We're going to open our Bibles to Ephesians chapter 5. Ephesians chapter 5, verses 8 to 10. And let's pray together. Lord, as we come to your word, I just pray that you would... I know that our eyes have been opened, as we're even going to see this morning. But sometimes it feels like we still need to pray. Open our eyes. We come in many ways blinded for so many reasons. So many things that keep us from seeing. So many things that keep us from understanding. And I pray that You would strip that away now in my own heart and in all of our hearts. And that we could truly be ready to receive Your Word. And I pray it in Jesus' name, Amen. Last week, we saw that Paul turned away, kind of made an abrupt about face, really, from summing up the whole Christian life, the life that you and I lead from day to day, as self-sacrificing love. Love for God and love for our neighbor. That's what the Christian life is. And then he came to his total opposite way of living. The opposite of self-sacrificing love is self-indulgent sensuality. And so we looked at it. Here's the passage. Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children. There you already see what being imitators of God means. It means to love because we've been loved as beloved children. So walk in love. just as also Christ loved us and gave up Himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God for a fragrant aroma. Now then, that's the positive side. Now Paul turns to the opposite, but sexual immorality and all impurity or greed must not even be named among you. as befits holy ones, nor filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor crude joking, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you all know with certainty, or at least we must know with certainty, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure or greedy, that is an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. It doesn't matter what we've done throughout our life, how much we've gone to church, or what kind of good things we've done. If we're living that kind of life, guaranteed, You don't have an 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 is coming on the sons of disobedience. Therefore, do not become fellow partakers with them. That again, as we said last week, should cause all of us to tremble a little bit, to shake a little bit in our boots, if we actually believe what it says. So we see that sexual immorality and impurity are never the result of a natural drive. And I'm just going to say some of these things again, but rather the result of greed, which is idolatry. It's the insatiable desire for selfish gratification. So our idolatry, our worshipping of idols, not literal physical idols, but the things that claim our affections and our devotion, our idolatry results in a powerful greed, even a craving. How many of you have ever known a craving? A craving. something that you just feel like you can't give up, you can't let go of. It's this greed and craving that then results in sexual immorality and impurity, which is the taking, the seizing of God's gift at our will from His creation rather than waiting upon the giver for His gifts in His sovereign good time. and thankfully acknowledging that I don't need the gift to be happy, though we convince ourselves of that lie all the time, all the time. All we truly need is the giver of the gifts to be happy, to have true joy. And I know this is tough, but it's tough because of our sin, because that greed is such a real thing in our lives. I thought it was so helpful, it was so helpful for me. And not just in the area of sexual immorality, because again, that sexual immorality is a picture, I think, of all our sin. And what all our sin really is, is the satisfying of self. All of it. The satisfying of self. It's the living of life with self at the center, and so the breaking of God's command to love Him with all of our heart and soul and strength in mind. We also saw last week just how far away we are supposed to be staying from sexual immorality, all impurity and greed. They aren't even to be named among us. There must be, Paul goes on to say, what does he mean by not being named? No filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor crude joking. And we pointed out whether spoken or listened to. And I want to challenge us again that the point here is not legalism. It's not legalism. Far from it. Paul says they shouldn't even be named among us and so he assumes that we have a repugnance, that we find repugnant to us. And there's no legal, you will never feel like you're under the weight of legalism if you turn away from something because it's repulsive to you. That's not going to be legalism for you or for anyone. And yet as we pointed out, this idea is innuendo, insinuation, suggestive language, and as we said last week, that's the bread and butter of almost all, we could maybe say is slightly exaggerated, but maybe not, modern entertainment. Treating sexual matters as a topic of amusement. May these things not even be named among us, whether spoken or listened to. Why? Because they are repugnant to who? To God's chosen holy ones. And we come back to grace. It's not about, you're holy and so you ought to be holy. You know, that kind of a thing. No, it's God has chosen us to be by grace. He has called us out of the depths of our sin and mire and dirt and filth. He has chosen us and called us to be His holy children. And so as His holy children, this is what we love. Indeed, it's on account of these very things that the wrath of God is coming on the sons of disobedience. Therefore, we must not be partakers with them. Now, in the next seven verses, Paul continues to address the same theme of sexual immorality. But now from the positive perspective, and I know that sounds weird. I know that there's nothing positive about sexual immorality. But he addresses the issue from another angle now. This morning we're just going to look at the next three verses. And here they are. For you were once darkness. So remember again, Paul has just said, don't let sexual immorality be named among you and all the stuff that goes with it. Stay far away. And then he says, for you were once darkness, but now light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. For the fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth, trying to discern... I forgot to... I'm using a different translation. Carefully working to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. So look how he starts out. For you were once darkness, but now light in the Lord. Okay, in the throes of temptation. whether it's sexual temptation or any other kind of temptation, in the throes of temptation is this. See, this is what Paul holds out to us as the strength to turn away, as the strength not just to turn away, but to pursue something different. You were once darkness, but now light in the Lord. I just want to say it without saying anything else. Let that be it. Now we'll sing. You were once, but now. Again, you come to start to feel like you know Paul. Like he's something of a friend, although I don't know if we would, you know, he's kind of up there for some of us, the Saint Apostle Paul, right? But as we look at his letters, he becomes more real and human and knowable to us. What I see about Paul is he never got tired of remembering and of celebrating the contrast between what we once were and what we now are. And that's a lesson to us. Because I don't think we spend nearly as much time as Paul did celebrating that kind of stuff. He's already said, we were once dead in our trespasses and sins, but now God made us alive together with Christ. We were once separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, that was you, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world, that was you and me. But now in Christ Jesus, we who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. And then, he goes on again now, we were once darkness, but now light in the Lord. And basically, we're in so many different ways, new creations in Christ. You name it, here's a way, here's a way, here's a way, and if we went through the New Testament, there'd be zillions of ways that we are new creations in Christ. We're brand new. And this is what I said, I think I heard this somewhere before along these lines, that is to say the least, It is an encouraging thought when we take hold of it by faith. It is an encouraging thought when we take hold of it by faith. But how many of us from day to day take hold of that by faith and know and believe God's Word that says, we were once, but now we are? We're a new creation. That's changed my whole way of thinking, and I pray some of my way of living, brothers and sisters, and I hope that you can say the same for yourself. Over the next seven verses, we have this continuous theme of light and darkness. Now in chapter 4, and you could read it in verses 18 and 19, I think it's in your handout, Paul spoke of the Gentiles, and he described them as those who are darkened. in their understanding, alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart, who having become callous, have given themselves over to unrestrained degeneracy for the working of every impurity and greediness." Now, did you see something there? There's darkness there, but what is darkness associated with there? Sexual immorality. Darkness and sexual immorality go together here as they do in Ephesians chapter 5. Now, we all know the idea of being afraid of the dark. When we were all little at some point, we probably all felt like that. We all have an appreciation for the light. We know what that is. Darkness is when you go to sleep and there's nothing else to do. The light is when we're awake and we're doing and we're not afraid and we're not unsure of things or where we're going, where we're stepping. So there's this picture of darkness and light. Such a beautiful picture of the Christian life. When we think of darkness, though, We should not think of the darkness that comes. There's two ways that it can be dark for you. It can be dark because you turn the light switch off. It can be dark because the sun went down at night. Or it can be dark because you shut your eyes. It can be dark because you're blind. And so it's like what Jesus said in Luke chapter 11. Your eye is the lamp of your body. It's really not the light bulb on your ceiling. It's your eye. And when your eye is healthy, when you can see and you don't have issues with your eyes, your whole body is full of light. What a beautiful picture that is. It's like my eyes right now are just letting light into my body and I'm just full of light. That's the picture. Whole body is full of light. And when your eye is bad, your body, shut your eyes, Your body's full of darkness. This is how it works. So in other words, the problem in Ephesians is not that there was no light around these people. There was light everywhere. The problem was their lack of ability and willingness to see the light. It seems crazy, like how many of you have read, if you've read Pilgrim's Progress? And you remember Christian sees someone, what were they doing in a dark room? I have a vague memory of this, sweeping the room, and all the while, they're living in darkness, and all the while there's light, and there's the offer of rescue. But they just can't see it, they refuse to see it, they just don't want to, they shut their eyes, and that's the end of it, it makes no sense. But sin doesn't make any sense. That's the way we are. Sin does that to us. The problem is not that there was no light, but that they were willingly blinded, willingly shutting their eyes. And that explains then how Paul can say not just that we were once walking in darkness, we could blame that on our environment, couldn't we? But even that we were once darkness itself. For you were once darkness. We were the ones unwilling to open our eyes because our hearts were hardened. And yet we couldn't change our hearts to make ourselves willing. And so we were trapped in the darkness of our own doing. And what was our darkness? And here's the thing. This will set you free from temptation. This will set us free from the bonds and chains of sin. What was the darkness doing? What was this darkness? It was our lack of the true knowledge of God. See, when I can open my eyes, I know who's here. When my eyes are shut, I don't know who's here. When we open our spiritual eyes and can see God, we can have the true knowledge of God. But when we've got our eyes shut from our hardened hearts, we cannot know God. We can't know His ways. We can't love His ways. And so in your handout, it was our darkness was our inability, think about this, our inability to comprehend. How much do we take for granted our ability or we think our ability to comprehend and understand God's ways, to approve and to love His ways and His character and His laws? I'm just going to ask you this question right now. Every single person in the room, I'm asking you. If I could ask you directly, I'd ask you. Have you loved God's ways? Have you approved, not that God cares in a sense whether we approve or not, but have you in your heart said, yes, I approve of those ways? Have you comprehended God's character? See, when we were in the darkness, we couldn't, and that's the darkness Paul is talking about. And it was this darkened understanding, since we couldn't comprehend God, and we couldn't have the true knowledge of God, what did that result in? It inevitably resulted in, here it is, self-indulgent greed and idolatry. God is love, God is not that. Self-indulgent greed and idolatry. Of which one of the ultimate expressions in every age is sexual immorality. So do you see the chain? Here's the chain. It was our darkened understanding, our shut eyes, our blindness to the true knowledge of God that explained our self-indulgent sensuality and sexual immorality. So then we have to ask, where does our sexual immorality come from today? Where does our other expressions of greed and idolatry and living for self come from today? Now here's the beautiful thing, Paul says. for you were once darkness." As one commentator put it, that is, thanks to God, the darkness is past. You can see, Paul loves saying this, for you were once darkness. And if he bolded and underscored and italicized words, those were the ones he did. But now, light in the Lord. You can almost hear Paul's joy in the abruptness of his words. Look what he says, but now, light in the Lord. The point is, but now you are light in the Lord. But it's almost as though Paul doesn't have time for those words. You were once darkness, but now light in the Lord. We're not just walking in the light, we are light. Did you hear that? We're not just walking in the light. We are light. If the eye is good, Jesus said, then the whole body will be full of light. And so Paul says in another place, God has taken away the blindness of our minds so that we might see. I think of the blind man who Jesus healed and how ecstatic he was. when he first was able to see. Sometimes I think, don't we lose that sense of being so ecstatic that what we couldn't see at one time, we can see now? We can see and have the true knowledge of God because He's opened our eyes, as it says here, God has taken away the blindness of our minds so we might see the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. He has shown in our lives to give us the light of the knowledge. See, there's the knowledge. Light and knowledge go together. Darkness and ignorance go together. The light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Do you know Him? Do you know Him? Have you seen Him? Because He's opened our eyes. That's the miracle of saving grace. That's the miracle of it. No longer are we alienated from the life of God or lacking in the true knowledge of God. Now that our eyes have been opened, we are, all of us, full of light, and I love to say that to you, full of light. Now we are able to understand. Now we are able, and you might be saying, well, I don't know that I really do. I'm just telling you, you are full of light. If you place your trust in Christ, you're able to understand. to comprehend, to approve, and to love, even to love in your heart of hearts God's ways and His character and His laws. That's another encouraging thought. So many times I think that we forget that that is what God has made us. You are able to love God's ways. You are able to delight in God's ways and find them beautiful. Not only are we able, but that is necessary if we are to turn away from self-indulgent sensuality. There's just not an option. We no longer have to be slaves to sexual immorality. And if there is anyone caught in slavery to it, in slavery, feeling like there's no way out, I want to tell you there is a way out. There is. We no longer have to be slaves to sexual immorality or any kind of sexual impurity. Because you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. It's not just about turning away. It's about delighting and loving and finding God's ways beautiful. Because you have the true knowledge of God. And last week is essential to this as well. Last week is essential. We no longer have to be slaves to these things. To the contrary, Paul says, you were once darkness, but now light in the Lord. Well then, walk. Walk as children of light. For the fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth. And once again, Paul in these verses is just abrupt. He's just abrupt. But when he's abrupt, it's because he's happy, I think. We can hear his joy. For you were once darkness, but now light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. There's no connecting therefore, walk as children of light, no so therefore, walk as children of light. It's just walk as children of light. One commentator described this, and I kind of got a kick out of this. He said, it's energetically added, which is, I think, to say that Paul adds it very happily and joyfully. Walk as children of light. And again, do you hear the burden and feel the burden of walk as children of light, or do you hear walk then as children of the light? The theme of our walk. What is our walk? That's very practical, isn't it? Our walk is our daily, moment-by-moment way of thinking, speaking, and acting. If I could just say it again, our walk is our daily, every day, no day of the week excepted, Moment by moment, no second of the day accepted way of thinking, speaking, and acting. That's our walk. Kind of sums everything up, doesn't it? It's everything. And that walk has been a constant theme in Ephesians. Look at these verses. And you being dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. I urge you, therefore, to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called. This, therefore, I say in testifying the Lord that you no longer walk just as the Gentiles also walk. Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love. For you were once darkness, but now light and the Lord. Walk as children of light. There is no room for compartmentalizing your Christian life. There's no room for living part of it this way and part of it this way. It's all about a walk. Every day, every moment, every thought, every word, every action, that's our walk. Walk as children of light. And so let me say this to you, and may you hear in these words God's grace to you. Brothers and sisters, we no longer have to walk in self-indulgent greed and idolatry. We no longer have to be slaves to sexual immorality or any kind of sexual impurity, no matter what our situation in life may ever be. We can know we can't. Know the freedom and joy of giving thanks and living sacrificially in love on a daily and consistent basis in our Christian lives. And as I said at the beginning, that is an encouraging thought when we take hold of it by faith. We're able to do this now because we are light in the Lord. What does that mean? We're able to do this now because we are able to understand what we didn't understand before and comprehend something in our minds and hearts that we couldn't understand and comprehend before. And what is that? All of God's ways and His character and His laws. We're able now to approve. If you look at a painting and you just kind of agree with the painter, You agree with the painter and say, yeah, that's a good painting. That's kind of what we're doing with God. We look at God's ways and we agree with God. Yeah, that's good. We identify with it, we feel it, we sense and we know its beauty, and so we delight in His ways with Him. The fruit of the light, and we are light, is in all goodness and righteousness and truth. There's that list of three we talked about last week. It's not in sexual immorality and impurity and greed, the things that don't even have to be named among us and shouldn't be named among us. It's not in filthiness and foolish talk and crude joking, those things that shouldn't be allowed to enter our ears if we have any control over it. The fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth. And so Paul is, in a sense, kind of summarizing. He just summed up the whole Christian life in one word, love. And now he's summarizing love in three words, goodness, righteousness, and truth. And it reminds us of verses like you have in your handout, which we won't read right now. Walker's Children of Light. We say, okay, Paul, that sounds good. Now what does that mean? For the fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth. And how many of you are saying, well, thank you, Paul. That was very helpful. Do we kind of feel like that with a little bit of sarcasm? Not real sarcasm, I know, but goodness and righteousness and truth? That's it. That's it. Pretty straightforward, right? On the one hand, is there not a part of you that says, yeah, that's what I want to be. On the other hand, is there not a part of you that says, what is that? It seems so broad and so general and maybe even vague. He didn't just say goodness, righteousness, and truth. He said all goodness, righteousness, and truth. So I ask, where's the detailed checklist? And in case you think it's in the first part of, in the rest of chapter four, it's really not there either. It's really not. Where's the detailed checklist? Where's the outline of exactly what is good and right and true in every unique situation that you face from day to day? Now some things are obvious, but there's a whole lot that's maybe not so obvious. And so often that's what we want. Brothers and sisters, it's what I want at times. Just God tell me. Make it obvious. And so we look for it when we're reading the Bible. No, I'm not just inventing this for this passage. Paul's coming to a point here that this leads to. How many of us, when we read our Bibles, are looking for the checklist? We're looking for an explicit directive about what I ought to do in this circumstance. If that's the way we're reading the Bible, we're reading the Bible the wrong way. The wrong way. Sometimes those directives are there. Maybe we look for that list of what's good and right and true in other books by Christian authors, but very often those books are very much the wrong books to be reading. And maybe it's most common to look to our pastors and teachers to tell us what is good and right and true in our own unique situations from day to day. Before I go on, I just want to say this. I've often thought about saying this. I invite and love your phone calls if you ever want to stop by the office and talk or go out and talk. And if there's any way that I can help in just bringing God's Word to bear on anything, I love that. I love it. On the other hand, I'll also say, it is not my job. to tell you what is good and right and true, and the unique situations and circumstances that you face from day to day. Now, again, I feel like having to qualify that, because it's not my job to give the list, because I don't think that list exists, at least in many levels. It may be a job to bring principles of God's Word to bear and to give counsel and advice and direction about maybe where this should go. But if we're looking for that list from the Bible, from another book we want to read, or from your pastor, or from other teachers and pastors that you listen to, that's the wrong thing to be doing. This isn't the role of the pastor teacher either, and that shocks a lot of people. So we ask the question, how am I to know? How am I supposed to know what's good and right and true in my own unique situation from day to day? If I can't find all the specifics and the details in my Bible or in other books or in the teaching of radio pastors or the pastor at my church, how can we know? The wonderful, beautiful answer is right here in front of us in this passage of scripture. For you were once darkness, but now you, you are light in the Lord. You are able to understand and comprehend what you could not understand and comprehend before. And what is that? It is the ways of God, His character, and His commands. Now that you are light in the Lord, you are able And we're going to qualify this in a minute. Again, I'm talking about the laundry list, the checklist, the specific directive in your unique situation. You are able to discern for yourself exactly what is good and right and true in your own unique situation from day to day. Now, I'm going to say that there are times that not only do we look to the Bible for the list, what do you want me to do right now in this? Give me the directive. Or we buy the book at the bookstore because it's got the title that says, I think it's going to answer my question. Or we go to church expecting the detailed directive. Or sometimes we even say, God has told me this. Sometimes we even say, God has told me this. We don't find that language in the Bible. Now, we have to be careful then. Are there other scriptures that support something like that? We don't find people saying, I feel like God told me to do this or that. But one thing we know is that God has given us His Word. And what does Paul say? He says, you are light. And that explains then why Paul goes on to say this, walk as children of light, for the fruit of light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth. And here it is. Here it is. Here's what Paul's been leading up to, carefully working to discern Not what God told you. Not some hidden message in your pastor's sermon. Not some hidden message in the pages of the Bible. But carefully working to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Carefully working to discern. That's a translation of only one word in the Greek. It's a word that you just can't translate with one word. Jesus uses the word in Luke chapter 12, you hypocrites, you know how to interpret or analyze, the New American says, the appearance of earth and sky, but why don't you know how to interpret or analyze the present time? What's the point? You carefully evaluate the appearance of the sky. Why? To come to some conclusion about it. It's not just analyzing not to go anywhere. It's analyzing to come to a conclusion and a course of action. In another one of Jesus' parables, a man says, I bought five yoke of oxen and now I go to examine them. Or the New American says, try them out. So the point here is he's going to go test the oxen to see how they perform. He wants to find out how they do. In many places in the Bible this word is translated testing. So it's the sense of working to find something out, testing, evaluating, examining, using critical judgment to find something out. And so we translate carefully, working to discern. There's no magical formula. There's no word, direct word from God here, whether direct or through a pastor or the Bible. What this is here is trying carefully to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. And I'll just say to you now, that is the task of every individual spirit filled, and that's all Christians, spirit indwelt, Christian. There's no one else in the world who is meant to do that for you. That's your job. And it's a joyful one. I'll just say this, and again, this isn't about not getting advice and counsel. Some people are further along in their spiritual walk than others. And those they can give, they can bring God's Word to bear on situations. Okay, that's all very true. But when it comes right down to what exactly you're going to do in that unique situation, you are light in the Lord. And there's no one else in the world who's meant to do that for you. There are no legitimate outlines. There are no legitimate books or sermons on what exactly is good and right and true in the unique real life situations that you face from day to day. And some, yes, and some. So I listened to what O'Brien writes. I think this is so very helpful. Reflect on it more maybe when you go home. The Jew who knew God's will, he was to approve what was essential on the basis of the law. So the Jew, especially if he wasn't regenerate, how did he figure out from day to day what was right? Well, he got the law out and went down the list. Christians, however, have learned Christ. They have responded to the Gospel and received further instruction about Him from those specially equipped by the ascended Lord Jesus. That would be pastors and teachers. That's what's happening right here, right now. And thus, their lives are shaped in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. I pray that's the truth you hear every week. The truth that's in Jesus. And as you hear that truth, as you are light in the Lord, then you go out and you carefully work to discern what is pleasing to the Lord on a daily basis. So this Christ-centered instruction, which focuses on the truth of the Gospel, This is the yardstick, this is the measuring stick by which believers are to discern in specific situations what pleases their Lord. Since you are no longer darkness, but rather light in the Lord, you are able to discern for yourself exactly what is good and right and true in our unique situations from day to day. And now, here's the thing. How many of you are saying, oh good, I can go out and justify anything and everything I want. I'm pretty good at that. Right? What does Paul say? What are we working at? Finding out what is pleasing to the Lord. We're going to come in a moment, just a second, to see what we more often do. So Paul writes in Romans and then Philippians, Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. See what's happening here? You're getting a whole bunch of stuff dumped on you that you thought was someone else's job, right? Or that I thought was someone else's job. Because as long as you didn't hear it from the pulpit, as long as you didn't hear, well, I can't do that, or I can't do that, or I have to do that, well then, I didn't hear it. But now, what God is saying is, all of us, as people who are light, have this God-given privilege. of working carefully every day to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. This is my prayer, Paul says, that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight so that you may be able to test and discern what is best. What is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ. This is our work. So my brothers and sisters, as we come to the conclusion, we here were once darkness. Let's remember that. We lacked the true knowledge of God. We couldn't approve His ways. We didn't come to the painting and say, ah, yes. We were unable to see, appreciate its beauty. We were unable to comprehend, to approve, and to love God's character and His ways, and that resulted, what did that result in? Living for self. Self-indulgent greed and idolatry. Of which one of the ultimate expressions is sexual immorality. So then how do we escape that? Paul says, you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. No longer are we alienated from the life of God, lacking in the true knowledge of God. Now that our eyes have been opened, shut your eyes. Open your eyes. Our eyes have been opened, we are full of light. Now we can understand and comprehend, we can approve and we can love and we can find beautiful and we can delight in God's ways. We can come to the painting of His ways and gaze upon it and say, Yes! That looks good. That's beautiful. And what does that mean? When you've done that, gone are the desires to walk in self-indulgent greed and idolatry. We no longer have to be slaves, no matter what our situation may ever be. Instead, in your handout, we can know the freedom. We can know the freedom. and the happiness and joy of all goodness and righteousness and truth on a daily, moment-by-moment, consistent basis in our Christian lives. Because we can discern and approve from day to day what is pleasing to our Lord. I think I've seen your handout. You can read or you can just listen. How infinitely far away that is from what so many Christians spend so much of their time doing. And has this not been all of us at one time or another? Maybe it's us today. What do we try to do? We try to discern what we can get by with. Maybe that's the TV show I like watching. trying to discern what is not explicitly forbidden. How many of us work? We don't even have to, it's just like unconscious. We work, we're working, yeah, working to discern something, what is not explicitly forbidden. That's so often what more characterizes the Christian. Or maybe we're working to try to discern, what are the gray areas? I want the black areas, and I know the white areas, or however you want to use that. But now I just got to work really hard to try to discern what's the gray areas. And then I can make sure that I have freedom in the gray areas. How infinitely far away that is from what Paul says we're all to be doing. I asked to borrow the title from Piper's book. Is this how you and I are wasting our lives? See, and wasting our lives here isn't about you ought to be over at some foreign country living in third world situation, maybe. But that's not the point here. Are we wasting our lives by spending our time trying to discern what's not explicitly forbidden, what's the gray area, and what we can get by with? Is that how we're wasting our lives and robbing ourselves of true joy? As Hendrickson puts it like this, let the true knowledge of God be our standard constantly. Let the joy of salvation be the very tenor of our lives. I'll just end with a little series of quotes here. Another person says, the Christian's whole course is a continual proving and testing of the will of God in practice. Investigating not what pleases himself, but what pleases him. And one other says this, believers are able to discover the will of God in the concrete situations they face as they place their whole beings at God's disposal. So I say to you this morning, it's all on you. But that's actually the good news of the Gospel. Because you are light. in the Lord. Walk, then, as children of life. Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that we'd feel free. So often we feel bound by an obligation to find and discover Your will. I pray, Lord, that we would know the joy of carefully working to discern what is pleasing to the Lord wherever we are at all times. Because we are children of light. That's something we couldn't do before. Before, we needed the law to spell it out. But now, as new creations in Christ, we have learned Christ. Our eyes have been opened to see Your ways and approve them and love them and find them beautiful. And so I pray for each individual here in this room today that we be able to go out with joy, not with burden, with excitement, with anticipation, knowing that as we go out as children of light, we are able to walk as children of light. Carefully working from day to day and moment to moment to discern not what are the gray areas, but what is pleasing to our Lord. We pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.