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I want to welcome you to Day 2 of our look through Ephesians 5 and daily drive
time devotions. We are going to be looking at verses 8 to 14 today. You might
remember that yesterday we began this look at the life that God intended and how
we are to live this kind of life.

If you and I are to live it, we need to realize that Jesus is our model. We need
to imitate him. If I am to live as a child of God, I need to realize that God is
love, so I need to have love in my life.

I need to realize that God is holy, so I need to live with holiness in my life.
And the only place to find that strength is from God's strength in our daily
life. God is love, live a life of love, God is holy, live a life of holiness.

Then there is a third thing that Paul talks about in verses 8 to 14. He says,
"God is light, so be light in this dark world. " God is light, so be light.

Let me read those verses 8 to 14. "For you were once darkness, but now you are
light in the Lord. Live as children of light.

For the fruit of light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth. And
find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of
darkness, but rather expose them.

For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But
everything exposed by the light becomes visible. For it is light that makes
everything visible.

That's why it said, 'Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead and Christ will
shine on you. '" What does it mean to be light in a dark world? What does it
mean to live as a child of light?

Well, let's just walk through these verses. First it means you bear the fruit of
light in your character. "Live as a child of light.

For the fruit of light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth. "
Those are character words. That the light is seen in the character of my heart,
my life.

There's goodness in my life, in the way that I treat people, the way that I talk
to people and talk about people. There's righteousness in my life. Now
righteousness has to do with right relationship to God and right relationship to
other people that grows out of my relationship to God.

And it can only be given by God. I can't conjure up righteousness or goodness on
my own. It's given by God.

His light comes into my life and then it shines through my life. There's nothing
more sad than trying to make righteousness work out of my own light because I
don't have it. It's just not in me.

I need him. But when he's in my life then righteousness shines through. Goodness
and righteousness and truth.

The character of truth. Living out who God is and what God says in my daily
life. Making decisions that are based on that.

Being different because of what God has done in your life. That's what it means
to be a child of light. There's a second thing here in these verses that it
means to be a child of light.

It means that you invest your life in discovering what pleases God. You find out
in verse 10 what pleases the Lord. You don't just live it out, you find it out.

What is it that pleases God in my daily life? You read his word to find it out.
You meet with other believers to find it out.

You pray to find it out. You depend on the power of his spirit in your life. You
find out what pleases the Lord.

I love these verses because they remind me that there is growth in being a child
of the light. I don't automatically know what pleases the Lord. I need to find
it out.

If you've not been spending time in God's word finding it out then you're just
depending on yourself and that's not enough. You find out. What do you find out?

You find out what pleases the Lord. A child of the light is living their life to
please the Lord. Not to please yourself, not to please someone else.

A lot of us are caught up in lives that are all built around pleasing someone
else. If you're someone who's all about pleasing others, it could be pleasing
someone in your family. It could be pleasing someone at a workplace.

Sometimes we live to please someone who is in our past, maybe a parent who is
even dead and gone but we're still living our life to please them. Now to live
as a child of the light means you set all that aside and you're discovering what
pleases God. Because you realize that your life can be pleasing to God.

No, you're not perfect. None of us are but you can be growing and as you're
discovering what pleases him and beginning to live that out, that brings joy to
the heart of God. That's light.

What does it mean to be a child of the light? You bear the fruit of that in your
character. You discover what pleases God.

A third thing is you separate yourself from the evil actions of this world. In
fact, the Bible says have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness.
Just don't have anything to do with them.

Just leave them out of your life. You separate yourself from it. You make a
decision to do that.

Now the Bible says that we're to be in the world but not of the world. So
separating yourself doesn't mean you go and live like a monk on some hillside
where you don't ever see anybody because the truth of the matter is there's
still temptation even there to the fruitless deeds of darkness. You can do
fruitless things even in your own mind.

You can think fruitless thoughts even in your own mind. So separating yourself
from contact with other people is not what this is talking about. It's talking
about separating yourself from those deeds.

Don't have anything to do with them. Walk away and when you do that, you're
deciding to live as a child of the light. In fact, the Bible says here you
separate yourself from those things.

Don't have anything to do with them but instead, rather, even expose them. How
do you do that? How do you expose evil in a dark world?

Let's just walk through this carefully. How do you expose evil? Not by pointing
out the dark in a dark world.

Not by hiding out our light from a dark world but by shining our light into a
dark world. Let's walk through that. You don't do it by pointing out the dark in
a dark world.

You don't walk around and say, "Oh, you're evil. Oh, there's some evil there.
Look at how evil you are.

" You could be a pharisaical, judgmental person and point it out as if somehow
you're not evil and they are but everybody realizes we're all at the same level
except for the forgiveness of Christ. You don't do it by pointing it out. You
don't do it by hiding out your light, gathering together in little groups of
Christians where we've got all of our candlelight together and it can look a
little bit brighter in this dark world.

Where is light needed? It doesn't need to be hidden out from darkness. It needs
to be taken out into the darkness and so you shine out your light into a dark
world.

You take out your light into a dark world. You see, the smallest candlelight is
evident in a pitch black room. You walk into the room.

There's no other light there. You're going to see the smallest candlelight. How
do you expose evil?

You take light into this world. You can do this in your business. You can do
this in your school.

You can do this in your family. You can do this in your friendships. You can do
this any place in your life.

Just be who Jesus has made you to be. Now, you may be looking at yourself right
now thinking, "I am not perfect. There's anything but light in my life.

" But listen, as you choose, you begin to choose to let Jesus grow you, to
recognize his forgiveness, to tell him thank you for things in your life. As you
begin to choose to let him change your character, no, you're not perfect, but
you are light. Because his light will shine through you.

It's not your light that we're talking about. Get this. It is not your light
that we're talking about here.

It is Christ's light shining through you. So as you depend on him, it's going to
shine through. And as it shines through, it's going to make all the difference
in the world.

I'll never forget a pastor friend of mine telling me that he used to work before
he was a pastor in the oil fields in California. Some pretty rough guys there.
They bring in their reading material that they were going to read during lunch.

And they showed him at the beginning, "The only place you can put it is in this
drawer here. Everything else is going to be thrown away. " Well, he found out
the drawer was filled with a bunch of pornographic magazines.

And he, this pastor friend, had brought a Bible in to read during lunch. So what
should I do? He said, "Well, this is my reading material.

" So he put it in the drawer with the magazines. Well, it wasn't long until he
noticed that the magazines had disappeared from the drawer and the only thing
left was the Bible. Why?

Because everybody else saw the light of the Bible and it shed some light in
their lives. Now that light could make you feel just guilty and like you've got
to hide. Or that light could help you to realize God can turn on the light in
your life and give you his forgiveness.

Give you a different way to live. That's what it means to walk in the daylight.
God is light and so be light.

Let other people see it in your character. Let God see it in you discovering
what pleases God. Let the world see it in you separating yourself from evil
actions around you and your choosing to be light in a dark world.

In fact, as we close today, I want to pray that God will bring us the ability to
depend on him to be light in a world that so desperately needs the light. Jesus,
you're the light of the world and you told us, you told us in the Sermon on the
Mount not to hide our light under a bushel, but to put it on the mountainside
like a city set on a hill so everybody can see it. And Lord, we realize that the
light that you're talking about, the light that shines out from us is your light
really.

It's who you are in us and through us and we know that that light, we know the
difference is made in our lives. So we pray that we be unafraid to let you shine
through us. Yes, people can point a finger at us and say we're not perfect, but
the reason they're pointing a finger is that they see us, they see the light
that's in us.

And when that happens, Lord, help us to say, yeah, I know I'm not perfect, but
Jesus's love is and I found it and it's made all the difference in the world.
Jesus, help us to be light in a dark world. Thank you for the light you brought
into our hearts.

In your name we pray, amen. Join us tomorrow. We're going to be talking about
verses 15 to 20 about how you and I are to be filled with God's Spirit.