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Walk in Light; Not Darkness

July 21, 2024 Speaker: Pastor James Wychers Series: All Things United in Christ

Topic: Walk in the Light Passage: Ephesians 5:8–14

Walk in Light; Not Darkness _ web

SERMON INTRO:

“I want to start this morning with a couple of quotes from C.S. Lewis. He says this, ‘I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else.’ And then he went on to say, ‘We cannot see light, though by light, we see things.’ And the point he's making is that we actually don't see light, but we can see everything else because of light, and light is shining.

So, looking at the world through the light of Christ more clearly and that's what we try to do when we open the Bible. That's what we try to do when we gather together like this to be able to see more clearly what is true and what is right. Shine light and to chase away the darkness within our own hearts and the darkness in our society as well. So that's what we're going to do this morning. We've been looking at how the transforming power of the gospel changes the way we live.

And remember we transitioned in Ephesians chapter four, walk in a worthy manner, in a worthy manner of which you've been called. So we're called to be imitators of God, we're called to love others, and we define love as giving ourselves for the good of others, and the ultimate example of that is Christ, Jesus coming and dying and giving his life for others, and this is how we define love, understand and experience the love of Christ, we can recognize that which is the opposite.

Last week we called them anti-loves, and we looked at two anti-loves last week, and what we essentially did is we shined light on those things, and we began to see truth there, and those two things were sexual immorality and greed. And both are self-focused, both deprive and damage others, which if you deprive and damage others, then that is by very definition anti-love. That's the opposite of love.

The text continues today with a call to walk in a worthy manner in the light of Christ. We'll see our primary claim this morning that Christians have become light, so they live in the light of the goodness, righteousness, and truth of God. There will be a call this morning to all those who live in the darkness of sin, in the darkness of worldly falsehoods, to wake up and come into the light of Jesus. The call for all of us is to be honest about the reality of our lives, to be honest about what is hidden within.

And our passage is going to get to that this morning. Well, it'll be a call for Christians to honestly assess our own hearts, to seek to expose the dark places in our own hearts to the truth of the light of Jesus Christ, to experience growth and healing in that. See, this passage really cuts to the heart of the matter. It cuts to the core of what's going on inside of us.

Hebrews chapter four verse 12 talks about the word of God being like a two-edged sword. And it cuts deeply and it says that it pierces to the division of soul and spirit, discerning the thoughts and the intentions of the heart. And that's what the word of God does and that's what it will do this morning if we receive it that way.

If we allow it to do spiritual surgery on us, and we really need the light of the Holy Spirit for this to work. We continue to pray that God would open our hearts and shine the light.”

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