Transcript

Let’s go back to Ephesians. We’re in Ephesians 5 and, you know, when you think about what God ordained and then indeed did accomplish through his Son’s death, burial and resurrection, if you are a studier of the text or listen well when the text is preached, the glory of it is quite overwhelming, the righteousness that was there fulfilled on our behalf, the wonder of his love, the glories of his grace and mercy toward us, and all of that’s been a foundation stone in Ephesians, the first few chapters. I don’t know why I’m telling you this but I sometimes receive emails and requests from people who think that I’m preaching heresy and there’s a particular lady, bless her heart, and she is just convinced that I am the curse on the world right now and that she’s on a crusade to fix me or protect the world from me, and she just can’t believe that God could be sovereign in all things, including men’s salvation. She just cannot grasp any aspect of the great doctrines of grace and she wants to talk with me. She’s just got to talk with me and I sent her a little email back and I said, “You listen to all of my sermons on Ephesians 1 and 2 and then I will talk to you.” And she doesn’t want to do that, so I haven’t talked to her.

So saying all that to say there are glorious and wondrous truths that, thank God, do not fit into our fallen capacity to comprehend. Did you hear what I just said? You are not capable of grasping in any comprehensive or aspect of logic all the glories and the wonders and the truths of God’s great sovereign plan for us. Now we get bits and pieces, we, as the writer says, do see through a glass dimly, we’re seeing some of it and we’re seeing more of it which gives us this great joyous anticipation of what we will begin to take in in heaven. Can you imagine to finally have a perfect mind and a pure heart to contemplate the wonders of God and the wonders of the grace of God shown to us through Jesus Christ when we get to heaven. It’s going to be a joy beyond all the joys earth could possibly muster and put together, and that’s for us. That’s coming for us.

When you get to Ephesians 5, as I’ve been saying for several chapters now, you’re in this practical part where Paul is exhorting this church in Ephesus, this church nestled in the most perverse, immoral, wicked culture, and so it’s a culture that, in fact, is a lot worse than our culture, if that’s hard to believe. I mean, we’re catching up fast but it used to be in America when I was a boy, the things that we’re seeing today promoted, celebrated, out in the light, they existed in America but in some dark alley somewhere and nobody knew much about it. And by the way, that’s good. It needs to be back in the dark alleys. But today things are being paraded and embraced and celebrated in our culture. I lay most of the blame for that, at least in the last couple of decades, to Barack Obama. Nobody gave such clear unabashed efforts to glory in what the Bible calls wickedness as he did. I’m just sorry, he did. I’m glad and I’m super thankful that a minority person was President of the United States. I think that’s a wonderful thing for us, but his viewpoint was wicked and perverse, especially when it came to moral issues.

Well, this coming out into light and just living in open unabashed celebration of perversion and sexual immorality and wickedness, is what the ancient world was like. The ancient Greeks and Romans were just immersed in outward immorality and wickedness and so in that context Paul is writing to believers. He’s writing to these Ephesians who have been saved and now they’re to be different. They’re to walk in a different way because of what God has done in them and should be now doing through them.

So here’s how he says it in Ephesians 5, beginning in verse 8.

8 for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light 9 (for the fruit of the Light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth), 10 trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. 11 Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them [it even has the idea of reproving them]; 12 for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret. 13 But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light, for everything that becomes visible is light. 14 For this reason it says, “Awake, sleeper, And arise from the dead, And Christ will shine on you.”

Very simply, I’m going to talk about “Let It Shine,” and that’s what Paul is saying, “Let the reality of the true light that is now you, let it shine out.” So, I.: transformed into light. By God’s doing, we are transformed into light. In verse 8 he very simply says there, “for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light.” Now let’s first of all talk about darkness. You were formerly darkness. In the Bible, darkness has the idea of ignorance and that’s one of the things you have to constantly remind yourself of, that when your friends at school, young people, or folks at the factory, the ball team or in the neighborhood, darkness is the idea, first of all, of ignorance, and as I was saying, you have to constantly remind yourself as you’re living in this culture, as you share your viewpoint, the principles you live by, as you share your Christian convictions, you’ve got to understand the people around you, if they’re not born again, have an ignorance in them. It’s not that they’re ignorant people but they’re spiritual abiding in ignorance. They do not have the capacity to grasp that our convictions are wise and good and best and profitable.

Now, one of the points Paul is getting to: we should so live in them that they should watch our lives, our families, etc. They’ll know we’re not perfect but they’ll see that, “Hey, I think there is something special, even superior, about how they live.” But they’re ignorant to grasp it. Where you and I grasp it, joy in it, treasure it, the world calls us foolish, actually exposing their own darkened foolishness.

So it has the idea of ignorance. It also has the idea of error, and that is that they’re completely and absolutely wrong. You know, I have been unabashed and very straightforward about the error in our culture today, all the things about just sexuality, what is right and wrong; what’s the definition of marriage, and on and one we could go, this whole concept of gender confusion. Of course they say they’re not confused, I mean, little three and four year old boys and girls can now decide what gender they are. What kind of absurd insanity? You’ve got to hold it that way, brother. You can’t say, “Well, da, da, da, da.” Look, it’s wrong. It’s in error. It’s darkness. Darkness. Darkness. But not only ignorance and error but it also has the idea of evil. It’s absolutely evil. It’s against the holiness and true things of God.

Now Paul’s writing to a people who have been saved out of that culture. “You’re formerly darkness, you’re formerly of that but you’re saved out of that and the culture you’re still living in is still deeply immersed in that darkness.” So, of course, he’s saying obviously, “Walk in this new light.”

A couple of real quick cross references back just to let it sink into our bone marrow a little bit about how dark we were and how dark this world is. In Ephesians 2:1-3, “And you were dead,” that means continuous, it’s a present tense, you were being dead, you were in the state of spiritual deadness, “in your trespasses and sins,” verse 2, chapter 2, “in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” We’re not going to go into this but in concluding that whole little summary there, he says, “Your very core being, your nature, called for God’s holy wrath against you. That’s what you were. That’s the darkness you were in.” Now he’s not saying that all of a sudden you are performing this explicitly holy lifestyle of true and pure light. That’s not what he’s saying. He’s saying in God’s eyes that is now your standing. You are of the light now due to the merits and the provisions of Jesus Christ on your behalf. You now stand as one of light, of holiness, or even righteousness.

Then a couple of other verses. Chapter 4, verses 17 and 18 where he says, “So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles,” that’s their world, their culture of the day, “also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart.” So he says that’s what you were and then he says very clearly and emphatically, verse 8, chapter 5, “but now you are Light.” That means you have no longer ignorance, you have knowledge. You’re no longer in error, you are now of righteousness. You’re no longer evil, you’re of goodness.

Now I think there’s a little side note here we need to make and that is in what the text does not say. The text does not say you are in the light. It doesn’t say that. The text does not say you are to be seeking the light. It says you were darkness and now you are light, not just in it, you are it. You’re not seeking it, you are it. It’s what you presently have become. Like he says in Matthew 5:14, “You are the light of the world.” You see, if Christianity is just a matter of living in the light or seeking the light, then it’s no different than any other religion or any other philosophy. You go anywhere, anyplace and ask the people, “What are you trying to do?” We’re trying to find the light of truth. We’re trying to obey and live out the light of truth or the light as we understand it. Everybody is doing that. That’s true everywhere but something has happened in Christianity. There’s a miraculous, actual, tangible work of God in the hearts of men and women, boys and girls, who have been born again, who have believed on Jesus Christ, whereby they are now changed by God and they are now become light. There’s a difference in you.

Now it’s not completely worked out through you yet, but you are different and you’re to walk in that difference. That’s what he’s getting to. But Christianity offers the hope others do not have. The others are on a quest for something, we’ve already obtained something. The others are on a quest to become something, we’ve already become that something. It is real in us already. It’s free. This newness we know, this light we know, this light we’ve become is free, “For by grace,” Ephesians 2:8, “For by grace are you saved through faith, that not of yourself, it is the gift of God.”

So while we need to be – now listen, church – very bold and very confident that we know the light of the truth, at the same time are very humble and very grateful that it’s been given to us as a free gift. It’s one of the things that I find quite repulsive about some groups who claim to have exclusive knowledge of the truth and that is the great arrogance sometimes that accompanies that. Pam and I talked to a lady recently and she was talking about religious things and the way she came across, and I said, “I bet she’s So-and-so denomination.” She said, “Why?” I said it’s just the arrogance. Just so arrogant about the achievement and the accomplishment of the truth or righteousness in their lives. Well, when you’ve really been saved, I’m not saying it happens immediately but you grow any period of time in Christ Jesus, it builds a humility but a confidence. Both of those should walk side-by-side.

So it’s free and it’s certainly all of God, for we are, Ephesians 2:10, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” So this aspect of us being transformed into light is a God- initiated, God-performed transformation of our heart and progressively in our lives, and it’s a transformation that is both immediate, progressive and future. It’s immediate in that you immediately stand justified in the eyes of God. You didn’t gain a justification in your lifestyle yet, you didn’t earn it, but by believing on Christ and on his merits and work on your behalf, you gain a standing of justification. That’s immediate. And then there is a progressiveness to it, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” Then there is a future glorification. So the immediate is justification which comes on the heels of regeneration. If you press me down, I’m going to tell you regeneration is first, justification is next, and then there’s a progressive sanctification in this life, then of course, one day we will be like him, the Bible says, and that’s the future glorification. But today now by the means of Christ, we are light. We’re not just in it, we are not just seeking it, it’s what I am.

II. Our duty, therefore, is to walk out that light. To walk in that light or to walk out that light. I’m sure as Paul writes to the Ephesian Christians and it’s interesting the kind of things that he warns these Greek cities, Roman/Greek cities to make sure they’re repenting of and keeping out of their church, and it’s the very open, brazen, vulgar immoralities that were so common in their culture. He’s saying, “These are no longer to be common in your fellowship. These are to be out of your fellowship. They are contrary to everything you’re about. It’s your duty to not walk in darkness, but now to walk in light.”

So he says in the last part of verse 8 of our text in Ephesians 5:8, “walk as children of Light.” Determine to live out the new transformed nature that is now the new true you. That’s who you truly are. You see, you truly are God’s. You truly are a righteous one. You truly are a saint, a holy one, and you truly are light. Now, he’s saying strive toward. You have a new capacity in you by the grace of God to be able to begin a progressive sanctification process whereby more and more you live out the light that you are. And that’s why I think a church, a congregation with no concept of trying to have compassionate loving accountability and discipline in the membership is a great contradiction in words. You know that at one time we had over 1,000 people on our membership rolls that almost never came. I mean, if you’ve got that many people that you say, “These are my brothers and sisters in Christ, these are my fellow comrades of light,” and the world looks at them and says, “Are you kidding me? They don’t look like light. They don’t even show up at your meetings. They don’t even show up at the light meetings. We see them at the clubs. We see them cursing out the refs at the ballparks. We see them doing this and that. We see them at the divorce court trading in their spouse for another one like the rest of the world. We’re wondering where the light is.” And do you know what I say to what they’re saying? Amen, I am too.

I mean, look, every single one of us, and count Jeff Noblit in on this, we struggle, we have to repent and we have to keep going for God. Amen? But you don’t have to walk knowingly, premeditatively in the darkness as would be common in the Ephesian culture. We’re not to be walking like that. That’s not who we are. Our behavior, he’s saying, must increasingly conform to our new identity as children of light. Charles Hodge, the Presbyterian theologian, said, “Christians should walk in a way consistent with their character as men illumined and sanctified by their union with Jesus Christ.”

Now in verse 9, he says, “for the fruit of the Light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth.” So he says as we walk this out, there are three things that will be true in us and shining out of us: goodness, righteousness, and truth. Goodness, that is, not evil should be the common trait of our lives. You can’t be a good light emitter in your work if you’re the biggest gossip in the factory. You’re not a good light emitter in your work if you’re cheating on your spouse and on and on and on we could go. That’s not goodness. Actually even looking this up and looking at some Greek scholars, I have a difficult time putting a real concise definition on this idea of goodness, but generally, you know, it’s one of those things where when you hear goodness, you kind of know what it is. It’s a person without malice, without ill-will. They want to do the best and be the best and believe the best about people. There’s a goodness and for the children of God, the children of light, there generally ought to be a goodness about us, that which is produced when we are living in a way in which our Creator created us to live; when we bear fruit that is in keeping with our God’s good and perfect desires for us.

Then righteousness. I think that has the idea of moral character that conforms to the law. Goodness may deal a little more with a man’s motives and with what he’s striving to achieve, how he deals with situations. Righteousness has a more austere sense of the law is about what’s righteous and true and upright, and I am a man who strives to live after that righteousness.

Goodness, righteousness, that’s all of the light, and then truth. Not falsehood. We live in truth. That’s one of the things that really separates true Christianity from all of this mushy nonsense that’s in our culture today where people condone all kinds of unrighteous, unlawful behavior because somebody involved in that unrighteous and unlawful behavior is sweet or they’re kind or they’re generous or they’re thoughtful. You can be sweet and kind and generous and thoughtful and in God’s eyes wicked. Very wicked. And I hear, and ladies, don’t be offended but silly women. You are principled women. You know the truths of God, but silly women are women that just run around following their emotions. Silly women get all tied up in, “Well, I don’t know that this is really wrong because they’re so sweet. Or they’re so kind. They’re the nicest people.” So? It’s just a satanic decoy. It’s a satanic counterfeit. It’s not true goodness because it’s not of the truth. Listen, we’re to speak the truth in love. Love, yes, but truth and love, amen? And help your children, raise your children understanding the difference between a worldly concept of kindness, sweetness, goodness, thoughtfulness, but a person may lack truth in what they’re about.

So we’re about the truth. So in joyful love of God, never getting over the glory of this grace that’s been shown us, and that’s chapters 1 through 3 of Ephesians, folks, if you get over chapters 1 through 3, you’re not going to get in chapters 4 and through the rest of the book. You can’t get over the glories of sovereign grace that saves you, the unmerited favor, the glories of election and predestination and sealing by the Spirit, and redemption through his blood. The glories of that have to grasp you. So we can’t strive to walk in darkness. We can’t allow ourselves to get in the rut and the pattern of walking in things that are not goodness, and things that are not righteous and in things that are not of the truth. Why? Because we haven’t gotten over the glories of this grace and we’re striving to walk and work out our salvation. We’re striving to manifest the fruit of light, which is, as he says here, goodness, righteousness and truth. This glorious spectrum of these three virtues, goodness, righteousness and truth, should be shining out of my life and impacting others.

I don’t know why, but I thought about, I don’t know if campers do this anymore, but campers when they go to the campground, a lot of times they put up colored lights. Do you remember the colored lights? Do you still do that when you go camping? You’re really dated if you do that. You’re really out of it, you know, you’re not cool, I guess. I don’t know. Things have a way of coming back in, but nevertheless, when you put up a blue lightbulb, it puts out blue light, and when you put up a red lightbulb, it puts out red light, you put up an orange lightbulb, it puts out orange light. Well, when God turns on his light, it’s goodness and righteousness and truth is what he emits.

He says, “That’s not what you’re trying to be,” he says, “that’s what you are. Cultivate it. Build it. Strengthen it. Walk in it. Walk it out.” And he uses a phrase here in verse 10, “trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.” The scholars tell us there’s a better translation, proving. In other words, when you live out these things, it becomes self- evident that this is truly right or this is truly best. When you walk in the light, the fruit of your life clearly proves that you’re pleasing to the Lord and the fruit of his life is shining out through your life, means you’ve passed the test. You’ve proven that you’re of the light and you’re properly admitting that life, that by contrast the unsaved man can’t do that. He can’t shine this light.

Now, let me go on to my third point here, and that is: my duty to spread the light. I’m transformed by light. I’m to walk in that light and then as I walk in that light, I have an evangelistic spirit. I want to spread that light to others. To be honest, there are some things in these verses that no one seems to be able to get to the bottom of, but I think we know the gist of what he’s saying.

Look at it there, if you begin in verse 11 and go through verse 14, “Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them.” Now I don’t think he’s saying go about it in the factory and in the world and call people out and put your finger in their face all the time. There is a time and place, perhaps, to confront a person about sin, but you’ve got to be careful of doing that just out in the world. I think it’s more the idea of as you live in the light, your life shines and becomes an instrument in God’s hand to illumine and expose the evil that’s in the culture.

Verse 12, “for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret. But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light, for everything that becomes visible is light. For this reason it says, ‘Awake, sleeper, And arise from the dead, And Christ will shine on you.'” There’s a clear picture of the new birth there. There’s a clear picture of one coming out of the darkness, arising from the slumber of darkness and coming into the light, and part of that is because your influence of light helps bring them to the truth. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard it and I’ve heard it many, many times from many, many people, and that is that someone will be working around you, somebody knows you because of your family members maybe, or they know you in school, young people, or wherever it might be, and they begin to start asking questions. They begin to seek you out. A man just told me this week, a man at work came to him and asked about how to know the Lord. Well, why did he come to that man and ask about the Lord? Because he saw some light. His life has been reproved by the light of that person’s life and then he begins to want to know more about how to know this God who gave him this light or who made him this light.

So I want to charge you this Sunday evening to stir up within you, let’s stir up within all of us an evangelistic zeal, as it were. We have a duty to walk in this light but also shine this light. Two aspects here. First of all, through our individual lives, we want to be shining this light. Paul told the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 3:2, he says, “You are our letter, written in our hearts, and you’re known and read by all men.” You’re known and read by all men. I’ve said many times in the past that the purity of the church affects the power of the Gospel. The purity of the church affects the power of the Gospel. In Acts 5, God is saving people, we’re talking thousands, and all of a sudden God shut the entire revival evangelistic campaign down and dealt with Ananias and Sapphira, purified the church, then we get to verse 14 of Acts 5, the evangelism cranks back up again. So my point is if we are not as a people serious about walking in the light, if we are letting Joe over here run around and he’s gambling on Saturday night, and Tom over here, he’s clearly living in adultery on his wife, and whatever it may be, I didn’t mean to just pick on the men. I want to be gender equal, you know. There are ladies doing stuff too. And we are indifferent to that, I am convinced our usefulness by God to shine the light, the evangelistic light, becomes greatly diminished. You see, I don’t understand exactly how that works, but I do believe that’s clearly taught in Scripture. The purity of the church affects the power of the Gospel. Not that the Gospel loses its power, it’s that God turns off his power. That doesn’t mean we have to be perfect. God knows we’re just striving and repenting, but we don’t walk in darkness. We don’t applaud darkness. We do not celebrate darkness. We do not affirm darkness. And we are not tolerant of known habitual outward darkness.

I was thinking about this before I came up here tonight and I make this very clear all the time because it’s a good and important biblical truth: you should never be a member of this church and fear that if there’s something you’re wrestling with and something you’re struggling with and repenting of, that it’s going to be exposed and made a big public scene here. We’re never going to do that. If someone is humble and they’re struggling, they will be dealt with with utmost confidentiality, and if you want to get this pastor’s ire up, you want to see me get angry, then you deal with a brother or sister who is genuinely trying to do better and you go flashing their sins that they may have confessed to you around other people. That’s wrong. Even the text says here there are things done in secret that don’t even need to be spoken about and brought about. My point being as we talk about being a pure people and light people, it doesn’t mean that we’re unkind. It doesn’t mean that we don’t have grace and discretion in how we help one another and counsel one another through things, and we’re always doing that here.

But nevertheless, saying all that to say this: our light needs to be shining. We need to be thinking about sharing the Gospel with others but making sure our lifestyle is emitting such goodness and such righteousness and such truth that our Gospel message has validity and believe-ability.

Well, through our personal lives and then, secondly, through a team effort. Haven’t talked about this in a long time. Probably Brother David has, but I have not. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 12:29, “All are not apostles, are they? All are not prophets, are they? All are not teachers, are they? All are not workers of miracles, are they?” So not everyone does the same thing. We’re to be a team effort and in your small group, you’re a small group evangelistic team. And I want to challenge every small group to rekindle an evangelistic flame in your small group. Stir your men and challenge your ladies to bring the names of those before the class that are unsaved: family members, friends, work associates, or whoever they may be that are yet unsaved. And pray over them. You know, every time we meet in pray as a staff or elders, not every time as a staff, but every elder meeting for sure, we have a list of people we’re praying for, that we’re reaching out to with the Gospel who give indications they’re being convicted by the Lord, and that helps us to keep mindful of the chore, the task, even the duty of evangelism.

So let me challenge you in your small groups. Get that before your heart. You say, “Well, I’m just not real stirred about that.” It doesn’t matter. Do it and you’ll get stirred about it. Pray for them and your heart will be stirred about it. So stir up the evangelistic zeal and as a team, you know, you have pastors and teachers who do their job and all of us, maybe you’re not a pastor or teacher but you can invite others to come and hear the Gospel, enroll them in a small group. Find a lost person and share the light with them by enrolling them in a small group, enrolling them in the next membership class. Of course, always invite them to a church service to sit under the preaching of the Gospel. Invite them to a special event. I know of lost men coming to the men’s fellowship this weekend because men that want to see them exposed to the light of our men and to the Gospel have invited them to come.

So all of us can be thinking in these ways, and my experience has been that I might be praying for this guy and reaching out to him, and praying for this one and reaching out to him, and praying for this one and reaching out to him, and then lo and behold, a guy will just come by the office and get converted. God just seems to have a way of not honoring your scheme but honoring the fact that you’re trying to be a witness. Are you hearing me? He’ll save the guy you least expected. But I’ve told you so many times, let me say it again: never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever give up on a soul. Don’t you ever say, “Well, it’s too late for them. They’ve gone too far. They’ve pushed God.” No, look, as long as they’re still breathing, grace can reach them. If God saves them, there’s always time.

Now that doesn’t mean we should tell them, not be urgent about it. Absolutely we should be imploring them, “You must repent and believe.” By the way, you don’t tell a person to wait until they feel something, you tell them to repent and believe. That’s hyper- Calvinism. That’s not where we are. You don’t wait until they feel something, you tell them, “You need to believe on Christ. You need to trust Christ. Tell him you’re a sinner and tell him you want him as Lord and Savior.”

So not all of us can do that directly but all of us can be a part of a team effort to pray for, reach out to, shine the light we have before them. All of us can share something directly about the way the Lord has saved us, though. I love the illustration of Philip in John 1:43- 46, “The next day He purposed to go into Galilee, and He found Philip. And Jesus said to him, ‘Follow Me.’ Now Philip was from Bethsaida, of the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote–Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.’ Nathanael said to him, ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.'” That may be what you need to tell somebody, “Look, Christ is real and he can change your life. Just come and see. Just come. Would you come and see? Would you come and sit under the preaching of the word for a couple of months with me at my church? I’ll buy you lunch every Sunday before you go home. Just come and see.” All of us can reach out to the lost.

He says here that we are those who reprove. We go out and shine the light. That includes a Gospel witness but it also includes a lifestyle that has goodness and righteousness and truth in it.

Well, let me close. Let me just read this little story to you. I found this years ago. I just thought it was important. Some years ago at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Washington, DC, the President of the United States spoke and he said what the broadcasters wanted to hear and he closed by quoting John 3:16, and all of those present became ecstatic. They lept to their feet. They applauded until long after the President had left the platform. It seemed as if revival had broken out in the nation’s capital. The next speaker was Charles Colson. Do you remember Charles Colson? He went to prison during the Nixon Watergate scandal but he came to know Christ and I think Charles Colson because a real and genuine believer. Anyway, he says Charles Colson came up and his experience had taught him that both the limitations and the seductions of politics. He said that he was glad to have heard the President’s speech and believed the Bible quotation, but he added, “We must remember that the kingdom of God is not going to arrive on Airforce One.”

Getting the right guy in office isn’t going to save any souls. Are you listening to me? Maybe sometimes getting the wrong guy in office will help save souls. As I’ve said, you know, there probably hasn’t been a greater revival of evangelism in any country in recent centuries like there has been in communist China. Now does that mean that we’re to hope for that? Well, goodness, no. We’re to pray and hope for something different, of course, but God works in mysterious ways.

The article goes on and says: that is profoundly true. In the ultimate sense, the kingdom of God is going to arrive only when Jesus Christ sets up his kingdom but until that time, it will arrive only to the extent that Christian people, not that highly visible people of the political arena but the quite normal and far less visible people, people like me and like you begin to live like Jesus Christ.

So let’s shine that light. I remember reading about a lighthouse off the shore of Massachusetts, just an old lighthouse, and they had done something creative. When they built this lighthouse, they set it up to flash light in the nautical code and in that nautical code it was saying, “I love you.” They’d just say it over and over. You’d get close to the shore and there it would be, the nautical code, “I love you. I love you.” Well, the thing was about to fall apart and they rebuilt it and put new lights in it and new technology in it, but it no longer, it just shined light now, it didn’t have the nautical code and the people of the area and the sailors and the fishermen of the area protested so loudly they had to put it back in there and I think that’s because people want to see light. You know, have you realized that even the most vile people expect Christians to live like Christians? Have you noticed that?