Let's hear God's Word, Ephesians 5, verses 3 through 14. But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you as is fitting for saints, neither filthiness nor foolish talking nor coarse jesting which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore, do not be partakers with them. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth, finding out what is acceptable to the Lord, and have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light. Therefore, he says, awake you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light. Amen. We'll end our reading there in Ephesians 5.14. Our gracious God and Father, we pray that today, through this portion of your word, the light of Christ would shine upon us. May it reveal what is dark, what is amiss in our hearts, in our lives, in our speech. But may it also invite us to come again into the light, to press more fully into it, to experience and enjoy it more deeply. for the glory of Jesus Christ, we ask it. We've previously looked at Ephesians 5, verses 3 through 14, not all together, but we talked about the prohibitions of sexual sin. We talked about the identification of covetousness and idolatry. We talked about the reasons that Paul gives for avoiding those things. We talked about the kingdom of Christ and of God. We talked about the great contrast that there is in how we were, what we are by nature, darkness, and what we are made in Christ, and how that contrast between what we are is inevitably must be expressed in a contrast in how We live. So you may be thinking, after that many bites at the apple, what is left for you to say? Could we not move on instead to verses 15 and following? However, it has been bothering me for some time that we really didn't do anything with foolish talking in verse three, and that there's a whole emphasis on speech here that I don't think we have done justice to yet. You can tell me afterwards if you disagree with me. And of course, last week, we heard a lot about speech from Isaiah 19, but that was from Isaiah 19, it wasn't from Ephesians chapter five. So notice with me the emphasis on speech that Paul has in this passage. In verse three, having identified some sins, he says, let it not even be named among you, And he proceeds with filthiness, foolish talking, coarse jesting, which all relate to speech. And out of those, we didn't really do very much with foolish talking. Instead of those things, he wants giving of thanks. But then he goes on, there's a return to the emphasis on speech in verse six. Let no one deceive you with empty words. And then, He comes in verse 11, have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them or rebuke them. And that connection with speech is made explicit in the very next verse, for it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. So you see that there's a thread running through this passage that crops up multiple times about speech. What is? Foolish talking. We've already explained that filthiness is the kind of speech that is likely to incite to sexual sin. We've explained coarse jesting as double entendres, where an innocent statement is suddenly given a perverse meaning. But we kind of skipped over foolish talking. Well, that could be pretty wide ranging. A fool utters all his mind, whereas a wise man Keeps it in until afterwards, according to Proverbs. So expressing opinions on things you know nothing about. Giving your hot take on every single issue. That could be an example of foolish talking. Saying more than you know or speaking at random. Speaking to hear your voice instead of to communicate truth. That could be foolish talking. You could think about foolish talking as talking that is opposed to goodness, righteousness, and truth, drawing on verse nine. Well, how are we doing on that score? Do we find that we have some reason to repent with regard to our speech? Some reason to be a little bit more circumspect about our language? But pressing on, you also notice that Paul replaces those things with giving of thanks because the goal is not to shut you down and make you be quiet. The point is for you to use your mouth as God intended. One old theologian said that human beings are the mouth of the creation to render the praise for all of this back to God. There is a right way to use your words. And that right way begins with giving of thanks. Because the Bible never just says, stop, cut it out, get rid of it. The Bible also always gives you something to do instead. Now, one of the ways that speech works, for good or ill, is to associate us with the unfruitful works of darkness, with the fellowship of those who don't inherit the kingdom of God, or to distinguish us from that. So in addition to giving of things, Paul wants you to use your words to expose, to rebuke what is evil. We saw before that this is not primarily a reference to you going around telling everybody, that's wrong, that's wrong, that's wrong, that's wrong, you're wrong, cut it out. We show what is evil in sin. We exhibit the worthlessness, the revoltingness of sin, and we do that, yes, with our words, we do that with our example. The saying that's wrong and you shouldn't do that is not the only way that that works. I'm not opposed to people calling out things that are wrong at all. But that's not enough. You can't rest content with just telling people. Now there is another danger, not so much from our speech, but from the speech of others. Paul references that, let no one deceive you with empty words. So that calls upon us to take heed how we listen, how we hear, who we listen to, what we do with that. And if we find that somebody is leading us astray, if we find that somebody is trying to minimize sin, That is a good thing to cut out of your life. That's a good thing to leave alone. So with our speech, we are avoiding sin, we are giving thanks, we are exposing evil, and we're exposing evil because we've been made light in Christ. It's the nature of light to illuminate, to show things up, to reveal them for what they are. So if we are light in the Lord, we are inevitably going to understand some things about sin that we didn't before. This is one of the ways that Christians can continue to grow in repentance, because as you walk with the Lord, as the light of Christ shines upon you, you understand sin better and you see it more clearly. It's not the case that you're more sinful than you were 10 years ago, even though you might feel that way, It's the case that you've grown in the light of the Lord and you see the sin that was always there more clearly than you used to. It's growth, not backsliding in that case. Let that be an encouragement to you as the light of Christ shines on the sin in your life. That's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. It is part of his mercy. It shows that he is making light where you are, and now you are seeing more clearly. Because the reality is that we are vulnerable, we are prone to falling, and I think that's why Paul wraps up this section with a mixed metaphor. Awake you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light. Well, are they asleep or are they dead? Now, the biblical writers are never slaves to their metaphors. They feel free to change them as needed for the purposes of the truth they're communicating. So it's possible that I'm over-interpreting this, but here's my suggestion. Paul speaks of those who sleep and of those who are dead because sometimes Christians forget who they are. They act like those dead in trespasses and sins. It's not true. lost our salvation, but we're too much like the world, and just as there's a similarity between sleep and death, sometimes there's a similarity between the believer and the unbeliever. Well, whatever your case is, Paul says, Christ will give you light. If you're a sleeping Christian who needs to wake up and repent, Christ will give you light. If you are a dead sinner who is lost in trespasses and sins, Christ will give you light. Either way, the answer is Christ, the light giver. We might also be surprised, what good does it do to tell a sleeper to awake or especially to tell a dead person to arise? But we should not forget that the Word of Christ comes with power. What good does it do to tell Lazarus to come out of the tomb? Lazarus is dead. Lazarus can't respond. But when it's Christ who issues the summons, the power goes along with the Word, and Lazarus walks out, his being four days dead, his grave closed. Do not stop him. He responds to the power of Christ. And so it is absolutely useful to exhort people Sleepy Christians, unconverted sinners, it's useful to exhort them all because the power of Christ goes along with his word. We are light in the Lord. Arise, awaken, and go more deeply into that light. Paul is probably adapting from Isaiah chapter 60, verse one. He might be bringing in some other verses as well in this what is presented as a quotation, but which does not occur verbatim in the Old Testament. Why does Paul end this way? Because as beloved children of God, as light in the Lord, what you need is for the light of Christ to continue to shine upon you.