Walking in Light, Together

Well, good morning. Well, good morning, guys. Want to say thank you to everybody for being here. Thank you so much for prioritizing Sunday morning and yeah, just being with us. Men, I cannot reiterate strongly enough the value of getting together in small groups and not just talking about our lives, but also learning about the Lord together. That’s what Al, Johnny, myself want to give all the men of our church an opportunity to be part of. You know, guys, we are not exactly known for enjoying sitting around a pow-wow and sharing about our emotions and our feelings. And we won’t ask you to do that every single time that we get together as guys. But what I do know is every man in this room wants to be a better man, right? I don’t think any of the men in the room just kind of want to stay where we are in life. And growth doesn’t happen for us unless we get in get into each other’s lives and we start sharing some time together. So yeah, August 8th, please make a plan to be there. I know all of the married men in the room, your wives are writing down that date right now. And for some reason, you’re going to be available that night. So we want to make sure that when you are set free, you are coming here. Okay?

And ladies, as you may have seen in the video, we have things going on for y’all as well. At the same time that the guys groups are going to be kicking off after that event coming up in August, the women’s ministry will also be kicking back up in the fall. And a couple of our women are involved in planning a citywide conference for the women of Charleston where a Bible teacher Caroline Saunders is going to come in. That’ll be in October. More information coming to you.

So as we are in coming to this part of our service this morning though we spend time every Sunday morning praying as a church. This morning we’re going to start praying for vacation Bible school which will be coming up at the end of this month. So this morning we’re praying specifically for the kids and the volunteers just to be good soil for the word that kids and volunteers both would receive God’s word that week and be changed by it. So, what I want to invite you to do is just grab a neighbor. Could be a child, could be a spouse, could be somebody you just met. Just grab a neighbor. And if you feel so confident or so bold, pray out loud asking that God will bless vacation Bible school coming up in those ways. And I’ll put a bow on it here in a moment. Thank you guys.

Heavenly Father, God, you love kids. Lord, something that’s abundantly clear in your word, heavenly father, is that kids are precious to you. Lord, there is no child so young that they can’t become your disciple. Lord, there is no home situation that you can’t reach. There is no mistake or bad decision that a kid could ever make to get you out of your love for them. So God, I just I’m praying that you would already be tilling the soil of the kids that are going to come to vacation Bible school. God, from the littlest of the children all the way to the oldest, I pray that you would please already be preparing them right now. That you would give them an excitement to come and learn more about you. And God, I pray for the volunteers. God, I’m I’m asking that you would please get a hold of them as well. Lord, that no volunteer would think that they are too old to still get something out of VBS for them. God, the the adults and the students that are going to help make VBS happen, God, they’re not just accessories to the ministry, they are part of the ministry and they God, I’m begging that they would be ministered to as well. Lord, from the class guides that are going to escort the kids to and fro to the various teachers and to the folks that are going to be preparing and serving snacks. I pray that BBS is something that would supercharge the spiritual life of Sauldam Baptist Church. Lord, all across that age spectrum, please, Father, I pray you’d do the same thing in us right now that you would open our hearts, you would till the soil of our hearts, that we would be just really good receivers of the word. And Lord, that like James exhorts us, we would not Just be hearers of the word, but we would become doers of it as well. God, for the person in the room that doesn’t know You yet, I’m begging You would open them up to You. Please, Holy Spirit, get a hold of them. Lord, where there are stony hearts, I pray that You would. You would just chisel off the stone. You would, You would crack those open, Lord. For the cold hearts, I pray that You would just warm them up. Father, for the cynical, I pray that they would, they would shelf some of their doubts and their frustrations for a moment. For the bruised and the hurt, Lord, I pray that You would help them to see You as a good, loving Father. And Lord, for those in here that do love You, I pray this morning they would grow to look just a little bit more like Jesus as we all behold Him together. God, we love You. Thank You for giving us Your word and giving us these few moments. It’s into Your hands that we entrust ourselves. Holy Spirit, please speak. Amen. Amen.

Well, if you have your copy of the Bible this morning, I want to invite you to go ahead and open it up or turn it on and get to the book of Ephesians. I’ll meet you in Ephesians chapter 5 here in a moment as we continue our study through this incredible and this pivotal letter that Paul wrote to this church or this group of churches that was on the southwest corner of what we would modern day call Turkey.

As you get there, as I was preparing for the message this morning, I was reminded of some of the experiences that Becca and I had when we were overseas. I would not say that I have been gifted with a spiritual sixth sense, if you will. I found myself in mosques. I found myself in like these witch doctor huts pretty regularly. I tried sharing the gospel one time with a police officer and that was actually very much against the law of the country we were in. And I just never had a sense for these things. I could never tell when I was in a place that you might call spiritually dark. Now, my wife, on the other hand, very much so blessed with this. It was just kind of always blinking on her radar. Now, that didn’t mean that Becca wasn’t willing to go to some places. She just kind of knew her, I don’t know, the hair on the back of her neck might just kind of pop up a little bit or something just might click for her. I was totally oblivious to it, if you could believe that or not.

As Paul is writing to this group of Christians in Ephesus, he is writing to a similar dynamic. He is writing to a group of Christians that inhabited what we would call a very dark place. Let me kind of set the scene for you or remind you of what Ephesus was like. This would have been the fourth most populated city in the Roman Empire at the time. A major port town, very ethnically diverse. And with all that ethnic diversity and with the rich history, that also meant an incredible amount of religious and spiritual weight kind of sat on the city. Archaeologists have found that there were at least 50 gods and goddesses worshiped throughout the city of Ephesus. At least 50 different temples and shrines, places dedicated to the worship of what we would rightly call, as we’ll study later in Ephesians, demons. 50 different gods and goddesses being worshiped, not least of which is one of the ancient seven wonders of the world, the temple of Artemis or Diana. That would have been at the city center. This monolithic structure where animals and agriculture and sometimes even children would have been sacrificed to the worship of this god every day.

In addition to 50 gods and goddesses, the Roman Empire also spread its influence through deifying the Caesar. That would have been called imperial cult worship. So in addition to all the gods and goddesses, you would have also had these mega structures built purely for the, like the literal worship of the king. So people not just would have been taking their offerings and their sacrifices to a temple and doing what we would call a pagan witchcraft or something like that. They were also worshiping these people literally. Hail Caesar. That’s, that was one of the things they were saying. And not just that, but before all those other outside influences, before the Roman Empire got there, the city of Ephesus, that surrounding area, already had this incredible, you might call it a rich tradition of animism, which is just kind of spiritualistic. Everything can be God. God can be anywhere. So, it’s not just like specific deities, but it’s kind of just deifying everything. So, as you are a Christian in the city of Ephesus, walking around doing business, enjoying food at your favorite restaurant or seeing other believers, you would have been going in and out of dark places all the time. That would have been very normal. You would have got very accustomed to reading the room, reading the signs, feeling a sense that the demonic or the spiritual is around you.

As Paul is ministering to these Ephesian Christians, as he’s writing this letter, he is telling them, “Hey, that is not you anymore. God has rescued you out of that darkness. He has delivered you from the domain of darkness and transferred you into the kingdom of His beloved Son.” So, as you come out of darkness and step into light, there’s some new ways you got to live. You got to leave behind some of that old dark stuff. If the Apostle Paul was alive today, he would write a similar letter to us. I fully believe that we have the exact same calling. We’ve got to leave the darkness behind and step into the light.

We may not deal with the buffet of deities that the Ephesian Christians were dealing with. We might think that we are more sophisticated and more enlightened. We are better than that. But if I can invite you to sus- to suspend some of that confidence for a moment, let me talk about some of the idols that I think you brush up against every single day.

I’m thinking control, the great God of control. You know, you bow down to this because you have deep anxiety over all the details of your life. You are obsessive in planning your contingency plans to get from A to B, which is only from 8:00 to 9:00. You feel this need to hardwire your life for your own safety. That’s the God of control. Now, you may not bring a- a physical offering to a little shrine, but what you do do is that you make your calendar your life. That’s the God of control.

Or maybe the God or the idol of power. Man, you have got to be seen as powerful. You’ve got to be seen as a high achiever. Your life is all about you getting the last word of every conversation you are a part of. And if it’s not your way, man, it’s the highway. I’m the boss here. I’m the ruler here. Power is maybe your idol.

It might be approval. Man, the God of approval seems so kind because the God of approval just says, “Hey, if you can make people like you, they will- you can have some sort of happiness in your life. If you can just kind of mitigate any sort of chaos, any sort of conflict, then everything is okay.” So, you worship the god or the idol of approval by lying to people or stretching the truth or manipulating the details of whatever social group you are a part of. Not necessarily so that you could be the center of it, but so that you can always be accepted into it. You know that your idol of approval is being challenged because when you have to do things that risk your approval ratings, you don’t do them. Your image is everything.

Maybe for you it’s the idol of comfort. Man, you find yourself dissatisfied with things in your life and you just kind of numb yourself to the cold sort of pain or dissatisfaction. For my generation, that looks like numbing ourselves through scrolling social media or having experiences with our friends. For me personally, that can look like numbing the boredom of my life through eating, and I find myself at the pantry or in front of the fridge because I’m just kind of- I just need some sort of stimulation. I need something to make me feel a little more comfortable.

Now, it may not be Artemis. It may not be Diana. It may not be the emperor, but we all worship something. We all brush up against idols. We all inhabit dark spaces. And what Paul is going to tell us this morning is to get out of the dark. Read it with me. This is Ephesians chapter 5, verses 6-14. Paul is talking. He says, “Let no one deceive you with empty arguments, for God’s wrath is coming on the disobedient because of these things. Therefore, don’t become their partners. For you were once darkness, but Now you are light in the Lord. So walk as children of light, for the the fruit of light consists of all goodness, righteousness, and truth, testing what’s pleasing to the Lord. Don’t participate in the fruitless works of darkness, but instead expose them. It’s shameful even to mention what’s done by them in secret. Everything exposed by the light is made visible. For what makes everything visible is light. Therefore, it is said, “Get up, sleeper. Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”

Paul looking at the church in Ephesus, speaking to them, God, the Holy Spirit, using that to speak to us this morning, would give you this charge. Walk as children of the light. It doesn’t get any more basic than that. Walk as children of the light. Your calling as a Christian is not to live in any sort of darkness. It’s not to participate in the works of darkness. It’s instead to walk as children of the light. And to fulfill that calling as children of light, Paul will give us two charges to embrace and to expose. Specifically, if you’re taking notes, this is also on that sheet. We are called to embrace our identity as children of light. And as an expression of our identity, we are called to expose others’ darkness. And I would say expose your own darkness as well. Embrace our identity. Expose the darkness.

Now, here’s the deal. Last time I checked, neither of those is very culturally accepted. Neither of these will grant you any sort of approval. They go they both go against our comfort. They both require us to lay down some sort of control and neither are actually the path of power because we’re submitting to a power over us. This identity that God calls us to embrace goes against darkness. It goes against idols. But also, last time I checked, Jesus sets the term for our faith, not us. Amen. So, we will submit to Him in this.

So, let’s dive in to what it means to embrace your identity, man. Praise God. You can have a new identity in Jesus Christ. Is anybody else this morning grateful for the fact that in Christ you can have a new name, a new identity? I know I am. Because let’s consider who we were before we met Jesus. This is how Paul describes it in Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1-3. You were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world. That’s encouraging. According to the ruler of the power of the air. That’s confusing. The spirit that’s now working in the disobedient, that’s all of us. We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires for control, for approval, for power, for comfort. We were all carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and our thoughts. We were by nature children under wrath as the others were also.

Who we are before we meet Jesus at best can be described as impulse-following, Satan-dominated people of darkness. That’s the most cheerful way you could describe it. And man, don’t get me wrong. There are lots of people that God has given the the ability to do incredible things outside of a relationship with Him. There are Nobel Peace Prize winning folks that do not know the name of Jesus Christ. But the testimony of Scripture, the testimony of the Bible is that no matter how good you can be in your actions outside of Jesus, your identity is not so good. That’s who we are before we meet Jesus. That is our identity. And praise the name of Jesus Christ. That does not have to be your identity.

Now God, His identity is totally different. Of all the things God says about Himself, this is extremely important for this morning. 1 John chapter 1 verse 5 says this. This is the message we have heard from Him and we declare to you, God is light and there is absolutely no darkness in Him. So while we are children of darkness, God is a God of light. So it would make a lot of sense that the first words God ever utters in the Bible are these. God said, “Let there be light.” And then there was light. While our identity is as sons and daughters of the dark, God’s identity is the God of light. So much so that He cannot help but further His identity into the universe by creating what is like Him. That’s supposed to be you and me. But along with Adam and Eve, every person stepped out of that identity of light into an identity of darkness. When we with Adam and Eve chose to sin and rebel against God, we left the light. We stepped into the dark. And every person ever since that pivotal day has been born into that situation. But that does not have to be your identity. For every person who professes their faith in Jesus Christ by God’s grace, their identity does not have to be a child of dark. No, they can be elected by God before time to enjoy sonship or daughtership in God’s family. They are adopted into God’s family with no regrets on God’s part, fully embraced by Him, totally redeemed of all their mistakes and all their sins because the blood of Jesus Christ was poured out for them, eternally sealed by the Holy Spirit and held into this family, never having to waver in their conviction that the God of the universe loves them and cherishes them and holds them. And because of that, every person that God claims as their own, who gives themselves to the Lord, who steps out of darkness into light, will be totally embraced by God forever as His inheritance.

That can be your identity, man. To be in Christ is to be transformed from a person of darkness and sin into a new creation of light and goodness. Praise the God of light for rescuing us from the domain of darkness and transferring us into the kingdom of the Son. Praise Him for that. If you are here this morning and Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior, Ephesians 2:1-3 is no longer your identity. Ephesians 1:4-13 is. But here’s my question. If you just be really honest with the Lord and just sitting there in the pew, are you still living in darkness today? Which describes you? That list of blessings for God’s children in Ephesians chapter 1, the election, adoption, redemption, those things, or that pretty bleak picture in Ephesians chapter 2, the son or daughter of dark, the one that’s dominated by their fleshly desires, the one that is still one day going to suffer the punishment of sin? Do you worship the God of the Bible, albeit imperfectly, or are you bowing down to the idols of power and control, approval, and comfort? Where are you? God would love to transfer you out of darkness into light. That process requires being honest before the Lord and being honest with yourself.

Man, I’m curious. Are you still under the incredible burden of your sexual sin? Like, do you feel dominated by your sexual urges or the things you have done? Do you feel a deep and a pervasive shame over your mistakes and your failures? The things that you have done when you were five or 50? Is there some hidden habit or hurt or hangup that you know that is just resting on you like a monkey on your back and won’t get off and doesn’t provide any sort of relief? What is the darkness for you? I can’t know you like that. But here’s the deal. The God of the universe sees. He sees. He sees you right where you’re at. And He would love to liberate you from darkness and to shine the light into your life. There is a way out of the darkness. And that path runs through Jesus who called Himself the way, the truth, and the life.

Man, it feels a little redundant, but I’ve been listening to a lot of VBS music in the car this past week, and I’ve been reminded of the sweet truths of the ABCs of the gospel. That you would admit that you are a sinner before the Lord, and that you would repent of that sin. You would turn your back on it. Then B, that you would believe that Jesus is the Son of God who was sent on your behalf. And then C, you would confess Him in faith as your Lord and Savior. Man, it can be just that prayer said in faith, but it is so much more than that. And please, if you are in the pew and you are just anxiously wondering, “God, am I saved?” and you just kind of repeat those ABCs, please don’t think that that prayer saves you. No prayer saves you. What saves you is Jesus Christ and the faith in Him. But man, that prayer is a great roadmap to get you from darkness to light.

If you are wondering this morning what this Jesus stuff is about, if you are considering this morning that while maybe you’ve heard a lot about God, you don’t actually know God, I would encourage you to follow the ABCs. You would admit you need God. You would Believe that God came and died for you, and that you would confess your faith in Him as your Savior and your Lord. To be God’s child means that you are a son or a daughter of light. And embracing that identity means you got to leave behind some old ways. Or I’d say it like this: if you’ve accepted the life-changing good news of the gospel, if you have professed your faith in Him and given your life to Jesus, then our old ways ought to fade away as you embrace the new identity that God has for you.

Paul says it this way: you’re not allowed to participate in the darkness anymore. Now, that doesn’t mean that we need to avoid people who don’t have faith in Jesus Christ. That would be the wrong way to do this. Jesus, in fact, wants you to be around non-Christians like all the time. In fact, in fact, look at the life of Jesus. Jesus spent so much of His time with the irreligious, the folks outside of church, that all the religious people accused Him of being a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. And if Jesus spent that much time around people who did not look like Him, man, we got to spend a lot of our time around people that don’t look like Jesus, too.

As we spend time with others, we embrace our identity of light. We embrace what’s distinctive about Jesus and about the gospel and about Christianity. We don’t lay it down to make our lives palatable. We don’t stop doing those things so that we don’t offend. It’s in fact as you step into the life of Jesus, the Bible describes Him, yes, as a stumbling block, yes, as foolishness—at least the gospel. And sometimes people are repulsed by it. But what I know is that Jesus spent time with people who did not look like Him, and they liked Him, and it actually drew them into the kingdom. As you embrace Christianity around people who don’t profess Christianity, there will be some that are enticed by it.

Tony Merida is a Bible scholar and a commentator, and he kind of sums this up. He says, “Paul calls Christians to be salt in society, to love and befriend those outside of faith. However, our mission does not involve participating in the sins of unbelievers. No, we must flee from and not share in the world’s greed, sexual immorality, and corrupt speech.”

As you walk through the darkness of your everyday life, man, don’t embrace the darkness. Instead, let your light shine. We do that because God’s wrath is real and it is coming. Look again at the passage: “Let no one deceive you with empty arguments, for God’s wrath is coming on the disobedient because of these things.” Here’s the deal: God’s wrath will be poured out on every person’s disobedience to light. The question is, has God’s wrath already been poured out on Jesus for you, or is it being reserved for you later because you have not accepted Jesus? On the cross, Jesus absorbed the fullness of God’s wrath for all of our sins—at least for all of the folks that are going to profess faith in Him. God’s wrath will be poured out one way or another, either on Jesus 2,000 years ago for you, or for all eternity on you because you did not embrace Jesus.

That’s why we’ve got to spend time with folks that don’t love Jesus. We’ve got to spend time with folks that don’t look like Jesus, because just like we used to be children who deserved God’s punishment but now have been embraced in God’s love, they deserve God’s punishment, and we surely want to see them embraced in God’s love too, right?

So embrace your identity. To be a child of light means that you embrace your identity. But man, this is the weirder one. This is the trickier one. It also means that we would expose the dark. When I originally wrote this, I said expose others’ darkness. And as I’ve been meditating on this, I’m also thinking, hey, I got my own stuff I need to expose and I need exposed. We expose the dark.

Paul says that followers of Jesus are not supposed to become partners with darkness, but he tells us to expose and not participate. I want to just kind of dig into those words for a second. That word “expose” means to sternly admonish or reprove, man. Not just kind of tsk-tsk when people do things that you know is wrong. Not huff and puff, not just walk out of the room, but there’s got to be a verbal kind of response. You would sternly admonish. You would reprove. You got to expose. And as you expose, certainly do not participate. That word means to be connected with. It’s b—it’s based off this word coinia, which is one of the terms that Paul uses in the New Testament to describe church. We coinania with one another. We participate with one another because we have participated with Christ. We are one with Christ, which means we’re one with one another. And Paul says if you are one with Christ, you better not be one with darkness. You can only have one. You can’t mix light and darkness. You can’t participate with something that God has already said He hates. Do not participate in the darkness, but instead expose it.

Literally, this is where the rubber meets the road. And man, every sermon that I preach like this is—I think this is different because the passage calls for something here. Literally, when people gossip about others, the Bible says you ought to verbally respond and say, “Stop gossiping.” When people brag about their sexual exploits or talk sexually about people that they are not married with, you are supposed to say, “That’s not right.” When you hear somebody slander another person’s reputation, you’re supposed to verbally respond and say, “Stop talking about people that aren’t present.” When you see somebody greedily fight for more and more, you’re supposed to say, “Hey, more money and more stuff isn’t going to satisfy you.” When you see people indulge in impurity, you’re supposed to say, “Hey, stop messing with that.” There is a verbal component to our faith where the rubber meets the road. Paul is saying if you have embraced an identity of light, then you can’t help but to expose some of the darkness around you.

Man, the last time I checked, when you light a candle in a dark room, the candle doesn’t pick and choose what corners of the room it lights up. But a candle just kind of sends out its light irregardless of what’s around it. If we are candles in a dark world, then man, we don’t get to pick and choose the darkness that we shine against. And it’s also not our job to light anything up. Our job is simply to be a candle. It’s simply to be your identity. And as you embrace your identity in Jesus Christ, you would naturally start to expose some of the dark around you.

This is not fun. This is not popular. It is what we have been called to. I’m curious, what’s the darkness that God is calling you to expose? I heard about this guy recently. He was hanging out with some some guys he had just met. They’re not really friends. They’re barely on a first-name basis. And this buddy of mine is just kind of talking with them about life. And one of them starts griping about his wife in front of my buddy. My buddy’s like, “Huh, this doesn’t quite seem right.” The conversation turned from griping about the wife to talking sexually about some other women he had encountered recently. And my buddy said, “Okay, that’s the line.” And he speaks up against it. He says, “Hey, I don’t know. I don’t really know you. Here’s the deal. You’re already married, so you don’t get to talk about those ladies that way. You’ve already got a wife, and you’re not treating her very well. So, how about you get that squared away and you stop looking at other ladies?” Talk about making the room awkward. My buddy did not like doing that. It was not not very fun for him. He kind of finished up his business and he left. Later on, the guy that he had exposed comes to him and says, “Hey, no one’s ever spoken to me like that. Thank you. When I said it, I knew it was wrong and you helped me.”

Man, that’s supposed to be our presence as we brush up against the darkness. I’m not saying you got to be mean or a jerk. Elsewhere, Paul would say, “Make sure any truth you give is also seasoned with some grace.” We never come at it from a holier-than-thou attitude. But what we should do is point people out of darkness. If we’ve been rescued from the dark, how could we not want to help rescue others out of the dark? And this needs to even happen in the local church.

According to scholars, verse 14 was part of a baptismal hymn. When new believers were being raised from the water, the church would sing, “Get up, sleeper. Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” Can you Imagine the experience of being a first-generation believer because your parents worship the emperor or they worship one of those 50 gods? You have given your life to Jesus. It’s understandably produced some sort of persecution in your life. You’re wondering how in the world do I walk out this Christianity thing? How do I love the Jesus that I’ve just now encountered? And you have this group of people all around you and you know they’ve got your back and they call to you as they’re celebrating and they say, “Get up, sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you as you go through all of your darkness. Christ will shine on you as you make your way through a world filled with sin. Christ will shine on you as you are trying to unpack what in the world it means to walk with Jesus. Don’t worry. That same Jesus that has saved you will continue to shine on you. So all you got to do is let your light shine. That’s all you got to do. Just embrace your identity in Jesus Christ.

For everybody here in this room right now, I want to say regardless of what’s in your past, your future can be filled with the light of God because of what Jesus has done for us. You can have a new future, a new identity. So, let the light of Christ shine on you, man. What do you have to lose? If you’re here this morning and you’re not so sure about the Jesus thing and you’re looking at your watch and you’re like, Jeremy, it’s high noon, man. Agave is about to fill up, buddy. I get that. And we’re about to wrap up. If you’re here this morning and Jesus is just somebody you’ve heard about, you may have even got baptized, you attend the women’s conference, you come to men’s group, all this stuff, but your life is just still so crammed, full of darkness. My job is to tell you there’s a better way. There is light for a look at the Savior and in whose presence everything grows strangely dim.

That hymn made no sense to me as a child. I was baptized as an eight- or a nine-year-old because one day I realized I was deathly afraid of hell. I was deathly afraid of being separated from my family for eternity. And my idol that I struggle with certainly is approval. I just wanted my family and my church community to like me. So I was baptized one day. Somehow I made it through the like the little confirmation class that my church had and you know I get in the water and I did the ceremony which was fun. I love being the center of attention if you can guess that. But nothing about my life changed. All those same fears still lived on. All my same attitudes and habits persisted till I was about 15.

And a buddy of mine who could drive at that time, man, he loved the Lord. He and Jesus, they walked together. They had a relationship. And my buddy one time drives me home from youth group on a Wednesday night, turns his car off, and just kind of squares up with me the way a good friend can. Says, “Jeremy, man, I love you. You call yourself a Christian, but dude, you’re just living for experiences with girls. You’re just trying to find some sort of meaning through sports. You’re just living for people’s approval. Man, you profess faith in Jesus, but the speech of your life, the profession of your life doesn’t match with that. You can’t have it both ways.” And he proceeds to share the gospel with me and he offers me a way out of darkness.

If that’s you this morning, there’s a way out. You don’t have to live in the darkness. No matter what you’ve done, no matter what you were planning to do this week, no matter the things that have gone through your mind or have come out of your mouth, no matter what your hands have led you to do or your feet have taken you, there is a future for you in Jesus if you would let Christ shine on you.

I invite everybody to bow their heads as I kind of close our sermon. You just be honest with the Lord. You just ask God, “God, am I in the light or am I in the dark?” For those that believe they may be in the dark, would you just pray, “God, can you get me out, please?” And for those that are in the light, would you pray, “God, help me to get somebody else out.” Holy Spirit, You inspired those words to Paul to write to a church in Ephesus that we’re getting to read and learn from right now, thousands of years later. I pray for anybody in this room that sense that they are still living in darkness, that You would free them, that they would turn their eyes upon Jesus and see the mercy and the grace that are in Him as they lay down their old lives. And for those of us, God, who live now in the light, I pray You would use us to free somebody from the domain of darkness through our testimony in our lives, that they would be wooed into the light. Please, God, make our church a place of light, a place of pure love for You. We do love You, Lord. It’s in Your name we pray. Amen.