Christ will shine on you, Eph, 5:11-14

We're privileged here this morning to be able to look into God's Word. And what's especially neat is just to look at, we're not just reading something like all the other things we read throughout the day, throughout the week. One of the things that's noted in advertising is people see some small percentage of what they read. It just blows by, because an awful lot of it would be better if we just passed on it anyway. This is different.

OK, this is something that is not just something else to read, not something else to put on the shelf, but this is God's inspired word. And that's why we're privileged here this morning. Not only that, it is the instrument through which the Lord changes us from glory to glory as we behold him through his word. That's a marvelous thing. Let's do that here this morning.

I'm going to remind you, because it's been a couple weeks since we did this, and there's a few folks new with us here, a couple of things. One is, this is the page number in the lower corner of your handout, so you can track with us. There's no page number if you're visiting. Write fast, because it's not on your handout. Okay? Now, something else I want to remind you, though, the key to the passage, remember, as we're looking through this here, it's pivotal and key that you remember this. There is a night and day difference between an unbeliever and a believer, okay? It's not just shades of difference, but a night and day, black and white kind of difference. There is no spiritual cross between a believer and an unbeliever, okay? We have in our congregation three ladies that are in various stages of expecting, perhaps more than that, but they haven't confessed. But anyway, you don't get 50% there or something of that sort, okay? You're either a believer, and you are saved, and you are entirely in the position that the Lord has placed you, or you're an unbeliever. You are not saved.

You are headed in an entirely different direction. The unbeliever still remains entirely in this old creation. The believer has been made a new creature and is in the new creation. Huge difference. No mixture of darkness and light in who you are in Christ. And that figure of darkness and light is one that Paul has been continuing to use here. One that he brought forth some weeks ago as we were studying. The mind of the unbeliever is darkened. The mind is darkened. They may be, from a worldly standpoint, profoundly intelligent. And yet, spiritually, lacking any insight at all. To them, it's that the lights are off. spiritually speaking.

We're going to, for the sake of getting notes in there and looking at things, break this up into three parts, verse 11 and 1, verses 12 and 13, and then verse 14 in the third section. We're going to look before we do that, though, at some imperatives. You're going to have this, do not participate, is an imperative with a negative attached, okay? The other imperative that pops up there is expose. It isn't a suggestion, expose, but it is an imperative. Next, we have awake sleeper, which is part of this last part we'll look at. It's kind of, the form of it looks different, doesn't it? And we'll explain why in a bit. And then finally, arise.

Those are the four imperatives. The first one is a negative in this case, and the last three are positive imperatives. You must do this, okay? Now, we want to explain something, and we brought this up before, but we want to certainly make it clear, because it's, as we go along, ever important that we understand the character of these imperatives. And when I say imperatives, it's because the original Greek has that form where it's clearly an imperative. There is an imperative form, but it needs to be understood. Paul often wrote with imperatives, but he does not write with a moral imperative. He doesn't write as if it's a law, you must do this or you must not do this or you'll be subject to condemnation.

He writes in Romans 8.1, those who are in Christ, there is no condemnation. None. Zip. It's not 50% or you get, you know, here's a half-off ticket or anything like that. Okay? No get out of jail free. There's just no condemnation. None. So if you want some, you'll have to go somewhere else. Okay. Not under law.

When he gives an imperative, the point there is, it is the logical conclusion based on your position. He spent the first three chapters telling them who you are in Christ. Irreversibly, untouchably, uncorruptably in Christ. You have this position in Christ that is untouchable in the heavens. He started off with chapter one, verse three.

You've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. This may come as sad news to you, but you can't be blessed anymore in the heavenly places. You've got every spiritual blessing. And I say that facetiously. because it's not facetious, it's really good news. You have been blessed, done deal already with every spiritual blessing.

I can say, God bless you, and it won't increase your blessings in the heavenly places one bit. Okay? There's nothing you can do to increase your spiritual blessings. Can you imagine that? You can't increase them. There is nothing from here to the rest of the end of the day, there's nothing from here to the rest of your life you can do to increase those blessings. It's already a done deal if you have put your trust in Christ and are saved. Now, let's look at this first verse here. Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them.

This do not, obviously, is the negative, but this word participate, we want to take a look at that. The King James has fellowship and that's certainly another very good word, and we'll actually see shortly why it's a good word. It's a compound word, sun koinoneo, or actually the Greek kind of puts it together, sun koinoneo, it almost sounds like a G. Together fellowship, it is, he could have said just fellowship, but he put that word together in there, and we'll see shortly why he does that.

When we were studying Philippians a couple years back, can you imagine? It's been two years. When we were studying Philippians a couple years back, one of the things that we noted was that Philippians has this kind of bookends phenomenon. And one of the things that Paul did, as he wrote in the four chapters of the book of Philippians, he spoke of this koinonia, this partnership that they were having, because they had joined in supporting Paul in his ministry, even while he was in prison.

They said, that's ministry too. And he called them sharers using this word that we look at here, a very similar word, sun. He added it in there. At the end of the book, he brings up the same or similar words again. Partnership. He looks at their partnership in the ministry in chapter 4, verse 15, and in 4.13 uses the same word that we're seeing here. together sharers, together fellowshippers. So I think that's an important thing to take a look at as we look at this passage.

It is a word that he ordinarily uses for an intimate fellowship. It is a word that he ordinarily uses with those with whom he shares an eternal position in Christ. So when he uses it here, as a warning, as a you-must-not, he's talking serious. He's talking serious. He's not using it lightly at all. As they're reading this, the Ephesians are looking at those words and it just jumps out at the page at them. And they're going, whoa! It's hitting them hard. And that's how they're seeing it.

This word sunqunenia, it comes out similarly, and we get a similar message, 2 Corinthians 6.14. Do not be bound together with unbelievers for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship, koinonia, has light with darkness. And he uses the light and darkness as pictures there as well. It's a similar kind of message.

Now, the interesting thing is, as believers, they share things together. And this togetherness, he's been continuing to try to convey with them with that sun, prefix, S-U-N, looks like sun. And he's been telling them all along, that's what we have together as believers. And even telling them, you have been identified together with Christ. That eternal position that you have with Christ, that fellowship that we have with one another, that intimacy that we have He now connects up with a word for things so disgusting.

He says, we don't even talk about it. We don't talk about the details. It's that awful. So he says, don't have that intimate fellowship. Don't have that intimate connection. That word that was used very similarly with our identification with Christ. Don't have that kind of a connection with these deeds of darkness. Now, did you notice what Paul didn't say?

Because he made a key point here. He made the deeds of the unbelievers the issue. Did you see that? The deeds is the issue. He didn't say, you can't associate with these people anymore. But the deeds were the issue. Don't get intimately tied in in fellowship with the deeds. This is consistent with the principle, hate the sin actions, but love the sinner. So he's not saying, you can't spend any time with unbelievers anymore. He's saying instead, don't participate, don't have together fellowship with these actions that are consistent with the position of those people who are unbelievers. He didn't say that we should be putting the unbelievers' lives in order. Go out and straighten out those unbelievers.

They're doing awful stuff. They're doing terrible things. You go fix them. Go into your neighbor's house and just order them around. Get them straightened out, those crazy loons. He didn't say that, did he? He didn't say, go fix those folks. Those next-door neighbors, I mean, they're something else. But he didn't say, go fix them. He didn't say, go fix them.

And that's an important distinction to make as well. He's focusing on the deeds. He's saying, it's you that we're looking at here. You're the one that has the position The guy next door that's living life like an unbeliever, guess what? That's because he's an unbeliever. We're not to fix him, and his main problem is not his behavior. His main problem is his unbelief. That's his problem. So don't go feeling like you've got to fix everybody, okay?

You look at all the things that they had that were wrong. They had things going on in the theater. We mentioned before the way the culture went. All the gals that were there in the orchestra or in the theatrical group were all for sale. They had four different categories of prostitutes. Horrible things going on there. Awful stuff. The Temple of Artemis. A thousand temple prostitutes. That's a different kind. They had Artemis idols that were gross in themselves. First Corinthians. Boy, it's funny I kept writing to those folks about similar topics. I wrote to you, in 1 Corinthians 5, 9, I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with immoral people.

Then he puts up the condition, I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, okay, or with the covetous, or the swindlers, or with the idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world altogether, basically is what he means. He says, I'm not saying you have to go and isolate yourself, but he's saying, he's talking about dealing with believers. who are steeped in the world's sins. He says, that's the issue we're talking about. We're dealing with believers, we're dealing with believers' behavior, we're dealing with believers that are behaving like they are of the world, who are completely neglecting the position that they have in Christ, the blessings that they have already been given 100%.

Now, I'm not, as I'm saying this, saying this as someone who hasn't been there, Being a civil engineer, now there's different kinds of engineers. Some of them deal with these little electrons buzzing around. Others of them deal with chemicals and mechanical things. Civil engineers deal with things that you can see and build and that sort of thing. So it means that being a civil engineer, you're frequently dealing with people in construction.

They're kind of famous for things that they do and say. And so anyway, when I say this, I'm not speaking as someone who's a neophyte in this area, okay? Believe me, if you tell those guys to clean up their language, they have no idea what you're talking about, okay?

And that's just the start of it. So, if you look at Ephesus, the kind of stuff I just showed you on the construction site, Ephesus was every bit of that. So Paul was not telling this to these people as somebody who was ignorant of how rotten and sloppy and slimy the place was.

It had one of the best ports on the eastern part of the Mediterranean. And so it drew a lot of sailors in, if you know what that means, okay? And then there were the stevedores, the guys who handled the stuff coming in and out of the ships. And then there were all the people in town and the people at the theater and it just on and on. It was full of everything that this world has to offer. And as you walk the streets, and as you went to the theater, and as you went around town to the different places, the place was ripe with paganism, arch-paganism. And so Paul was not being naive either when he said this. He wasn't telling them something where he didn't know what they're talking about. He himself had spent three years there. He was not ignorant at all. And what does he say?

Don't participate, don't be joint fellowshippers together with the unfruitful deeds of darkness. This puts the acts of the unbeliever in sharp contrast with 5.9 which is speaking of the believer. For the fruit of the light consists of all goodness and righteousness and truth. Notice again the like. Galatians 5, which is the fruit of the Spirit, its fruit is singular, but then he gives the character of the believer, and it's specifically the character, the definite articles are missing, consists of a character of goodness and righteousness and truth. It's interesting, light bears fruit.

That's what we saw in 5.9, that's what you'll see in Galatians 5.22.

Darkness doesn't produce anything at all. No fruit. Okay, it's fruitless a Carposs Okay, you ever want to say something and you just notice this is just useless a car boss and let people figure out what that is Okay It's it's a car boss like not okay. It's not fruit. There's no fruit.

There isn't anything there Okay It's the same way in Galatians 5. The works of the flesh is what he calls it in Galatians 5. So the flesh has works, deeds. The spirit has fruit. But the flesh is fruitless. There's just nothing there. Now, let's get the point across. It is deeds of darkness.

This is the Temple of Artemis. We saw it in our Acts class, the same scene here just a little bit ago. It was where the worship of Artemis took place. There were a thousand temple prostitutes there, and almost unbelievably, there was a safety deposit box system there in the middle of a ring where it was legal to steal. Figure that one out. Okay.

Now, they had at least 50 pagan religions that were in varying degrees in practice there in Ephesus. Some of them had rituals that were conducted at night or inside a building with the lights off, deeds of darkness. They would do awful things. They would do terrible things. We talked in the acts class just before this about Bacchus or the alternate name Dionysius, that was the God of wine. And people would get drunk for several days and they would do things to wild animals that I won't describe here in church, but they were deeds of darkness. They would be done in the dark. They would be done while people oftentimes would have no memory of it. They were so inebriated. These are some of the deeds of darkness he was talking about. That's, I'm sure, just scratching the surface, but it's kind of a good picture.

Now, so here are the unfruitful deeds of darkness. Now, get the idea? Here's the fruit of the light, all goodness and righteousness and truth. Now, get ready for the deeds of darkness. Watch carefully, look, examine, that's it. That's what you get. Look carefully, here's the fruit of the light, here's the fruit of darkness, that's what you get. There's nothing there. You see the fruit? Neither do I, because there isn't any. It's fruitless. It's a carpas.

And he says, all right, but instead even, and what's real interesting, this is the only place that he puts these words together like this in the whole New Testament. He's used but rather earlier in chapter 4 and chapter 5, 428, 5-4. Here he uses a rare construction, one that he doesn't use elsewhere. but instead sharp contrast and even to intensify it.

What he's doing is putting a verbal distance. He's trying to maximize their understanding. Remember how earlier we had these goofy looking creatures or mixtures of things that don't happen in nature? There isn't any cross. He's trying to get them to understand that. Here are the deeds of darkness. They come from those who are spiritually dark, who are stuck 100% in this world. You, however, are of the light. You, however, have been blessed with every spiritual blessing. You've been seated with Christ. You will spend eternity discovering the magnitude, the infinite magnitude of God's grace.

What does that have to do with these people? What does that have to do with what they are doing? Don't join in with them. You are a new creation. You are headed to a different eternity. What sense does it make for you to have intimate fellowship, zun koinoneo, that intimate, close fellowship, together fellowship with the deeds of darkness? It makes no sense at all. That's what the imperative is about. Not to clobber you over the head with guilt. Not to say, aha, I caught you, you're condemned. But to look at it and see, oh, who am I? Who am I in Christ? How have I been blessed? What sense does it make for me to have my mind and my body tied in with these fruitless deeds of darkness? You know what they produce? Zip. Nothing. They're useless.

Then he says, and this is interesting, expose them. Oh boy. What does he mean by that? Does Paul mean that we should have Christian spies? We're going to expose these guys. We're going to find them out. We'll even get a CIA, the Christian Intelligence Agency. We'll look out and we'll go out and we'll write these things down. We'll get pictures, get things documented. Oh, today with the electronics, we can do this really good, you know. Does it mean that we should keep people under constant surveillance?

Now you know what the deacons are really up to. Okay. Yeah? Okay. Should we be getting those camera shots, those candid shots, investigating every detail? Should we be lurking in those shadowy places to investigate activities? Looking here and there as we lurk.

I can imagine it now. The National Christian Inquirer, can you imagine what that's going to be like? There's going to be the church lobby rags, say, on a rack as we come in through the lobby. And they'll have the National Christian Inquirer there. Can you imagine what the headlines are going to say? It'll be stuff like this, Vern keeps a small herd of flying moose. Okay? All right? Or there'll be another headline like this, Holly Hill's mom makes a touchdown with baby in arms. Okay? Or how about this one, Holly Hill's elders tell people that they already died. You can imagine these things going on. And we'll get it out there. We'll expose them, believe me. We'll get it done right. It'll be great. Maybe not.

What does he really mean? This word here has a kind of a fullness of meaning. And what tends to happen is the translators a lot of time have a hard time picking a single English word that always fits. And it has a range of meaning, convict, convince, tell a fault, rebuke and reprove. That's the full range of meaning. And I think in this context that that's really what he's focusing upon. He's looking at a wider range of meaning and we have to kind of pick one when we do our translation.

But the point isn't to go, hey, I'm going to expose somebody and just really embarrass them. And boy, I tell you, we're going to love to jump on people and just condemn them because we just love doing that. Aha! Gotcha! Is that what he's talking about? No. It's not saying, boy, we've got this law just waiting.

And believe me, those Ten Commandments, we've got two inch thick granite. You're going to hurt. This is going to hurt for a while, okay? We're going to whack you with them. No. He wants them to be brought to a knowledge of the truth, just like we're doing here this morning. What are we doing at? We're looking at our position in Christ and looking at the stark contrast that that puts us in compared to the deeds of the unbeliever. Here He has prepared good works that we might walk in them, and now He says, What are some of you doing? You're having intimate fellowship with the fruitless deeds of darkness. A closeness that makes no sense at all. It's spiritual insanity. It's nuts.

In Galatians 6.1, it says, Brethren, even if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual should clobber the guy. Right?

No. Restore such a one The goal that we're looking at here for the exposure is not to wipe somebody out. That's not the intent. We don't look for the first opportunity to just ream them. No, what we're looking for is restoration. That's where we're headed. That's what we're looking for. That's what the exposing is about. When we were studying through chapter two, it starts off in verse one, you were dead in your trespasses and sins. And this trespasses is one of the things we can look at here. It's a falling off the path. It's a falling off the path.

What are we doing? We're wanting to put them back on the path. We want to restore them. That's the intent. The exposure is not to just simply end up with, boy, weren't they embarrassed. They'll never come back. Yippee yippee. No, that's not the point.

The point is we want to restore them. That's the purpose of the exposure. There is a correct way, and a couple of years back in a church, God's intent for the church, we had an elective that talked about how does that take place. There's a process that takes place if we look at the whole of scripture revealed in the New Testament that is intended to restore at every stage. Okay. Now, we looked at verse 11 there. Let's look at verse 12.

For it is disgraceful even to speak of the things that are done by them in secret. This word disgraceful or the King James has it appropriately as a shame. Both of those are good words that convey the idea there. They stand in stark contrast to the exalted character of the eternal position that we have in Christ.

Paul, as he begins to tell in the early chapters of Ephesians about our position in Christ, is he secretive about it? No. He's wanting them all to know. He just gets through saying, Hi, I'm Paul, and he tells them right off, you've been blessed with every spiritual blessing, and then his pen just goes into turbo mode. Okay? Verse 3 down to verse 14, one long sentence in the Greek. Verse 15 to the end of the chapter, second long sentence. Do you know those are the first and second Longest sentences in any literature in the Greek language.

That's just after he just said you've been blessed with every spiritual blessing and his pen went Okay, why? It's because as you look at what he's spelling out here You have these marvelous blessings and I do not hesitate one bit to tell you the details because they're really really good and I'll give you all the inside details on this stuff. I'll describe it and we will be very clear about what it's all about.

I don't mind that at all. But he says, what's going on here? He says, nobody should be talking to the details about that stuff. You don't need to know the mechanics of what's going on. The technical details are not even appropriate to speak. This word, disgraceful, Aeschron there. And the next work comes out is Lego. Of course, you know what Lego is, right? That's one of these things. Okay. So Paul is wanting you to play with Legos.

I think not. No, this word implies an intelligent content and specifics. He says it is not appropriate. It is disgraceful to go into the technical details and the procedures of all the gross stuff that they're doing in secret. And I think that's a real important insight for Christians to get.

There really is no value in us describing in intimate detail the gross stuff that the world gets into. You know that? There isn't any value in it. There's no place. And that's what he's saying right here. He says it's disgraceful to even sit there and describe all the intimate detail. So there's no place, you know, you go to a prayer meeting, would you please pray for Bill? He's doing blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? No. You don't need to say, pray for Bill and then give a five-minute dissertation on what Bill's doing.

We don't need to go into intimate details. We don't need to sit there and study five books on some gross stuff so that we know what sin looks like. That's not where our focus is to be. How can we behold Christ if we're spending hours and hours engrossed with the stuff that's gross?

That's Paul's point here. One of the things that we saw contrary, again pointing back to Philippians, Philippians 4, 8, and 9, our focus is instead to be on things that are a blessing, things that are good, things that cause us to grow. And so I'd like to bring up a song that we sang back then. And of course, you folks know it all from two years ago, right? Yeah, we'll try it here.

Whatever is right, whatever is just, whatever is found to be excellent, whatever is pure, whatever is true, whatever is lovely and worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things. Let your mind dwell on these things. Let your mind dwell on these things. Let's stand up. I'm gonna move that key up a tad here. All right. Whatever is right, whatever is just, whatever is found to be excellent, whatever is pure, whatever is true, whatever is lovely and worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things. Let your mind dwell on these things. Let your mind dwell on these things. Thank you. Have a seat.

So there is no spiritual value in becoming intimately familiar for the sake of building up the body of Christ, and digging into this world's garbage and sewage. No place for it. They do this in secret. The Greek word there is kruphē, and it's not some foreigner trying to say groovy. It's a word here. This is the only place in the whole New Testament the word shows up, but it's a word that goes along with the reference in 5.11.

It pursues the avoidance of light. It likes to scurry away from it, kind of like cockroaches. It likes to get away from the light. You notice that's an interesting phenomenon. You got the darkness. Deeds of darkness like to head for the darkness. You got the light. Deeds of light head for the light.

There's a polarization that takes place there, isn't there? There's a gravitational attraction, and that's a part of what Paul is trying to lay out here. He says, look, your gravitational attraction, your magnet's flipped. You're pulling off to this other end and you ought to be here. Instead of being drawn to the light, you're getting sucked in here to the darkness. And it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make any sense.

This word kruphe has some assumptions built into it in secret. If I'm a believer and I'm doing something in secret because it's the fruit of darkness, the deeds of the fruit of darkness, I might be assuming that God doesn't see it. Is that true? God doesn't know what's going on. God can't tell what I'm doing. The lights are out. Or, maybe it's an assumption that only what other people see matters. Now, tell me, which one of those are really smart assumptions? Dumb, right? Spiritually stupid. It's spiritually insane. But yet, that's the assumption.

When the believer scurries for the darkness, when the believer is headed off doing something in secret, because it's one of the fruitless deeds of darkness, these are the assumptions, one or both, that they're operating with. Now, for verse 13, rather than kind of break it apart, I think it's better if we kind of look at it comprehensively. The words are fairly understandable.

There isn't any, you know, secret tricks there. But at just this point, darkness limits our understanding. You look at a picture like this and say, what is that? I don't know. As we begin to put more light on it, we begin to see, ah, now I can tell what it is. Before, couldn't tell, couldn't tell what it is. Darkness limits our understanding.

Light allows us to see beautiful realities. You see, what's done in the darkness is just flat out ugly. It's sick. Light now, there's something beautiful. Now I can see some things that are really beautiful. And you wouldn't want to have it be dark if you got that to look at. Or that. Or that. Beautiful things. We love to see that, and we like to see it as light. Why? The beauty is all visible.

And that's why Paul uses this analogy. Jesus Christ Himself is the light. It's His light. It's His life. Now, let's move on to verse 14 here. This verse isn't a direct from any Old Testament passage. It appears to be a Christian hymn. It may have some things drawn out of Isaiah appears to be a Christian hymn or perhaps a poem, maybe even a part of it. But Paul writes it down here and he's trying to convey some truths for us. So he's trying to get excuse me.

Oh, OK. All right. Yeah. Here's what it means. OK. Awake sleeper, the first line that comes across there. And of course, he's got this analogy to work with. Hey, there's me. Oh, okay. Anyway, one of the things that it draws to mind is in Revelation 3, one through six, we have the church of Sardis where he says, wake up. That's where you were sleeping, by the way. Wake up. All right.

And many of the believers, he says, are soiling their garments. Positionally in Christ, I have absolute purity. I have His righteousness. Soiling the garments, what's that saying? This is in my condition. I'm stepping out of my position and jumping into the world's mess. Okay? So he's laying that out there. They are participating in the unfruitful deeds of darkness. That's what he's spelling out.

The exhortation to the church at Sardis in Revelation 3 has a lot of similarity with Paul's exhortation here. Wake up! Wake up. Here's a church at Sardis, it's one of the seven cities that we looked at a few years back. The place is very visible now.

What happened, and just a quick story on it, is that Sardis was so confident of their military fortifications that they all went to sleep, putting nobody on guard. And they actually were overtaken by the enemy because they assumed that they were completely safe. So the exhortation to the church of Sardis was, wake up! And Paul's doing the same thing here to the nearby city of Ephesus. Okay, awake sleeper. This calls to mind the Lord's message there. Here they were asleep, spiritually in a stupor. Completely, now think about what happens when you're asleep. You sleep what? Typically in the darkness. And you're completely unaware of what your surroundings are. arise from the dead.

He'd already told the believers that they were positionally dead before they were... that the unbelievers were positionally dead, and that before they believed, they were positionally dead. But he says then in chapter 2 that God had raised the believers from that dead position by identifying them with Christ and Christ's resurrection. Now he says, live in your condition according to the raised position that you already have.

You're already there. Arise from the dead. That's a present active imperative. This is our last imperative here. You must be arising. Right now, he says, you who have been participating together, fellowshipping in this sewer. It's like you're going to the sewer to eat. He says, get out of there. It's so disgusting, it's not worth talking about. Get out of there. You have an exalted position in Christ. You're a new creation. You will spend eternity with Jesus. God is going to spend eternity revealing His glory to you. What business do you have in that dark place doing that disgusting stuff?

Ek is from there in the Greek. It has the primary meaning of get. It doesn't just arise from the dead and sort of slowly wake up. Get out from there is what he's saying. Get out and away from there. He says, that's not who you are. By the singular conclusion coming from the logic of your position in Christ, you must get out of there and stop joining in with the action of the spiritually dead people right now. That's the point he's getting across to them.

If I said to you, Nancy and I are moving, now don't worry, we're not moving very far, just to the cemetery. And we'd like to have you help us. We've got to get the stuff out of our place there, and we'll put it in the van, and we'll move into the cemetery. You'll give us a hand, won't you?

No? Well, good. That would be a very odd thing to do. That's part of the comparison that he's making. Spiritually speaking, that's where you've been. Get out! Leave it! You've got no place there, just like Nancy and I have no business moving to the cemetery. Okay? Isn't that good? Okay.

And Christ will shine on you. You see, the Lord is already shining on us, but we don't know it. Why? Because we're scurrying from the darkness. Why? Because we're living entirely contrary to who we are. If we walk in the light, we'll walk in fellowship with Him as He is in the light. We're children of light. He's already told them that. 1 John 1, 5-7, if we walk in the light, He Himself is in the light. We have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from all sin.

And that's why we make the point, this is directed towards restoration. Not finding a believer in sin and saying, boy, I gotcha. We're going to clobber you good. You're never going to forget this. No, it's restoration. We can walk in the light. The believer who is walking in darkness can right then wake up, can right then get out, can right then walk with the Lord. Christ will shine on you.

Let's pray. Lord, as we look at this passage, we see how marvelous a thing you have done. We are indeed no half-breeds. but those who have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. How wonderful, how marvelous. We praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.