Ephesians 5 at verse 1, therefore the followers of God as dear children, and walk in law, as Christ also has loved us and given himself for us, and offering, and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling of Roma, but for an occasion and all uncleanness or covetousness, let not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints. Neither filthiness nor foolish talking nor coarse-justing, but you're not fitting, but while they're giving a thanks. For this you know that no fornication, unclean person, or covetous men, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, but because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not be partakers with them. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord, walk as children of light. For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth, proving what is acceptable to the Lord. To have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. For the shame will even just speak of those things which are done by them in secret, but all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light. For whatever makes manifest is light. Therefore he says, the way you who sleep arrives from the dead in Christ will give you light. See them that you walk circumspectantly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil. Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is, and do not be drunk with wine in which is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit speaking to one another in songs and hymns and spiritual songs singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. Giving thanks always for all things to God, the Father, and the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Submitting to one another in the fear of God. Thanks be to God. Of us pray. In thankfulness do we come to this by word and trust the Spirit of God, Father, for enlightenment, for the enlarging of our understanding in all wisdom. We pray through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen. In Proverbs in all of the Bible, wisdom is to be tried. Wisdom is a possession. To be pursued, it says here that we are not to be unwise, but therefore why? What is wisdom? I give you a profound definition. Are you ready? Wisdom is simply knowing what to do with what you know in the Word of God. That isn't hard. Wisdom is not information. Wisdom is not knowledge. We must have information and knowledge, indeed, to be wise, but there are people filled with knowledge, with information, with biblical facts, who are not wise. Wisdom is knowing, as unto the Lord, what to do with what we know. And what it says here that we are to be wise. We are to understand that is the immediate context of this obligatory command to be filled with the Spirit of God. We have on these Sunday mornings been in something of an unofficial sermon series. I haven't labeled it a series, but since the day of petty cost, the last Sunday of May, we have considered the three commands related to fullness, or the Son, or the Father, or fully at work in a light and in the church. We look at this command again in its context this morning. And I just remind you, when we look at the command itself, we understand that principally by way of the contrast of 5, 18 and Ephesians, the Spirit's fullness has to do with control. And one of the fruits of the Spirit is self-control. I want us to understand that we cannot use Spirit-filled as a code word for those who claim certain special gifts. It is used that way, but the Bible does not use it that way. And it's an interesting thing to me, among just conservative Christians, that we give quick lip service to the truth of the Bible is our only infallible rule for faith and practice. And yet so quickly, so quickly, do we set that aside? And except claims and experiences, as though they validate, even when they are in conflict with Scripture. The fullness of the Son is in chapter 1, the fullness of the Father in chapter 3, the fullness of the Spirit, chapter 5, and Ephesians, and nowhere in this epistle, I repeat, is there a word about miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit, nowhere. And I would ask you in understanding this command, and I believe joining me in a Holy desire that Trinity be a church knowing the fullness and freedom and fruitfulness of God, the Holy Spirit, of God the Son, of God the Father, that we understand what the indications are in the Scripture of the fullness of the Spirit. What is the context then? In that which precedes the command in verses 1 through 17 of Ephesians, the key word for the context is walk. There are three signs. Five, two, walk in law. Five, eight, walk in the light. Five, fifteen, walk, circumspecially. Some of you with keen memories may recall that years ago I preached those three points in this portrait, and it was one of those times when I just assisted the Apocalypse Paul gently. In the liberation that is, you had two elves, law and light, you should have had a third, right? So instead of circumspecting limits, that's what circumspection is, setting boundaries limits, walk in law, walk in light, walk within limits verbally. That's what it means to be filled with the Spirit, that's the context. The context has nothing to do with miraculous gifts or claims, it has to do with conduct, it has to do with cancer, and then following the command in verse 18, in verses 19, 20 and 21, worship, worship is invigorated when there is fullness to Spirit, and it relates to our relationship properly in worship. It tends on participation and presence, the fullness of the Spirit, in worship, whatever the style, I say again, let it be clear. Our repeat is often enough, perhaps it will be clear. I don't require everyone to take our style, and every right, be wrong, but I don't want them who choose another style, noise the exuberance as it may be to say, that because we have not their style, we have not the fullness of the Spirit in our midst. worship, these are the arenas in which the fullness of the Spirit gives evidence of its presence and power. And then there's a third area, beginning in 542, where it says, why submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, and all the way down into chapter 16 through verse 9, it is what I call workability. The fullness of the Spirit is a very workable thing. It works as indicated in the last section of chapter 5 and marriage, and gets things in order. It occurs to me that we need fewer people making their livelihood off a seminar on marriage and family life, and we need more understanding and implementation of what the Bible teaches. The Spirit's fullness has worked out in the right world, the relationships and marriage, and in child-parent relationships, chapter 6, 1 through 4. There it is. The Spirit's fullness is workable in those relationships. Have been verses 5 through 9 of Ephesians 6 looking at the context of the command to be filled with the Spirit. Business affairs, your work world. You can't have the fullness of the Spirit segmented off to Sunday morning and to this sanctuary, the fullness of the Spirit works in the whole arena of life and business affairs, daily commerce, profession. There's the greater context of being filled with the Spirit. Walk, worship, workability, and the home in marriage with children, and in daily commerce. We look at the walk. First and foremost, we would conclude because it precedes the command, and there is a therefore logically in the language here, in light of the walk, therefore do not be unwise in who controls your mind and emotions and decisions, but be wise in the control, the fullness of the Holy Spirit, the walk in love. Love has got similar, it's not similar. Nothing wrong with those things. Sometimes we get those things confused. The love becomes very weak, mushy, calvary love. As someone else has said long before me, was tough love, walk in love, even as Christ also loved us, and has given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet, smelling aroma. He's the standard. He did not go to the cross in your stead out of sentiment or feeling good about you or friendliness.
He went because consciously he decided to love you with an everlasting love, and drove you with cords of love, and that in Old Testament language about the fact that official system provides a sweet, smelling aroma to God. But will you notice in every one of these walk words, walk in love, walk in the light, walk within limits, there is both a positive and a negative. Every time, related to walking in love, there is a positive command to follow, and there are negative commands about things to avoid. That's our job. The Spirit's job is to point those things out. The Spirit's job is to prompt the will. The Spirit's job is to convict us of wrong. It is our job to do what we know. That's wisdom acting wisely. It is unto the Lord Jesus, and it is a strength of the Spirit who will be at doing what we know to be right, avoiding what we know to be wrong. And so the Lord Jesus, giving us an example about loving us, his life, his sacrifice, smells good to God. That's what a sweet smelling aroma is, the Old Testament sacrificial system. I'm not sure any of those sacrifices to the physical knows smells good. I don't see how it can be, but animals and blood and fire, but to God is pleased, acceptable, and orders offensive. I want to be careful about being too earthy sometimes in the pulpit. This is the sacred desk. It is to be guarded. The Puritans call it the sacred desk, and I concur in the terminology. There are things inappropriate here. And you don't want to say that unless by the Spirit we are walking in love and life and within limits, all of our religious experience can smell bad to God.
That over sometimes being death, don't say. I understand, lost his championship, retriever, depicting that random out of the lizard, he turned out to be a perfect specimen, wonderful dog named Tingsford for the charcoal. It has appeared. We did everything to find him, and they I say it delicately. Finally, we smell sin. Fitting by a snake, we think he burrowed down in the ivy and straw far at the back of a deep loss. We all cried. He was dead. He smelled bad. A dead life, religious, active, noisy, a dead church, noisy, full, active programs can smell bad.
A walk in love, Trinity. So, but the Spirit, understanding what the rid of the Lord is, putting into practical practice, Calvary's love. Or light, he cast his light, far beyond information, far beyond fact, upon the sacred page and shows us things positively and negatively again notice that, positively according to walking in the light. Verse 10 is to prove what is acceptable to the Lord, and the negatively beginning in verse 11, as we walk in the light, we have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness. Rather, we expose them. One of the clear evidence is that we are not filled with the Spirit, and thus walking in the light is that we get accustomed to things we ought not to be accustomed to. We accommodate things from culture and society with a reproof thing. I interject in the date 15, what I will repeat now, at 11, that if the Lord carries next Sunday evening on the holiday, planned to preach on the relationship again of church and state as I did last year, on Independence Day weekend. This year I trust to say what it is the church should speak to the state and in turn what we should expect of the state. I worry of conservative Christians and the criticism of the state. There are some corrections that need to be made. I don't know how it will come to us, and I don't want you to tell me. I don't support the incumbent in the boyhouse. But we have asked the state to do what the church and home ought to be doing, and we criticize the state for not doing our job. We have become accommodated and accustomed in the church to all sorts of things that smell bad in heaven. Walk in the Spirit, in the fullness, in the light of what you and I understand and know to be the will of God. Walk in the light and prove things acceptable, pleasing to the Lord. Here's the question we ask. Not much wrong with a thing, but does it please the Lord? And how does it please the Lord? When we begin to ask the question and it ought to drop away from us in sanctifying maturity, we are moving very close to the edge of darkness. But when we ask, Robert, how does it please the Lord? Does it please the Lord? We are moving away from darkness into the center of light. Be filled with the Spirit. To walk in the light, asking that question, how does it please the Lord? How will it praise Him and cross for His people? Not can I do it and still be a Christian? What's wrong with it? Walk in the light as He is in the light,
walk circumspectly. There are limits to be set. There are edges at tassels to be avoided, not to be a fool, and the Christian has plunged to fruitlessness because he lived on the edge of hell. Let him who thinks he stands. Take heed with circumspection. Let's see fall.
Walk in love, light, limits. There are things to set aside for sake, be separate from. Our problem often is not understanding. Rather falls more in the category, not wanting to understand. It might interrupt. It might disrupt. It might require change. So many times we use that as an excuse, I don't understand that you didn't want to understand. Very likely. The spirit of God will only be faithful in giving His fullness. But our responsibility is a determination to do what we are commanded and to avoid what is forbidden to be filled with the Spirit is now to be passive, but to pursue arduously even in the power and strength of the Spirit, the walk. You can, for their nottenerious spirit, your whole, your life. I don't want to perpetuate religious activity. I want to know the fullness of the Spirit and the fullness of the Son and the fullness of the Father and all the fruitfulness that comes thereby. Now it's the same fall having spoken of our walk, our deportment, our decisions, our conduct, our character. Don't be foolish. I understand it. Set your mind with determination to understand it. The Spirit will show us what to do with what we know
I close by reading from Philip's translation. This portion we have considered in Ephesians 5, J. B. Phillips was saved in the Church of England as an adult. He said about to put the Bible in modern English, modern British English you understand, which if you will allow me is a noteworthy to evolve modern American English. J. B. Phillips did not claim to make this an original translation. It is a paraphrase and therefore I do not use it regularly to read and preach from in the pulpit but I use it supplementally. Listen, just listen to the lesson and see if you don't get it and understand. Be willing to understand. That's the requirement. Be willing to understand it. The children copy their fathers. You as God's children are to copy him. Live your lives in law. The same sort of law which Christ gives us and which he perfected when he expressed his love and gave himself up for us in the sacrifice to God. Put us for sexual immorality in all its forms and the itch to get your hands of what belongs to other people. Don't even talk about such things. There are no fit subjects for Christians to talk about. The keynote of your conversation should not be nastiness or sadness or flippancy but a sense of all that we owe to God. For this box you can be quite certain that neither the immoral or the dirty mind and or the covetous man which latter is in effect worshiping a false God has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and the God.
Don't let anyone fool you on this point. However plausible his argument is these very things which bring down the wrath of God upon the disobedience. Have nothing to do with men like that. Once you were darkness now you are light. Live that is children of the light. The light produces and then Christ the opposite of sins like these. Everything that is wholesome and good and true. Let your lives be living proofs of the things which please God steer clear of the activities of darkness. Let your lives show by contrast how very infusefile these things are. You know the sorts of things I mean to detail their secret doing is really too shameful for me to write. For light is capable of showing up everything for what it really is. It is even possible after all that happened with you. For light to turn the thing it shines upon his light also. Live light then. With a due sense of responsibility not as men who do not know the meaning and purpose of light but of those who do. Make the best use of your time. Despite all the difficulties of these things don't be vague but firmly thrust what you know to be the will of the Lord. Wisdom knowing what to do what what you know God give us wisdom in this place. Amen.