Walk As Children of the Light
Download MP3Our text this morning is Ephesians 5. We've been working our way through Ephesians. Now we're gonna look at the first 14 verses of chapter 5. Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. The sexual immorality and all impurity and covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints.
Joel Brooks:Let there be no filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead, let there be thanksgiving. For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure or who is covetous, that is an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore, do not become partners with them. For at one time, you were darkness, but now you are light in the world.
Joel Brooks:Walk as children of light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true. And try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things they do in secret. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible.
Joel Brooks:For anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore, it says, awake, oh sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. This is the word of the Lord. If you would pray with me. Father, I pray that you would, in this moment, awaken sleepy hearts, dead hearts.
Joel Brooks:Jesus Christ, you would shine brilliantly in this place. Lord, that we would see you for your worth. Lord, and as we see you, we would become more and more like you. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but, lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Amen. Okay. So I've watched exactly 2 episodes of Fixer Upper. Not quite 2 full episodes, just, it's been recommended to me enough times that I finally YouTubed a couple of episodes, and I got the gist of it. I mean, they're the same thing.
Joel Brooks:And, and from what I gathered, there's basically, you know, this this couple, it's Chip and Joanna, and is it Joanna? Joanne? Joanna? Jojo, I got that. And they they go into a house, and they're looking at it, and basically, they're like, we need to tear this down, we need to do all this, and and then they come back to this couple, and they give them some enormous price tag, you know, to do what we really wanna do with this house.
Joel Brooks:I think the one I watched was like $130,000, the other one was like $170,000. So some extensive renovation and of course, the couple's just really hesitant. So then, then Jojo does her work and, she she sits a couple down, and she she has the computer, and she does the computer model. And it's at that point, she begins to go through the home as it will look, room by room. And and you can see the wife's eyes as she she looks as they're going through the rooms and you already know it's over, like it's over.
Joel Brooks:In her mind, she's already living in that house. And, and she's just nuzzling up to her husband, and she's like giving him little elbows, and and at that moment, as as they're going through room by room, the budget that they had is gone. That that doesn't matter anymore. The the the scared thoughts they had about having to tear down certain walls, spend all of this money putting other stuff up, it It doesn't matter anymore, because they actually get to visualize where they're gonna live. And then in the wife's mind, she's already there.
Joel Brooks:Now, that will That's my first and my last cable TV reference that I probably will ever give. Alright? In 20 years preaching, this is That's it. But there's a way that I really see this connects with what Paul is doing. Paul is coming to us, and he's talking about now in this section of Ephesians, sacrifices.
Joel Brooks:He's talking about to us about things we've got to start tearing down, and we're considering the cost. We're like, it's gonna cost a lot. Are you really? We've gotta tear like all of this stuff down. We've gotta make this much sacrifice, and we don't wanna do it, but then he puts before us the model, but this is how you now get to live.
Joel Brooks:And when we catch hold of that, that we now get to walk as children of the light, and we get to have a life that's full of goodness and purity. We're like, I want that. I want that. No matter what the sacrifice is, whatever needs to come down in my life, I want to walk as a child of God. As a child of God's supposed to walk, and so we buy in and we say, let's tear down the walls, because I want the life that you have presented before me.
Joel Brooks:This is what Paul does so faithfully in all of his letters, and what he has done so faithfully here in Ephesians. Last week, we began to look at some of some of the things that Paul is telling us to tear down. Some of the things that we're supposed to put off. He says, we're to put away falsehood, grudges, stealing. We're supposed to put off corrupting talk, bitterness, slander, malicious words.
Joel Brooks:Then he says the things we're supposed to put on, we put on truth, forgiveness, sharing, kindness, words that build one another up, words that are full of grace. Now he says we get to be children of light. What he's describing is what children of light look like. So that's what we saw last week is what we had to put away, and then we look at some of the things we had to put on, and now Paul's gonna continue that list. Let's look again at verse 34.
Joel Brooks:He says, but sexual immorality and all impurity, or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead, let there be thanksgiving. So Paul tells us here, he he mentions 3 things that have absolutely no place among the Christian life. They're not even to be named among us. And the first is sexual immorality.
Joel Brooks:The Greek word there is pornea. It's where we get the word pornography. And pornea simply means this, any sex outside of marriage. Any sex outside of marriage is porneia, is sexual immorality. So this is premarital sex.
Joel Brooks:This is adultery. This is homosexuality. To reinforce this idea that he talks about in sexual morality, he adds the term here of all impurities. And this covers even a greater, a more broad view of sexual immorality throughout scripture, and not only to include sexual immorality, but all forms of licentiousness or filthy talk as well. Then Paul adds coveting.
Joel Brooks:That we're to remove covetousness. Some of your bibles might say we need to get rid of greed. The word here means a unrestrained, or unrestrained desire for money, or for food or any material thing. That's coveting or greed. Now as I was studying this text this week, I found it fascinating that Paul really pulls from these two things, the the the sexual sins there, and then the coveting or the greed sins here.
Joel Brooks:And he pulls together those two things, and he says they are to have no place, not even name, no place among the lives of Christians. And I found it fascinating that he pulled those two things because you really can divide the American church by, by those that are fixated on one of those two things. Or pay close attention at least to one of those two things, but rarely will you find a church that pays attention to both. So you certainly have churches that are out there that are all about preaching against forms of sexual immorality. There's churches that will preach against homosexuality, against premarital sex, against adultery, preach against pornography.
Joel Brooks:They're all out there, yet they will largely ignore any issues of coveting or greed. And so it's absolutely fine for you to be a member in that church, to be a workaholic, and to try to accumulate as much wealth as you possibly can for your own purposes, you do that, and you can sit comfortably week after week in those pews, but if you were to have an affair or be in a homosexual relationship, then you're gonna be raked over the coals. That is something that has to be dealt with. Your seat is gonna get really hot because the church is not gonna tolerate sins like that. And then you have the other churches.
Joel Brooks:Churches that are all about social justice. Churches that are about giving to the poor, who are passionately gonna speak up against greed. A matter of fact, they'll say greed is the root of all the evils that we have in this world. And yet, when it comes to issues of sexuality, the church will be silent. They don't think the Bible really speaks, or God has anything to say about sexuality.
Joel Brooks:However a person chooses to live, that is free to them to decide. They just need to be true to themselves. So we have those 2 camps, largely those 2 camps in our churches. I would even say in an American politics, you see largely those 2 camps. And yet, Paul here, he says, you know what?
Joel Brooks:God actually has a whole lot to say about sex and about greed. Now, there's a lot of things, I feel like I need to say this, there's a lot of things that we can have a healthy debate in as a church. Christians can debate whether there's a rapture or not. You know, is Kirk Cameron right? You know, we can have those debates.
Joel Brooks:We could talk about creation and is a day a literal day, or is it a 1000 years? Can you hold to evolution and also hold to creation? We we can have that debate. We can have the debate about spiritual gifts. You know, are all the spiritual gifts for today?
Joel Brooks:Can we still speak in tongues? Are there still gifts of healing? We can have that debate. But we can't have the debate about whether sexual immorality or greed is wrong, because scripture clearly teaches it's wrong. Look at Ephesians 5 verse 5 through 6 again.
Joel Brooks:For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous, that is an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words. Let no one deceive you with empty words. Now here, Paul Paul is describing a lifestyle of sin here. A a a lifestyle of sexual immorality.
Joel Brooks:A life style of coveting or greed. He's not talking about somebody who succumbs to those temptations and then repents of them. He's talking about somebody in a sustained, unrepentant lifestyle of choosing to do these things. He says people who give themselves over to sexual immorality, give themselves over to greed, will not inherit the kingdom of God. In other words, children of light can't stay in the dark.
Joel Brooks:Now I'm sure that you can find some random talking head on TV, or some quote scholar on Time Magazine, is gonna come out and do some kind of mental or theological gymnastics to try to tell you something otherwise, but all of scripture is crystal clear on this. There's not any room for ambiguity. Now I've heard it brought up that Paul here he's in, in other places, he's just a victim of his times that the view that he's presenting here, well, I mean, everybody believed that. But that is simply not the case. The view that Paul is presenting to us was just as counter cultural in his time as it is in our time.
Joel Brooks:There was nobody out outside of the church in Paul's time that was thinking about sex or greed in this way. This was completely counter cultural. You know, if actually, if you study church history, secular church history, historians are gonna tell you this. That's over the last 2000 years, all societies have recognized 2 characteristics of the church. 2 common characteristics of the church and of Christians that have always stood out.
Joel Brooks:The first is this, Christians call themselves brothers and sisters, and that's just weird. Alright? So so all cultures, pagan cultures comment on letting the world is happening. They're all like, calling each other brother and sister. And the second is this, Christians hold to a different sexual ethic.
Joel Brooks:For 2000 years, the church has always stood out against culture in the way that it views sex. So Paul, he's standing out against culture here. He's very aware of what he's doing and he's asking that we would do the same. So the question we have is this, are we gonna let God define what is right or wrong, or do we wanna play the role of God and decide what's right or wrong? That's our choice.
Joel Brooks:Now I'm sure you guys have heard the statistics, because it's seemingly everywhere. That the church in America, church attendance is in rapid decline. Actually, it's been declining for the last few decades, but in the last decade in particular, more and more people, especially millennials, are leaving the church. And it's not just one study. I mean, there are numerous studies that show that this is true and it absolutely is true.
Joel Brooks:But I want you to look more closely at those studies next time and see who exactly is leaving and what types of churches are declining. If you look more closely at those, you're gonna realize that the churches that are rapidly losing members are those that are holding to what I would call a more liberal theology, in which they have thrown out the gospel, and they have thrown out biblical authority. The churches that actually hold to the gospel, that they believe Jesus is the son of God who has come to save us from our sins, and they preach that, And who actually hold to the Bible as being authoritative in all matters of life and practice. Those churches, they're holding steady, if not increasing in number. And of course, that makes sense.
Joel Brooks:Why would you go to a church when it's just a mirror of the culture? If a church is just a reflection of culture, it's lost the power to save or to transform that culture. If the church's view on Jesus, the church's view on sex, or money, or all morality, is the exact same as the current culture's view of Jesus and sex and money and morality. Why in the world would you ever go to church? There there's no transformation that could possibly happen, but the churches have hold on held on to the gospel, we've held on to biblical authority.
Joel Brooks:They actually have something to offer, something of substance to offer to a dying into a dark world. We can offer them a better and a more joyful way to live. We can offer them salvation because we actually are pointing out the sins they need to be saved from. We can offer them the real Jesus. And this is what Paul means when he says that we were supposed to walk as children of the light, that we're not to take part of any darkness, but instead we're actually to expose darkness.
Joel Brooks:We're to live a life that's in sharp sharp contrast with the world around us. It's why the church is called the light of the world, a city on a hill. And hear me, the brighter that our light shines, the more people are drawn to it. Alright. So sexual immorality, impurity, coveting greed.
Joel Brooks:These are what we're supposed to put off as Christians. So what is it we're supposed to put on? Once again, look at verses 3 through 5. But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead, let there be thanksgiving.
Joel Brooks:Oh, in there. Instead, let there be thanksgiving. It's interesting that Paul tells us what we need to put on as Christians is thanksgiving. I mean the opposite of sexual immorality, of covetousness, of all the filthy talk, all of that. The opposite of all of that is actually Thanksgiving?
Joel Brooks:Why Thanksgiving as something we're supposed to put on? And the answer is this. A thankful heart is not looking at what it doesn't have, but a thankful heart recognizes the worth of what it's been given. A thankful heart's not looking at what it doesn't have. It's It recognizes the worth of what it has been given.
Joel Brooks:You cannot covet your neighbor's house if you are thankful for the shelter that God has given you. You will not pursue sex outside of marriage if you are either thankful for your singleness or thankful for the marriage that God has placed you in. You see, gratitude, real gratitude comes from when you feel or when you believe that God is for you, not against you. If you believe that God is for you and not against you, you cannot help but give thanks. Gratitude is what you feel when you understand that God is not withholding anything from you that is for your good.
Joel Brooks:You believe that, and you will be thankful. Now to understand this, I think we need to go back to the garden. We need to go back to the Garden of Eden. In the Garden of Eden, you had Adam and Eve, and they're in paradise. They have everything they needed, everything they wanted.
Joel Brooks:A perfect relationship with one another, perfect relationship with God. God not only gave them the entire world to enjoy, but then God himself plants a garden to be their home and for them to live in. You read in Genesis 2 that God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to sight and good for food. So in this garden, you have unimaginable beauty and bounty. You have this endless feast for both the eyes and for the stomach.
Joel Brooks:We we can't imagine the beauty. Not just the flowers, and all the different colored flowers, but also just all the fruits and all the things you could taste. It's all there. And so God creates this for them, and he tells them, I want you to go out there, and you're free to eat, and you're free to enjoy all of this, except for this one tree. If you eat from this, you're gonna It's gonna kill you.
Joel Brooks:Don't eat from this one tree, but everything else enjoy. And Adam and Eve did. They went out and they enjoyed it all. Until the serpent came. We don't know when the serpent came.
Joel Brooks:We don't know how many days, months, years Adam and Eve were enjoying this garden, but at some point, the serpent came and began to tempt them. And in particular, he came to the woman and he said, did God really, really say you're not allowed to eat from any of these trees? Oh, no. No. God God didn't say we couldn't eat from any of these.
Joel Brooks:He said, we could eat from all these. He just said, we came from this one. The serpent's like, oh. You really can't eat from that one? She's like, yeah.
Joel Brooks:He goes, oh, that's that's surprising because that's the best one. That's the best one. You know, that's that's the one I see God eating from it all the time. I mean, I think it's his favorite fruit. Just just kind of curious that he wouldn't allow you to eat, like, from his favorite fruit there.
Joel Brooks:I think God's holding back on you. I think God doesn't want your best. I think if you if you really want what's good, you're just gonna have to go out and take it. I mean, why would God actually create something so beautiful and that looks so good if you weren't supposed to enjoy it? That lie sunk in to Eve and she she begins to just wonder.
Joel Brooks:And she's no longer thankful. She's no longer thankful for all that God has given her at this point. Instead now she's she's not focusing on focusing on God's generosity, but she believes that God has held back. And so, you know, Adam comes up to her and, you know, like, offers her a mango, and this is not in your bible. This is just, you know, we're just playing out the scenario here.
Joel Brooks:And she, you know, she looks at a mango. She's like, mango again? I mean, how many times sick of mango? It's like, well, there's there's a few other thousand fruits. I'll I'll get you another one.
Joel Brooks:She's like, I don't want any of them. I want that one. I want that one. I I mean, I've heard that one's the best, and that begins to grow in her mind as she begins to think that she cannot be fulfilled unless she gets sick. And finally, she reaches out and she eats, and the very fruit that she thought would bring her life and joy brings her death and shame, just like God said.
Joel Brooks:Her relationship with God and her relationship with others was shattered. Now here's the thing, 1000 of years have passed since this, and Satan has never had to come up with another lie. Isn't that remarkable? He still can use the exact same lie on us, and it works. The lie is this, God's holding back on you.
Joel Brooks:God's holding back. God really doesn't want what's best for you. And if you really wanna be happy, if you really want to have a fulfilled life, you're just gonna have to bend the rules and disobey him. That lie is just as effective now as it was then. Now some of you are single here, and you are convinced, absolutely convinced, that if you have to wait until marriage for sex, well, that just means God's not after your good.
Joel Brooks:Why would he deny you such a good thing? He's withholding something from you. He's against you. Or perhaps, you're in an unhappy marriage and you're looking at all the other happy marriages, seemingly happy marriages out there, and you're convinced that God is not for your good. And so you begin to look for another relationship.
Joel Brooks:Or perhaps you struggle with same sex attraction, and you were convinced that to not pursue that desire would mean the death of you. The absolute death of you. After all, why would God create something so beautiful to you, but then ask you not to partake? You must be cruel if that's true. You must be holding back.
Joel Brooks:He certainly can't be for your good. Those are the lies that we have believed for 1000 of years. And when we begin to believe these lies so much, Paul says we actually become an idolater. Look again at verse 5. For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure or who is covetous, that is an idolater.
Joel Brooks:An idolater. The insatiable desire that we have always for something other than God is called idolatry. Something becomes an idol when we say, I I cannot be fulfilled, I cannot be happy unless I have this. Now idolatry is a violation of the first commandment, thou shall have no other gods before me. When we want something so bad, we're we're saying that that is now a God in which I place my happiness and hope.
Joel Brooks:But hear me, every idol demands a sacrifice. And if you go after that idol, you will have a sacrifice. You'll reach for it and you think there will be life and there will joy, but you'll just find death and shame. So how do we resist this temptation? Once again, we begin by thanking God.
Joel Brooks:Thanksgiving. We thank God for what he has given us. Thanksgiving is is the inoculation against that disease. It's it's the antidote that we've been given. When you thank God you're focusing on all the bounty that he has given you, that even your very breath you have to talk to him is a gift from God.
Joel Brooks:And joy begins to flood your soul as you begin to thank God for all of these things. Gratitude is the way that you combat coveting, because gratitude says, God, you're the one who satisfies the longings of my heart. Coveting says that, God, you are not sufficient to satisfy the longings of my heart. I want something else. If you struggle with sexual immorality, begin thanking God for your singleness.
Joel Brooks:Thank God for that gift of singleness he has given you, or for the marriage that he has placed you in. If you struggle with coveting, begin thanking God for the bounty He has already given you, and how He always provides for His children. Now parents, you you might not have thought of this, but if you've raised your kids in a Christian household, likely, the first thing you've taught them about God is that he's the one to whom you give thanks. When we had Caroline, Lauren and I, we made a We had a discussion about, okay, how are we gonna introduce our child to God? It's kind of a really, you know, unique thing as a parent.
Joel Brooks:It's a sobering thought and also a joyful thought. But as Christian parents, you get to introduce your children to God. The very first thoughts they're gonna have about God, are gonna come from you. They might have some kind of general awareness that there is a God, but you are gonna give shape to that and give them words to who he is. You get to introduce him.
Joel Brooks:And so, Lauren and I, we thought a whole lot about how we're gonna introduce Caroline to God. When we say like, this is God. This this He is. And we decided we would introduce God this way. We would say, God is the one who changes hearts.
Joel Brooks:That was the first thing we were gonna say about God. That God is the one who changes hearts, because we wanted Caroline to grow up always knowing that she needs a heart change. She can't change her heart on her own, and she has to always go to God to ask for a continual change of heart. And she always has to go to God for the satisfaction and the longing of her heart. And so that was her plan.
Joel Brooks:And and and sure enough, we we would teach her those things early on. But I don't think that's the first thing she caught, and I don't think it's the first thing that any of the children, who grew up in a Christian household catch. I think, first, they catch that, no, God is the one to whom we give thanks, because almost every prayer we pray is, Lord, thank you. Certainly, the most common prayer we have around the dinner table, it's, Lord, thank you for this food. So there's a being to whom we give thanks, and I think that's a good first introduction.
Joel Brooks:That there is a creator over us who thanks. Hear me. God created you to be a child of light. Does it mean that you have to make some sacrifices and tear walls down? Yes.
Joel Brooks:Some of these things are so precious to you. Some of these things feel like they might be death to you. But hear me, that's the power of the gospel, as there is always life after death. Always. And those things that you have to give up are compared to the life that you were given as you get to walk as a child of the light.
Joel Brooks:I love how Paul ends this. He ends this section with the image, with this this quotation really from Isaiah, at least part of it's from Isaiah, and part of it might have been from a contemporary hymn. We're not really sure, but he ends with these words. He says, awake, oh sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. And the image is this, that Christ, he comes to us in our slumber, our darkened slumber, and he says, hey, get up.
Joel Brooks:Get up. Put on these clothes, and be alive, and walk as a child of light. That's what he's called us to do. Pray with me. Father, once again, I know that there are many here who are in a darkened slumber.
Joel Brooks:They need you, Jesus, to shine on them, to wake them up, to show them what real life looks like. For those who need to repent and to come before you and just say, tear these walls down, I pray they would do so, all knowing what you are going to build in its stead. The glorious life that is now offered to them. So spirit of God, I ask now that you would come and you would have your way with us. In your name, Jesus, and for your glory.
Joel Brooks:Amen.
