Well, good morning to everyone.
If you would open your Bibles with me to Ephesians chapter
five. Ephesians chapter five. Before we begin, let's bow before
our Lord, seek his blessing. Our Father, we humbly bow in
thy presence, daring only come into your thrice holy presence.
in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, pleading his obedience
as our only righteousness, pleading his blood as the only cleansing
that we have for our sin. And Father, we come this morning
seeking a blessing from thee. Father, how we pray that you'd
speak to us through your word this morning. Father, that you
would be our teacher, that you would enable each heart here
this morning, by your grace, to hear you speak through your
word and be pointed to the Lord Jesus Christ. And Father, that
you'd be pleased in your mercy to cause everything that we hear
to be mixed with faith. Enable us to hear not just doctrines
and religious ideas, even correct religion, but Father, let us
hear of Christ. Trust him, believe on him. Let
his name be glorified, we pray. pray for ourselves in this class,
we pray, especially for our children's classes. Father, that you would
bless in a mighty and special way. We're so thankful for all
these little ones that you've given to us. And Father, I beg
of you that you'd use these times in their classes to teach them
the scriptures, which are able to make them wise into salvation,
that you'd plant the seeds of faith in their hearts. Bless
them, Father, we pray. And we pray for your people everywhere,
wherever they meet today, Father, we beg of you that you'd bless
your word in this dark, dark, dark day in which we live. Father,
we pray you'd reveal your glory, the glory of your son. All these
things we ask in that precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
For his sake and his glory, we pray, amen. All right, I've titled
our lesson this morning, Walk as Children of Light. Our lesson
begins, the text begins in verse seven. Paul says, now, be not
ye therefore partakers with them, for ye were sometimes darkness,
but now are ye light. Now are you light in the Lord.
Walk as children of light. Now all of us are born in darkness. That word darkness there means
the ignorance of unbelief. We're born in unbelief because
we're ignorant. We're in darkness, we're ignorant,
we can't see. We can't see God, we can't see
ourselves, we can't see anything. And in our darkness, the ignorance
of unbelief, we're still religious, but we walk away from God by
nature instead of toward God. We hear the truth of the gospel,
but we're in darkness, so we stumble over it. We even hate
it. Hear the gospel of Christ, how
God saves sinners, how God's merciful to sinners, And because
we're in darkness, we hate it. We're in darkness, the darkness
of unbelief. It's thick Egyptian darkness. You just, I mean, spiritually
speaking, we can't see our hand in front of our face. Look at
John chapter 11. You know, the reason the natural
man does not love Christ and does not believe Christ is because
we can't see him. That's the reason we can't see
him because we're in darkness. John 11 verse nine. Jesus answered, are there not
12 hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he
stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world. But
if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there's no
light in him. You notice the Lord didn't say
there's no light around him. He said there's no light in him.
That's our nature. Our nature, what is in us is
darkness. There's no light in us. We're
dead in trespasses and sin. And that's how every one of us
came into this world. But Paul here is talking to believers.
He said, you were in darkness, but now are you light in the
Lord? And that word light, it doesn't
just mean a illuminating glow. That word actually means the
truth and its knowledge. The truth and its knowledge that
God is light. That's what the word means. So
being light, That means we know God. We know God, we see God
because we see in the light of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's
why Christ came into this dark world. He came to give his people
light. He came to give them faith and
knowledge because they see him. They see him in the truth. Remember
when Simeon held that eight day old baby and what he said about
that baby is this baby's come to lighten the Gentiles. He's
come to give light to the worst of sinners. And Simeon also said,
now let thy servant depart in peace. Mine eyes have seen thy
salvation. Now, how did he see his salvation
in that baby boy? The light of Christ. God gave
him light, that's how he saw. And the same way, if you and
I see, we believe on Christ, we see him in the very same light,
with the very same God-given faith. And when God the Holy
Spirit gives you light, now you see. You see what you couldn't
see before. You may have heard the gospel
for many, many years. I can say that was me. Heard
the gospel for many, many, many, many years. And suddenly, oh,
I see. I see, I understand. It was there all along. The truth
of Christ was there all along. Christ was there all along. The
gospel message was there all along. But I couldn't see because
I was in darkness. And God gave light. Now I see. Now I understand. Look at 2 Corinthians
chapter 4. In the light of Christ, now we
see the truth. We see the truth of who we are.
Now, only in the light of Christ can we see how sinful we are.
only in His light. Without the light of Christ,
we think we're pretty good. The only way we see ourselves as sinful,
not just everybody else is a sinner. God be merciful to me, the sinner.
The only way I can say that and mean it is in the light of Christ. The only way we can see the truth
of who God is, how God saves sinners, how God is holy and
just at the same time is in the light of Christ. And God's got
to give us that light. If you're a believer, you know
this. You used to be in darkness and now you're in light. And
the reason you're light now is God commanded the light to shine.
Look here at 2 Corinthians 4 verse 6. For God, who commanded the
light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. Now when God said on the first
day of creation, let there be light, he was speaking of the
Lord Jesus Christ, the light of the world. And God uses that
same creative power. He said, let there be light.
And there was light. It was so first day of creation.
God uses that same creative, sovereign power to say, let there
be light in the hearts of his people. And when God says it,
there's light. Now I see. And the only way that
we can see any spiritual truth is if God causes the light, Christ,
the light of the world to shine in our hearts. And when God does
that, that's how we become a child of light. If you're a child of
light, it's because God spoke in your hearts and let there
be light. That's why you're a child of light. All right. That's how a sinner, child of
darkness, becomes a child of light. It's by God's sovereign
power. So now Paul tells us, God's made you children of light.
Now walk as a child of light. Conduct yourself as a child of
light. Now, what on earth does that mean? What on earth does
that mean? It probably does not mean what
you might think. I guarantee it doesn't mean what
the natural man thinks. How is it that I can walk as
a child of light? Well, I have three ways from
our text I believe will be helpful to us. Now, walk as a child of
light. Number one, by conducting yourself
as a person who is a sinner. Now here we all sit in our Sunday
finest. We've all got up and brushed
our teeth and combed our hair and put on some deodorant and,
you know, put on some nice clothes, make ourselves look as, you know,
this about as good as we're gonna look all week, isn't it? And this is a faithful group
of people. And I'm thankful for that. I mean, you know, we ought
to be faithful. If God saved us by his grace,
If God's been merciful to us and called us out of darkness
in His marvelous light, we ought to be faithful, shouldn't we?
We ought to be faithful to be where He's preached. We ought
to be faithful to the worship service. And this is a faithful
group of people, and I'm thankful for it. I mean, I just know. I already know who's going to
be here on Sunday, who's going to be here on Wednesday. If somebody's
missing, I know something's wrong. I mean, just because you're so
faithful. But let's never forget this.
That faithfulness is not our salvation. It could be the evidence
of it, but it's not our salvation. Let's never forget this. We're
just as sinful right now as the day we were conceived in our
mother's womb. Just as sinful. By nature, we are just as vile
and just as sinful as we ever were before God called us by
his grace. We're just as vile and just as
sinful as the worst criminal on earth today. Now, God has
saved us. And I'm speaking here to believers,
and many of you are. God has saved us. He saved us
by his grace. But that doesn't make us better
than anybody else. It doesn't make us better than
anybody else at all. Now, by God's grace, we're better off.
I mean, we're much better off being delivered from condemnation
and being delivered from God's wrath, aren't we? We're much
better off. We're far better off to know God. We're far better
off to be trusting on Christ. We're far better off. But our
nature is just as depraved as it ever was. Let's never forget
that now. And if I remember, I conduct
myself, now by nature, I'm a sinner. I'll conduct myself knowing this,
the only way I see, the only way I see the gospel, believe
it, the only way I see Christ and his word and believe it is
because God gave me light. God gave me light. The only reason
I have any idea that I'm a sinner is God showed me myself in the
light of the Lord Jesus Christ. Isn't that what Job said? Job
said, I've heard of you by the hearing of the ear. He said,
now mine eye seeth thee. Now I have light, now I see you. Wherefore? Because I see God,
I abhor myself. And every believer can say the
same thing along with our brother Job. Walking as a child of light
means conducting myself in such a way that people don't get the
idea that I think I'm better than them, that I'm on a higher
spiritual plane or somehow I'm better than them. Walking as
a child of light certainly means I don't give somebody the impression
I'm holier than thou. Our Lord condemned that, didn't
he? Now I've not moved, even the oldest believer will say
that. I have not moved past being a sinner. I'm a sinner that needs
forgiveness. I'm a sinner that needs mercy.
I'm a sinner that needs grace from God continually. That's walking as a child of
light. Number two, we walk as a child
of light by conducting ourselves as a person who's dependent who's
dependent on Christ for everything. Now, if I'm a dead sinner, if
I'm born a dead sinner, I'm born dead in trespasses and sins.
That's the only way I could come into this world. I was conceived
from dead sinful sin or dead sinful seed. It can only produce
a dead sinful man. That's all it can produce. Then
it should be obvious to me, if God's taught me I'm dead, I need
Christ to do all of the saving for me. All of it. I need him
to give me life. I need Christ to do all of the
saving and I need Christ to be all of my salvation. I'm dead. I need Christ to be
my life. Not just give me life, I need
Christ to be my life. Just like the branch has its
life from the vine, I can only get my life from Christ. I need
him to be my life. In verse nine in our text, Paul
says, for the fruit of the spirit, He said, now walk as children
of light, for the fruit of the spirit is in all goodness and
righteousness and truth. Now Paul says the fruit of the
spirit is goodness. And that word has two meanings.
It means kindness, goodness, kindness. But it also means uprightness
of heart. Uprightness of heart. Now I've
already showed this, I'm sinful me. I have a nature that can't
do anything but sin. I can't be kind to people. Now,
I might be able to fake some kindness, right? If somebody,
I think, you know, if they can do something for me, you know,
I can fake some kindness. But I can't truly be kind to
somebody else, because I've got a nature that only loves me.
The only way I can be kind is if it's going to benefit me in
some way, because I only love myself. That's my nature. Now, I know it's Adam's nature,
but it's my nature, isn't it? It's my nature. And I have a
nature that can't do anything but sin, so I certainly can't
have uprightness of heart. If all I can do is sin, I can't
produce uprightness of heart, can I? My heart is fallen in
sin. It's fallen. Then it can't be
upright. That makes sense, doesn't it?
If my heart's fallen, it can't be upright. Then how can a sinful
man, a sinful woman, walk as a child of light, walk in this
fruit of goodness. Well, the only way any of us
can have any goodness is in Christ. He's the only one who's good.
Isn't that what he said? The only one who's good is God.
He is my goodness. Walking as a child of light means
conducting myself so I give off the impression I live in complete
dependence on Christ. God's never going to accept my
goodness. He's never going to accept my kindness. He's never
going to accept my uprightness, but he accepts Christ. I know
that. I do know that the father accepts Christ. Then I should
conduct myself like I'm depending on Christ. Like I'm depending
on him to be my goodness. Not like I'm depending on my
rags of righteousness. Next Paul says the fruit of the
spirit is righteousness. I look this up and it doesn't
mean, this word righteousness, it doesn't mean to act righteous.
Here's what the word means. It means the doctrine concerning
the way in which a man may attain being approved of God. It's the
doctrine that teaches us how can a son of Adam attain being
approved of God. It means this word, it doesn't
mean act righteous, act moral. It means understanding how it
is that God makes sinners righteous. That's what the word means. Now
the doctrine, the teaching of righteousness is this. Christ
is our righteousness. He is our, he earned it by his
obedience to the law, and he personally is our righteousness. And a believer receives that
righteousness by God-given faith, by trusting Christ is all I need. The only righteousness that I
need It's Christ, it's not by my works of the law. I don't
add anything to it. I don't add anything to what
Christ did. It's trusting Christ and Christ
alone. That's the doctrine of righteousness. How God makes
a sinner righteous. It's the teaching of this whole
book. The whole book is written to teach us that. Sinners are
made righteous by Christ's obedience to the law, not ours. Not ours. The sinner can only
be made righteous by trusting Christ. That's the doctrine of
righteousness. Now, walking as a child of light
means that I conduct myself like I'm dependent on Christ, like
I'm dependent on him to be my righteousness. I can't add anything
to Christ. Now, certainly the believer tries
not to live in open sin. We try not to let that bust out.
We try not to act on those things. We try not to. because we love
our Heavenly Father. We try not to let those things,
you know, act on those things, but that's not my righteousness.
Say I can't contain myself and not sin outwardly and do what
my heart wants to do. Well, that's not gonna make God
bless me. That's not gonna make me more righteous than if I did
whatever, you know, sin. I can't make myself more righteous
than I am in Christ alone. I can't, it can't be done. And
if I try to add to it, by my works, I've ruined it. That's
walking as a child of the light. If I'm walking as a child of
light, I never give somebody this impression, I hate this,
oh I hate this. Somebody acts like they've been
blessed. And usually they're talking about material, physical,
you know, financial things. That God's blessed them. because
they did something right, because they followed God's way. They
followed God's way better than me or somebody else, and that's
why God's blessed them. That's kind of like fake humility,
isn't it? God hadn't blessed me because of what I've done.
God hadn't blessed me because I followed God's ways. God's
blessed me because of his undeserved grace, period. That's why God blesses his people.
Because of his undeserved grace. Now I want to follow God's ways.
God's laid out his ways before us. I want to follow those ways.
But because I love my father. Not because I want to get something
from him. Now there's a great big difference there. If my motivation
is do something to get something from God, that's a totally different
thing than following him and worshiping him because I love
him and I'm thankful. Great big difference. Walking as a child of light is
following our Lord's way simply because we love him. That's out
of thanksgiving. Next, Paul says the fruit of
the spirit is truth. And that word means, it doesn't
just mean true statements like two plus two is four. That's
true, but it's not the truth. The fruit of the spirit is truth.
And that word means things that are true pertaining to God. It's
things that are true pertaining to God. Now this is something
that's true relating to God. I'm born in darkness. I'm born
in darkness, I don't know God, and I don't believe God. And
the only way I can know the truth is by Christ, the light of the
world, Christ who is the truth. Here's when I'll know the truth,
the truth pertaining to God, when Christ is revealed to me. When he's revealed. Christ can
be preached to you a long time before he's ever revealed to
you. but when Christ is revealed to you, you'll have light. John
1 verse 17 says that the law was given by Moses, but grace
and truth came by Jesus Christ. It didn't say grace and truth
was given by Christ. Grace and truth came by Jesus
Christ. And the only way I can know that
truth, the truth that pertain to God, when Christ comes to
me, that's when I'll know the truth pertain to God. When our
Lord said, I'm the way, the truth, and the life, it's the same word,
truth, that Paul uses here in the book of Ephesians. I am the
truth. Here's the truth is pertaining to God. No man cometh to the
Father but by me. If we come to the Father in Christ,
we'll always be accepted, always. Christ is the only way to know
the truth that pertains to God, who God is, and how God saves
sinners. Now, walking as a child of light
means conducting myself so that somebody doesn't get the impression
that I'm a know-it-all. I mean, don't you hate a religious
know-it-all? I mean, they got an answer for everything. And
typically, they don't know what you're talking about. Walking
as a child of light means I'm not a know-it-all. I'm walking
depending on Christ. I'm depending on the Spirit to
reveal Christ to me. It's the only way I can know
God. Walking as a child of light means that I conduct myself this
way. I always need to be taught. I
always need to be taught more of Christ. I always need to be
taught more by the preaching of Christ. I'm not always trying
to be the preacher. I need to be a learner. I need
to be taught of God. That's walking as a child of
light, walking in the truth. And when God gives us saving
faith, This matter of knowing the truth, that's not just blind
faith, because look what Paul says in verse 10. Proving what
is acceptable under the Lord. Now that word proving means to
examine and to recognize. A believer can say, I've examined
these things. God's revealed them to me by
spirit, but now I examine these things of salvation, how it is
God saves sinners. I examined this thing of righteousness
and forgiveness. I've examined this thing of eternal
life and I see it's all Christ. I've examined these things by
the word of God, comparing scripture with scripture and by God's grace
and by God's light, I recognize these things to be true. I mean,
what I believe in is what I know to be true. God's taught those
things to me from his word. So walking as a child of life
means that I conduct myself so that people know the only reason
I know what I know, the only reason I believe what I believe
is the grace of God. He revealed it to me. He taught
me, I didn't deserve it. Everything I have is by God's
grace. That's true physically, materially,
and it's certainly true spiritually. I did not figure this thing out
on my own. Salvation, is by the revelation
of Christ. When God says, let there be light,
it's the revelation of Christ. That's walking as a child of
light. And then thirdly, walking as
a child of light is to conduct yourself like a person that has
two natures. Look at verse 11. And have no
fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather
reprove them. For it's a shame even to speak
of those things which are done of them in secret. But all things
that are reproved are made manifest by the light. For whatsoever
doth make manifest is light. Wherefore he saith, Awake thou
the sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give
thee light. See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools,
but as wise. Now every believer has two natures. We have an old man that can do
nothing but sin, and we have a new man that can never sin.
that can only do holiness and righteousness. Now when God saves
a sinner, he leaves that dead nature of the flesh alone. He
didn't change it into living flesh or flesh that's got some
sort of spiritual understanding. God leaves that old dead flesh
alone. So the believer still has to carry around with us that
old dead nature that loves sin, that loves sin. And I tell you
the sin, I thought about this a lot this week. I'm sure this
is a true statement. The sin that our flesh loves
the most is self-righteousness. That's the sin that our flesh
loves the most. Well, if you're a believer, you
got a new man in you too, don't you? Now that new man knows better
than self-righteousness. He knows better than that. And
that new man is gonna fight against the desires of that old man. That new man just refuses to
trust anything other than Christ alone. He can't do anything else
because that's his nature. Now Paul says you've got these
two natures in you. Don't have fellowship with those
works of darkness. You know what those works of
darkness are? Self-righteousness. It's works
we do in darkness thinking God's going to be happy with me because
I've done that. He said I don't have fellowship with that. Those
works of darkness can only produce death. They can never produce
life. He says, don't have fellowship with them. Just refuse that old
man. He's going to constantly get
you to trust in your flesh and just constantly refuse. Every
time he gets you to try to trust yourself and do something and
think, oh, if you do this, God will bless you. If you do this,
God will be more happy with you. Just resist that. Fight against
that and keep looking to Christ alone. Don't have any fellowship
with that. You know, certainly all those
different sins that we looked at last week, fornication, uncleanness,
and covetousness, filthiness, and foolish talking and testing,
certainly don't have fellowship with those either. I mean, I
know the old man loves those sins too, but now I tell you
primarily what Paul's talking about here is this matter of
self-righteousness. Don't have fellowship with it.
any more than you wanna have fellowship with any of those
other sins. Don't give in to them. Paul says, reprove them. Reprove them. And that word reprove
means to find fault with and to correct. Now I want you to
listen to me very, very, very, very closely here. This is a
huge key to walking as a child of life. Very important. Paul
says, reprove them. Now you reprove them in yourself. Find fault with yourself. Correct
your own sinful attitudes and your own sinful actions, not
others. This is not telling us to go
around and reprove each other. I find fault with what you're
doing and here's how you can correct it. You come to me and
say, well, you know, okay, I see the same thing in you. That's
not what Paul's saying at all. Being a judgmental Pharisee,
Wouldn't that be what that is? If we go reprove each other,
I find fault with your sin, here's how you can correct it. That's
being a Pharisee. What did our Lord call the Pharisees? He didn't
call them children of light. He said, you're a father of the
devil. So I don't want to walk like that. I want to reprove
my own wicked, sinful attitudes and sinful actions. It's my own. Walking is a child of light.
It's not sleepwalking through this world. I mean, how we conduct
ourselves in the world is important. It's not sleepwalking through
a worship service. I know we all do that, but I
hate that. I hate that in myself. I sleptwalk
through a worship service. God's woke you up. God's given
you light. He's given you life. Don't sleepwalk
like your life doesn't matter. Walk wisely, Paul says. God's
given you light, so don't stumble over the truth. God's given you
light to see, don't stumble over it. And be diligent about this
thing. The word circumspectly, Paul
uses there in verse 15. See then that you walk circumspectly,
not as fools. That means diligently. Here's
walking as a child of light. Conduct yourself diligently,
seeking Christ. Diligently, see, diligently depending
on him. Diligently working to rest. Diligently working to rest in
Christ. That's walking as a child of life. All right, well, God
bless that too.