Ephesians chapter 5. We're going
to begin reading in verse 1. I'll let you know when we get
to our text. The Apostle Paul is speaking to believers here,
and he says, Be ye therefore followers of God as dear children,
and walk in love as Christ also hath loved us. and hath given
himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling
savor. But fornication and all uncleanness
or covetousness, let it not be once named among you as becometh
saints. Neither filthiness nor foolish
talking nor jesting, which are not convenient, but rather giving
of thanks. Now here's our text. For this
you know, that no whoremonger nor unclean person, nor covetous
man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom
of Christ and of God. Let no man deceive you with vain
words, for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon
the children of disobedience. Be not ye therefore partakers
with them, for you were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light
in the Lord. Walk as children of light. That's our subject. Walk as children
of light. For the fruit of the Spirit is
in all goodness and righteousness and truth. So he says, walk as
children of light, proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. We'll look at the children of
disobedience, and then the children of light, and then we'll look
at this exhortation. First of all, who are these children
of disobedience? He says in verse 6, the children
of disobedience. The children of disobedience
are those who are breakers of the law of God, and they don't
believe on Christ. It's what all men are as we come
into this world. We come into this world children
of disobedience. Children of disobedience are
described here by their works. First of all, they're whoremongers
and unclean. Before God's law, before the
law of God, they have literally, in their heart, in their thoughts,
if not in their deeds, have literally committed fornication, adultery,
incest, uncleanness, and so on. And then toward Christ, not believing
on Christ, not bowing to Christ. Spiritually, they committed fornication
against the Lord Jesus. And then it says here that the
children of disobedience are covetous, which is idolatry. They're covetous idolaters. Before the law of God, which
forbids covetousness, which forbids idolatry, before the law of God
in the heart, Their hearts are set on the world, set on everything
God forbids, set on having more, more, more, more, never content. And spiritually, because they
haven't bowed to Christ and haven't been made content with Christ
who is the one thing needful, they're spiritually covetous
and idolaters against Him. Not worshiping the triune God,
the one triune God in Christ Jesus. That's what it is to be
a worker of disobedience, is to be an unregenerate, unbelieving,
self-serving sinner. And that's whatever person is
who does not rest solely in Christ alone. Unregenerate, unbelieving,
self-serving sinners. Without God, without hope in
the world, they won't heed the word of God's preachers, won't
heed the word of Christ Jesus the Lord. The thought crossed my mind,
and I was thinking on this, While I'm preaching this, there are
some sitting right here in their hearts who say, I will not have
Christ to reign over me. I won't have Christ tell me what
I can and cannot do. I'm going to have my way, I'm
going to do what I want to do, and that's how it's going to
be. There are some that think that in their hearts. Well, you
can justify your rebellion. You can do those things and speak
in your heart, but here's the truth of the matter. This is
what will happen to all children of disobedience who meet God
in that state of disobedience. Look at verse 5. This you know,
that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man who
is an idolater has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and
of God. Let no man deceive you with vain
words. For because of these things cometh
the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. There is not
a single child of disobedience who meets God in the day of judgment
that will have an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and
of God. Not one. Now there are some who
teach this and I want you to understand this because you might
come across this in your dealings with folks. But there are some
who actually preach It's the doctrine of election. And they
preach particular redemption. They preach that Christ died
for the elect of God alone. And you'll hear this and you'll
think, this is the truth what they're saying. But they also
believe that it's not necessary for a man to hear the gospel
and to be brought to faith in Christ. And they call those who
are in false religion and free will religion or who just hate
God and are rebels against God, they say they're children of
disobedience. But if they're the elect children of God and
if Christ died for them, they're going to be saved anyway, whether
they ever hear the gospel or not. There's men who preach this.
Listen to what God says. Let no man deceive you with vain
words. For because of these things cometh
the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. Those who never
bow to Christ who never serve Christ, who never cast all their
care into Christ's hand, who meet God without faith in Christ,
without repentance from dead works and from their sin and
from themselves, they're going to suffer the wrath of God. That's
just plain and simple. They're going to suffer the wrath
of God. The Scripture says, without faith, it's impossible to please
God. The Lord said, there's no coming
to the Father but by Me. That's the narrow way. We have
to come through faith in Christ. There's no other way to come
to God the Father. No other way. Those who profess
to believe on Christ, profess that they don't believe they're
saved by their works whatsoever, who yet say, let us sin that
grace may abound. They're not coming to God. They're
not going to be received of God. That's not what the believer
says. That's a child of disobedience. That's an unregenerate child.
That's a child on whom the wrath of God will be poured out. You just think about the wrath
of God. The wrath of God. Sometimes it's
poured out on the children of disobedience in this life. In
temporal judgment. But it'll certainly be poured
out in eternal judgment. That's for certain. Those who
follow darkness. Most of the works are done in
darkness. And those who follow darkness, they're going to have
a sad life. Because they don't have the knowledge
of Christ, the light of the knowledge of Christ. And they don't have
the blessings of Christ, the comfort and protection and safety
of the Lord Jesus in this life. And their darkness concerning
all spiritual things and all spiritual comfort. They don't
have true light, they don't have true joy. And the scriptures
are crystal clear. The wages of sin is death. That's all we're going to get
from sin. That's all sin pays you is death, death, death. And that person who's walking
in the works of darkness, he's going to get darker and darker
and darker as he goes. In this life and the life to
come, and the scripture says in the life to come, there is
reserved, there is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. It's a fearful thing to fall
into the hands of the living God. You think about how it would
be if you went and you served life in prison. Go into prison
with the worst of the worst criminals and be locked away with them.
They can do to you what they want to do to you. And you're
locked there with them. And you spend your whole life
there with them. If we meet God outside of Christ and we are
cast into outer darkness, cast into hell, we'll beg God for
something as pleasant and as endurable as life in prison. That would be a cakewalk compared
to what we're talking about. You look to the cross of Calvary
and on the cross God spared not His only Son. Whenever the Lord
laid on Him the iniquity of His people, He did not spare His
Son. And there's where you see what
the wrath of God is. Would you want to suffer what
Christ suffered on Calvary's tree for eternity? That's what
hell will be. Because that's what Christ suffered
on the cross for His people. That's what hell will be. That's
the wrath of God. That's where you see it, at the
cross. Let's move on to something more
pleasant. Who are these children of light? Who are these children
of light? He speaks there in verse 8. He
says, Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord. Every true child of God, every
true child of God who is now light in the Lord, in ourselves,
every one of us were at one time darkness. We were darkness. We were darkness itself. We were
darkness. Look back at Ephesians 2. Look
at verse 2. In time past you walked according
to the course of this world, according to the prince of the
power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children
of disobedience. among whom also we all had our
conversation in times past in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling
the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and we were by nature
the children of wrath, even as others." This is what we were.
We sometimes were darkness. What made us to differ? Did we
just one day decide we'd turn over a new leaf? Did we just
decide we're willing, we're going to give ourselves to Jesus now?
What happened? Look at verse 4. But God... but
God who is rich in mercy for His great love wherewith He loved
us even when we were dead in sin. He quickened us together
with Christ. It's by His grace that you're
saved. Grace brought us to behold what
Christ did for us. We didn't even have life to even
know what Christ did for us. We didn't have understanding.
We weren't even in our right mind. Our minds were darkened
so that we couldn't understand God. He came and He enlightened
our minds. He gave us life and enlightened
our minds, shined the light to make us see what Christ did for
us. We were whoremongers. That's what we were. But because
God came, God came in human flesh and shed His blood for His people,
He made us chaste virgins. That's what he did for his people.
Paul said, I'm jealous over you with the godly jealousy for I
have espoused you to one husband that I might present you as a
chaste virgin to Christ. That's what his people are because
of Christ's blood. We were unclean, but God, He
washed us in His blood in that molten laver, that molten seed
that we looked at Thursday night. That's Christ's blood. He washed
us and made us clean. We were covetous, had our hearts
set on this world, on us, on our career, on our stuff, on
all the things we wanted, but God brought us to Christ and
made us content in Him. That's what contentment is. That's
the cure for covetousness is Christ. He said this, let your
conversation be without covetousness and be content with such things
as you have because He had said, I will never leave you nor forsake
you so that we can boldly say, the Lord's my helper. I won't
fear what man can do to me. If you've got Christ, you've
got all. You've got everything. We were idolaters. serving ourselves,
worshiping ourselves. God brought us to Christ and
made us serve the one true and living God in Christ. Willing,
made us willingly do it. We were children of disobedience.
How did God do this work? How did He bring us to this? Paul said in Ephesians, I mean
in 2 Corinthians, he said the preaching of the gospel is the
one weapon we have. And you hear this message preached,
and this is what God did. He said, He cast down our imaginations. A man will sit and hear this
word and his polluted imagination, he's just thinking all kinds
of ways to try to object and refute the gospel and ways that
just vain imaginations. Through the gospel, God cast
down those imaginations. And through this gospel, He brings
every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge
of God, He brings it down. And He brought us into captivity. You see, men talk about, oh,
I'm free and I'm free to do this or that. You're either going
to be in captivity to sin and be the servant of sin, or you're
going to be in captivity to Christ and be the servant of righteousness.
Well, you're not going to be free from God or free from sin. We're going to be one captive
or the other. It says, He brought into captivity every thought
to the obedience of Christ. That's what happens through the
Gospel. That's how we're brought to believe Him and trust Him.
And there's no constraint. There's nothing that will make
a believer want to serve God and worship God in spirit and
in truth like the constraint of His unchanging sovereign love
and grace. That brings a man to want to
worship God and serve Him. In truth, you were sometimes
darkness, now you're light in the Lord. The Lord said, I'm
the light of the world, and he that followeth Me shall not walk
in darkness, he shall have the light of life. This is going
to be our whole subject the next time. We're going to talk about
Christ the Son of Righteousness, our light. And this is how we
have light. And he says, those born of me,
you're not going to walk in darkness. You're going to have the light
of life. Now let's look at this exhortation. He says in Ephesians
5 verse 7, Be not ye therefore partakers with them. Be not ye
therefore partakers with them. And he says in verse 8, Walk
as children of light. Be not therefore partakers with
children of disobedience and children of darkness. Can you
make light and darkness go together? It's going to be one or the other.
It's going to be light or darkness. You just can't make them have
communion with each other. Light and darkness just can't.
And spiritually speaking, it's an impossibility. The Lord said,
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. A young person
will fall in love with somebody and they're not a believer. And
they'll go on and on and on until they get to the point where they
say, well, I'm going to marry them anyway. I know they're not a believer.
Your life's going to be miserable. It's just going to be miserable.
You know, it's hard. Life's hard anyway. And you've
got your flesh to contend with and all these things. And it's
just impossible to live with somebody and be happy serving
God and worshiping God and doing what God says to do if that person
is opposing you the whole way. He says, Be not yoked together
with unbelievers, for what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light
with darkness? None. Absolutely none. The Apostle
John tells us to be honest. Look at 1 John. 1 John. in verse 1. And he's speaking
here to folks who profess to believe the gospel. And he's
telling us here, be honest with ourselves because we're certainly
not going to fool God. But look what he says here, 1
John 1 and verse 5. This then is the message which
we've heard of him. Now this is straight from Christ.
And we declare it unto you, that God is light, and in him is no
darkness at all. Now if we say that we have fellowship
with him, And we walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth. But if we walk in the light,
as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another and
the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.
See, God's light. And therefore, God has no fellowship
with darkness. So we can go around saying, oh,
I'm a child of God and I believe God and I serve God, but if our
heart The intent of our heart, the joy of our heart is to serve
sin and to be with children of darkness and children of disobedience. If that's our delight, if we
would have our rathers, that's what we'd rather do. The Holy
Spirit says here through John, we're lying. We don't have fellowship
with God. We don't have communion with
God. But walking in the light as God is in the light. He says,
we have fellowship with one another. We have fellowship with God and
He has fellowship with us. And the blood of Christ cleanseth
us from all our sin. Our text tells us what it is
to walk as children of light in verse 9. It says, The fruit
of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth,
proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. The first thing to
walk as children of light is, is to walk in the Spirit. To walk in the Spirit as opposed
to walking in the flesh. The only way our flesh can be
mortified, the only way that our lust of our flesh will not
have dominion over us is if the Holy Spirit has come into our
heart and has conquered us, invincibly conquered us and made us new
creatures so that now we're willing to be led of the Spirit of God
like a little child is willing to be led of their father. We're
led of Him. And you know where He leads you?
He leads you to Christ. He leads you to His Word. All
the time, that's where He leads us. But, you know, you got another
man in you and that other man in you is striving. He's warring
with the new man. And that old man is wanting to
serve sin. That old man wants to go after
sin. Doesn't want to be led of the Spirit of God. Who's going
to win? Who's going to win? Listen to
this. This I say then, walk in the
Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Walk in
the Spirit. That's the only way the lust
of the flesh will not be fulfilled, is to walk in the Spirit, to
be led of the Spirit, to be giving yourself constantly to the Spirit
of God. He makes you do it. and then
you do it, you give yourself to it. Feed that man, don't feed
the old man. To walk in light then, look back
now at our text, he says there, is to not only walk in the Spirit,
is to walk in all goodness, in all goodness. Now listen to this,
you know who our goodness is? Our goodness is Christ. Listen
to what he said, this is Christ speaking in Psalm 16. And he
says there in verse 2, he says, Oh my soul, Thou hast said unto
the Lord. He's saying, he's speaking, communing
with his soul. He says, Thou my soul, Thou hast
said unto Jehovah my God, that Thou art my Lord, and my goodness
extendeth not to Thee. Christ is saying, I'm not in
the world doing my goodness and bringing about my goodness and
working my goodness for it to extend to the Lord God. He's
good. He don't need Christ. goodness
toward him. He says this, but to the saints
that are in the earth and to the excellent in whom is all
my delight, there's where my goodness extends to. And so our
goodness, first and foremost, is Christ alone. That's our goodness. And so we were a sheep going
astray, but we've been returned to the bishop and shepherd of
our soul. So now we walk in our goodness, which is Christ. We
follow Christ. And then when we err into sin,
it's Christ in His goodness that leads us to repentance. The goodness
of God leads us to repentance. Let me give you an example. You
get into an argument. You get into a disagreement.
Say it's your spouse. Say it's your brother or sister
in Christ. Say it's an enemy that hates
the gospel. To get into this argument with
them, your flesh is going to just swell up and just heat up
with all kinds of evil against them, and all kinds of, I'm not
going to have anything to do, I'm dropping them, I'm doing,
you know, all these things, you start thinking. And then you
start hearing that still small voice in your heart saying, God,
for Christ's sake, has forgiven you. God, for Christ's sake,
sent His Son and He laid down His life And by His blood, God's
forgiven you. And He's leading you. He'll take
you and He'll just turn you in your heart and bring you back
to that one that you have had to fallen out with to ask forgiveness
from Him. Don't ignore that voice. Don't
fight against that voice. He's saying, walk in His goodness. Because His goodness, when you
err, it's His goodness that's going to lead you to repentance
and bring you back to Him. So walk in that goodness. And
then to walk as children of light is to walk in all righteousness.
And Christ is our righteousness. He is our righteousness. He is
the righteousness of God. Christ is. And He's the righteousness
of His people because Christ has made us the righteousness
of God. That's what He's done for us by justifying us, by purging
our sin, by robbing us in His righteousness. And His kingdom,
therefore, everything He creates, everybody in His kingdom is righteous. It says, Unto the Son, He saith,
Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever a scepter of righteousness
as the scepter of Thy kingdom. And so those who are in His kingdom,
really in His kingdom right now, live unto righteousness. He's
that righteousness we live unto. Listen, His own self bear our
sins in His own body on the tree that we being dead to sin should
live unto righteousness by whose stripes you were healed. Righteousness
is a who. It's a person. It's by righteousness
our stripes have been healed. And He's our righteousness and
we live unto Him. And it means we not only are made righteous
by Him and we're not only delight in Him and believe Him and trust
Him, we want to live walking in this world according to what
Christ says is right. According to what He says is
right. Listen to this from John. If you know that He's righteous,
you know that everyone that doeth righteousness is born of Him.
And he says, Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin, for
his seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin because he is born
of God. And in this the children of God
are manifest, and the children of the devil. Whosoever doeth
not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his
brother. The only way we delight in, the only way we are filled
with fruits of righteousness and delight in righteousness
and want to walk after righteousness is because Christ fills us with
righteousness. Philippians 1.11 said, being
filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ unto
the praise and glory of God. We can't boast in it because
Christ is the one that does it, but because Christ does it, it's
irresistibly going to be done. His people are going to love
righteousness and they're going to want to walk after righteousness.
That's true. We look at ourselves sometimes
and we think, how could that possibly be said about me? Well,
don't listen to what you say. Don't listen to what your old
man is telling you or what Satan is telling you. Listen to what
God tells you. He says, they're going to be filled with fruits
of righteousness. You know, He tells us what they are. The Spirit,
the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, meekness, peace, long-suffering,
gentleness, goodness, faith, temperance. Against such there
is no law. Now, another part of walking
in truth is in our text here too, is to walk in all truth.
the walking all truth. He spoke over and over again
about the truth. He brought us into the church. He said, so
that speaking the truth in love we might grow up into Christ
in all things. He said, put away lying, speak
truth with your neighbor. Here's the result of the truth.
This is what truth has accomplished right here. It's a two-fold work
truth has accomplished. Christ the truth has done this
for us on the cross. This is what He's done. The psalmist
said, Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity. Why will God not impute iniquity?
Why will He not charge iniquity to His people? They don't have
any. Not before God, not before the law, because Christ purged
our sin. He put away our sin. God said, I remember them no
more. God will not impute sin to His people. That's because
of what truth did on the cross. Here's what truth did in our
hearts. Here's the second part. And in whose spirit there is
no guile. Guile is falsehood. Guile is
deceit. Guile is maliciousness. Guile
is conniving. But in the spirit that Christ
has created, where Christ is formed, where we've been made
a partaker of the divine nature, there's no guile in the spirit.
Remember he looked at, who was it, Nathaniel, and said, here's
an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile. That's what Christ
said in His new man. There's no guile in this man.
All the deceit and the cunning and the lying, you know where
that comes from? Our old man. They don't come
from something God made. No sir, it comes from us. Therefore
we walk in the truth because we believe, we know the redemption
that was accomplished was accomplished in truth. That's how it was accomplished. So we speak the truth about redemption
being accomplished, not by us, not by co-effort with us in Christ,
by Christ alone. And we speak the truth of regeneration.
It wasn't accomplished by something we did together with Christ,
it was accomplished by Christ, through the Holy Spirit, through
the Word of God. We delight in the truth of a
total depravity because it gives Christ all the glory and gives
us none. We rejoice in the truth of unconditional
election because it claims that God did this all on purpose from
before the foundation of the world, choosing whom He would
in His Son. We rejoice in the truth of limited
atonement, particular redemption because Christ laid down His
life for the sheep, He said. He laid it down for somebody
in particular and He accomplished the work. We rejoice in the truth
of irresistible grace. Him coming to you and busting
that stony heart and giving you a heart of flesh, a feeling,
loving, trusting, believing heart because this gives God the glory. That's why we believe it. We
believe He keeps us and preserves us and will not let us fall away
because it glorifies the fact that He satisfied justice and
justice, holiness demands His people be kept and brought to
salvation in Him. We preach that He is the one
who resurrects us and brings us into glory and we'll have
a joint inheritance with Christ because He's made Himself one
with us in every way. We rejoice in the truth. And
not only that, we delight to be truthful with men when we
walk this earth. Your word is all you have. When
it comes down to it, your word is all you have. And if your
word is lying, You know, and when I say lying, I don't mean
just malicious lying. I mean telling somebody, I'm
going to be there at this and such a time and you're not there
at that such a time. You do that once or twice and
they realize it don't matter what time they say they're going
to be here, they're not going to be here at that time. Your word don't mean anything.
Word, truth, is what you have. And if a man can trust you in
carnal, just everyday, temporal things, He might just listen
to what word you have to say about God and listen to what
you have to say about your Redeemer. Now let's move quickly. I got
something else I want to show you real quick. This last thing.
Walking as children of light is to be always, verse 10, proving
what is acceptable unto the Lord. What does this word proving mean?
You see, it's not what's acceptable to me. No, no. It's what's acceptable to the
Lord. What's this word proving mean? There's three things this
word means, three meanings carried in this one word. First of all,
it's to test. It's to test what is acceptable
unto the Lord. How do you test something? You
have something in your life, something going on with you,
and you've got to make some sort of decision or something like
that. How are you going to test whether or not this is acceptable
to the Lord? You bring it right here. This is His Word. The answer
is here. The answer is here. You bring
it right here. You bring it to Him. You ask
Him, Lord, show me, is this acceptable? And then the Word carries the
meaning, discern. We not only test it, we discern
what's acceptable unto the Lord. Not just discerning it in the
letter, discerning it in the Spirit. What does that mean?
It means all things are lawful for me, but all things are not
expedient. All things are not necessarily
the best thing for me. And I'll give you an example.
The Scriptures nowhere forbid a believer having a glass of
wine. The Scriptures forbid a believer from getting drunk. But let's
say you have faith in Christ and you know you can plead in
Him and you believe the Lord's Word and you have no problem
with having a glass of wine. But you got a weak brother who's
coming to your house, and he's got a problem with it. He don't
think he ought to be drinking wine, and he thinks he's going
to look at you differently if he sees you drinking wine. And
he's weak. He don't realize we're not under
the law, we're under grace. He's weak in that department.
So it's lawful for me to have it, but if I have it, I'm going
to hurt my weak brother. So what's expedient for me? What's
best for me? It's better for Him, for me,
not to have a glass of wine. So you test what's acceptable,
then you discern spiritually what's the best thing here. What's
going to glorify God? What's going to give honor to
Him? And then it's not only to test it, not only to discern
it, the third thing is you approve of it. That means when you've
tested it and discerned, then you approvingly delight and joy
and submit to do what Christ approves of, instead of doing
it grudgingly and, well, I'm not going to do this, but I don't
want to. Well, I'm going to do this, but the only reason I'm
doing it is I hope I'm going to get a better reward for doing
this. That's a mercenary spirit. You do it approving of it because
God said it. That's it. God said it. All right. Let's end. Let's turn over to
1 Thessalonians. I want to end with this. 1 Thessalonians
5, 5. This is one of those scriptures
that those folks use to speak of children of disobedience as
being just children who are asleep. Let me read this to you and I'll
give you the real meaning. 1 Thessalonians 5, 5. You are
all the children of light. I'm speaking to believers. And
the children of the day. We're not of the night nor of
darkness. We were sometime, he said, but
not now. Therefore, let us not sleep as
do others. That word sleep there means let
us not be as unregenerate, unbelieving, lost sinners who are in darkness. That's what it means. It says,
but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep, sleep in
the night. And they that be drunken, are
drunken in the night. Those who are undegenerate, drunk
in their sin, drunk in their flesh, lost, dead sinners, the
children of night, they sleep in darkness. And they do all
their works in the night, in darkness, spiritual darkness. But let us, who are of the day,
be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love. That's what
covers our heart, is faith and love. and for a helmet upon our
head, the hope of salvation. For, here's why, God hath not
appointed us to wrath, God has not appointed us to wrath, but
to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ. That's why we can
put on our head the helmet of hope and salvation, because God
hasn't appointed us to wrath, He's appointed us to salvation.
He's going to bring to pass His appointment. Now look here, who
died for us, that whether we wake, whether we've been regenerated
by the Holy Spirit of God, or whether we're awake, alive when
Christ returns, or whether we sleep, whether we're dead in
sin and not yet regenerated, but we're an elect, redeemed
child of God, He's going to regenerate us. He's going to regenerate
you, if that's your case. Or whether we're already dead
when Christ returns, when He comes back. That's what this
word sleep means. Either way, this is what the
truth is. We're going to live together with Him. That's right. He's going to regenerate all
His people. And even if we're dead, when He comes back, sleeping
in our bodies asleep, He's going to raise our bodies. Our spirit
will go be with Him immediately, but He's going to raise our bodies.
We're going to live with Him. That's what He's appointed His people
to. That's what He's going to bring to pass. Doesn't that make
you want to walk as children of light? That's a light and
easy yoke. I mean, that's not, that's not,
you know, the heavy whip of the law. That's grace, grace showing
you what Christ has done for you. All right. Amen. Our great God and our Father,
we thank you for your word. We thank you for the light that
you've given to your people, showing us what great things
you've done for us so freely. by Christ our Lord. Lord, make
us children of light. Make us walk as children of light. Give us discernment to approve
of what you approve of. Make us walk in an acceptable
way to you, honoring you, serving you, glorifying you, that we
could be used of you in this world to set forth the truth
of the gospel. and not bring reproach and shame
and dishonor upon it. Lord, we ask that for Christ's
sake. Lord, forgive us where we fail. Forgive us of our sin.
We ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.