This Week's Light Service Sermon

Light Service Sermons for the Month
The Secret of Empowerment
Pass It On
DATE: June 25, 2000
TEXT: Ephesians 5:1-5

YOU can change the world. It’s true! You can change the world! You say, “Stan, what did you eat this morning? I can’t get my spouse to change. I can’t get my children to change. I can’t get myself to change! How can I even think of changing the world?” But, it’s true. God, through you, can change the world.
Back when I was taking our Confirmation Classes to Confirmation Camp each summer, there was a song that we sang until we almost wore it out. Maybe you’ve heard it: “It only takes a spark to get a fire going. And soon all those around can warm up in it’s glowing. That’s how it is with God’s love, once you’ve experienced it. You spread his love to everyone. You want to pass it on.”
I’m curious, who was the person or people that lit a fire in your life? Who are the people whose spark of faith – the fire of faith in them – encouraged your faith? I think about my parents and the spark of faith they gave me. I think of my math teacher at school who also happened to be my Sunday School teacher. I think of my Scoutmaster at the EUB church. And I think of my pastor, Andy Schilling. Many people along the way have passed that spark of faith into me.
Who was it for you? Any brave souls want to share with me who that person or those people were that really put the spark of faith in you life – or passed that spark on?
(FROM THE AUDIENCE)
YOU CAN CHANGE THE WORLD.
A true story about a mom who was having a real hectic day. Of course, with ten kids and one more on the way, for her, every day was pretty hectic. But this particular day, her little four-year-old Lynn kept tagging behind her. Every time she turned around she stepped on Lynn’s feet and knocked him over. He just wouldn’t let her go. He walked behind her all day long. Finally, she turned to Lynn and said, “Would you please go outside and play with the other kids? Why are you tagging so close to me today?”
“Well,” he replied, “my Sunday School teacher told me that I was to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. I can’t find Jesus so I’m going to follow you.”
Most people around us can’t find Jesus. They don’t know where to look. But as God shines his light through you, as you pass it on, people will follow and are following in you footsteps to know the love of Christ. It’s that tone that Paul sets as we read our passage today and as we listen to God’s word that God wants to change the world through you. He wants there to be a spark and a fire of faith in you life that passes on to others and changes this world. How do we pass it on to others? We’re going to learn about that in God’s word today. But before we do that, let’s pray…
(PRAYER)
The Apostle Paul gives us some very practical advice today. How do we keep the fire of faith burning and how do we pass it on? First he says, chapter 5, verse 1, “Do as God does. After all, you are his dear beloved children.” Another translations says, “Be imitators of God, as God’s beloved children.” Imitators – the Greek root-word is also translated into “pantomime.” Pantomime imitates life. Pantomime imitates the master. Pantomime imitates the way people walk and move. God calls us to imitate our master-teacher just as children imitate their parents. Have you every noticed how children imitate their parents? For those of us who are parents, that thought can be both flattering and embarrassing.
A young child came to her mother complaining that her stomach hurt. Her mother said, “Oh honey, your stomach is empty. You need to get something in it and you’ll be just fine.” A week later that mom was talking to their pastor. The pastor happened to mentioned that he had a headache, Little Missy chimed in, “Oh pastor, my mother says that your head is just empty. If you put something in it, you’ll be just fine.”
It was interesting watching our kids imitating us as they were growing up. I remember one obvious game was “playing church.” Why I can remember one time we had a baptism in our living room with a cabbage patch doll. Just last week at the Celebration Service, one mom was telling me how their son would stand on a box and begin preaching.
Now, if we are to imitate God – what does God do? What does God look like so that we might imitate him? Paul goes on to explain, “Let love be your guide.”
Today, I’ll share three characteristics of God that we can imitate today. First of all, God is love. I John 4:8, “God is love.” God embodies love. Everything about God – everything God does – everything God thinks – every action of God towards us is an act of love, every thought is a loving thought. And so Paul says, as your imitate God, “let love be your guide. Christ loved us and offered his life for us as a sacrifice that pleases God.”
Paul uses an Old Testament example here to describe what God has done for us. Over 50 times throughout the Old Testament, the scriptures that Jesus used, it mentions that when someone offers a sacrifice to God it’s like the cloud of fragrance from that burning sacrifice lifts up to heaven, God breathes it in, and it pleases him. When Jesus was sacrificed on the cross, it was a pleasing sacrifice to God. It was like the sweet fragrance to God. Not only that, it was a pleasing sacrifice of Jesus for you. Jesus demonstrated love through that sacrifice. Love is sacrifice.
I John 3:16, “We know what love is because Jesus gave his life for us. That’s why we must give our lives for each other.” Paul here draws a picture of love. Love is sacrifice. Love is self-giving. Love is not selfish. Love is more than romance and feelings. Love is sacrifice. And now Paul not only draws that picture but in the following verses he colors in the lines – he fills out that picture for us. Verse 3, “You are God’s people so don’t let it be said that any of you are immoral or indecent or greedy. Don’t use dirty or foolish or filthy words, instead say how thankful you are.”
Paul is not just lifting up some little moralism, a moralism that often keeps people away from the church. Paul is talking here about relationships. Paul is talking about love. You see Paul and the Christians in Ephesus lived in the midst of a very pagan society. Women and children were treated like property. Greed and theft were commonplace. People were not kind to each other. And so Paul says in the midst of all this selfish love (in the midst of all the taking and taking and taking) that “love is sacrifice.”
Paul particularly focuses on sexual immorality. The ancient world around Ephesus regarded sex outside of marriage as something that was not sinful. It was expected that a man should have mistress. In places like Corinth there were hundreds and hundreds of women priests who were actually temple prostitutes. The money they received from their prostitution went to build temples to the gods, gods like Aphrodite, the goddess of love. There were voices within the Christian church that taught people to think lightly of sexual sin. In the ancient world there was a line of thought called Gnosticism. Gnosticism basically said there were two realities in the world. There’s a spiritual reality and there’s substance and matter. Spirituality is good; that’s from God. Physical reality is bad. And so with our bodies, consisting of spirit and the flesh, the spirit is good. The flesh is evil. With that thinking came the notion that whatever we do with our bodies can’t really matter because they are evil anyway. Thus bodily and sexual sin were of little importance because they were of the body and not of the spirit.
But in Christianity God clearly says, “time out.” God says that the body and the spirit are of equal importance. God created both. Jesus came in the flesh to be a human being and lived in a body. Paul says that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and when we sin sexually, we sin against our own body.
God is concerned about the body and the spirit together. So we are to walk in love, to walk honoring our body and the bodies of others. Whereas sexual immorality and pornography treats another person as an object of our desire, God says, “Honor each and every person. Honor their body with the respect and dignity that I gave them. Walk in purity.” So as we imitate God we do as God does; we walk in love in very concrete ways.
What is God like? Secondly, God is light. “God is light and doesn’t have any darkness in him.” Then in verse 8, “You use to be like people in the dark but not you are people of the light because you belong to the Lord. So act like people of the light and make you light shine. Be good and honest and truthful as you try to please the Lord.”
What is light? Light is all that is good, true, honorable, and honest. Walking in the light is just simply walking in truth and honesty. When our actions and thoughts fall out of line with God’s truth, we are to be courageous enough to admit it to ourselves and others. Someone once said, “Live that you would not be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.” Living in the light is really tested behind closed doors, isn’t it? In our home, behind the doors of our office, in the words we say, in the thoughts that we meditate on, it’s in those places that the light can really shine.
In the bazaars of the Middle East, there are many shops that have four walls, a door, and a canvas cover over those walls, no windows. So if you buy a piece of cloth or some brass, before you actually pay for it, you take it outside, you lift if up in the sun to check for flaws. Paul invites us here to take our lives and lift them up into the sunlight of God’s love, to let our lives be transparent.
Don’t be afraid to get things out in the open. One of the ways we do that is through confession. We experience that corporately most often in the Faith and Celebration services but it can also happen personally. God invites us to confess our sins to one another and pray for each other so that we can be healed. I invite you to consider times of confession, getting things off your chest with someone you trust, someone you know who will not gossip (a pastor, a trusted friend, a counselor). It’s healthy to periodically empty our thoughts with what we’ve done, what we’re ashamed of, and let God come in with his love and his forgiveness. We are to walk in the light.
Third, God is truth. In I John 5:6 it says, “The spirit is truthful.” Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the light.” Then in verse 15 it says, “Act like people with good sense and not like fools because God is truth. Walk in truth. Walk wisely. Make every minute count. Don’t be stupid. Instead find out what the Lord wants you to do.” As we shine this light, as we walk in love, we can ask God, “What’s the best use of my time, Lord? What would give honor and glory to you? What’s the best use of the talents you’ve given me, Lord?” God helps us do that.
In verse 18, Paul says, “Let the Spirit fill your life.” Paul makes an interesting contrast. “Don’t be drunk with wine. But be filled with the Spirit. Keep on being filled.” God wants us to operate “under the influence.” Not under the influence of drugs or alcohol which can destroy us, but under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Keep on being filled; it’s ongoing! “God, come and fill my life! Energize me! Speak to me! Touch me and help me love others. Fill me with your power.” Under the influence of the Holy Spirit we can love as God loves. We can walk in the light as God is in the light. We can walk in truth and wisdom as God is true.
AMEN