I'm Ryan, welcome to Bible on the Beach. Today we'll be in Ephesians chapter 5 verses 1 through 14.
Paul writes, be imitators of Christ in everything you do and then you will represent your father and his beloved sons and daughters.
So, you know, our calling in life is to be an imitator of Christ. He's our standard.
You know, these days it's very culturally acceptable to slander people, to gossip, and if you have Jesus as your standard,
we don't slander and we don't gossip about other people. We lift up one another, we encourage one another,
we pray for one another, we use our words to bless, not to curse, and to tear down.
He says, and continue to walk, surrender to the extravagant love of Christ, for he surrendered his life as a sacrifice for us.
His great love for us was pleasing to God like an aroma of adoration, a sweet healing fragrance.
So, it's God's love that renews us each day, renews our hearts, renews our mind, renews our thoughts.
It's the basic foundational principle of operating as we follow Jesus. It's the overwhelming love of God that you feel every day in your life.
Paul's reminding us that all good things flow from love, the love, the recognition of the love that God has for us.
He says, and have nothing to do with sexual immorality, lust, or greed, for you are his holy ones and let no one be able to accuse you of them in any form.
So, the same tools that the devil has used to derail people have been pretty much the same from the beginning of the Garden of Eden.
It's gold, glory, girls, if you're a guy. So, gold would represent money, glory would represent pride, and girls would represent lust.
Another way of saying it is sex, money, and power. Avoid sex, money, and power.
This is almost completely lost today. We live in a place, in a context, in a culture where people are trying to accumulate sex, accumulate money, and accumulate power.
No one is talking about what Jesus is talking about. What's Jesus talking about?
Well, the gospel is Jesus telling you that you have enough and you are enough.
Now, why do you have enough? You have enough when you realize that God loves you. You were made in his image.
You are enough when you realize that you're a child of God. So, you quit striving to impress. You quit striving to prove yourself.
The love of Jesus helps us to relax, and it helps us to calm down, and it helps us to be at peace with how God made us.
And then out of that, we figure out how we want to serve and love other people.
All those other things are just tools to derail and distract you from your divine destiny in your life.
So, he says, guard your speech for sake of sinities and worthless insults. These are nonsensical words that bring disgrace and are unnecessary.
Instead, let worship fill your heart and spill out of your words. So, do you actually have to choose to worship God and use your words to lift up Jesus?
Yeah, you do. It's called being disciplined. Every day you have to say, I'm going to walk in worship. I'm going to walk in prayer.
I'm not going to walk in obscenities and worthless insults.
It says in verse 5, for it has been made clear to you already that the kingdom of God cannot be accessed by anyone who is guilty of sexual sin, who is impure or greedy.
For greed is the essence of idolatry. How can they expect to have an inheritance in Christ's kingdom while doing those things?
So, if you get up every day and you're motivated by lust and greed, it's pretty clear that you're not in the spirit of Jesus, operating in the spirit of Jesus.
Now, can you technically be a follower of Jesus and be consumed with lust and greed?
I'm not sure. The Bible says Jesus is the judge. I have my own personal thoughts on that, but I'll keep them to myself.
What I will say is this, is remember that God is your judge. And if you get up every day and you're lusting and you're greedy with every single opportunity, experience that comes forward, and you think God's cool with it,
well, I'm going to leave that between you and the Lord. It wouldn't be my advice that you operate in such a manner.
And he follows it up in verse 6 by saying, don't be fooled by those who speak their empty words and deceptive teachings, telling you otherwise.
A lot of people will tell you, yeah, you can be filled with lust and be filled with greed and be filled with anger and be in the spirit of Jesus and operate in the family of Jesus.
And it's pretty clear here, Paul saying, no, that's not the a priori. That's not the premise. That's not how we roll. We operate in unselfishness and servanthood and humility.
So he says this is what brings God's anger upon the rebellious. So does God get angry with his rebellious children? Well, sure.
How does God's anger manifest itself in your life? Well, I'm not sure. I'm not God. But it does say that God is angry against his rebellious kids.
Now, I'll leave that to you interpret. A lot of people would say, well, God's never angry against his rebellious children.
Have you read Ephesians? Have you read Corinthians? Have you read the New Testament? Probably not, because if you did, you wouldn't think that way.
So we allow this to mold and monitor our thinking, not our feelings to mold and monitor our thinking when our feelings, they're all over the place.
This is constant and consistent. We're supposed to align our thinking. We're supposed to have our thinking molded into this thinking.
That's what it means to follow Jesus. You follow Jesus means he's in charge. If you follow yourself, it means you're in charge. You don't get to do both.
Following Jesus means I admit I'm wrong. I'm following Jesus. That's what it means.
And it means that we follow his word, not our word and our feelings. It's his word and his desires for us.
Once your life was full of darkness, but now you have the very light of Jesus shining through you because of your union with him.
Your mission is to live as children flooded with his revelation light. So you can even say every day.
Now, God, help me to be filled with your light, to be filled with your love today as I go forward and the supernatural fruits of his light will be seen you goodness, righteousness and truth.
Then you will learn to choose what is beautiful to our Lord. So as you follow God, you get more discernment.
As you walk in humility, you get more wisdom. As you walk in compassion, you get more discernment.
It says, and don't even associate with the servants of darkness because they have no fruit in them. Instead, reveal truth to them.
The very things they do in secret are too vile and filthy to even mention whatever the and I'll just say this year, you know, we live in a very public world now where people publicize their personal life.
Didn't used to be this way. It's certainly that way now. And so it's pretty common now for people to just flaunt and publicize the most personal, devious things that they do under the guise of being authentic.
And so Jesus says we're not to bring attention to those things because because he says they're too secret and too filthy to even mention whatever the revelation light exposes.
It also corrects and everything that reveals truth is light to the soul. That is why the scripture says arise you sleep or rise up from your coffin and the anointed one will shine his light on to you.
So what Paul's saying here today is that we're supposed to follow the light. We're supposed to be children of the light. We're supposed to live in the light.
We're supposed to have a life that's motivated by being in the light, walking in the light and loving in the light. That's God's word for us today.
I hope you're encouraged by it. I hope you're blessed by it. I hope you're lifted up by it. This helps you don't be afraid to share it with someone else.
The best things in my life have happened serendipitously where God used a conversation or a text message from somebody else to lift me up.
If you feel like this is beneficial, please include it in your life today to bless somebody else.
Until next time, Bible on the Beach, I hope you have a beautiful day.