Becoming: Children of Light
Ephesians 5:1-21
Grandma's hands clapped in church on Sunday morning.
Grandma's hands played a tambourine so well.
Grandma's hands used to issue out a warning:
She'd say, "Greg, now don't you run so fast
Might fall on a piece of glass
Might be snakes there in that grass,"
Grandma's hands.
Grandma's hands used to hand me piece of candy
Grandma's hands picked me up each time I fell
Grandma's hands, boy they really came in handy
She'd say, "Nina, don't you whip that boy,
What you want to spank him for? He
Didn't drop no apple core,"
But I don't have Grandma anymore.
When I get to heaven I'll look for
Grandma's hands. Words and Music by Bill Withers
I thought of that song written by Bill Withers, a man who grew up down the hill from me in West Virginia. He wrote it to commemorate the impact his strong and loving grandmother had on his entire family. The same was true of mine. We have lots of strong and loving women in my family line. One was my maternal grandmother, Mary Catherine Sharp
; 5 ft tall, less than 100 pounds, native American from the Shawnee tribe, and mother of 11. My own Mom, Nina June Sharp,
was much like her Mom, the 11th of 11 children, 5 feet tall, under one hundred pounds and a Mom who “spoke the truth in love”.
When my brother and I got into a fight or didn’t tell the truth, my Mom would say to us what her mother had said to her, i.e., “I don’t know what kind of family you think this one is going to be. But, I’ll tell you what kind it WILL be, i.e., one that does not fight and steal and lie. So,” she said, “that kind of family is going to start right now!” She had a remarkable gift of meting out appropriate justice to turn us from our ways.
You see, what they did, they did out of love for us and for our family. I always knew that. But, they loved us too much to let us establish a way of life of dishonesty or selfishness. If you’ve ever experienced anything like that, I believe you will grow to appreciate today’s Bible passage as much as I do – and you will come to benefit from it; even its hard-hitting parts. In Eph 5:1-21, God speaks to us as his “dearly loved children” (5:2), and then he basically says, “I don’t know what kind of family you think this is going to be, but I’m going to tell you right now what it WILL be, a family of people who live as children of the light (5:8).
#1: Walking in the Dark (5:3-7) – Among you, there should not be a hint of sexual immorality, impurity or greed…
Do not miss the point that the Bible is not speaking about how bad people are who are not yet alive to God. He’s speaking to people like you and me who claim to be alive to God but live as if we are not. Notice the words, “among you” in v. 3a and “for God’s holy people” in v. 3b.
And, in the rest of the passage, Paul speaks of four of the ways that he saw people in Ephesus living when they didnt know God. He summarized their lives in four ways: 1) sexual immorality, 2) greed, 3) obscene and foolish talk, and 4) drunkenness (cf, 5:18). He wrote in v. 3 that there should not “be a hint” of those things in the church family. By that, Paul meant that, though those things were what the people of Ephesus were known for. But, he insisted, those things should not be what Christians are known for.
In picking out these four particular behaviors, Paul was speaking directly to what we might call the culture in the city of Ephesus. Remember that Paul had spent about 3 ½ years there so he knew that culture well. At the heart of what was important to that city was their worship of the goddess Artemis, also called Diana, at the Temple of Artemis. This religion had worldwide adherents, but its main temple was in Ephesus. 
The Ephesians prided themselves in being Artemis worshippers.
The culture and way of life of the people in Ephesus was dominated by the way of life taught in the Temple. This came out dramatically in an episode reported in Acts 19. In that report, people in Ephesus were coming to faith in Jesus. As they did, their changed lives undermined some of the temple-related practices and businesses in the city. That led to a riot in which people shouted for over two hours, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” My point is that, in Ephesus, the entire culture was permeated by what happened at the Temple.
The four areas of life that Paul spoke against in our passage today were all directly related to the way of life connected to the Temple of Artemis. Diana was the goddess of fertility so, for those who worshipped there, they believed the highest spiritual and religious experience possible for a human being was an ecstatic sexual encounter. They sought to heighten that experience through heavy drinking so that the God Dionisius, or Bacchus, also became central to their worship. Also, in the temple shows, the stories and language were known to be bawdy and coarse, very sexual in nature. An evening at the Temple ended in wild activity in the dark that Paul described “as shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in the dark (5:12).”
In Ephesus, people felt that this was the way people were to live “the good life”, life to the full. However, as you surely can imagine, it led to brawling, addictions, and broken marriages and families. In Ephesians 5-6, the Apostle Paul called us to see that Jesus came to make possible a different and better way of life, one Paul called a “life worthy of Christ” in 4:1, a “life of love” in 5:1 and a “life as children of light” in 5:8.
For them, going to Ephesus would have been like many of us going to Vegas. There are a lot of great things there – great food, wine and shows. But, all of that, can led to darkness. I can imagine a slogan like this: “What happens in Ephesus stays in Ephesus.”
Notice that what the people in Ephesus were doing were not in and of themselves bad. In fact, all were rooted in a good part of God’s creation: like sexual pleasure, good humor, good food and wine, and financial resources. But, when we think that those are the main things that give us our reason for living, we will eventually find that they do not – indeed, they cannot -- fill up our human hearts and lives. No, they will end up being empty. What we find Paul calling out in these verses is that there is a better way to live than what people were living for there.
I wonder what Paul might say to us here in Southern California. What values and ways of life characterize our own society? Coarse entertainment? Put-down humor? Elevating any kind of sexual pleasure? I believe that this ancient letter speaks directly to us in our world, don’t you?
I see these verses asking us what we want to be known for. They call us:
- To find sexual enjoyment and faithfulness within a marriage covenant – Those who work in student life on university campuses consistently say that one part of our culture is that cohabitation, i.e., living together without making a lifelong marriage commitment to one another, is simply accepted as a way of life in our culture. People say it’s cheaper, provides opportunity to test out compatibility, etc. etc. I find it interesting that Paul wrote about sexual immorality in v. 3 directly after writing about “living a life of love” in v.2. He was speaking about Jesus-like love in that verse. It’s covenantal love like Paul will underscore in Eph 5:22-33. By doing so, he is underscoring the biblical message that, in a world in which people experience great pleasure in sexual activity, God has given us this gift in such a way that the lasting joy of sexual activity happens within a covenant in which two people commit their lives to one another “until death do us part.” I think God says, “Be known for that!”
- To finding freedom from greed -- and discovering the joy of using financial resources not just to accumulate more and more but to bless others and further God’s work in the world.
- To using the gift of speech to build up -- rather than to mock, gossip or tear down.
- To experiencing liberation from addictions -- like those often caused by alcohol or drugs, so that God may always be the one in control of our lives. As one of our LAC ministries declares, it is wonderful to “celebrate recovery”, i.e., to find freedom from bondages through the power of Christ.
I think Paul’s words to the Ephesian society speak into our world rather directly. And they bring us to v. 8.
#2: Our Calling to Be Light (5:8-14) -- You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.
You may remember that I made Eph 5:8 the key verse for our current series in Ephesians. Our series is entitled “Becoming” and this verse calls us to become what God declares we are, i.e., light. It’s family language, isn’t it? “Children of light” – in sharp contrast in which so much in the Temple of Artemis that happened in the dark. One part of this is that God really wants us to be people of integrity – people who don’t have to hide things and do them in the dark. Maybe a slogan of ours should be: What happens at LAC should be seen and heard outside the walls of LAC! The world should be able to look into our practices, into our homes, and into our church dealings see the same thing on the inside that we speak of through our words.
I find it striking that God calls us not simply to live in the light but to be light. He specifically says that this happens when we “live lives of goodness, justice, and truth (5:9).” When we live like that, it exposes what is wrong in our dark world (cf, 5:11). You need to listen carefully here: Notice that exposing darkness doesn’t happen by us constantly criticizing the lives of people in the world who don’t know Christ. Darkness is exposed when we live lives of goodness, justice and truth. People should be able to watch us live in our workplaces, our schools and our families, and see a better way to live than living lives of immorality and greed.
I think that a part of what was happening in the church in Ephesus, was that people were coming to faith in Jesus but still engaging in much of the lifestyle of the Temple of Artemis. Think about it: They had been enculturated by that way of life. It must have seemed so right to them. All their friends were living that kind of life. One question you might have when your read this passage is why some Christians still were drawn to doing what Paul described as things “shameful even to mention” in v. 12.
My guess is that the way of life in Ephesus Paul described in 5:3-7 was so much a part of their culture that they were blind to how misguided and wrong it was. It’s a lot like the old proverbial question, “Does a fish see air but not water like we see water but not air.” A fish is so enculturated by being in water, it doesn’t even know it’s wet. It doesn’t know anything else.
Let me show you how easy it is to be blind to something that is wrong.
Can you see the mistake there? Let me help you. Read the first line and stop. Then, read the second…
I wonder what this has to say to us today. Like the Christians in Ephesus, we too may be blind to things in our culture but that are shameful. Paul’s words in 5:10 are so important: “Find out what pleases the Lord.”
Finding out what pleases the Lord is what the next part of our passage is about.
#3: Walking in the Light (5:15-21) -- Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity…
In vv. 15-21, the Bible speaks practically about how we go from where we are as still-imperfect children of God to living faithfully as children of light. How do we find out “what pleases the Lord” (5:10) so that we might shine as his children in this world? Paul says in v. 15 that, each day, we will have some decisions to make, decisions between what is wise and what is unwise. Paul did what all good Jewish rabbis did, i.e., showed us that all the decisions we make take us down one of two paths, one wise and the other unwise. The path that is wise is directed by God and leads to light and life. The unwise path leaves God out and leads to darkness and death. This picture illustrates it: h
Since Eph 4:1, the Bible has been asking each of us, “Will you walk worthy of your calling in Christ, which is the path of love and light? Or, will you walk the path of darkness and death?
In vv. 17-18, Paul gives us two essential parts of living not as unwise but as wise:
- Make a commitment to being a faithful student of God’s Word. You cannot “understand what pleases the Lord (5:10)” and “what the Lord’s will is (5:17)” unless you take time to hear what God has said in his Word. I encourage you to be faithful in reading the Word, to being in a small group that studies not a current popular book but the Word of God. Keep coming to worship too. Here, as God’s people, we hear together each week what our Father has to say to us.
- Allow the Spirit of God to direct you. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit (5:18). The people in Ephesus let their lives be controlled by heavy drinking. When, under the influence of alcohol, they lost all inhibitions, they engaged in all sorts of destructive things. The opposite of that is an ongoing surrender of our lives to the control by the Spirit of God. What Paul said literally in 5:18 was, “Be being filled with the Spirit.” I see his command as being a call to surrender each day of my life to the Lord.
You might ask, “What are the keys to being led daily by the Spirt? In vv. 19-21, Paul uses four phrases telling us how to be filled and directed by the Spirit. He said, “Be being filled with the Spirit.” How?
- Speaking – to one another with psalms hymns and songs of the Spirit (5:19a) – In the Temple of Artemis, after getting drunk, the people were known for wild, senseless and ecstatic singing as a part of their exuberance. Paul says that our singing can be something that makes sense – that actually instructs in the ways of the Lord and encourages our brothers and sisters in Christ to walk with the Lord. He said, “speak to one another” in your singing.
But I imagine that the Jews and the Gentiles in the church didn’t want to sing the same kind of music. The Jews would surely have preferred Psalms and thought, “Psalms are the songs of God’s Word. Let’s keep singing only them!” But, I imagine that the newer believers wanted to sing newer songs about Jesus – and the Psalms were written before Jesus. The newer believers may have said, “Leave those old archaic psalms out. Let’s sing songs about Jesus!” And, as has always been the case in the history of the church, when the Spirit of God moved the hearts of people, they sang songs about their experience with God.
“Which should we sing, Pastor Paul?” the people might have asked. And, he said, “All of them. Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs – sing all of them. Indeed, speak them to one another.” Let their messages go deep into your beings. When you sing all of them, you will teach about the foundations of your faith found in the Psalms. You will teach about the centrality of Jesus. You will teach that the Spirit of God is here and at work. Speak them to one another.
- Singing – and making music from your heart to the Lord (5:19b). Here, we see how beautiful the gift of music is. It not only instructs our minds, but it expresses our hearts. Few things draw my heart to God as well as singing from my heart to him. And, I love to do it with you, my church family.
- Always giving thanks – to God the father for everything (5:20) -- I’m quite sure Paul is not telling us to be grateful for all that happens in our world but… to take time to acknowledge that all things are under God’s control. He is greater than our troubles. His grace is greater than our sin. And, in church, we can look around and see others like us. Others who are struggling too. Others who have failed too. Others who have discovered that God loves them and will keep them and is ready to bless them. When we worship, we should remember these things together and give thanks.
- Submitting – to one another out of reverence for Christ (5:21) – When we thank God for everything, we remember what Jesus went through to bring us and others into his family of light. Jesus gave his life. We remember that Christ also gives us his Spirit, who dwells within each of us. When that happens, out of our heartfelt desire to please our crucified Lord, we should submit to one another and serve one another. But, that’s next week’s message.
This week, this is the kind of family that God wants his children of light to be. One that is directed by his Word and his Spirit. That kind of church will be different from anything in this world. It will be one on the path of wisdom that walks together worthy of Christ, walks in love as Jesus loved, and walks in the light of Christ.
To further that, we will now remember what our Lord Jesus did and how he loved our Lord Jesus as we go to communion together with our church family…