Morning Message Text: Ephesians 5: 8-14
8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light
9 (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth)
10 and find out what pleases the Lord.
11 Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.
12 It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.
13 But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.
14 This is why it is said: “Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
Morning Message:
If you take some time to think about it, you can’t help but marvel at the patience and long-suffering of Holy God. If I were God, I would have become fed up with mankind long ago. This is precisely why we could never measure up to or be anything close to God. Think about this for a moment. God through his tremendous love and patience gives us every assurance of who he is and the beauty of what he wants for us. God speaks to the souls of every living person and gives us the assurance of who he has created us to be. It is so evident in nature that this world could not exist apart from an infinite being who created all things so precisely and perfectly that life couldn’t possibly exist apart from his will. To not believe in God is to not believe in life itself because there cannot be one without the other. You can refuse to believe in God, and you can choose to ignore him and claim that he doesn’t exist, but every person who has ever lived knows deep down inside that God exists because at some point God has spoken to them and called them.
Those of us who call ourselves Christians and claim Jesus as our Savior are blessed with assurances throughout God’s word of how much God loves us. We take these assurances far too lightly. We take them for granted and in doing so we miss the tremendous blessing of security. We go through life fearing the world around us and forgetting that Jesus has overcome the world and God is in full control of his creation. What is it that you are afraid of today? Do you truly believe that whatever that fear is that God is not greater than it. I read Psalm 23 at almost every funeral service, and people get the idea that it is meant for those who have passed from this life, but it is meant for believers who are still here on earth and need reassurance that God is with them. Jehovah-Rohi – the Lord my shepherd. Because God is watching over us, we will lack for nothing that we need. He promises to guide us and to refresh us along the way. No matter how dark the times may get in our lives, he promises to be right there with us, protecting us, fighting for us, comforting us. And in this wonderful Psalm God makes us a promise, he reassures us that because of the fact that we have been anointed by the blood of Jesus we will see goodness and love in this life, and we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. If we would just take the time to read this Psalm and make it our own, our cups would overflow with gratitude and love for our Savior. God has given us this wonderful assurance and placed it in his Word to give us confidence. “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.” There is no deep meaning in this verse. It is not a complicated statement that you will have to study for hours to find its meaning. We were all once darkness. Before we came to Jesus we were darkness and separated from the light of God. I should, I suppose, say, “If you have come to Jesus.” I am not blind to the fact that there are many in this world who have not yet come to Jesus. When I stand before you and preach, I have two purposes in mind: To disciple those who have come to faith and to evangelize those who are not yet saved. I don’t know which category you fall into, so I make sure to be inclusive. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The only difference is: Have you claimed Jesus and escaped the darkness, or are you avoiding Jesus and still living as darkness? You must take notice that it says, “That you were once darkness.” It doesn’t say that we were once in darkness. In other words, before we accept Jesus, we are not innocent bystanders in a sinful world; we are sinful beings; we are opposed to God; we are the enemies of a Holy God. Here is the assurance. Now you are light. Now you can be light. Once you were lost; now you are saved; was blind but now you see. You may be darkness right now, but in an instant you can become light.
We have all of these assurances in God’s Word of his amazing love for us and his plan to bring us through all of the hurt and pain of this world. Jesus died to give us the blessed assurance that God was reconciling mankind to himself and creating a way back to righteousness. We sing, “Blessed assurance Jesus is mine” and it is a wonderful thought to know that we are safe and secure in our salvation. We find ourselves many times needing reassurance of God’s grace. We are human and full of flaws, and those flaws and short comings cause us to lose our confidence, even sometimes our confidence in God. Why does this happen? I suppose there are many reasons why, but every one of them takes place in our lives when we move away from God’s presence in our lives. God is constant; he is always with us, but we stop praying and we stop reading God’s Word like we used to. We start looking at worship as an inconvenient choice instead of the magnificent privilege it used to be. One day when trouble comes our way, and it eventually comes to all of us, we feel lost and unsure; our faith is shaken because we have allowed it to become weak. We say that we can’t find God, but he is right where he always has been, right beside us. It’s okay; God wants to give you the reassurance of his grace. It’s right here in God’s Word. Verse after verse, promise after promise. Even in today’s text we can find the reassurance of God’s Grace. Listen, those of you who are saved and slipped, and those of you who have not yet accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Listen, God is about to speak to you. “Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” It is time Church. If not now – when? If not here – where? Jesus is calling you right now. Now is the acceptable time to come to him and to come back to him. Revival will happen one more time in this hurting world, will you say, “Let it begin with me?” Jesus is coming soon, I can’t wait, but I want to take everyone with me. It’s time Church, it’s time for the body of Christ to hear the wakeup call, and it’s time for the lost to see Jesus as the Savior that he is. Are you ready to answer the call?
In Christ’s Love and Peace,
Pastor Bob
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