Good morning. Back to Ephesians 5, and we're at verses 7 and 8, talking about light and darkness, as you recall. So let's go ahead and pray, and we'll dive right into it here. Father, we thank you for your word. Thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior. We thank you for all the many blessings that you give to us and we thank you that you have revealed yourself so specifically to us in your word. We pray then that as we come to your word that you would speak to us, that you would illumine our minds, that we might grow in the knowledge of you, to love you more, and to have our faith strengthened. And we pray this all in Christ's name. Amen. All right, well, here we are. The therefore, you remember, verse 7, Ephesians chapter 5. Therefore, because of all of this, because we've been justified by faith and made new creations, do not become partners with them, that is, the world and those outside of Christ in all of their evil deeds, because, verse six, because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Don't become partners with them. For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to discern what's pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. So you remember that we spent time last session considering this fact that Paul says that he says that every person is defined by either light or darkness. We, before Christ saved us, we were darkness, but now we are light. And remember, We gave some time to considering that, that Paul does not say you were in the dark or anything like that, and he doesn't say that now we've been enlightened. He says, no, now, he's talking about the very essence of the, whatever it is then that you'd say defines a person. We were darkness. Everyone outside of Christ, is darkness. And we talked some about what that means. We're going to talk some more about it today. But now you are, as a Christian, you are light in the Lord. There's difference between night and day, between a Christian and a non-Christian, darkness and light. And we talked about also the implications of that. I guess I should clip my microphone on here. The implications of that are far-reaching, one of which is surely that we can know and other people can know whether we're saved or not, because you can tell the difference between darkness and light, you see. Sometimes this happens very, our awareness. That we've been saved that we're no longer darkness and we know are now like comes very very quickly into someone and You know the Lord saves us in a moment but then Some people can say I know I know when this happened to me exact moment and other people are more like I I don't know. All I know is I used to be darkness, but now I'm light in the Lord. I can't pinpoint the exact time. But this speaks then of a radical, an extremely radical change, being born again, being made then a new creation. And so we also saw then you can't be Halfway Christian. All right, you can't you're either In Christ or you're not you're either darkness or your light it's it's one it's in one of the two and Some people seem to think that Well, you know, I don't know about these things, but I think I'm okay with God. But can you see that at one time you were darkness, but now you are light? And can other people tell it? We know this from John chapter 3. The darkness hates the light. Darkness hates the light. If I was darkness, when I was darkness, and I've been born again, and now I am light in the Lord, right? John 3 says, Jesus said that the darkness hates the light. It doesn't come to the light. It's evil deeds and nature is exposed by the light. So it's repelled by the light. And so when I'm saying when the Lord saves a person, there is going to be necessarily quite a change in their relationships. The darkness, people that are still in the darkness, are going to recognize this change and they're not going to like it. They're not going to like it. And that's another way we can know whether we've been born again then or not. Listen to a couple of quotes here by Lloyd-Jones that I think that are very, very helpful to us here. He's going to talk some more about the darkness here, but let's see. Well, let me introduce the topic better. Okay, so what does it mean to be in the darkness, right? What does that entail? Well, it is a darkening of the mind and of the heart. It is a darkening of man's, and this has all happened at the fall, it is a darkening of man's ability, the sinner's ability to know. This darkness is equated with ignorance. I think there's a good passage. What was that? Was that back in chapter 4 here? Let's check this out here. Let's see. See, here's some description of it. This I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that's in them due to their hardness of heart. So you see right here, he uses the word, ignorance here and darkened in understanding, that's just another way of saying ignorance, and it's in their mind, the emptiness of their mind. This is what happened then at the fall. When Adam and Eve sinned, the lights went out in their mind because God is light. To become separated from God is to be plunged into darkness of mind. What does this mean? It means that, well, here's this good quote I was going to read. Listen to this. The trouble then with man is not simply that he is in a dark world, but that the light that was in him has gone out. God put a light into man when he created him. When God made man, he breathed into him his spirit. Man became a living soul, and he was in communion with God. There was light in his soul. But sin has put out the light. It's not simply that we're in a dark world, but that there is darkness within us, in our very being and constitution. So, see, that's what Paul's saying here in Ephesians 4. The darkness is in the mind. The mind is darkness. God is light. But the mind of the sinner is darkness, antithetical to God, opposed to God, and darkened in its understanding, unable to see, to grasp. the truth of God and due to the ignorance that's in them. And there's culpability in this as well, their hardness of heart. So they give themselves up to foolishness, evil foolishness. They become callous, have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy, to practice every kind of impurity. Now we'll go on to explain this darkness a bit more. I'll continue that paragraph. Listen to our Lord's words in the Sermon on the Mount. The light of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is clear, the whole body will be full of light. Now he's just using a physical illustration here, right now at that point, to illustrate a spiritual truth. Light comes into my being through my eye. If my eye is clear, I can see. my life, my being will be full of light. But if the eye be evil, the whole body shall be full of darkness, because the eye of the soul and the spirit It's darkening of the mind, right? Has become opaque and darkened so that no light, no truth, truth about God, truth about ourselves, truth about salvation can get into the body. And the result is that the whole body, the mind and the heart, the whole personality is full of darkness. And he tells, he told us earlier too in Ephesians chapter 2 that at one time that was us. That was us. We were in the darkness. So this is why people reject the light. This is why unsaved people hate the light. They try to explain to them, try to talk to them about truth, about themselves, about God, about the way of salvation. And why don't they believe it? Why don't they turn to it? They love the darkness rather than the light. This paragraph ends, darkness is in their hearts and darkness is in their minds. They love darkness. They enjoy it. It's the thing that appeals to them. Darkness is within them. But Paul says, but now, right? Don't become partakers in the deeds of darkness, the works of darkness, because that's not who you are anymore. That isn't you. At one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. So you can see here, once again, how Paul is emphasizing to us Be who you are. Recognize who you are in Christ and be who you are. And we also see this tremendous difference, huge difference, between a Christian and a non-Christian, right? There is a huge difference. And that means then, which is so common today, I suppose it always has been, but so many people claim to be Christians, but you don't see the light in them. You don't see, that is to say, they look like the world. They think, more so, not only just they look like the world, they think like the world, you see. If you're saved, the lights have come on and you don't think like the world anymore. So, we are light in the Lord. This is a radical, radical transformation. Now, these things have a tremendous application to evangelism, right? Think this through. If in fact, and it's true, if in fact the unsaved person is darkness, if their mind is darkened, so that their understanding of God, of God's word is darkened, if they are ignorant then of God and of the gospel and of Christ and so on. those things being true, then so much of what we call evangelism today, and this probably has always been a problem, is being exercised on a false foundation. What is the false foundation? The false foundation is that man, the sinner, has at least a speck of light in him. That is to say, he has the ability, well, let's put it this way. What we need to do then, this is how this thinking goes, what we need to do in order to bring a person to Christ is explain the gospel to them, and reason with the person about the gospel, about the truth of God's word, about the character of God, reason with them, and so forth. And then, having done that, we think that You know, surely, surely now, because of the information and so on that we've given to the sinner, he or she is going to, has the ability to choose to believe it and be saved. Here's another, listen to this, this explains it really well. This thinking says, all we need to do is to hold the truth before the sinner, present it logically and clearly, bringing out our arguments, put it as strongly as we can, supply eloquence, and so on. But the chief thing, this thinking says, is to present the truth to him, because He has, they maintain, he has the capacity and the power to believe it and to take it. Now, yes, we should present the truth. That's called preaching the gospel, all right? Delivering God's word to the sinner. And to even present arguments facts about how we know that this is true, that God's word then is true. But if we think that by doing so, then the sinner has, we have affected that person's so-called ability to believe the gospel, and surely at least some of these people are going to choose to accept it, because there has to be a little bit of light in them. This is, of course, Arminian theology, which we reject. What are we saying here? The Arminian doctrine of man is that the fall wasn't total. It's not that he, you know, he's fallen in sin, seriously fallen in sin. but he still retains ability to choose Christ, to hear the gospel and to see it. But all of this explanation of the sinner's mind being in darkness counteracts all of that kind of an idea. Now think about this. If we believe that man still has ability to choose Christ, then what's going to happen in our evangelism? Well, we're going to try to reach that ability. We're going to try to convince him. we're going to, it will affect our methods, right? It will affect our methods. And that's what you see in so many churches or evangelistic campaigns and so forth. There is, there are things implemented which are designed, supposedly, to move the sinner to choose Christ. It could be some emotional, heart-reaching story or illustration in the preaching. It could be the way music is utilized, or the whole atmosphere of the thing, or things are set up to give that push to the sinner to decide for Christ. But the whole thing is based on a false foundation. What is that? It is a denial that we're dealing with people who are darkness, who they are darkness. So what's true about them? What is true about them? They can't see. It's worse than that. They can't even understand. Why don't they understand the light of Christ? Why don't they understand? Because their will is also in bondage, their desires. They hate the light. They will not choose the light. Let's see, if we go back here to 1 Corinthians, And I suppose, I get chapters one and two mixed up, but look, here's just some examples. Paul said, and I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God. Look at this now, with lofty speech or wisdom. That's what we're talking about here. Paul says, I didn't employ those methods. I didn't come and preach to you with, oh, this great eloquence so people would, oh, surely they're gonna choose Christ because Paul's speech is so lofty and wise. And he said, he rejected that. He said, I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling. My speech and my message were not implausible words of wisdom. They weren't some kind of philosophical, structured argument and so forth, but in the demonstration of the Spirit and power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. What is Paul saying here? Why was he with them in weakness and in fear and much trembling? And why didn't he employ lofty speech or wisdom? Why didn't he bring a band with him and dim down the lights and everything and try to do those things? Because he knew this. He knew that there was nothing he could do ultimately, when it comes right down to it, so that the people listening to him would choose Christ. He knew what they were, darkness. Now, what else did he know? He knew his words, the gospel. He knew that the gospel is the power of God to salvation. The gospel is. So he said, you know, I didn't come to you as a fancy, entertaining, eloquent speaker. I came to you, I presented Jesus Christ and him crucified, recognizing that it is the Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit that must effect this radical change in the hearer so that they can hear. It's the same thing as Jesus so often demonstrated physically, illustrated this way. What did he do? He gave sight to the blind. He gave ears to the deaf. Why? What was he saying? He's saying salvation is like that. The sinner can't see and he can't hear until I say, let there be light. See? And that's what Paul's talking about here, that their faith has to rest on the power of God. So often today, what happens? People are told that they're saved, and they believe that they're saved, but their so-called decision for Christ is just based upon what a person said. Oh, he's really convincing, and that story really touched me. But it's not, their so-called faith isn't going to last because it's not the product of the power of the power of God. There was another verse here, if I can see this here. Here again, Paul's talking about the darkness that's in the unsaved person. As it's written, what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him. The sinner can't see, can't hear, he can't even imagine. The truth, okay? God has to reveal to us these things through the Spirit. That's what has to happen. No one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Unless the Holy Spirit comes on the person that we are presenting the gospel to and effects that new birth in them, the darkness is going to remain, okay? Look at this now. We impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit. And then here's the verse I really wanted to get to. The natural person, the sinner, who is darkness, does not accept the things of the Spirit of God. They're folly to him, and he's not able to understand them because they're spiritually discerned. Now that verse right there needs to be at the heart of all of our preaching, all of our evangelism, right? What is true about the sinner? He or she does not accept the things of the Spirit of God. They're foolishness to them. The gospel is foolishness to the sinner. The Bible is foolishness. You, as a Christian, are a fool to the sinner, right? So how is a person like that ever going to make a decision to choose Christ? How is that ever gonna happen? It's not going to happen unless God says, let there be light, and they're born again. See, look at the progression here. The sinner doesn't accept the Word of God, the things of the Spirit. He doesn't accept them. Why? Because they're folly, they're stupid. It's foolishness to him. Why? Because he's not able to understand them. His mind is darkness. They're spiritually discerned. There's only one way that a person is going to believe in Christ and be saved, and that is by the work, then, of the Holy Spirit. So all of these things are are vital for us to know. Let's go back here to Ephesians 5 again. At one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. So a person, I'll just read this sentence here. The sinner, the difficulty with the non-Christian is not merely that he needs to be shown light You know, just show him this, reason with him, show him the plausibility of the gospel and so on. I mean, think about it this way. Do you want to go to hell? Don't you want to go to heaven? That's reasonable, isn't it? The Lord says to the Jews through Isaiah, come now, let us reason together. Let's reason together. But these things are, God's Word is unreasonable to the sinner. It isn't that he just needs to be shown the light. He needs to be born again. The Holy Spirit must do an operation in him. For the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, their foolishness to him. You can put the truth before him, quote your verses, bring your arguments. Those are good things. but they remain foolishness to him. And that's what we've got to understand, you see. He cannot know them for they are spiritually discerned. So not only must we present the light and the truth, but we must pray that the Holy Spirit might enlighten the sinner's mind and his heart. And this demonstrates to us then that nothing short of a mighty revival and visitation of the Spirit of God will ever deal with the sinner's condition. Right? That's it. In the end, we need to recognize this. And so, anything in our methods of evangelism that smacks of us trying to manipulate the emotions or thoughts of the person with the idea, you know, if we can just get him to believe, if we can just get him to believe and choose Christ, if we can just set this thing up so all he has to do is walk down the aisle of the church and say that he accepts Christ and so forth, if we can just do those things, Think about these things in more detail yourself and to relate them to the methods that we see in so many churches and organizations today that are called evangelism. So much of it is based on the false notion that we are able to get through to the person ourselves, if we can just be eloquent enough. If our arguments can just be convincing enough, we can get through. No. No. We should use convincing arguments. But if we're operating in any way that is based on the idea that we, as Paul said, in our eloquence and so on, can save this person, then our methods and our thinking are based on lies, on false ideas. Here's the amazing thing. This is why there's no room for boasting. As a Christian, I can't boast at all. Why? Because I was darkness. I hated the light. I didn't want Christ. I couldn't even understand God's word. I couldn't understand any spiritual things at all. And then God Turn on the lights. Let there be light. See, that was it. He has to do it. I think I've told you before that, you know, here locally, I'll get these emails and so forth from various local ministerial association or whatever. And I think the most recent one that I got was Come on, let's all get together, you know, that's the big thing. If we can just all, every church and whatever, every Christian community can all just get together and we're gonna have this event. And it's gonna be powerful. And there's gonna be powerful music. And there's gonna be powerful preaching. And we're going to see then all kinds of people get saved and come to Christ. But you see the whole thing, Paul rejects that. He said, I didn't come to you with powerful preaching. What he means by that is his own power. He preached, and he didn't come to them with powerful arguments for the truth of the gospel. He came in fear and trembling with an utter dependence upon God, that if anyone is going to be saved. The only reason that the gospel is God's power to salvation is because God empowers that word. That is what he does, you see. Lloyd-Jones mentioned, by the way, once again I'm reading out of Darkness and Light, Exposition of Ephesians 4 and 5. It's published by Banner of Truth by Lloyd-Jones. But he mentioned in here, you know, Charles Finney, and I think Finney was back in the, what, 1800s, something like that. Finney embraced Arminian theology, much of The so-called evangelism that we've seen in churches and crusades and so forth in our day has a lot of Phineas in it. Phineas, I think, is the one that invented what they call that, they put a bench or something up at the front of the church. invited people to come and that, you know, they employed methods and he said that, Finney said that we are capable of effecting salvation in a way. I should say we are capable if we will just follow certain methodologies we will succeed in people, seeing people receive Christ. Okay, that was his, that was it. So just a comment here from Lloyd-Jones on this. The father of the evangelism which imagines and thinks that it's sufficient to simply hold truth before people was a man named Finney. That's what he taught. He did not believe in original sin. He believed that all that was needed to be done was to hold the truth before people. This being done, he said, they possess the ability to believe and take it in. But they can't. They are darkness, you see, in mind and will and everything else. It is by the work of the Spirit, opening up the Word of God and opening the heart and the mind. See, what happens in the new birth? We're made a new creation. What is necessary? a person, a sinner, is darkened in their understanding. They're ignorant. That is, they cannot understand I mean, you can present the best arguments ever, absolutely logical arguments and proof for the truth of the gospel. You can present the sinner's desperate need then for Christ. He's not going to be able to understand, and furthermore, His will, his desire, his affections for the things that he chooses is in darkness as well. He can't choose unless God turns on the light. And it seems that as long as we want to take credit, glory for ourselves in evangelism. I mean, think of the language here. Think of the language. Well, in our church last year, you know, we led 50 people to Christ. And we did this and this morning, you know, there was three people that chose Christ and all of those kinds of things. are boasting, really. They're boasting. They're taking glory, which belongs only to God, for ourselves. You know, people, people, let's just, let's say Christians, all right, us, we are threatened by inaction. Right? We've got to do something. Come on, let's, boy, if something's gonna happen in our church, we've gotta do some things here. We have to get things going. People are threatened by inaction. But largely, that's what God calls us to. Now, of course, we're supposed to preach the gospel, and we gather together on the Lord's day to fellowship in his church and so on. We hear the word preached. There's certain things like that that are necessities. Those are the things that we do. But what if our church is not seeing lots of fruit? What if it's not seeing any visible fruit? In other words, what if our church is not growing numerically? What if we're not seeing regular professions of faith in Christ and baptisms? Many, many churches and seminaries and so forth today would tell us that we're failures, that we need to do something, right? And that's exactly what Paul is telling us we can't do. It's kind of hard to explain other than to say, Not doing something is threatening to people. Oh, I'm going to go look for a different church because things just don't seem to be happening there. Well, is the Word of God being faithfully preached there? Well, yeah. Is church discipline practiced? Yes. Ordinances, baptism of the Lord, supper, observe, yes. Yes, all those things are done. Okay, well, when you say nothing is happening and we need, you know, they need to be doing something, what did you have in mind? What are you talking about? What do you have in mind? We have to be seeing results. We have to get out there. So here's this program that I see going on over here. We need to get this program going. We need to get that program going. But do you see, as soon as we start relying on those things to save people, We are denying what God's Word is telling us here about the sinner. How are people saved? It's by the power of God. We preach His Word, teach His Word, build up the saints. We live ourselves as Christians in light, okay, doing what's pleasing to the Lord, and we leave the rest to Him. That's it, you see. And as I say, seeming inaction is threatening to people. It's threatening to them. Well, we really are not. we really are not guilty of inaction, are we? If we're faithfully preaching and teaching God's word, gathering together on the Lord's day, then we're being a witness then for the Lord and we're relying on him, we're praying and we're asking the Lord to send his spirit to do a work in sinners. So we're relying then upon him. And this is the very reason that Paul ran into this trouble in Corinth. because the Corinthians did not like his approach. And they deemed these things as a sign of him being a second-rate apostle. These critics came in and said, you know, his speech and his appearance, they're not impressive then at all. And so people are listening to that. And Paul himself then even says, I didn't come to you with some kind of eloquence of speech and so on. I was relying on the power of God in fear and trembling. I came to you in weakness, right? And I think if you want to talk about a hindrance to revival, it's when a church or individual Christians think that they're strong, think that they're able to save people. But then we're getting in the way of God's work. Well, Light and darkness, okay? Light and darkness. And it's not surprising that the Apostle Paul also, he's not the only one in scripture, but it's not surprising that Paul emphasizes these things because if you ever wanted to meet somebody that understood, once I was darkness, but now I'm light in the Lord. You talk to the Apostle Paul, You talk about the lights coming on, right? The road to Damascus. Here he is in darkness, his understanding. He couldn't understand. He was an expert, he thought, on the Old Testament scriptures, but he couldn't even begin to understand them. His mind then was darkened. So darkened was his understanding of God and of God's word that he was actually persecuting Christ and those who followed him. What changed? Did some Christian reason him into the kingdom? Did, you know, oh, yeah, I didn't see that before. What happened? No. The light came on on that Rona's blinding, heavenly, blazing light came on, struck him blind and showed him his blindness, and Saul of Tarsus became the Apostle Paul then, you see. So, well, you know, Paul, let's look at this, move on a little bit here. Verse 11, take no part, we'll just kind of introduce this, we're about out of time, but take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. It's shameful even to speak of the things they do in secret. Okay, this word unfruitful is one that, how come that didn't come on? I must have it on white here, just a second. Unfruitful works. Here's something else that is true about the sinner, about the person in darkness. The things that they do, the things that they think, the things that the sinner values, is not only worthless in itself, it's worse than worthless, it's unfruitful. It doesn't produce fruit, which is a good thing. It produces, you say, bad fruit, the unfruitful works of darkness. And we want to think about that some more then next time. Paul reminds us then, you know, Christian, you need to think back. What was going to be the outcome? What was going to be the ultimate fruit of the life that you were living before you were saved? Right? Anything positive? No. It leads to hell then. It's Broadway. So we'll talk next time about this matter of the unfruitful works of darkness. And we also want to think about how man, in his sin, This business of it being shameful to even speak of the things that they do in secret. And how the darkness gathers together. Have you ever thought about cities? Cities. That's a big topic, you know, in the Bible, right? We have the city of God, which is an image of the kingdom of God. But what about the cities of man? What is a city? What happens when lots and lots and lots of people walking in darkness get together, take up residence together in a city? What do we see it being true in the cities of our own nation and down through history? And we'll want to talk about that as well in conjunction with the unfruitful works of darkness. Father, we thank you for your Word. Thank you for turning on the lights. Thank you that you came to us when we were lost in darkness. We were your enemies and we chose to be. But you came and you presented Christ to us in power, and you made us new creations, changed our heart, changed our minds, so that we are now light in the Lord, and we give you thanks for it. We pray, Father, that we pray for all the people around us that are lost in darkness, our neighbors, maybe some friends, Maybe people in our own church that think they're saved, but they're not. But we acknowledge that there's only one way that they're ever going to be saved. And that is that if you turn on the lights in their mind, cause them to be born again, so that as they hear your word, they can understand it and be saved. And we pray this all in Christ's name. Amen.