Ephesians 5:8-14 (p. 1822)
Int.: Are you afraid of the dark?
To be in darkness is not pleasant, since you have no way of knowing what is happening around you.
Already in infancy many children are afraid of the dark. As they get older, children only grow more afraid of the dark as their minds begin to imagine many more terrors that the darkness could be hiding. Most people get over their fear of the dark as they grow up, but some don’t. And of course, darkness is the venue for horror movies that try to scare people silly with what could be out there.
“Being in the dark” is a metaphor for not knowing and understanding what is going on around you. Many people feel that way when trying to use modern technology like computers and the Internet, or even their VCR or DVD player. You feel that you are “in the dark” when watching people play a complicated game for which you do not know the rules, so you can not understand why people are doing things.
And of course you feel like you are “in the dark” if you are a fan of the TV show “Lost,” because nobody knows what is really going on in that show.
All of our Scripture readings today deal with “being in the dark” spiritually.
Both Isaiah and Jesus talk about the spiritually blind, people who are incapable of seeing reality because of the prejudices and the false beliefs that make up their worldview. The man who Jesus healed of physical blindness in our Gospel reading could see that Jesus was the promised Messiah-Savior sent from God, but the Pharisees whose worldview was formed by their traditions were incapable of seeing that fact. They were so blinded by their prejudices that they could not even rationally consider the meaning of Jesus’ many miracles.
In our text this morning, St. Paul also speaks about darkness. Paul talks about three kinds of darkness here: the darkness of unbelief, the darkness of sin and the absolute darkness of death.
When God created the universe, there was only darkness everywhere. Then God gave the command, “Let there be light!” and light burst forth from the darkness and overcame it. It was that light that enabled the existence of life on this planet. As we come out of the dark days of a Michigan winter and head for the light of summertime once again, the increase in light during the day cheers up our moods even when the weather is cold outside. Once again we look forward to the world around us bursting forth with life as the days grow longer and the increased light brings back warmth to our state. By this time of the year most of us are eagerly waiting for the coming of summer, when we can once again …
BASK IN THE LIGHT OF LIFE.
You Were Once Darkness And Death.
This is far worse than living in darkness, for Paul says that the Ephesians actually were darkness.
In our text, Paul was speaking to the Ephesian Christians about their life before hearing about Jesus and becoming Christians. In the verses of chapter 5 before our text begins, Paul mentions some specifics of the darkness that defined them. Their hearts and lives were filled with sexual immorality, filth and greed. Their speech was full of obscenities, foolish talk and filthy jokes. In short, they thought, talked and lived like most Americans do today. That is a life of darkness that Paul terms “idolatry.” This is darkness that pollutes and ruins everything it touches, for it is a poison of the soul that kills all whom it engulfs.
The Ephesians had been engulfed by the darkness emanating from others around them until they became an integrate part of their society and culture. Then the darkness and death came from them also and spread to people around them. That very same darkness and death are being spread today throughout our society and culture by people who are spiritually dead and blind to all truth, and who are constantly bragging about how enlightened and uninhibited they are. But the stench of death hangs about them, and they don’t have a clue. Paul tells us in our text, “It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.”
Paul also warns in our text, “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness.”
Nothing grows in the dark but fungus. The little additional light of the sun that has brought us some global warming in the past couple of decades has melted back some of the glaciers that have covered mountains in Switzerland for as long as anyone can remember. Fear mongers around the world have been carrying on about the devastation this warming will cause, but as the ice caps receded on their mountains, the Swiss were astonished at what was revealed beneath the ice. Some of the mountain heights were terraced for farming underneath the glaciers, other mountains had forests buried beneath the snow and ice, and at least one mountain has long-forgotten mines beneath its snowcapped heights.
But in the ages that snow and ice capped those mountains, nothing grew where farms and forests once thrived, for the light that gives life could not penetrate there. This real world discovery in Switzerland dramatically highlights the truth of what Paul warns us about in our text – that the deeds of darkness are fruitless. They bring nothing but death. As once-Christian Europe embraced atheism and socialism and plunged into sexual sin and coveting the possessions of others, those nations have seen their populations drop almost as fast as rocks thrown from the leaning tower in Pisa. The nations of Europe are dying, literally, killed by the fruitless deeds of the darkness of unbelief and sin that have gripped the hearts and lives of their people. It is truly unfortunate that many in America are enthralled by the spiritual death of Europe and they are most eager to emulate that here.
But Paul’s words in our text stand as a sentinel warning that all who turn their backs on God and on his word to live for the flesh and its desires will find nothing but death at the end of their road. “The wages of sin is death,” Paul warns in Romans 6:23. It always has been, and it always will be. But out of the culture of death that permeates unbelief, St. Paul tells us, …
The Light Of God’s Truth Brought You To Life.
“Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you,” Paul says in our text.
Like Jesus calling into the tomb of his dead friend, “Lazarus, come out!” (John 11:43) Paul calls to the spiritually dead to rise to life and to let the light of Christ’s love shine into their hearts. That light of love from Jesus Christ comes from “the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.” (Romans 4:17) Lazarus came back to life and came out of his tomb in response to the command of Jesus, and the life-giving word of God about our Savior Jesus Christ has given life to our dead souls as well.
As St. Paul told the Roman Christians, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23) What amazing love is revealed in those few words! When we had earned death and hell with our sins against God and richly deserved that eternal reward, God intervened in our fate and gave to us his gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord, a gift that is purely the result of God’s love for the unlovable. St. Paul tells us that “Christ’s love compels us” to serve God in love in return for God’s love to us. But what would compel God to love us who had only hatred, contempt and rebellion for him?
It is no wonder that St. John marvels so greatly at this love from God when he says, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10) Yes, that truly is a miracle beyond the ability of human hearts and minds to imagine. We can not understand why God loved us, but we can understand and embrace Christ’s sacrifice for our sins.
That sacrifice for sins is the very heart of the truth that brought us to life.
In this season of Lent we follow our Savior on his way to the cross each and every year. We see him as the miracle working Son of God, the great Teacher sent from the Father who had crowds by the thousands following him everywhere and hanging on his every word. Jesus became so popular that he simply could not set foot in any city because of the throngs of people with him. He had to live out in the countryside, and could scarcely find time to eat and to drink during the day. Mobs of thousands even followed him out into wilderness areas when he was trying to escape them to get a little rest. All those people were convinced that Jesus was the promised Messiah from God who had come to save his people. And they were right!
But Jesus could not save his people by leading them to victory over their enemies in a great war, as most of them expected him to do. The enemies that Jesus came into our world to conquer were sin, death and Satan. Those enemies could not be conquered with armies and swords; they would only give way to the cross that carried the Son of God into death. Jesus defeated all of Satan’s attempts to get him to sin while he lived in this world, and with that life of perfection Christ won righteousness for us. But Jesus also needed to break Satan’s power over us, and that power was sin. All of the guilt and the punishment for our sins were laid upon the Son of God when Jesus took our place on the road to the cross. There the Savior of our race paid our debt to God and collected the wages of our sins – death and the torments of the damned.
With his death in our place, Jesus freed us from sin’s curse of death and opened to us to gateway to life everlasting. In the gospel message of forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus Christ, God calls on us to come out of the grave of sin and the tomb of unbelief. He calls us to life from the dead and his Holy Spirit fills our souls with life through faith in Christ Jesus. Thus St. Paul condenses the beginning verses of Isaiah 60 when he says, “Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” That reflects the words that Jesus told the crowds who followed him: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12) With Christ as the light of our world who has given to us the light of life, Paul urges us in our text to …
Live As Children Of Light.
We should produce for God the fruits of faith instead of the fruitless deeds of the darkness of sin and unbelief.
Paul tells us, “The fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth.” The goodness that is the fruit of the light is Godliness. It is goodness as God himself defines what is good and right in his word, we would call it moral excellence. Along the same line of thought, the righteousness that Paul asks us to produce is right as defined by God’s holy word. It is wholehearted service to God and a dedication to so thoroughly learning God’s word that his word lives in us and we are guided by God’s Holy Spirit in all that we do. This is what Paul was speaking about when he wrote to the Christians of Colosse, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.” (Colossians 3:16)
Finally the fruit of the light consists of truth. Truth is an accurate description of reality, and pure truth can only come from God, who knows and understands all things. On the night before he died, Jesus prayed to God for his followers, asking, “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.” (John 17:17) We can only be made righteous and holy by believing the truth of God’s word, and we can only be good and righteous in our lives by following the truth of God’s word.
My friends, the wisdom of man and the truths of man are so perverted by ignorance, sin and unbelief toward all the things of God that St. Paul says of them, “Let God be true, and every man a liar.” (Romans 3:4) The darkness that fills human hearts and minds can only result in a flood of darkness and death coming from people’s mouths and hands. Just look around the world today, and that is exactly what we see. Death and destruction, hopelessness and despair are the rule, not the exception. That should surprise no one, for without God, life is pointless and without meaning. But you know God and have experienced God’s love in Christ Jesus, and should now live as children of God’s light.
Paul says in our text, “Everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for it is light that makes everything visible.”
When we were darkness because of the unbelief in our hearts and minds, we could not find the way of life, of truth and righteousness. But with Christ as the light of life for us, the way to God and to life become clear. Jesus told us, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) Salvation and life can be ours through faith in Jesus alone, for there is no other way to God. That simple truth of the gospel is the most profound truth ever uttered in the entire history of this world, and it is a truth that is totally indiscernible except in God’s word, the Bible.
Jesus is the light that makes visible for us the path of life. Because you and I follow that light, Jesus tells us, “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14-16) Christ has made us beacons of salvation to light the way to life for others by sharing with them the gospel message that Jesus is the Savior of the world.
That is why St. Paul says in our text, “You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.” Let the light of God’s love shine in your hearts, the light of God’s truth beam from your lips, and the light of God’s goodness overflow into your lives so that you are a constant blessing to everyone around you every day that you walk upon this earth. As those who have been called by God’s Holy Spirit from darkness into the light of life, …
Con.: BASK IN THE LIGHT OF LIFE from God.
You Were Once Darkness And Death because of unbelief and sin.
The Light Of God’s Truth Brought You To Life by the work of God’s Holy Spirit in you.
Live As Children Of Light, and so glorify your Father in heaven as you lead others to Jesus Christ for forgiveness and salvation. Amen.