Walk as Children of Light
First B Jackson
2026-10-18

Automatically transcribed. Where this and the recording disagree, the recording is the record.

----
Hike and we're verbally preparing and talking through the message for that Wednesday night and Ray was like, wow, that was great, man and he usually doesn't give me a lot of feedback. He's like, you know, great job or I don't get a lot of feedback from Ray on the messages but for whatever reason, he just loved it. He even when he was driving away, he rolled his window down and I went over to him like, are you everything good? And he was like, you just gotta keep your notes. Like, that was so good and I was like, thank you.

Wow and and then couple weeks ago, we we were talking about this message and he was like, just take that one and then, you know, we've got Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians that we've been in, you know, the past few months and just all all the places that Paul talks about walking with God and and just just just do this with it and I was like, yeah. Awesome. I, if I did that, I, guys, like, you would be here a long time. I don't know if you, like, if you just read flip through those three epistles, there is so much about walking with God in there. It was really overwhelming and it was either Thursday morning or Friday morning.

I think it was Friday morning. I I don't these notes are not those notes. I just wrote out the this sermon from all of that and the key verse is Ephesians five eight. We could pick a lot of ones, a lot but I don't I'm already distracting you. This is the focus.

For you were once darkness but now, you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you for all that you give us in your word.

We are so thankful for your spirit working in us to open our eyes to what you have to say through scripture. Please help me to speak clearly and to deliver what you want to be said this morning for us. In Jesus name, amen. Amen. So, there's like three components there.

You were once darkness. Now, you're light. So, walk like it. Super simple. I have taken that and made it very simple for us this morning.

For you were once darkness. We normally don't hang out with this on Sunday morning but I want to a little bit. We all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, right? Whether you're a Christian today or not, we all started in this darkness, in this hopeless condition. We were hostile towards God.

Enemies, we had no purpose in this world. We constantly try to fill ourselves with stuff in the world and it to no avail, right? Even even now, like our flesh drags us back. It's trying to drag us back in the darkness. In our staff meeting Thursday, I I wanted to start out our meeting with confession and because I needed to confess.

My sin of conceit. Wednesday, I had a few different meetings and one was in an airplane hangar and I'm like, wow, nice. You know, and just like, I was envious of my brothers and I had to confess it and I was interesting about this specific sin that I was dealing with Wednesday was that I didn't have scripture. I was not putting scripture on the situation to to show me the sin and I was trying to justify how I can grow my wealth which is silly. What are you talking about, Van?

And so anyway, we still deal with the darkness, but when without Christ, it's not only misery here on Earth, there's an eternal suffering that you're headed towards. Without Jesus, you're hopeless, right? Eternal separation from God. There's no hope. The only work you can do will never add up to anything.

We can't outwork our bad works. Like the the Muslim faith is all about, you know, working hard so your good works outweigh your bad. Most religions are that way. You've gotta just keep trying to do better and better and better to outweigh maybe. When you die, you'll figure out if you succeeded.

You can live in the most beautiful place. I mean, you can walk around and it just looks like bright but we you can be in total darkness without knowing the one who made it. And and when you're in that darkness and you can surround yourself with other people that are in the dark and they can try and encourage you or each other to focus on the temporary joys that you can get from the world. The vain pursuits that ultimately leave you empty. Right?

Ephesians two one through three says, you were dead in your trespass and sin that you previously walked. According to the ways of the world, living according to our fleshly desires. We all, all of us previously lived among them in our fleshly desires carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and we're by nature children of wrath. We are not done talking though. But if the clicker doesn't work, you'll have to close your eyes while I continue.

There it is. But God, alright? Like, that's it. I I wanted to just sit there in the darkness and just just think about where we were and where we would be without Jesus but God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us. Even when we were dead in our trespasses, when we were in darkness.

He made us alive together with Christ by grace, you have been saved. He raises up with him. He seated us with him so that he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace. It's not works, right? Immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ.

It doesn't say, you were dead in sin but man, you did so many good works. You're good. It doesn't say that. It doesn't say you were born in sin but you're born into the right family. So, like your status has you where you need to be.

Doesn't say that. Doesn't say you were born in sin but you're so talented. No. Our works can never save us. Even Paul's works couldn't save him, right?

He in Philippians three, he recounts all those gains and he counts them all as rubbish. Counted as loss. It's only the work of God that's counted as gain. Only he has graciously made a way for us to salvation through faith in him who loved us and gave himself for us. In exchange for our sin, our failure, our misery that's put on the cross, he gives us his righteousness.

If you declare Jesus is lord and believe in your heart in the resurrection, in the gospel, you're saved. So, if you have done that, now, you are light in the Lord. It's our next point. Your darkness, now you're light. Only because of Jesus.

Only because of the work of Jesus. There's a couple scriptures. One, the hymn of Christ that just so mightily exalts his work, right? Who is in the form of God but he didn't count equality with God, a thing to be taken advantage of or grasped. But He chose to humble Himself and come down here, smelly earth, and take on the form of man, take on the form of a slave, and then be obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

And then he folded those grave clothes and left him there in the tomb and he just walked out. Right? And therefore, God has highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name. So that the name of Jesus, every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, essentially all creation for all of time. Past, present, future, at His name, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is lord.

That's our savior. That's who'd rescued us from the grim condition we sat in for a few minutes that felt way too long. This is our God and then, Colossians has another. Ray did a great job unpacking the preeminence of Christ. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

By Him, all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. All things were created through him and for him. He's before all things and he holds it all together. He's the head of this church. In him, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through him to reconcile to himself all things.

That's good news for us. Right? He... Okay. And you who were once alienated and hostile in mind in the darkness, doing evil deeds, he is now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.

It's his work that brings us into this light covering us by his blood. This is our God who brings us from that darkness to light. Who... We had a former walk, the way of the world, and now we have a new walk, a different way of walking. We die to our old self because he died, we can die to our old self and raised to walk in newness of life.

We... I got to hear this past week a story of somebody in the room who recently was in just the most tangible spiritual darkness. And it was it was enticing this person to stay in the darkness. And when this person was in a... Was called to just buy a Bible and start reading the Bible, the the darkness was was pulling her away from it physically.

And then she got to this point where total rescue and freedom from the darkness and is living in the light and it is incredible and I know there's so many stories in the room but just being able to hear that afresh story and be excited about the reality of this. It's not just something that we're talking about but it's real, right? From darkness to light. In Galatians two, Paul says that that that we've been crucified with Christ. The old self, the darkness, our flesh is is killed.

It is no longer us who live but it is God who lives in us. The life that we now live in the flesh that we're still dragging around our flesh like we just talked about confession. We live by faith in the son of God who loves us and gave himself for us. Later in Galatians, Paul talks about how our flesh is opposed to the spirit. So, we get to this next section of walking in the light.

There's a constant battle like a daily struggle between our old walk and and the new walk. It's the last part of the verse. Walk as children of light. That you are. That's who you are.

If you follow Christ. Enoch walked with him and was taken up and he pleased God by his faith and the manner of life that that was an outflow of his faith. Enoch is probably not an attainable goal for us. Like, don't expect that you're just gonna get taken up like he did. He never died.

But it's encouraging to look at that level of faith and that level of faithfully pleasing God in the way that he walked and so we see this connection between pleasing God and walking with God. In second Corinthians five nine, Paul says, it's our aim to please God. Hebrews eleven six says, you can't please God without faith. So, we by faith, those who follow Jesus, we don't walk to like we used to. We want to please God, not the world.

Colossians one nine and ten brings a lot of this together. We are praying that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will and all wisdom and spiritual understanding so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. So, walking with him is intentional. It's learning about who he is and praying for wisdom, praying for understanding, praying for the spirit every day to remind us of the darkness that we used to be in, the light that we're in, and how to move forward continually fighting our flesh and putting our faith in him as we walk with him. So, like we mentioned, we're still dragging the flesh around.

We're dealing with temptation. We're fighting sin. We're desiring what's not aligned with God's desires, justifying things we see in the world around us, this enticing and it lures us, right? We're prone to wander from the unseen, most loving, wonderful, amazing God to settle for trinkets. There's analogy in youth a long time ago.

Somebody had used in about how the flesh is like a child who you give a million dollars and they buy an 18 wheeler load full of suckers. Which I Googled to see how like legit this analogy is. You you could spend $400.00 on a truckload of suckers. That is so silly, right? Like, of course, we see the the ridiculousness in that.

We have the same problem. We have opportunities to invest in the eternal but we often invest in the temporal more than the eternal. We can invest our time and money into bringing the gospel to the lost. If Baxter was in here, I'd call him to ask what the statistic was. Over a million house churches were planted around the world through the run ministry this year.

You can invest in that. You can invest in praying for, helping the oppressed in this community, discipling others that whether you are part of or lead a small group, investing your time and money in that. Investing in in this group of believers in the work of ministry, caring for widows and orphans, inviting our our unloved neighbors into our homes, somebody had mentioned earlier or Thursday about the how they don't want to be like the one who is given the one talent and buried it. And we don't want to waste our life, right? We have been given something.

I don't know if it's two or three, four, five talents, whatever it is, but you have been given a gift and skill and time. How are we using it to invest? Another silly illustration that I wasn't planning on but at at a camp I'd worked at, they did this thing called the mayonnaise skit. So gross and these people stand up there and they do different things with mayonnaise. They use it to brush their teeth and they say, don't waste it and then they spit it into this other thing and they use it as a lotion.

It's so gross but just the, don't waste it. Don't waste it and I just, it was just every week like that was the thing which is it's really nasty but it grabs your attention kind of but like, don't waste your life. Don't waste what you've been given. Don't invest in the temporal. Don't get lured and enticed by your own desire, right?

Don't waste your life. Walk not in the darkness but but the light. Walk in the light. First John one five through seven is very convicting about this. God is light in him.

There is no darkness. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, I think some of us have probably been in that situation before. I know I have. We lie. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin.

This is not a pull up your bootstraps sort of message either. This there is only one thing, one being that can help us with this. It's not our own strength, right? It's only by the power of the spirit that that will allow us to walk in this manner. Those next verses after our core verse, Ephesians five eight, says, for the fruit of light consist of all goodness, righteousness, and truth.

Testing what is pleasing to the Lord. Get up, sleeper, and rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. We need the spirit to defeat our flesh daily that's trying to get us into the darkness. Do y'all remember the the illustration that I shared about the rich man who was in the wagon and he's going on the way to receive this huge inheritance, right? And when his wagon breaks and he's on the side of the road and it's hot and he's sweating, covered in dust, and he's got a smile on his face.

Because he's headed to something so much greater. He has a hope. He has perspective on the situation. Jesus gives us the knowledge and perspective that's critical for walking with him. If while that guy was on the side of the road walking forgets that about the inheritance, then does his demeanor change?

Is he all of a sudden complaining about being on the side of the road? Probably. But he has his mind on the inheritance and and this for us, this is not just looking to the eternal inheritance. I think a lot of us can just only find comfort in our eternity when things are so grand. Well, one day, everything will be made right.

Yes. A 100% true. Focus on that but it's it's today also, right? We are free from the anxieties in this world. We are free from obsession with wanting just a little bit more.

Another toy camper behind me. Another business idea. We are free from those things. We are free from the bondage of sin. We are forgiven people.

Today and every day, we have access to God because of Jesus. Walking with him and talking with him like we're just saying. We can have fellowship with Him because of the work that Jesus did for us. Right? We can confess to Him how we have wandered astray, and He welcomes us with open arms.

He promises to wash us clean after we confess our sin. We're no longer slaves to this world or sin. We are free to walk with Christ. When when Chris and I were hiking, I see where you are now. I thought you're over there earlier.

On this 19 mile hike, it was like HD amazing views the whole time. Up paintbrush and down cascade. And we were thinking about what are all the analogies, you know, that we can use with hiking and walking with God and there are a lot but one just we kind of mentioned earlier with creation like as a person that's in the light, walking in the light, when you look at creation, you see the fingerprints of God and you worship the creator unlike the person who's just worshiping a rock or a crystal. When we were walking, we noticed like the trail often to move fast. You had to really focus on the trail.

You know, you're just hiking, hiking, focusing on the trail and you couldn't really look much at how all the beautiful views and so every once in a while, just stopped and just to look around and thank God for where we are. And I think for the... For our walk in the light, sometimes we've got to slow down and just take a breath and stop and look around at what God has given us in Christ. In the last two little analogies, one is our long term conversation. We walk together the whole time.

What does that relationship look like? As children of light or or we had some random encounters. One, you know, that it was just really quick. Hey, how's it going? Blah blah blah.

But one, the people were like interested mainly in him. I mean, look at him. And and they wanted to chat and ask questions. Oh, you're locals. It's like, hell, he's a local really.

I'm just living here. I'm local now maybe. Game and fish says I gotta wait a year. So anyway, how does that apply to our walk? We have people that we're on this journey with in the...

For the long haul. Lot of you are sitting right next to that person. And some of the some people that you know is a shorter term thing. And sometimes it's just a random encounter. But we meet people.

And if we're walking as children of light, what does that look like? For for we see we see a few examples in scripture. Before the resurrection, Philip meets Jesus And he found Nathaniel and he said, we have found the one Moses wrote about in the law and so did the prophets, Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth and he... Nathaniel says, what good can come from Nazareth? And he says, come and see.

We talked about this in small grid. I'm like, that's going in the sermon. Come and see. He's excited about Jesus and then when he does meet Jesus, Nathaniel does. He says, Rabbi, you are the son of God.

You are the king of Israel. And notice like that, what does Philip say? He doesn't, Philip didn't go to seminary. He didn't unpack a lot of stuff. He just said, come and see.

For the example from this week of that testimony, come and see my life. It's totally different now. Come and see. A few weeks ago, Tim Dalton in middle school class, he asked the question to the to the kids in the room. When you think of God, what do you think of?

And I was like, wow, that's a really good question. He was like, yeah, it's probably the most important question, right? What do you see? A lot of people like so if you're just in the context of come and see, if your view of God is, you know, like distant and like, how are you living your life? You know, like, that's not a come and see.

That's a come and run. He will judge one day, right? But but Jesus has with open arms welcomed us to fellowship with him. Isaiah 62, it talks about how God looks at us with the same view that the same way of looking like a a groom would look at the bride walking down the aisle. When I looked at Lauren walking down the aisle ten years ago almost exactly.

I like couldn't control myself. I was so overwhelmed with love and like, I can't believe I tricked her. You know, and I was just like, I was crying and I I felt like my face looked like this but in the video, it didn't look that bad but it was just, I just couldn't. I I was so in love with her and I still am. Like, it's just every day.

I'm like, you are so amazing. Somebody she met with somebody earlier this week and they're like, you really outkicked your coverage. I was like, I know. I look at her like that. Oh, the only one that I look at like that.

Jesus looks at us like that. Come and see him. Right? Like, that's who we want to see. So I want to do this.

This this is not super normal, but... And the band can go ahead and come back up. We're gonna be a little bit early, it looks like. Whatever you're... You take notes with, which I don't think most of you take notes, but if you have a thing to take notes with, if you use a phone and a notes app, I want you to think.

For the last eight minutes, who do you walk with in the long term? The whole hike. And how are you walking as a child of light in that relationship? And who in that who in those in that category? And I wrote I wrote this down for myself too.

Long term that doesn't know Jesus. And are you inviting them to come and see him? Write a name there. And then in the in the short term, maybe somebody you work with that's probably short term relatively to your whole life. Write a name.

Who is not following the Lord that you are with regularly in this season that that God's given you favor with in relationship that you need to invite to come and see right that name now. Maybe the random interactions, you just keep running into this one person or there's somebody that you ran into last week and you're like, man, I wish I shared something. Write that name down and pray that the Lord would give you the words to speak to these people. Write the name so that you can be intentional and commit that you will go talk to this person. If we believe in the darkness that is the reality that we were in, that that is the reality and that people who don't know Jesus are stuck there and can't work.

There's nothing that they can do to get out except put their faith and hope in Jesus. All we have to do is invite them to come and see. That's all we have to do. Come and see the one who rescued me from darkness. Come and see.

Walk with me. Look at the evidence of our creator. Walk with me. Come and see. Let's confess our need for the blood of Jesus to wash us clean.

Walk with me. Slow down. Maybe pause on the trail and gaze at our savior. Walk with God who loves us so much immeasurably more than we can comprehend and enjoy him forever. I invite you to to to stand as we close and worship and if you're with someone that is a believer that's in that long term, ask them to hold you accountable to who those people are in your life.

If we all share with one person in the town, what would that do? It's amazing to think about. Lord, we thank. No. Yes.

Gosh. Lord, we pray that you give us the joy because of the reality that you have rescued us from darkness into light. And if and if one of us is in the room that has not experienced that, Lord, we pray that you would draw that person to you into a life that is infinitely better today and for eternity. In Jesus name, amen.