Children of Light

For the most part, I grew up in church and had a fun time at it. As a child I attended VBS, Sunday School, and children’s camp, but it wasn’t until I entered the teen group that I really discovered how much fun it could be.

The youth leaders would always plan fun activities for us on Wednesday nights, but the real fun came a few times each year when we’d have a lock-in. In case you’re unaware, a lock-in is where a few naive or crazy youth workers would decide to lock themselves inside the church with a group of teens overnight. Of course, none of the teens ever go to sleep during lock-ins, so likewise, none of the youth workers get to sleep either.

The nights would be filled with snacks, movies and games, and the types of games were solely determined by the level of crazy found within the youth workers. One game that was a lock-in favorite was the game Sardines. This game is roughly described as hide-and-seek in the dark, but there’s more to it than that. In Sardines one person is given a few minutes to find a hiding place within the dark church. Once that time is up everybody else begins searching around the church looking for the one person. However, once that person is found, the person or people who find them, instead of announcing it to everybody, begins to hide with them. This begins to get interesting, because while one person can easily hide under a table or in a closet, after being found a couple of times, you begin to have two, five, ten, or even fifteen people trying to a small hiding place like a can of sardines.

Seeing as lock-ins always take place at night, games in the dark were always on the agenda. However, nothing ruined the game more than that one exit light that you couldn’t turn off or the lights from the street lights shining through the window. In complete darkness, even the faintest amount of light becomes a glaring beacon. Paul uses this fact to illustrate the difference between Christians and the rest of the world.

As we continue in our study of the book of Ephesians, I want to remind you about what we’ve discussed so far. There are two halves to the book of Ephesians, and as we continue our journey through the second half, it’s important that we don’t forget the first. While the second half of the book may seem like a bunch of rules, a list of do’s and don’t’s, it’s important that we see the big picture that Paul is painting. God loves you so much that he was willing to take the punishment that you deserved. All the sin and ugliness that you’ve done in your life, Jesus took it upon himself on the cross so that you might believe in him and live. To those that believe in him, he offers the honor of becoming a child of God, and along with that honor come certain responsibilities. Paul begins with speaking again of these responsibilities in Ephesians 5:3-7.

Most of this is pretty self-explanatory. Stay away from sexual immorality. Don’t be greedy. However, Paul goes on to say, “Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking.” This phrase can easily be glossed over due to it not covering what we’d consider to be the big sins. Paul seems to be grouping together three different ideas all relating to our speech and how we communicate with each other. We might take them each individually and say obscenity refers to crude gestures or foul language. We could go on to say that coarse joking is speaking of dirty jokes, but if we look at this grouping as a whole, a bigger issue begins to emerge.

If we sift through this group, we begin to see that foul language and dirty jokes aren’t the real issue. Years ago when the TV show The Office was in its prime, the same joke could be heard in office buildings across the country. “That’s what she said,” the famous catch phrase from Michael Scott, was repeated on almost an hourly basis. I remember working in an office in Moline, IL and hearing this joke on a regular basis. Seeing as it was the cool thing to do, I wanted to get in on the joke and get at least one well placed “That’s what she said.” I consider myself to be quick-witted. I can crack jokes with the best of them, but I could never seem to be quick enough to get in a good joke.

The more I tried to make a good joke, the more I discovered what was required of me to do so. In order to crack a good dirty joke, you need to be in the proper mindset. You can’t be thinking of puppy dogs and kittens and quickly spout off a joke like that. You have to be in the right state of mind, and in order to pull off a “That’s what she said” joke, you need to constantly be in that mindset so that when the opportunity arises you’re ready to strike.

A couple of weeks ago we looked at a quote from Jesus in which he said, “But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them.” (Matthew 15:18). This is the root of the problem. While coarse jokes and foul language are a problem, they’re merely symptoms of a bigger problem. They are merely a reflection of what is on the inside. Paul isn’t saying, “Discipline yourselves to keep from doing these things so that you can be a better Christian.” He says, “No immoral, impure or greedy person […] has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.” It’s not because these things will cause you to lose your salvation. Instead, these things are the fruit of a dirty heart. They are the natural product of a heart that is focussed on the things of this world, and since Christ cleanses us when we ask for forgiveness, if we are the Christians that we profess to be, our hearts should not be dirty as they were before.

Paul goes on to illustrate the impact of the light within our lives (Ephesians 5:8-14). This is not to say that once you receive Christ you will no longer be tempted. Changing of the heart and changing of the mind are two different things. There was a time when I was younger that I thought it was cool to use foul language. I have since moved past that and don’t use that language anymore, but when I stub my toe or hit my elbow, you can be sure that sometimes the first word that comes into my head is not a nice one.

As Paul points out, we used to be darkness but now we are light. He didn’t say that we once lived in darkness and now live in light. We were darkness and now we are light. Just as the teen lock-ins showed, light and darkness cannot exist in the same place. Even a little bit of light begins to remove the darkness. As Christ’s light shines through us, the darkness has to diminish. The sexual immorality, the greed, the coarse jokes and language, the darkness that we once were, has to diminish the more Christ’s light shines in us. The only way for the darkness to remain is if the light stops growing or the light begins to diminish.

We have been made children of light. This is the responsibility and the worthiness that we’ve been talking about. We’ve been given this calling to be light in this dark world, but in order to be a light in the world, we have to be children of light. This requires that we be changed (Ephesians 5:15-20).

I understand, this feels like a lot. Get rid of greed, get rid of impurity, get rid of obscenity, don’t get drunk. It seems like God’s out there just trying to be a cosmic kill-joy, but that’s where we have to remember the first half of Ephesians. If a doctor tells you to stop smoking or it will kill you, we all understand that he’s saying that with our best interest in mind. Likewise, God has set forth his standard of righteousness because it is for your own good.

Last weekend my family had the opportunity to visit a church plant started by some friends we went to college with. Getting together with old friends we had the opportunity to reminisce about our time at Vennard College. A former professor there, Dr. Brad Penn, had an old saying, “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is today.” Each of us are at a different place in our journey with Christ. Some of us have a godly heritage that was planted many generations ago. That tree has since been watered and nurtured until it has flourished into the godly life and heritage that you hold today. Others have not been so fortunate. You didn’t have a mom and dad that raised you in church and told you daily of God’s love for you. You don’t have that heritage to fall back on, but even if your tree wasn’t planted long ago, you have that opportunity today. You have the opportunity to accept God’s mercy and grace and become a child of light. You have the opportunity to plant that tree so that the generations that follow will have that support to lead them towards God.