Ephesians - Walking in Ephesians - part 1

This morning we're going to have a two-part series on walking in the book of Ephesians. I hope you brought your walking shoes, right? So we're going to be talking this week about the positive imperatives to walk. Next week, Roger gets to take the negative imperatives. The ways that you should not be walking. So, I got the easy part, right? We can keep things positive and Roger has to try to not have to hand out antidepressants after class next week.

Anyways, we want to make sure that as we take a look at these four verses, we're going to take a look at Ephesians 2.10 4, 1, 5, 2, and 5, 8. We'll talk about walking in good works, walking in a manner worthy of our calling, walking in love, and walking as children of light. We want to make sure that you understand one primary thing.

The Greek word literally there is walking, like you would think, to perambulate, to move about on your feet. The Hebrew understanding of that would mean It would be representative of your life. That you would walk would be the way that you would describe somebody's relevant daily life.

The Greek tense for this word is imperfect second person singular. Imperfect means that it's incomplete. Second person means that a person is being told to walk. In this case, it's the Ephesians and then by proxy, us. And it's singular. I mean, it's for the individual and not a group.

Paul is talking to each and every individual. Hey, you need to walk in the ways that we're going to talk this morning. I think it's important to note that Ephesians is a book written with Greek and Hebrew thoughts mixed together in it. Paul will write some sections of the book where he will speak in very Hebrew-oriented language. For example, walking. And in other places he'll use more Greek language. Well, he wrote it in Greek, but more Greek ideas. So today we're going to be taking a look at the Hebrew idea of walking.

If you've got your Bibles, please go ahead and open to Ephesians 2.10. We'll start there.

Ephesians 2.10 is for me a very comforting verse. There are very few things before I was exposed to this verse that didn't just sound like a bunch of things I needed to do of my own accord so that I could be righteous myself. And this verse is very contrary to that. I'll go ahead and read that out loud here.

He says, For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, so that we would walk in them. The first part of this verse, as I was studying this, really kind of Well, it doesn't kind of. It strongly builds a foundation, logically, that we're going to be able to take and understand the walking in a context that God has put forth. The first part there that we are God's workmanship, we're the Father's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. What kind of craftsman is God the Father?

Is he adequate? It's masterful. It's perfect. So God's craftsmanship is an important thing to understand about his work in our life. It's masterfully done. It's perfectly done. His craftsmanship or his workmanship is phenomenal. The whole universe around us is made by God. It's a tremendous thing. So we have God's workmanship and so we can then see that as His workmanship we're created in Christ Jesus. Now why is it critical for us to understand that we're created in Christ Jesus? It's all different. It's new. The last two weeks we've been talking about the old man and the new man. Being created in Christ, what was the creation in Christ? What is it that we were created to be in Christ? A new creation. But what is that?

Okay, we've been blessed with every spiritual blessing. We're in Christ. We're identified with Him. We have a new federal head. If we were in Adam and we had Adam's federal headship, what would the works of that headship of Adam be? What are those works? We all can see them around us. We'd be doing it for self. It leads to sin and selfishness. Our motive is personal and only of ourselves. When we take a look at being created in Christ Jesus for good works, now we have to ask ourselves, what are good works? Righteous garments. Can we all identify a good work? Is it distinguishable? Not always. So we need to make sure that we understand that we don't always see every good work, but that when we see a good work, we can know what it is.

We have a qualitative word. When we say that it's a good work, or we have a qualitative phrase, we know that it must be identifiable, right? Now the problem is that there has been equated with that in our culture, especially if you're familiar with John MacArthur or some of the more legalistic strains of Christianity. We spend a lot of time doing the qualitative work without ever looking at the source. I'm going to look at the quality.

I can see that Gandhi wanted to fight for freedom. Was that the Holy Spirit's motivation in his life? He was not a believer. The thing is that whatever someone is doing, the motivation is the critical nature. This passage kind of helps give us a little bit more context for that.

But we're created in Christ Jesus for good works. The good works, it's significant to notice that Agathos, which describes the quality of the works, signifies that it's profitable and useful. As a believer in the body, when the Holy Spirit is working through me, does the Holy Spirit do something profitable and useful. Yes. We want to make sure that we don't understand this as a good works lead to salvation. That's obviously a problem. But instead good works are a result of that salvation. Because this new creation that we are in Christ inherently is capable of doing those good works.

Now we'll keep going because if we don't keep going then we don't get to the exciting part. which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. Now, every time I think about God and eternity past, I am personally, it just, it gets me excited because it allows me, I like philosophy, okay, so it allows me to stop thinking about things in a modern, my time frame, my time space continuum mindset and instead try for a moment to comprehend the richness of God's being. God is not strapped into our time-space continuum. The time-space continuum is his creation.

And his infinite nature allows him, in history past, as we perceive it, to richly know and understand what we need and be preparing these things. This Greek word that we have for prepare beforehand would more in our earthly terms be used to describe of a king sending someone out ahead of them to go prepare something. Go prepare my summer castle. But going to prepare.

God doesn't have that problem. God doesn't send someone before it. He can decree it. He's God. He can speak it, and it is. How did God create the earth in seven days? He didn't have elves in a shop in the North Pole. He made it. He spoke it into existence. Tom? One way of restating that is, I believe in the Big Bang Theory. God spoke and bang, there it was.

Yeah, it's the nature of God speaking something into existence is part of Him also being able to prepare things in advance with knowledge, with wisdom, and with perfection. His character speaking ahead and decreeing beforehand that these things would be possible for us to do. Now, here's the part where we get into the tricky stuff, because if you are familiar with Calvinistic theology, Calvinism teaches that you can't do anything but these good works. Okay? You are almost like a God cosmically made you the robot that's going to do these things. The Greek language here actually implies that if we are abiding we will do these things. If we're walking in fellowship we will do these things.

So I want to be careful that we don't present from this because I actually taught that incorrectly the first time I taught this passage. This was a couple years back and the elders corrected me. So I had to come up the next week and say, it's not like that. It was a little embarrassing, but I'd much rather get over my ego and you guys have good doctrine than me just saying, well I hope they get that taught correctly by someone else some other time.

So what we have here is that We Would Walk in Hymn is a modern English translation of the Greek word It really carries with it, in the Greek, a you singularly responsible for walking in Him. You be in fellowship with Him so that you can do those things. It works out really conveniently for the flow of the English language for there to be a, you know, that we would walk in Him, but there is a responsibility for you to be abiding that's implied by the Greek that doesn't come out so much in the plural nature of this. In the end, it still communicates the fact that these are things that we need to be walking in, but you need to be abiding in the Holy Spirit and these things will come about. So it's a tremendous opportunity to rest and stop worrying about, will you be able to do the good things that you're supposed to do? That was the thing that always tormented me, is I've got to do these good things. Will I be able to do them? I don't know. I remember thinking about Gideon laying out the fleece, and I would put out...is everybody familiar with that Bible story? Gideon putting out the fleece?

I was charismatic, by the way, when I'm speaking about this past tense. This was in junior high and high school when I was charismatic. I would constantly say, Lord, if you want me to do this, then I'd lay out the fleece, whatever it was. If you want me to reach out to that person across the street, Lord, then send a car to and everything. I remember a specific instance, and the car drove by and I chickened out. I was like, oh, that was coincidence.

So it was one of those things where once I became aware of Ephesians 2.10, I said, wait a minute. This gives me the ability to walk, walk, there's that word again, confidently in my faith with the Lord, in my trusting Him to bring about circumstances. God prepared the circumstances. Did He prepare them haphazardly? Did He prepare them accidentally? Did He prepare them so that they would be almost adequate? Almost sufficient for me to be able to walk in them? No. Tom? So we don't need to live under a fleece tatership. Yes, we don't need to be fleeced.

But as we walk as believers, we can walk confidently in God's preparation and God's planning for us to be able to do these things. Now here's one other question. This is within the body. Why is it important that we be constantly encouraging one another to be setting our minds on things above? In light of this passage. So that we don't do the works ourselves and allow the Lord to do it for us. Yeah, because if we do the works themselves, are they the good works? They're not the ones that God prepared beforehand. But we want to be constantly encouraging one another in that, so that we can be growing and edifying one another.

Alright, any thoughts or questions on Ephesians 2.10? Anytime we get into this verse, I always think, man, we could probably spend a lot of time discussing the theological rabbit trails or discussing the various applications of this. Whether it's, you know, should you buy this car? Should you not buy that car? Does that tie in with the works? Do you need this job? Do you need to live in this town? Obviously everybody needs to live in Denver, right? Because then we could go to Holly Hills. Or the Denver metro area. Yeah. Just a question. Sure. Is it the works that have been prepared by God ahead of time? Is that what we're looking at here? As opposed to the walk? Yeah. What are you thinking? Are you looking at Greek and seeing something else?

The witch there has got an antecedent of works in the Greek. It's got the same case in the Greek. It's a pronoun referring back to something. And it matches works. That's why I'm asking. Is that what we're talking about here? That God has prepared these works? Well, I mean, the language certainly implies that. The witch could refer back to we are his creation in some people's minds in English because there's no I there.

Oh, OK. I see. I just I just assumed that was sometimes dangerous as a teacher. Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't have the Greek in front of me, nor am I a Greek scholar, so I work very slowly and carefully through the Greek when I do, because I don't want to erroneously just spat out Greek and then have no way to prove things. Often I will look at Zodiates, but that's not the only source I use. But I try to slowly go through.

In this case, yeah, I think it's clear that the Lord has put the works in place so that we would be able to walk in. as we abide, that it would be not only possible but likely as we abide. So his creative work is there so that we potentially would walk in those works that he's prepared for us, those good works. Yeah, most definitely you could say it that way. Let's see here, I had some questions here.

What elements of this passage give us peace as believers surrounded by a world based on merit? We just talked about works. Works are almost always, in a worldly sense, tied to merit. What about this passage gives us peace while we're surrounded by a world based on merit? Maybe what we just said, that the works were created by Him. Yeah. So the piece would be that we don't have to worry about what those works are. He's already. Yeah. Right. You know, just the fact that if they're doing them through us, that he gets the credit for them anyway.

So you wonder how many good work to do. We get no merit out of the situation to begin with. I've been toying with the idea as I think about this verse that maybe these good works that the imperative and adventurous should do are not at ten o'clock, Brad, I've dictated that you are going to so-and-so do this such-and-such and do a good work to so-and-so in me if I'm going to do this through you. But more, just he's prepared the life of Christ for us to live out day in and day out. to love, joy, peace, patience. These are the good works. These are the good works he prepared in advance for us to do. Not a deterministic, you know, pinball machine that we're going to pop off one and hit the other one. You know, if we're not walking in Christ that day, we'll miss these three good works he prepared. Blah, blah, blah. Because it's not like that. It's not a deterministic thing.

It's simply living Christ's life on us. We should prepare in advance by putting this in Christ. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's an element, there's a nature of God's eternal character that allows him to be as specific about the time and the place, but it is more, Paul's concern in this passage is more about that walking it out and living it. It is the life, it's not about the chronology as much as it is about the intimacy with Him. Ah, see, I did it again.

But our intimacy with Him and our abiding in Him and that bringing things about. I think that the chronology or the timeline aspect of this verse is the part that I want to get hooked up in. I want to be like, well, because I've got a statistic. Where's my metric? I've got the quality of works. OK, they're good. Done. But then how many? And when? And can I check off my checklist?

That's the flesh. You know right there that, OK, we've got the wrong motive. So we have here the opportunity to walk in good works. We just simply need to abide. And that by itself is a powerful thing. We need to keep going, otherwise we'll never make it through, which would almost be catastrophic, right? We'd never be able to make it into Sunday service.

If you'll move with me ahead into Ephesians chapter 4, verse 1. Paul says, Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called. I happen to love, very personally, Ephesians chapter 3 and 4. I just think they're phenomenal passages, at least from my own life. But maybe I'm picking favorites out of a perfect book, so I mean, right there is kind of silly. But I really love this passage.

Starting in the middle of Ephesians chapter 3, about verse 14, Paul goes into talking about this family relationship that we have as children of God. We get our name, as verse 15 tells us, from God the Father. We discover the riches and the character of God and his love together as a body, as a family in 16 through 21. And so Paul is building up on this robust passage, which I got to teach in the Ephesians the official Ephesians series that we did.

If you want to listen to that online you can, but I just really love this passage. But Paul continues on building on this sense of family that comes from 3.14 on and he says, I as a prisoner of the Lord implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called. Now Paul was a prisoner of the Lord and and he saw the prisonership to be God's work and it was not a problem for him. But I want to take a moment to explore the word implore. Implore is one of those words that I don't use a lot. Anybody else use implore often? in their vocabulary. No hands. Pretty soon the New American Standard is going to be obsolete like the King James because it's going to have all those words like implore that we don't use, right? They're going to say, that's 1995 English instead of 1611 English, right?

No, I'm joking. So he implores them. The thing about, see that was such a nerdy joke. That was a word nerd joke. I apologize. He says, I implore you. The Greek word parakaleo means to call alongside or exhort or instruct. So Paul is exhorting and instructing them to do these things. It doesn't make it optional. See, that's the thing that I get. I get implore. If you're like me and somebody just makes a suggestion, suggestion almost always means I can throw this away. It's just a suggestion. No, that wasn't my idea. I like my ideas.

They're always better because they're mine. Paul comes along and he says, hey, I implore you. I'm coming alongside you as a prisoner of God. Listen, I've gone all the way to chains for Christ because I'm that committed and serious about his life in me. I'm an apostle. I implore you.

Hey, I'm going to tell you something important and then he's going to bring up this family headship again. I implore you to walk, okay, there it is again, this idea of living out a life in a manner, there's another quality, a manner worthy, that's one Greek word, it's another qualitative word. I'm imploring you, I'm asking you, don't make this optional, don't make this just a suggestion, that the quality of your life might be, and then this is where this is kind of fun and cool. for me, that you would be worthy in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called." Now that's not a phrase just like implore that we use a lot.

Unless sometimes maybe you've heard people say, I feel called to the ministry. Have you heard that one? Maybe seven or eight hundred times in your life. Maybe less. Maybe more. What are you really called to as a believer? Maybe we should ask, what's calling me? I see some heads went down. Let's look at the notes. I think it's devotion and obedience. OK. Devotion and obedience. And acceptance. Knowing we have acceptance. OK.

The calling, there's some specific natures to this that I think are important. And because of the culture and the time that they took place would be something that we maybe as first world Americans don't think of. The first word for calling actually has to do with having been invited. And the second word for calling has to do more with the verbal nature. of a name and you've been called or named something okay so you've been invited to have this name now what's the name that we've been invited to have since I just kind of preempted you to earlier in Ephesians chapter 3 what's the name that we've been called to? what's this thing we've been called to? we've been called to be under the name of God the Father so that this we have been invited or called to be called by the name of God. Live in a manner... That's the adoption. The adoption would definitely fall in there. We've been made to have a manner worthy of this invitation that we've responded to, to be called by the name of God the Father.

Did I make that long and wordy and confusing enough? Bud's almost, he's going to fall asleep. I slowed down. But instead of there being a sense of guilt that comes from this, what instead should we understand from Paul's exhortation here of his imploring? Should we feel guilty? He's used qualitative words, but those qualitative words are contingent on something, aren't they? What are they contingent on? He used the therefore. therefore always tells us what they're contingent on.

I think when we take a look, if we step back in the verses prior to that, and we start talking about verses 15, 16, 17, and 18, we're talking about the riches of God's grace. We're talking about the riches of God's love and the dimension of God's love, which Paul tells us we cannot understand alone.

We need to understand them in the body and help one another understand them. There's that intimacy concept again. And that intimacy and that togetherness and that growing bond is going to come together so that Paul, when he implores us, oh no, there's that non-optional concept. When he implores us, he doesn't implore us into something that is really that difficult to take place in the context of a loving, growing body, is it?

Hey, walk in a manner worthy of your calling. If I'm not walking in a manner worthy of my calling, there are several men in this room I know who will come alongside me. Give me a little elbow to the ribs, headlock with a noogie. Be like, hey, you need to be walking.

And I know that I've had the opportunity to come and also administer God's love and encourage others in this room to set their mind on things above. I have yet to greet any of you with a brotherly kiss. But that's OK. Brad, you're first. But the thing is that we don't see from this just legalism. We see that as an encouragement.

If I discipline my daughter and all I ever do, well, I have two of them, but if I discipline one of my daughters and all I ever do is tell her, no, you can't do that and no, you're wrong, maybe I've missed the point of parenting. Paul is imploring not just to give us spankings and to tell us, WRONG! WRONG, BELIEVERS! SCREWED UP AGAIN!

Although we're going to go into Galatians next, and then maybe we'll get a little bit more of that. But instead he's encouraging, he's coming alongside, and in a parenting way he is lovingly saying, hey, set your mind on things above, because you know what?

This new creation you are in Christ, is going to do awesome things because of Christ and Christ will be glorified. God will be glorified. So, this name that we're called to is a tremendous thing. In the context of this, what's the name of God? God our Father being called. What does that mean for us shining out to the world around us when they watch us? How many times do you hear people say, oh, that person's a Christian.

They're a hypocrite. There's that name, or concept of the name, as the world understands it. And they're not walking worthy of the manner of that name. But Paul encourages us, hey, be that Christian. Well, actually, it's not just Christian. It's God the Father again. Be the one called of the name of the Father. that's worthy of that name. Be the one walking out that name. Alright, we've got to keep going here because I can tell that I'm going to have a rough time making it all the way through, all of 5.2 and 5.8.

Ephesians 5.2, Paul continues on, he says, and walk, actually we've got to start in verse 1 because otherwise we don't get it in context. There is a therefore, But we're going to pretend it's not there for just a moment because he's building on that and if we go back we'll run out of time.

Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love just as Christ also loved you and gave himself up for us an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. In the light of this being a longer sentence, let's take in consideration verse 1, Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children.

Being imitators of God? That's where the Mormons get the idea that you're going to be a god over another universe or another world, right? Is that what they do? They're imitating God? Sorry, that was a cheap shot at the Mormons. But being imitators of God, how can you be an imitator of God? Anyone?

Well, displaying the fruit of the Spirit would show imitation and it would be powered by the Holy Spirit. Yeah, the imitation, I think, you know, Paul uses this term and I think he knows that we're not going to imitate God in the sense of imitation vanilla versus real vanilla. Instead, that we would follow after the likeness of God. That we would follow after. And he says, as beloved children. And I think that gives us a clue as to what that looks like. I have followed after my dad to a certain extent.

There's areas where we vary. I have more hair than he does. I'm joking. That's not nice. Actually, he was bald by 18, so at 32 I'm doing pretty good. Sorry, Dad, if you ever listen to this. I love you, hair or otherwise. But being an imitator of my dad is not that bad of a thing, because he loves the Lord. But I reached a point where I realized my dad, as awesome as he is, he has a few flaws, and it's not just that he's follically challenged. He's a human being. So who should I imitate? God the Father. Why? He does a better job. And that's okay.

My friend Tony, and he's given me permission to share this, but my friend Tony grew up in multiple households under multiple relatives care. Care might be an overstatement. They were legally responsible for him. And he really did not know what a father looked like. He had no clue. He's like, I really don't know what a dad looks like. And he told me on a few occasions, if you see me doing something that doesn't seem godly and doesn't seem like a good father behavior thing to do, tell me. Let me know, because I might need some correction here and there. But he said, I had to go to the Bible. I had to go to see what a real father looks like to see my heavenly father. And you know what?

I have not once come to Tony and corrected him and said, Tony, you're not doing this father thing quite right. Instead, I'm in awe to watch the Holy Spirit move through Tony and watch him father his children in a loving and a gracious way. It's tremendous. It really, really is cool. I admire my friend Tony for being a godly father.

He didn't have an example like my dad, who I thought did a pretty tremendous job of being a godly father. Instead, he went straight to the source. He started off better than I did, even though he started off worse than I did before that. Yeah, when did he lap me? Well, fortunately it's not a circle, it's a straight line, so he hasn't lapped me, but sometimes I feel like he's significantly further ahead.

But we have here this concept of, you know, be imitators of God, just like a child would imitate their father, and walk in love Okay, so there's the walk again. Walk in love just as Christ also loved you and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. Now, walk in love, we could say, what does walk in love mean? If we wanted to isolate it by itself, we could come up with some nice definitions of love. It's agape love. It is a benevolent, giving love. But Paul, in case there was any question in our minds for what this walking in love means, gives us the example of Christ.

Just as Christ also loved you and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. So this love that we're supposed to have, this love that we walk in, is a not-selfish, self-sacrificing love. It's a die-to-the-self kind of love. And what happens when we die to ourselves? It's a fragrant aroma to God. So what does that dying to self look like?

Are there any husbands in this room who could tell us what that looks like? Any wives in this room that could tell us what that looks like? When you love your husband, or you love your wife, or you love your children, or your brother, or your sister, or your aunt, or your uncle, or your mom, or your dad, or your second cousin once removed. What does that look like?

Gift of the Magi. Huh? Gift of the Magi. You're going to have to explain that because I don't know if you're going to... If you've ever read that short story, you'd get it all. Oh, okay. I haven't. What does a sacrificial love look like? The Lord Himself. I'm sorry, what? The Lord Himself. The Lord Himself. Absolutely.

I think, you know, I'll come back to a story with my dad, and I've shared this before, but it's just, for me, a strong illustration. On my dad's 42nd birthday, I got a phone call while I was pulling my 1981 Chevy Love into my parents' garage. It was a standard. And the phone call came, my sister answered it, and she ran out the front door and said, Randy, Jeremy's on the phone. Jeremy was the bass player in the band I was in. And I jumped out of the truck. lunged, grabbed the phone, and turned around and saw that my truck door was open and it was rolling down the side of my parents' Camry.

Happy birthday, Dad. 42 years. Your car needs some work. My dad helped me buff out the yucky crummy paint from my white Chevy Love that the door had bent all the way backwards. It's a suicide door now. Well, it wasn't really technically a suicide door, but it went the other direction now. He helped me bend my truck door back and he helped me use rubbing compound. Fortunately, he was able to take off the white paint from my Chevy Love on their gray, sparkly silver Camry. And he was just like, well, this happens.

It's not a big deal. Let me love you. And I was standing in my parents' garage at about 17 years old bawling my eyes out because I just couldn't believe such a tremendous love. Wait a minute. Where does this love come from? That's a benevolent, self-sacrificing love, you know, of all days on his birthday. That was pretty tremendous for me. Now, I thought that was a good story. I thought it was a good story until I met the gals that were here from Uganda and they had a better one.

The mom of the two, and you'll have to forgive me I don't recall her name at this point in time, but she said she thought her mom hated bread. She grew up thinking her mom hated bread because she never saw her mom eating bread. And one day, as an adult, she came into her parents' house, and she saw her mom eating bread. And she said, Mom, you're eating bread? Why are you eating bread? I thought you hated bread. She said, we couldn't afford enough bread for the whole family when you were growing up, so I let you eat it. And I went, that's cooler than my dad's car.

But the thing is that it's a benevolent sacrificial love, a love that says, you know what, I'm going to be okay, I'll have water and some morsels and some whatever else, and I'll let you have the bread. The sacrificial love is something that, like Christ, dies to the self. Now, I asked, are there husbands who can give the example or wives who can give the example? In Ephesians chapter 5, when we take a look at the husband and wife relationship, if we were to jump ahead in the verses, he's going to say that exact same concept. The sacrificial walking is exactly what needs to be happening in the marriage. You don't know how badly I wanted a recording studio since I was 15. So badly wanted a recording studio. And I couldn't buy one. I could never buy one because I needed to take care of my family. But I knew that self-sacrifice meant that I didn't get to have a recording studio. Now, it just so happens that I've put together a small recording studio at home with parts and pieces in the works.

And Brad's smiling because he's going, you sent me a song you recorded this week. But the truth of the matter is that I wanted those things, but as the leader of my family, that was not the thing to get. Wouldn't it be awesome if my kids didn't have clothes to wear and they were barefoot and they were dirty and didn't have food to eat? But I had the coolest recording studio. Wouldn't that be the example of the flesh? And you'd say, wow, Randy, you don't sing well enough to have that fancy of a recording studio.

But we look here and this walking in love is a sacrificial love. That's the way we walk. That's why when you end your conversation with anybody here this morning, I implore you to ask how can I be praying for you? Or what things can I be on the lookout to help find for you? What do you got? A couple of husbands saying to their wives, yes dear, you're right. Yes dear, you're right? I think that crosses some lines. Actually, I think that's an important thing, that it is a representation of that sacrificial love. My ego always wants to be right.

If I could have the last word, it took me eight years in my marriage, I'm not kidding, it took me eight years to figure out that I should probably just shut up and apologize rather than try to prove how right I was in my sin. We would have hour-long arguments and it would be like, we'd be all done. It was like, when did it start finishing? When did the end come? When I apologized. when I owned up to having made a mistake. I was like, wow, I wasted hours of my life. I think the first eight years of my life we must have wasted weeks of time if you were to add it all up because I wanted to be right instead of being self-sacrificing. So you're right, bud. That's a good example.

Just a little bit later on in this passage, we'll take a look at Ephesians 5.8. He says, well I'll start in 7, because there's a therefore.

Therefore do not be partakers with them, and he's talking about those who are walking in the flesh and being filthy and full of silly talk. Do not be partakers with them, for you are formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. So verses 5, 1, and 2 talk about walking like children of God the Father and seven and eight that we would walk as children of light.

So we have this similar concept of walking in this positive. Now he says that you were formerly of darkness and of course in the last two weeks we've talked about the old man and the new man. The old man has been what with Christ? Crucified. Awesome. So the old man has been crucified so that's how we could be formerly of darkness. Okay, so we are formerly of darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. And some people are lightweight in the Lord. They don't want to know Him. I'm a Christian, really? Okay, awesome. Tell me about our Savior. And they don't ever really progress in their walk. And I don't say that to be critical, because there is grace.

But it is one of those things that we are to be walking after Him and we are to be growing. We're implored to do so. And we are to be lights. We are to be a light in the Lord. Why would this fall under the category of imitating our Father? He is light.

1 John 1.5. that God is light. This light is actually a way to describe truth, isn't it? Well, the Greek word is actually light as in a source of light.

But I think there is a metaphorical sense that we're representing God in a way that is light to the dark world. If the former way was darkness and we're of a new type, then it is truth, it is love, it is the character of God. It is the fullness of God's character being shown through us as filaments, if you will. But we are light in the Lord, and of course you can get really metaphorical about lights and how light starts and fire and energy and all that other business, but we won't do that. The truth of the matter is that we are representing our Father in the darkness.

So we are light. He is light and He is light through us. As we're walking in this manner, walk as children of light. So we have this concept of walking, we have this this idea that we're to walk as children of light. What does that mean? What do we do with that? How do you walk as a child of light? Alright, so then the question is something that we need to ask. What if you're not good at it? It never will be.

God is good at it. A couple weeks ago when my dad was teaching in the main service, I from memory wrote this quote down on a piece of paper about five minutes after he said it. So it's not a direct direct quote But he said something along the lines of sometimes you're given a headship not because you are good at it But because it's the role you are to have and that really really has been resonating with me for the last couple weeks I've been meditating on on the fullness of what God Has in store for me as a believer. I am to walk as the head of my family I've never done this before Every new event that takes place, every birthday my daughter has.

Yesterday Abigail lost her second front tooth. So ask her to say she sells seashells down by the seashore or something. She'll chuckle and you'll chuckle and it'll be cute. I'm not ready for that. She's getting older. She's 7. In 10 years she'll be 17. A year after that she'll be legally an adult.

What happened? Some of you are looking at me like, my kids are in there. They're your age and whatever. There is no preparation for that. It's come down to me having to trust the Lord. Imagine that. I'm not good at the role of husband. I'm not good at the role of father. Heck, I'm not even good at the role of son. I screw that up. But it's the role I've been given because God wants to work in me and grow me and through me. If you feel an inadequacy, that's okay. That inadequacy is an opportunity for the fullness of God to show where the weakness of man is. That's okay.

Often we'll ask the question in this class or it will be asked of us, how are you doing with that? How are you doing with that? It doesn't matter how you're doing with that. In the end, how's he doing with that? And it's a good question. Because here's the thing, if the answer to how you're doing at that isn't good, the works that God's prepared for us, the good works, are good. If the answer is not good, the next step for us is then to say, why am I not abiding? Take some time to meditate and spend the time with the Lord and say, what are the distractions that I have allowed in my life? What are the footholds? What are those things?

That's okay to take, but don't just stop at how you're doing. And saying, not great, but neither is anybody else. Status quo. Instead, take the time with the Lord and grow with Him. Pray about Him showing you where those things are. I bet you He can. Through one of those events, He's good at orchestrating to work out good works. If we stop at, how you doing with that?

Then we don't get to Ephesians 2.2. We don't get to the walking as the children of light, which we're implored to get to. Now I'm not saying, again I want to be careful that nobody, since Bob is often the one that asks that question, I'm not trying to be critical of Bob. I am saying that we need to not stop there. Paul doesn't stop there. If he stopped there, he wouldn't get to the imploring.

He'd be like, hey, these are good ideas. And we'd all go, yeah, that's a good idea. And he'd go, but you're not going to do good at it. Don't worry. Instead, he says, hey, keep going. Push through. You've got this role. It's something that God is going to do through you. It's this role that you stink at, but I'm going to do it through you. You're going to stink at it, but I don't stink at it. So anyways. Is that the second bell? It's the second bell. See, I can't even count to two. Let's go before the Lord. And again, I want to encourage you, just as we submit our lives before the Lord, this is the end of the year. There's always this reflective, what's your New Year's resolution? My New Year's resolution is going to be to abide. Which I'm going to pull off in the flesh, right? No, I need to abide.

I'm called to walk in Him. So we want to close by, we've looked at Ephesians, I want to take us to Romans chapter 6. You know I was going to go there. Somebody had to know I was going to go there. Because it's another walking passage. Romans chapter 6. He says, What shall we say then?

Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore, we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead, through the glory of the Father, so that we too might walk in newness of life.

Roger gets to talk about the negative stuff next week. The good thing is that the negative stuff is still positive stuff. It's from God's Word. But we're to walk in this newness of life. If you find yourself not walking in newness in life, and trust me, how I'm doing at it is not great, but I know I'm called to those good works. I'm called to be in fellowship.

Encourage me when you see me. How can I be praying for you so that you'll be abiding? And when I see you, I hope that I'm asking you that same question. How can I be praying for you so that you'll be abiding? So that you'll be grown? Alright, let's love one another and let's go before the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for all that you have blessed us with in these sets of passages that we've looked at. Thank you that you have blessed us with every spiritual blessing and that your purpose is for our condition to match our position. We ask that you would constantly be reminding us of ways that you have prepared for us to serve you in moment by moment little things. We just thank you and we praise you for this time in Jesus name. Amen.