Ephesians 5:7-10 “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.”
Pastor Herk of the Little Church in the Pines at Bass Lake in California, continued in his Sunday sermon series through the Pauline Epistle to the Ephesian church in Ephesus. In this country established on a biblical worldview and the light of the Gospel, there isn’t any God-fearing American that can say that we are living in a wonderful secular-humanistic culture of naturalism; an atheistic world of peace and light. It’s is a dreary world, saturated in the immoral lifestyles of fallen humanity and their fleshly desires, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen (Romans 1:25). The devil has a strong foothold on the God-rejecting world-system.
The Apostle Paul is giving the Christian church a similar message of the state of the culture and the need for Christ-followers to change; take off the old, put it aside, put on the new and walk with Christ. The light that the true Christian emits is in contrast to our godless world of darkness in wicked sin and rebellious unbelief. To have a context for issue We need to look back at Genesis 1:1-4, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.” Light is a form of kinetic energy, not matter. Matter is made up of atoms. Light is electromagnetic radiation showing the properties of both waves and particles made of particles called photons. Visible light is a wavelength of electromagnetic radiation between 3,800 and 7,600 angstrom units to which the retina of the eye is sensitive and a part of the electromagnetic spectrum the brain interprets.
The Apostle Paul uses the same imagery of darkness in terms of spiritual separation between the sons of God and the sons of disobedience. Darkness is defined as the total and absolute absence of light. It is infernal gloom; hell; as utter darkness. Obscurity of truth in God and His Word; want of clearness or perspicuity; the characteristic of being either difficult to see or hard to understand. It is essential that we have a proper understanding that darkness is the total absence of God’s light.
Matthew 5:14-16 “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”
Pastor Herk describes three principles in Ephesians 5:7-10 that help us to lights to the world. (1) We respect, but we do not resemble; Therefore do not be partakers with them. Jesus prayed to Father God in John 17:15-18, “I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.” Sanctify is defined as: to cleanse from corruption; to purify from sin; to make holy, the Lord be detaching the affections from the world and its defilements, and exalting them to a supreme love to God; to prepare them for divine service, and for partaking of holy things. To separate, set apart or appoint them to a holy, sacred or religious use, ordain and appoint to the work of redemption and the government of Christ’s church.
Among the sanctified children of God, there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place for the kingdom of Heaven. The born-again Believer are not to be partners with those who engage in these fallen sinful lifestyles. They are not to accept or affirm the dark inequities, depravities, debaucheries and trespasses against their just and holy Creator God, but are supposed to set ourselves apart as light in the darkness.
Let's continue Pastor Herk's message in the next post.
In Christ, Brian
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