and keeps you from being who you are meant to be can be removed, replaced through faith in Jesus Christ.
Transition: This is a marvelous, wonderful theological truth. But Paul is not content to leave it as some lofty idea for us to ponder. No, he gets real practical on us. Notice again how verse 8 in our text ends as I read it again along with verse 9. Read Ephesians 5:8-9.
Because we are no longer darkness but are light, we must live like children of light. Because God has brought us out of darkness into his kingdom, his family of light, we now must live like it. We are no longer children of darkness, we are children of light. He says our behavior ought to match this reality in our lives, that we are now light.
Have you ever been in dark? I mean, have you ever been in a situation where the lights go completely out and you are left in pitch blackness? Do you know the fear, the uneasiness that comes with that? And then do you remember the relief you felt when the lights suddenly came back on? Paul says that is what has happened to you, spiritually. You were completely blacked out. Now, you are in full light. But it doesn’t make any sense to live, to act like the lights are still off!
And yet this is exactly what we do so often in our lives. We’re glad to have the new life of Christ, glad to be transferred, as the book of Colossians says, by God from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of his Son, but we just keep on living in the dark. We act as if we are still consumed by darkness, not light.
Think with me for a moment about the last 12 hours of your life. I’m taking it easy on you, since you were probably asleep some of that time… As you think about your last 12 hours, how much of what you did during that time could be categorized as light? How much could be categorized as darkness? Ah, just as I thought… Paul says that doesn’t make any sense.
He says God has put his light in you, through the Holy Spirit, and that light should produce goodness, righteousness, and truth in your life. This is the fruit of the light. You can’t grow good fruit without good light. The emphasis here is that this fruit – goodness, righteousness, and truth – are already in you, because of God’s work in you. These things come with the Holy Spirit. You don’t have to come up with them yourself, they are already there, you just have to let them show; you have to let this light leak out, shine through.
II. OUR LIVES SHOLD BE LIVED IN THE LIGHT
We should no longer live in darkness, but in light, since in Christ we have moved from darkness to light. Because we were darkness but now are light, our behavior should reflect this light. The light of Christ should illuminate our entire lives. There is a very practical aspect to our relationship with God. Now that we have embraced the truth, we must live accordingly.
Transition: How do we do this? How do we live as children of light? What does it mean to live in the light of Christ? There are two steps to living in the light of Christ. The first is found in verse 10. Read Ephesians 5:10.
Paul goes on the say “and find out what pleases the Lord.” That’s a strange verse. Most other translations include a form of the word “try”: “try and find out what pleases the Lord.” The first step in living in the light is trying to find out what pleases the Lord. That sounds hard, doesn’t it? Go ahead – just try and figure out what pleases God. But that’s not exactly what it means. To try here means to test. Or we might say “examine.” Find out what pleases the Lord by testing, by examining everything you do. To live in the light means to examine, let the light of Christ examine your life. Shine Christ’s light on what you do, say, etc., and see if it passes this test: Does it please God? One thing this light we now have in us does is examine things to see if they please God. Take the light of Christ in you and shine in on what you’re doing and see what happens.
Let Christ’s light examine your speech. Does it please God? Shine the light on your attitude toward your boss, or your parents. Does it please God? Is it good, right, true? What about the last movie you watched? How’s it look with the light shined on it?
My boys are really into music, and we’ve spent a lot of time lately listening to different bands and attempting to shine Christ’s light on them: are they marked by goodness, righteousness, truth?
Every single aspect of our lives should be examined by the light now resident in us to see if it passes the test.
Listen to how this happened in Scott’s life. [Read Scott’s testimony]
III. WE MUST LET CHRIST’S LIGHT EXAMINE OUR LIVES
If we want to live as children of light, we must let the light in us examine everything we do, everything we are.
Transition: Because we were darkness but now are light, we must live as light. The first step to living as light is to let Christ’s life examine our lives. We must let his light shine on everything and ask, is this pleasing to God? Does this please God? But there’s a second step. Notice what else we do as I read Ephesians 5:11-12.
Paul starts by saying “don’t have anything to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness.” Remember how he said earlier that light produces fruit – goodness, righteousness, and truth. But darkness doesn’t grow any fruit, so avoid doing, participating in stuff that is dark, fruitless. Instead, he says, expose those things. First we saw how the light of Christ in us examines our lives. Now we see how it exposes darkness around us.
Paul says the light in you, shining forth, will expose the things done in the darkness – stuff we shouldn’t even spend time talking about.
Our culture loves talking about, dwelling on darkness. Did you see the news this week about the latest serial killer that has been captured, in Wichita? So now for weeks, maybe months, every news source you read will be full of details about the dark things this man did. It will be replayed over and over again. You shouldn’t even read that stuff, is Paul’s advice.
Have you noticed how the top-rated television shows love to dwell on darkness. I think the CSI shows are still at the top. Though theoretically they are about solving crimes, they focus on the actual dark stuff suffered by the victims.
These just represent the way our culture, our world, loves to focus on the darkness. But Paul says the light of Christ in you should expose such things for what they are. When we bring the light to bear, a lot of stuff becomes clear. Notice what Paul says as I read Ephesians 5:13-14.
Light exposes what we don’t want to see; what shouldn’t be there. When we are being photographed, we don’t want to light too strong, or it will show the stuff we don’t want people to see. In our first home, in California, once in the middle of the night I walked into the kitchen to get something. When I flipped on the light, it exposed ########### all over the floor.
Paul says that’s the impact the light of Christ in you will have. As your light shines, it will expose a lot of the stuff going on in the dark around you. And – this is very important – the reason for exposing the darkness is to keep you from getting involved in it, from participating in it. The point is to keep you from being fooled into thinking stuff isn’t so bad.
IV. WE MUST LET CHRIST’S LIGHT EXPOSE DARKNESS AROUND US
We must let the light in us expose the darkness around us, so we won’t become involved in it.
CONCL:
Because we were darkness but now are light in the Lord, we must live as children of light – examining our lives to see it they please God and exposing darkness so we won’t become involved.
I almost hesitate to end here, because this is the kind of message we love – one that we can so easily apply to others… It is so tempting for us to go from here feeling smug and justified in shining a big God-flashlight at others and pointing out the darkness in their lives. After all, that’s one think a light is good for. I can shine this light on [Roger] and expose what he had for breakfast, his lack of ironing skills, etc. and miss the whole point. For one thing don’t spend your time shining the light on those outside of Christ, except to keep yourself from falling into the darkness. It is no scandal that those without Christ participate in the darkness. When they do, they are doing exactly what they are supposed to do, all they can do. The scandal isn’t them; it’s us. The scandal is that those of us that God has mercifully, miraculously turned from darkness to light still live as if the light are off. And though in love we are to point one another toward the light, heaven help us if we point the light of Christ in the eyes of others but don’t turn it on ourselves.
Christ has made you light – live like it! Examine everything you do and see if it pleases God. Expose the darkness around you to keep from falling in. And who knows, God may use that light to draw one more person out of the murk into his light.
