All right, okay, here we are. You probably just saw my mouth moving and no sound, so now we're on, we're set. Ephesians chapter five, darkness and light. So let's pray and we'll see what the Apostle Paul has to say here. Father, we thank you for your word now. We pray that you would teach us, that your spirit would empower your word. that we would be given understanding, to know you more, and to now better appreciate and be thankful for what you've done for us in Christ, taking us out of that absolute darkness where Satan held our minds so that we couldn't see the glory of Christ, You shone into our hearts and minds, you brought the gospel to us, and you saved us, and we give you thanks, and so we pray that you would teach us and help us understand more about these things, and we pray this in Christ's name, amen. All right then, here we are. down about verse eight, all right? I'll just go back to verse one here and read so that we have a kind of a refresher here. Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure or who is covetous, that is, an idolater, and you might say a person who loves this world, all right, has no inheritance in the kingdom of God, of Christ, and God. What's Verla saying? Oh, I need to enlarge the text here. Stand by. We're forgetting everything this morning. And... Okay. There we go. Where was I? For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure or who is covetous, that is an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words. I'm going to come back to these two verses here. For because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore, do not become partakers with them, for at one time you were darkness. Remember we talked about those verbs. You were darkness. But now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. Be who you are, right? For the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true. and try to discern what's pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it's shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. All right, so we'll stop right there and come back up to, I just wanted to make another comment on verses five and six. Now, Paul says that we have to take care and not listen to or believe anyone, you know, let no one deceive you with empty words, all right? What would those empty words be in this case? Well, here's the truth in verse five. You may be sure of this, okay? See, Paul is emphasizing here, he's giving us a warning. He's telling us things that we can know with certainty here. And we need to realize that they are certain truths, absolute truths. You may be sure of this, of what? Everyone who is sexually immoral or impure or who is covetous, that is an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. What does Paul mean? He means that a person whose life is characterized by a love for this world or sexual immorality, impurity and so forth. A person who walks in darkness, they still live in darkness, right, is not a Christian. He says it, let no one deceive you. This means what? It means that we are going to be confronted with a false Christianity, a false religion that says it doesn't matter how you live. Just as long as you believe in Jesus, everything's okay and you're on your way to heaven. But you can You know, hey, nobody's perfect. Oh, yeah. Yeah, those people over there, that guy and that gal, they're shacked up together. But, you know, they're coming to church and That's good that they are, and none of us are perfect, and so let's not judge one another. That kind of thing. And Paul says, let no one deceive you. These are empty words. They're empty of what? They're empty of truth. There's no truth in them. You can be sure of this. a person who is characterized by darkness, whose life and thinking and so on is just like the world's, right? And that's what Paul means. He's not just singling out sexual sins and so on, or coveting. He's saying a person who says that they're a Christian, that they are in the kingdom of God, they have an inheritance in the kingdom of God, but who walks in the darkness, who looks just like all the other worldlings around and so forth. don't be deceived because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon them. They are sons of disobedience. They are, what does that mean? You know, in the Bible, there's this sons of children of wrath or sons of, in this case, disobedience. What does it mean? It means, it's a figure of speech that means they are born of disobedience. That is to say, their nature by birth is one of disobedience to God, all right? And a person then who claims to be a Christian and yet their life evidences the fact that they are born, their DNA, spiritual DNA, is one of disobedience to God. Well, guess what? They're under condemnation. The wrath of God comes upon them, right? They're on Broadway. They're headed for hell. Now, you catch, as a Christian, knowing these truths and standing for the truth of God's word here, you catch all kinds of flack, right? Well, now wait a minute. You're being judgmental here. I don't like this judgmental attitude. Well, all right. Is it not true, is it not evident from what Paul says here, that we are to judge, that we are to judge people, right? Judge ourselves, but also to judge people, and that we can judge them. In what sense? We can discern. Think of it this way. Can you tell if someone is sexually immoral? Can you discern if someone is characterized by covetousness and love for this world? Can you discern those things? Can you see those things in a person? Obviously you can. Obviously you can. And Paul says, you can come to a conclusion about such people. That person has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. In fact, he's telling us here, you must make these judgments because If you don't, you're gonna be deceived. Let no one deceive you with these empty words. Here's the truth of the matter. Because of these things, The wrath of God comes upon them. They are children of disobedience to God. They're born and they're still dead in their sins and rebels then against God. So you see those things are absolutely, absolutely certain. That old mantra, you know, Oh, you're so judgmental. Oh, we are not to judge anyone, is the mark of a fool. A person that's saying that, and if they look at their own lives, in saying that, what are they doing? They're making a judgment, aren't they? They're judging you. Oh, you are judgmental. You are unkind. You are not loving. Well, It's not a mark of love to be deceived, to believe lies, and let people march down Broadway to eternal destruction. So there you are. Those are important verses. You can be sure of this. Absolutely sure. Well, who are you to say, I'm not a Christian? Well, I can say that. You claim to be a Christian, but you walk in sin. Your life is carrying, your spiritual DNA is that of disobedience to God. I can make that judgment. In fact, I must make that judgment so that I'm not deceived about God's truth and about what a Christian is, what salvation is. All right, verse seven. Therefore, do not become partners with them. Don't participate in those sins. Don't participate in that kind of thinking. Don't be deceived. I wouldn't be surprised, let me check this verse here. Pull up this here in Greek. Therefore do not be deceived. No, it's not the word I was thinking of there. All right, well, disregard that for a second. Don't become partners with them. Don't be buddies with them, all right? You're gonna find out, if you're a Christian, what happened to our, here we go. If you're a Christian, you are light, Unsaved people or in this case what we're talking about specifically is false Christians are darkness There's gonna be a parting of the ways You can't light and darkness cannot Co-exist. All right. You are a lot light in the Lord walk as children of light and and so That's how it's going to be you know In our day, local churches, even ones that claim to be Bible-believing evangelical churches and so forth, have a lot of darkness in them, and even kind of boast about it. And they do so to the degree that they're giving people in darkness, the idea that they are saved, okay? So it's not unusual. It is not unusual to, oh, well, we saw an example of this, and we were watching the inauguration Monday, and there was a wife of a billionaire, or a fiancee, I guess, of a billionaire guy there that was attending And she was dressed extremely inappropriately, all right? Extremely, and is characterized by that. As we looked up her bio and so forth, but it said on there, that she attends a mega evangelical church down in the south somewhere, and she hosts a Bible study at her house every week. Ha! I think it's the same gal, yeah. She hosts a Bible study at her house every week. Well, that church is communicating to her that she is saved. But Paul says, no, no, absolutely not. And all right, well, you get the picture there then. If it was a different gal, Verlil, you can think about it. But it's the same, even if I have a different gal in mind, The same principle holds true because it was two peas in a pod here type thing. Anyway, people that are lost in the darkness of sin, that are still in the kingdom of darkness, need to have the light of Christ shown upon them through the truth of his word. And that's what we're gonna see as we proceed here. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them, all right? As you see, we are to preach and teach God's word and live God's word. as light. We're not supposed to put our light under a basket and hide it. We're supposed to be who we are. And as we do, the unfruitful works of darkness will be exposed. Now, in that case, a person who is deluded, they claim to be a Christian, but they're walking in darkness. One of two things is going to happen as the light exposes their deeds and exposes what they really are. Either they're going to get mad and and lash back out at you for being too judgmental, all right? And leave, or they will come under conviction of sin and repent, right? It's one of the two. The worst thing that can happen is that as Christians we hide our light. We don't want to say things that might offend that person. We don't want to appear to be self-righteous or something, so we just need to tone down our Christian life and living for Christ and so on. The idea is, the pressure that's put upon us today is, if we're going to reach the loss, we have to be relevant. So we need to show them that we have things in common with them. We need to relate, we need to design all of the so-called programs in our churches so that there's something that those people can relate to and, oh, I see, yeah, hey, you're an okay guy, you're not like these other Christians, so-called Christians I've known, why you're, I can be at ease around you. Well, that's hiding your light, you see, because darkness cannot be at ease around the light. That's what Paul is saying here. All right. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true. So, If we are Christians, if we've really been born again, we are light in the Lord. We are light in the Lord. We have his life in us. He is the life and light of men, and you can see it. You can see it. People can see that light. They can see Christ, who is the light of the world, in us, in our thinking, in our values, in everything that we are. He radically changes us. We're a new creation in Christ. And as a result, Fruit is born, all right? Fruit is born. Christ blossoms in our life, and that's what Paul is talking about here. Verse 9, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true. You're not going to see the fruit of light be sexual immorality, covetousness, and so on. That's not the fruit of light, the fruit of the light. No. Paul talks about the fruit, the deeds of the flesh versus the fruit of the spirit over in Galatians chapter 5, right? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness. These kinds of things are the fruit of the light. So, this is another fact. It's true. It's always true. For the fruit of light is found in what? All that is good and right and true. According to God's Word. As defined by God's Word. goodness, righteousness, and truth. It is evidenced if we're born again, right? The fruit of the light is evidenced in us trying to discern what's pleasing to the Lord. That's what we want. We want to learn more and more and more about what is pleasing to the Lord and live then in that manner, in that way, live and think in that manner. Also, here's something else that's characteristic of the light. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them, okay? Now, think about verse 11 here. How do I know if I'm saved? These matters relate to assurance, right? How do I know I'm saved? Well, I'm going to see in my life a desire that is put into practice to not participate in the unfruitful works of darkness. All of a sudden, When a person is saved, sometimes it can be in a moment, right? Or maybe the Lord working and drawing us to himself over time. But at some point, you're gonna realize, guess what? You know, I used to be at home among darkness and people in the darkness. You know, that was my realm. I participated in those things. But now, but now, I'm not at ease there anymore. That's not what I desire. I desire to learn more and more what is pleasing to the Lord. I desire to please Him. I don't want to participate anymore in the unfruitful works of darkness. You see, you see what all this comes down to? It comes down to what Jesus said to Nicodemus, you must be born again, right? If you're ever going to see the kingdom of God, you're going to be saved, right? You've got to be born again. And Paul talks about this as well, being a new creation. a new creature. Everything is new now. Old things have passed away. And it's not just found in the New Testament. You go back to when Jesus told Nicodemus, you must be born again, he had Ezekiel 36 in mind, and sometime you can go back and read that, that the Old Testament speaks of the new birth. So, a Christian is a person who is a new creation, who has been born again. And the Spirit of God in us always bears fruit. And that fruit is not the unfruitful works of darkness. No. No, it's not. It's the fruit of the light, which is goodness, righteousness, and truth as defined by the Word of God. Now our desire is to, we desire to please the Lord. I want to find out more and more from his word what pleases him. And I don't want to take part in the unfruitful works of darkness. These things are always going to be true. They're like non-negotiables. And if these things are not what characterizes a person, then they're not a Christian. You know, nowadays there's all kinds of people floating around who want to, who claim that they're Christians, all right? And they've got all of their ideas. Well, guess what? Their ideas don't come from the word of God. They're absolutely ignorant of the word of God. They invented God in their own image, and they decide, well, this is what a Christian is. I'm a Christian, and so forth. The Bible says, No way, no way. A Christian is a person who's been born again, a new creation, a person in whom the Holy Spirit dwells, and all of those things will evidence themselves in fruit, right? The fruit of the Spirit. So, verse 11 then, take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness. Now let's think about that. To know the Lord, to be born again, to be a Christian and therefore indwelt by the Spirit of God who's working in us to sanctify us, is fruitful. It's profitable. It's good and it's right. There's life now in us, right? We're in the kingdom of God. We're going to be with the Lord. There's no condemnation upon us. But in the darkness, in the darkness there's no fruit. Now there's evil fruit, but what Paul means here in verse 11, take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness. What he means is, The sinner, by his thoughts and his affections, that is, the things that he loves and desires, and his works, are not profitable. They don't result in anything to his or her profit. Right? They're not, there's rotten fruit. Well, a bad tree that produces bad fruit is not a tree that's profitable. or a box full of rotten apples is not profitable. You can't go and benefit from one of those rotten apples and eat it. It's just good for throwing it out and that's all. There's nothing of value found in it. And that's what Paul is saying here about the life of the man who is outside of Christ. His life is characterized by works of darkness, sin in all kinds of form, but it's all unfruitful. The sinner thinks, in so many cases he thinks that His life is very profitable. He looks around and he's got, maybe you take somebody that's wealthy or something. How's things going for you? Oh, it's going great. Remember the rich fool? Parable of the rich fool, right? You know, oh, I've got all kinds of goods laid up for many days and years to come. I'm just gonna sit back and enjoy. You fool, this very night, your soul is required of you. And what's all this wealth? How's that gonna benefit you now? Who's gonna have it now? It's not gonna be you. Turns out, His whole life was for nothing, right? And worse and worse than nothing. That's what Paul means here. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness. Look at people's lives. the life of the sinner that we see today. People are pursuing, be it sexual immorality or what Paul calls covetousness, which is idolatry, and by that largely he means acting and thinking as if the things of the world are your God, loving the world and so on. And so what Paul is challenging us to think about here is that people who give ultimate value to those things and think, oh man, look at my life, look at all the profits that I'm making and so forth, They come up empty in the end. It's unfruitful, these works of darkness. Notice in verse 11, instead expose them. That doesn't mean, and we'll get into verse 12 here a bit later, it's shameful even to speak of things that they do in secret. And you think, well, if it's shameful to speak of their sins and wickedness, How do I expose them then? What, I mean, doesn't Paul mean here in verse 11, but instead expose them? I mean, doesn't that mean that I'm supposed to be going around and getting in everybody's face and so on and pointing out their sins to them? Now, sometimes that's appropriate, all right, to rebuke someone. But when Paul says this, take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them, he's doing it in, what's the context here? The context is light and darkness. Light and darkness. Light, by its very nature, in fact, without oftentimes even speaking a word, Light exposes what's hidden in the darkness, okay? Have you noticed that so much sin is characteristically committed in darkness, in secret, behind the scenes, because these things are shameful, you know? Economic sins and crime, you're going to do it behind the scenes. Shady stuff, offshore accounts, all of this kind of insider trading. Sin likes the darkness. Because even the sinner has a conscience as being created in the image of God. And even though that conscience is greatly dimmed by sin, the darkness, nevertheless, it's there. So the sinner, ultimately the sinner is ridden with shame, right? And so they do their deeds in darkness. Most of the time, that is the case, okay? Well, in comes the light. Instead, expose them. How? How does light expose sin? How does it expose the works of darkness? It doesn't even have to say a word. It exposes them by what it is. Light. We are a light in the Lord. You've probably seen, if you're a Christian, you've probably seen this in action. You know, sinners, maybe unsaved people in your family or people that once were your friends. It's like all of a sudden you realize they don't like you. They don't really want to be around you or they kind of hold you in contempt, and it might be kind of, you know, dummied down a bit there, but it's there. It's there, there's this undercurrent. Well, why is that? Because as a Christian, just being a Christian, you are light in the Lord, Your mind is no longer darkened. The light of Christ has shone upon you. You now understand God. You know Christ. Your thinking about the world and everything has changed now, okay? And being who you are as a Christian exposes the darkness and the things, specifically the things that are in the darkness, right? The unfruitful works, the sins that are in the darkness expose them. So you're like this beacon of light that comes on in the darkness and it exposes the sinner's false ideas about God, it exposes their lack of knowledge of God, exposes their hatred of God, and hostility then toward the Lord. All of those things are exposed. And the darkness does not want to be exposed. John 3 here, Let's go back there and come here. John 3, probably down about verse 19 or so, right? And this is the judgment. The light, who is Christ, has come into the world. And people love the darkness rather than the light. Why? Because their works were evil. for everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his work should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God." So, you know, there it is. How do you expose the unfruitful works of darkness? How do you expose that? Be who you are. Discerning what is pleasing to the Lord. Walking in obedience to the Lord. Loving God's Word. Thinking, thinking like God thinks. valuing things that are truly profitable, valuing things that God values, right? Being on the same page as the Lord. Well, when you do that, being who you are, when you are who you are in Christ, you are going to be light. And people who are of the darkness do not like the light. It hurts their eyes, but more so it exposes who and what they are. And so that's what's going on. So when Paul is telling us these things here, take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. Again, he's telling us that in the context of being light and shining as the light of Christ in the darkness, right? So you can see this, again, even in just verse 11, how do we expose the unfruitful works of darkness. Well, the first thing is, take no part in them. Don't participate in those unfruitful works of darkness. Have you ever noticed how sinners, unsaved people, people of the world, right, in the darkness, they take offense when a Christian refuses to participate with them in their works of darkness. What are some things that we can, well, let's say they're, let's say, hey, we're gonna have a party over here at so-and-so's house. Why don't you grab some booze and come on over and, you know, they're not talking about somebody getting together for dinner and maybe some wine is served or something. No, they're partying on. Then you talk about drunkenness and so forth. And you know, all you have to do to be light is say, no thanks. Ah, no thanks. And they don't like it. Why? Because just by saying that little thing, no thank you, I'm not really into that stuff. You are exposing, they're exposing. See, they know what they're about to do is not pleasing to the Lord. They know that they're going, they're choosing to go sin, right? And so what remnant of conscience they might have is still, but you, and so you are exposing what they're doing as evil and they don't like it, all right? So you don't have to even speak about the things they do in secret, verse 12. All you have to do is look at verse 13. When anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible. For anything that becomes visible is light. So you see the whole thing here. The most important thing that a Christian can do is to be who they are. Be a Christian. Walk as children of light. You've been born again. You've been born of God. You've been, that is, born of the light. Therefore, your new nature is light. Be who you are. And you don't even have to go around. Yeah, sometimes, yes, we do speak up and say, you know, and we rebuke somebody. What you're doing is sin. It's not pleasing to the Lord, and it's unfruitful for you, right? It's unfruitful for you. Somewhere here, Paul has said, you know, when you were in bondage to sin, Christian, what benefit was that of you? What positive fruit did all of that life provide to you? Well, of course, the answer is none. worse than none. But sometimes we do. We speak up and say, you know, that's wrong, that's sin, and we need to speak up. But Paul here is primarily talking about who we used to be and who we are. Look at verse 8 again. For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. Be who you are. What is the light like? Well, it's goodness and righteousness and truth as defined by God, by His Word. So this is the whole context of this section. If you take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, okay, if you refuse to be deceived with empty words that, oh, you know, none of us are perfect, yeah, I'm a Christian, oh yeah, I notice that you're shacked up with a woman here, all right, I notice that you are sinning and immorality, you know, it's pretty evident that your life is characterized by greed. You want to get rich and you love, you know, you're treating this present world as an idol, as a god. I can be sure of this. You are not a Christian. You're not saved. You have no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ. These things are certain, all right? Darkness and light, black and white. So don't be deceived with empty words here. Because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. So don't become partakers then with them, okay? Someone who says they're a Christian But they are participating in these deeds of darkness, and that's still where they are. Well, they're not saved. They don't know the Lord. You know, that seems to be the unpardonable sin in the churches today, doesn't it? What I mean is, oh, an unpardonable sin. You can't say that somebody's not a Christian. Well, There's lots of responses to that. You know, if that's really true, that we cannot and should not ever say that someone is not a Christian, then we cannot say that we are a Christian. If there's no certainty about who is not a Christian, then there's no certainty to be had in regard to who is a Christian. It's like the unpardonable sin amongst churches today and amongst so many professing Christians today is to dare to say that, you know, that person is darkness. They have no inheritance in the kingdom of God. Well, how can you say such a thing? None of us are perfect and we're not to judge one another and blah blah blah and you know how this stuff goes. Let no one deceive you with empty words. Those are empty, foolish, stupid words. They have no substance. Here's the truth. The wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. A person whose life, you know, our lives demonstrate our spiritual DNA. That is to say, our lives, how we think, the things that we love and value, the things that we hate, our actions, everything that we are, is fruit of who we are, right? That's what it is. It's evidence of who we are. And if darkness is what characterizes my life, then I'm not safe, all right? So, well, we'll stop right there for now, but next time, I want us to look at a little bit more on Verse 11, exposing them. We said quite a bit there already. You see this, don't be conformed to the world. Don't participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness. Don't think like that's not who you are. Don't let the world press you into its lies. Be who you are. Love the Lord. See what is pleasing to Him. Study and give yourself to knowing His Word and thereby knowing him. And just by being who you are then, work and working out your sanctification, you will shine as light and you will expose the works of the darkness. And just mark it down, the darkness is not going to like it, right? It doesn't like Well, we'll plan to pick up there about verse 11 and 12 next time. So let's pray. Father, we thank you for this great salvation that we have in Christ. Thank you that you've delivered us out of that darkness that enveloped our mind. We were ignorant of you. We were ignorant about ourselves and our true lost condition. And in that darkness, our affections were warped so that we hated what is good and we loved what is evil. And our will, our desire was in bondage to that darkness. We couldn't even, we didn't even choose things that are good and right and true, but we chose sin, just the opposite. And we were in. tremendous, just a mess in a pit in that darkness. And you grabbed hold of us, you shone your light upon us, and you said, awake sleeper, rise from the dead. And you raised us up and seated us with Christ and we give you thanks for that. For all of that, we pray that you would help us to understand more and more what you've done for us, who you are, and what awaits us when Christ comes again. And we pray these things in Christ's name. Amen.