Awake, Sleeper

So the topic of abortion is a strange thing to talk about because it's not something that we naturally want to talk about. It's not the sort of thing that comes up in conversation because it's fairly uncomfortable. It's a difficult thing to talk about. It's unpleasant. And so it might seem strange to you that some of us are actually excited about talking about abortion. We're not excited because we delight in the... In the slaughter of the unborn, we don't. We're actually excited to talk about it because we trust God to call his people and to work in his people faithfulness, to wake his people up and to bring them to arms, to engage in the battle, and to deliver those who are being led away to death. Another way of saying it is we're excited to talk about it because we believe...

in the power of the Holy Spirit. We believe in the authority of God's word and the things that he says in his word, we believe will actually happen. And so while abortion is not something we delight in talking about, it's an awful, miserable thing. And I wish that we didn't have to talk about it because I wish that we didn't live in a land that slaughtered one out of every four children. But the reality is we do. And it's our place as the church of God. To be faithful to God in the face of this wickedness. We can't bury our heads in the sand and ignore it. And so while it's a miserable thing to talk about and a nasty thing to behold, salvation is of the Lord. And God works through his church and through his people to bring salvation. And so we can't be divorced from this sin. We can't keep our hands clean. It's impossible. You can't do it. And so I'm excited to see God waking us up, me up,

his church up to engage in this work because I want to see what he does. When I read the things that he does in the scriptures, when I see what he has done for his people, when they've cried out, when they've called out and they've said enough, what a sweet thing it is to see the Lord come to their aid, go before them and prepare their way and destroy their enemies. That's what we look forward to when we engage in this battle. And that's what gives us strength and hope to speak about it. And so I invite you to join in that hope and that zeal. It's my expectation that this morning you'll hear some of that. You'll be encouraged to that end. You won't be apathetic. You won't be like, well, I can't wait till this is over and this is so miserable and I do hope that it ends, but I don't think it's going to. That's not faith. That's not faith. And so I want to call you to faith this morning. Christian faith. Christian faith is something that should be known or seen or obvious.

through our actions. The fact that we're Christians is not something that people should find out by chance or when they're talking to us and you say, oh yeah, and by the way, I'm a Christian. Or they're talking to someone else and they say, oh hey, did you know that Dave's a Christian? That's never how people should find out about our faith. Because if that's how they find out about our faith, it requires us to have been silent. For them to know us means for them to know that we're Christians. Our faith should be worked out through our lives. It should be apparent to people. They should be able to see you and within their first interaction with you, they should know this person is a Christian. The things they say, the things they believe, the things they do all testify to the fact that God has sent his son into this world to die for sinners. They should know that. They should see it. It should be apparent. Our faith should come out through every pore of our body. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said,

to his disciples, you are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket. But on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house, let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. And so if you're uncomfortable with me starting by saying people should know you're Christians, it should just be obvious. When I say that, don't hear me saying, I should never have to say anything and people should just realize. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is your life and your conduct ought to immediately impress upon people that you have a higher authority, God the Father, who calls the shots in your life. And they may learn that by saying, why in the world did you say that? Why do you think that? That's not okay. That's not popular. That's strange. And you can say, yeah, I know it's strange, you know. The wisdom of God is foolishness to man.

I know it sounds strange to you, but I say it and I believe it and I hope in it because God said it. And I would that you would believe it too. The church of God is to be the light of the world. And we're to let our light shine before men in such a way that they may see our good works and glorify our Father who's in heaven. Bringing light into the world is Christian work, and therefore it's our work. This morning we're going to be studying Ephesians chapter 5 to learn what it means to be a light. To the world. Would you please stand for the reading of God's word? From Ephesians chapter 5 verses 1 through 14. This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children. And walk in love just as Christ also loved you and gave himself up for us. An offering and a sacrifice to God as in a fragrant aroma. But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you.

as is proper among saints. And there must be no filthiness and silly talk or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure or covetous man who is an idolater has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words. For because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore, do not be partakers with them. For you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. For the fruit of the light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth, trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them.

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. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. We're going to spend the majority of our time toward the end of our passage, but I want us to get the context of what's going on here first. And so we're going to begin at verse 1. We're to be lights to the world. That's what Jesus has told us. That's what Paul affirms here in this text later on down. We're to be light of the world. And the beginning of this chapter starts big picture and says, what does it mean to be a light of the world? What it means to be a light of the world is to live with godly and biblical morality. You're to live according to God's commands. In verse 1, it says, therefore be imitators of God as beloved children. Children, be like your father. Imitate him.

If you have children, you understand that this is what they do. For better and for worse, children imitate their father. And so we are called to imitate our father, our heavenly father, as beloved children. We are to walk in love just as Christ also loved us and gave himself up for us. We are made in God's image and we are to reveal him to the world. If you think of, if you think Throughout the scriptures, God's revealed himself in many ways. He's communicated to the nations and to his people in lots of different ways. But here now in our time, we're told that Jesus is the clearest manifestation of the truth of God. And we are to imitate him. We're to be like him. We are to communicate him to the onlooking world. We're to bring light into darkness. We're to be the light of the world.

And this isn't to be done in any way that we choose to do it. It's to be done in love. We're not supposed to do this out of, we're not supposed to be lights to the world out of fear. We're not supposed to be lights to the world out of pride. We're not supposed to be lights to the world out of a sense of duty. We are to be lights to the world in love. We are to walk in love. 1 John 4, 19 says, we love because he first loved us. And we are to love in the same way that Jesus loved us. And the way that Jesus loved us, we read in this passage, is he gave himself up for us as an offering and a sacrifice. In our own words, what that means is we, like Jesus, are to put ourselves in the way of harm for the sake of the innocent. For the sake of the victim. For those who are being oppressed. Those who are being led away to the slaughter. We sacrifice for the good of others.

This is pleasing to God. It's said to be a fragrant aroma to him. So what does it mean to walk in love? Paul goes on in verse 3 and he says, this is not what it means. Sometimes when you define things, you define it by saying, this is what it is. And sometimes you define things by saying, this is not what it is. And that's what Paul's doing here. He's saying, this is not what it is. You're to walk in love. You're to be like Jesus Christ. You're to imitate God. Here is not what it looks like. But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you as is proper among saints. And there must be no filthiness or silly talk or coarse jesting which are not fitting but giving of thanks. What is Paul telling them? He's saying your behavior, the things that the world sees, must be above reproach. No immorality, no impurity, no greed. Do you recognize those things when you see them?

Can you identify greed in someone else? And you can go, they're greedy. Do you see impurity? And you go, that's impure. Or you see something else and you go, that's immoral. He's lying. He's cheating. He's being sexually immoral. You can see these things. And Paul tells us to be imitators of God. And he says, you can't imitate God and do these things. These things shouldn't be named among you as is proper among saints. It's proper for God's people to not participate in those things. There's tension that cannot exist in a Christian that says, well, I'm a Christian, but I'm immoral. I'm a Christian, but I'm impure. I'm a greedy Christian. What would you say if someone came to you and says, hi, my name's Dave and I'm a greedy Christian? You'd go, those things don't fit together. They don't work. It's not fitting among the saints to be a greedy Christian or an impure Christian or an immoral Christian.

Our behavior is to be above reproach. And specifically, Paul goes on at length about our speech. No filthy or silly talk or coarse jesting. These things are not fitting. But rather, giving thanks. This is how we're to speak. And so we find that the way we talk, the things we say or the things we don't say, reflect heavily upon the image of God. Us being imitators of God. In verse 2, he tells us, remember, we're to walk in love. What does it mean to walk in love? Well, just the chapter before in Ephesians 4, 14 and 15, Paul writes, as a result, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men and by craftiness and deceitful scheming. In short, we're not to believe lies. That's what all that means. You're not to believe lies. You're not to participate in lies. But we're to speak the truth in love. So what does it mean to walk in love?

In large part, to walk in love means to speak the truth in love. You remember last week, if you were here, the whole point of the sermon was to say, God's word is true. The world will come up with a million lies to say, God's word's not true. It doesn't change the fact that God's word is true. And the world will come up with all these lies and confusion to get you to question the truth of God's word. And what was the truth? The one truth. that's self-evident through all of scripture regarding abortion. It's that abortion is murder. And there are all kinds of confusion and lies that will be put forth to make you question that truth. And if you were here last week, you remember I said, the way you combat lies is with truth. You don't combat lies with other lies. You don't combat lies with silence. You don't combat lies with violence. You combat lies with truth. And so to walk in love,

Means to speak the truth in love. And Paul goes on at length in this passage about what we say. No filthiness or silly talk. No coarse jesting. But rather the giving of thanks. Speaking the truth in love is our work. We must respond to lies. And we must not respond to lies with filthy or silly talk. Or coarse jesting. What is coarse jesting? It's everything that our media does. with life and death. That's what coarse jesting is. It's to make light of it. It's to take things that are going on in real people's lives. This is what we call news today. It's to take things that are going on in real people's lives whose real sons and real daughters and real mothers and real fathers have died or been killed or been harmed in some way and to make a spectacle of it and to offer them no help. It's to joke about things that are serious, that are life and death. It's a way of deflecting the pressure of it.

The hardship of it. We don't want to talk about it so we're silent. We don't want to talk about it so we joke about it. We don't want to talk about it so we objectify it. These forms of speech are opposed to walking in love because they fail to speak the truth in love. When we don't speak the truth in love, we're in danger of believing what is said. Have you ever seen two people argue? And they're back and they're forth. And they're back and they're forth. And they're back and then that's the end of it. There's no response. What do you conclude when there's no response? You conclude that the person who got the last word is actually right. That's what happens when there's silence. That's what happens when there's deflection. That's what happens when the truth is not spoken and held to and stood on until the end. You believe that what was said last was the truth. Because you're left standing there going, well, I don't know if there's a response to that. That must be true.

Our place as Christians is to speak the truth and to love and to never give it up. When we speak, it ought not to be filthy. It ought not to be silly. It ought not to be coarse. In our scripture lesson this morning, Paul told Timothy to be sober in all things. He tells a young man who's particularly tempted by silliness and filthiness and coarse jesting. These are particular temptations to young men. You all face it, but it's particular to young men. And he says, don't do that. Be sober in all things. Speak the truth. In love. Why is it so important that we speak the truth in love? Why is it important that we not participate in filthy and silly and coarse jesting? Why is it important we don't talk this way? Paul goes on and tells us, he says, for you know this with certainty, that no immoral or impure or covetous man who is an idolater has an inheritance in the kingdom of God. What he's saying is those who don't imitate God in love don't have any hope of eternal life.

Those who don't imitate God, those who don't speak the way God speaks and speak the things God speaks, they don't have a hope of eternal life. You know this with certainty. Are we uncomfortable yet with what God says? That those who don't speak the things that God says without shame, without apologizing for it, but who speak the truth in love, those who refuse to do it have no hope of salvation. For you know with certainty that no immoral man or impure man or covetous man who is an idolater has a hope of heaven. Do we believe it? Do we believe that what we say and how we behave matters? And it matters not only for us, but it matters for those who hear. You remember when I was saying those who hear the argument fall flat? Those who are listening, the onlookers, and then they hear this and then this and then this and then silence? They go, well, he must be right.

Because he got the last word. Our silence, our unwillingness to speak the truth, harms not only ourselves, but those who are looking on. Those who are watching. Those who are going, is there an answer to that? Is there truth to combat that lie? Another way of saying this is we are under obligation not to hide the light. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, you are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Who lights a lamp and puts a basket over it? You cannot hide the light. And the way we hide the light is by foolish, silly talk and by silence. That's how we hide the light. The church of God is the pillar and foundation of the truth of God's word. It's a city set on a hill and it's to proclaim, to broadcast, to declare God's truth in the midst of all of the darkness, all of the lies, all of the confusion. It's to say, no.

That's not true and that leads to hell. This is what's true because God said it. We are under obligation not to hide our light because if we do, we become complicit in the lie. You say, well, I didn't participate. I didn't say that. I didn't do that. And I say, if you were silent and you allowed that lie to go by unchecked, you're complicit. If you worked for the Department of Homeland Security and you worked at Indianapolis, International Airport, and it was your job to run the scanner and to make sure that the bomb didn't get in. And you didn't do your job. You're like, well, I got to go on break. And it got in. And it went off. And it harmed people. Would you be complicit? Yes, you would. That person would lose their job. At the very least, they would lose their job. And the same is true of Christians. When we let lies just go on by, And we don't say, wait, no, hold on. When we have nothing to say, we become complicit in the lie. Silence is not a way out. He says, How do you prevent someone from deceiving you with empty words? How do you prevent a lie from going unchecked? You speak. You speak.

You say, that's not true. That's a lie from hell. God's word says this. I don't want you to believe that because they want you to kill your child. And your child's made in the image of God. And he commands us not to kill our own children. He said it's a sin that's so awful that it never even entered his mind that people would sacrifice their own children, that they'd kill them. Don't do that. That's what it sounds like to speak the truth in love and call out to them. So being a light in the world starts with godly biblical morality. It starts with us obeying God's word, not being complicit in the wickedness. And so what Paul says in verses 1 through 6 in one way, by way of teaching or exhortation, he says in verses 7 and following by way of warning. Again, he comes back in verse 7 and he says, therefore, do not be partakers with them.

For you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. God's wrath is poured out on those who don't imitate God, who live immoral, impure, covetous lives, who don't speak the truth in love, who don't walk in love. God's wrath is poured out on them, on us who don't speak, as well as those who don't hear because we didn't speak. I will say that verse 7 is much more comfortable than verse 11. Because what verse... 7 says is do not be partakers with them. And I want you to know what your heart does with that verse because it does what my heart does. What it does is it identifies a couple of particular wicked things that I'm already not doing and says, I don't participate in this and in this and in this. I've obeyed. I haven't participated. I'm clean. I did what the apostle said. I didn't participate.

It's very easy to limit this warning to a few particulars and to move on, to go back to sleep. It's as if your alarm clock goes off and it says, do not participate in the evil deeds of darkness. And you say, snooze, back to sleep. I didn't, I'm going to get up and go to work. I actually planned out my whole life to set my alarm clock early enough that I can hit snooze for an hour and still make it where I need to make it on time. I've created a whole environment where what's really important still happens. I don't participate in being late for work.

I don't participate in wickedness. So what do you do? You go back to sleep. And that's what we do with this passage. We take it and it says, do not participate. Do not be partakers with them. And we go, I don't. Okay, I won't. And on back to sleep we go. But do not be partakers with them does not simply mean stay above the fray. It means trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. So not participating, not becoming partakers with them actually, carries with it the meaning that we would be doing something in the other direction. God doesn't call his people, generally, big picture, he does not call his people to inaction and silence. He doesn't say, oh, just get out of the wickedness and just hold up in your little corner and be holy over there. Paul says to the Corinthians, what? You'd have to go out of the world to do that. That's not what I meant. I didn't tell you to isolate yourself and to do your own little thing over in your own little corner.

You'd have to go live on another planet for that to be possible. I told you not to associate with the immoral people of the world, or of the church. But you've got to live amongst the people of the world. You've got to love them. You've got to speak the truth to them. You have to help them understand the lies that they believe. This is your work. This is your place. This is what it means to be a light to the world. Do not be partakers with them. Our Lord is not a Lord of inaction and of silence. And in case we weren't clear, when he says, when Paul says, do not be partakers with them, he goes on in verse 11 and he says, do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness. Parallel construction. Don't be partakers. Don't participate. But rather, but instead, even expose them. And here we find the proactive work. The proactive work is exposing the wickedness. And what sort of wickedness? The sort of wickedness that's so disgraceful, you shouldn't even, it's disgraceful even to talk about it.

And you know what your heart does with that when you read it? It does the same thing my heart does with it when it reads it. It says, oh, it's disgraceful to even talk about. We shouldn't talk about it. Because it's disgraceful. We wouldn't want to talk about disgraceful things. Being a light means doing the work of exposing wickedness. Does the disgrace preclude us, prevent us from becoming involved? No. What Paul's doing is he's saying it's a mess. It's nasty work. People are caught in real sins that are really destructive. It's awful. It's disgraceful to even speak of the sort of bondage that they're caught in. But you're a light in the world and your place is to expose it. Okay? You want an example of what exposing looks like? I've got a bunch. The first one is, did you guys watch those videos that David Daleiden put out last year? Exposing Planned Parenthood. Do you remember them? Where he goes in and he poses.

as a baby part buyer. And he goes into Planned Parenthood and he tries to negotiate prices for different parts of the babies they kill. And he secretly films all of it. And then what he does is he compiles it and he puts it out and he says, here's how they talk. And here's what they do. That's exposure, okay? Did any of you think when you saw that, could you have been in a conversation and tolerated someone laughing about, Pulling children apart limb by limb. How can you sleep at night? Many of us couldn't even watch the videos in their entirety because of how graphic it was. Because the exposure was so real. Because what they did was so disgraceful in secret. But that man and those who worked with him went in there with the express purpose of exposing the wickedness. Those things that are too disgraceful to even speak of. They went in and got messy. Terribly messy.

Faithful work looks like getting in the mud, in the mess, for the sake of getting other people out. That's what it looks like. That's what exposure looks like. It does not look like you participating. Did David Daleiden ever participate? Did he ever show up and say, here's my wife and we'd like to kill our babies and we have a question about, we want our, you know, and here's our baby for you to kill. No, he never participated in it. And yet he exposed it. Faithfulness is not, doing the wickedness. Faithfulness is exposing the wickedness and it's messy. Remember that wickedness always runs under the cover of lies and confusion. That's what we talked about last week. And the work that David Daleiden went in was he just went in and shined a light called the little lapel camera into the darkness. Here's what it sounds like. Here's what it looks like. Here's what the people who do this wickedness look like. They look like normal people. They look like your neighbors. They look like you and they look like me.

The goal was to uncover the lie, to peel the blanket off of what's done in secret and to shine light on it and say, that's what it is. There it is. Do you see it? You remember at the beginning I said that some of us are excited about talking about abortion, but we all fight this temptation to not talk about it. We don't want it. You don't want to hear about it. You don't want to talk about it. When's the sermon series going to be over? You know I've been asked that by people here. It's so depressing. It's so discouraging. And I say, no, we have hope. We have hope because all things become visible when they are exposed to the light. Lies don't have to rule the day. Lies don't have to just set up shop and dictate to the church of God how things are going to be. It's the church's place to see lies and say, that's a lie. And I don't believe it and you shouldn't believe it and I don't participate in it and you shouldn't participate in it because there's a God in heaven.

who made you and who will judge you, don't do what you're doing. Please don't do what you're doing. All through scripture, if you were to study scripture with the purpose from cover to cover of looking for light and darkness and how it's talked about and how it's described, you would find that everywhere light is good and everywhere darkness is bad. You have this even, In Genesis 1, before the sin entered the world, God said, let there be light. And then there was light, and the light separated itself from the darkness. And what did God declare? He declared that the light was good. And so in Genesis 1.3, God establishes the goodness of light. And another thing he establishes is that light comes into the world by his word. His word is light.

We are his light. And the reason that we are his light, and by we, I mean the church of God, the reason that we are light is because we have the word of God. That's what makes us light. We're not special. What we have is special. We don't have authority in and of ourselves. We have something that has authority. That's what makes us light. And God has made this world and given us the work of being holy conduits of his light. We're the wire that the power of God's word runs through and then it gets to the light and it shines. That's our place. That's our work. And everywhere there's darkness, we need to run conduit and wire and set up a light and shine light over there. And you say, I don't want to shine the light over there because I saw over there once someone had a lighter and I saw it was a mess. I don't want to shine light over there because it's really nasty. I say, you have to live here. And if you have to live here,

Shine the light over there and clean it up. Fix it. What's broken, make it new. Tear it out if it's busted. If the studs are broken and you go into a house and it's all rotten and mildewed and water damaged and nasty, what do you do? You tear it out. You get big bright lights and you tear it all out. And what do you do? You put new stuff in. You tear the lies out and you build with truth. That's what we do. That's our work. That's our place, Christian. And what's the temptation? Always when you're doing remodels. How much more do I have to tear out? How much more do I have to tear out? And I say, you've got to tear it out until it's all gone. You've got to tear it out until there's no more darkness. That's how far you have to go. Well, it's going to take longer than I expected. I say, God will give you strength. Keep tearing out the lies. Keep shining the light. God said light was good and darkness was bad.

Do not be partakers with them, for you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. For the fruit of the light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth. You are under obligation to redeem this world, to bring light into darkness. You ought to be excited about it. I did a bathroom remodel recently. And the remodel that I did, when you walked into the bathroom, it was a mess. and it was a mess in the way that some of the tile had fallen off the wall in the bathroom, and the board behind the tile was gone, and insulation was there, and you know what was back in there? Mold. Nasty black. And you could see it. You didn't even have to tear the wall open to see it. And you're sitting there, and you're looking at it, and you're going, oh, what are we into? What is back there? Am I going to have to tear his whole wall out? I know it's got a concrete floor, so I don't have to tear the floor out.

How far does it go? And it stunk like mold. Before the wall was even opened, it stunk. And I was excited to tear it out. I was excited to tear it out. Let me see what's in there. I got my hammer and bust a big hole in the wall and grab the thing and pull it open. What's back there? Why? Because I'm confident that I can fix it. And so when it comes to wickedness and you see the trails of the wickedness and the tales of it and you go, It's over there. I know it's over there. I can see it. It crawled in that hole in the wall. It's in the darkness now. Our place as Christians is to say, where's my hammer and my sawzall? Where is the truth of the word of God? Let me at it. Let me at it. I'm light. I have the word of God. I'm light. Let me at the lie. Let me at the darkness. I'm going to cast. I want it gone. I want a bathroom that doesn't leak.

I want a shower that doesn't have mold behind the walls. Let me at it. I'm going to keep working at it until it's gone. How's that? The homeowner is thankful. And God will be glorified if you'll have that disposition towards exposing the darkness. But you won't have that disposition towards exposing the darkness if you don't believe that the light does what God's word says it does. If you believe that the word of God is inept, is not powerful, it's just there. It's just one. holy book among many other holy books, then it will be a depressing work to you. But it doesn't have to be. Isaiah 55, 11 says, My word which goes forth from my mouth, it will not return to me empty. This is what the Lord declares. My word which goes forth from my mouth will not return to me empty without accomplishing what I desire and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. Do you believe in the power of God? And do you believe in the authority of his word?

and the agency of the Holy Spirit to convict rotten sinners of their sin and bring them to the cross, then speak it. You say, well, the world doesn't like that. And the world says it's not true. And they tell me all these lies. And I say, that's right. Have you noticed that the thing that, what are you not allowed to say right now in our culture? What are we heading towards? What's hate speech? It's simply saying what God's word says. That's hate speech. Have you ever wondered why that's what's being targeted? Because the enemy knows what works. The enemy recognizes the power of God and the power of his word. And so they say, you can't say that stuff because if you say that stuff, you're going to upset our whole trade. That's what the Ephesians, the coppersmiths in Ephesians, Ephesus said about Paul. He's upsetting our whole way of life because he's bringing the word of God to bear into a broken, wicked world. And he's messing everything up.

Tell him to shut up. The word of God is powerful. And God's given it to us to bring to the world. And it's our privilege to do it. You say, what if it doesn't go well? Well, I've seen people say true things and I've seen people not respond with repentance. And I say, you know what? That does happen. Does that mean God's word isn't true and active and powerful and sharper than a two-edged sword? No. It means that what you're seeing is God's will right now. And it doesn't mean that that person will never repent. It means that there was a seed planted and there's a battle going on inside of them between Satan and the Lord. And Satan wants to destroy them and God is determined to save them. He doesn't wish that any should perish. You say, well, it's discouraging because I talk and I say and then they don't listen and they get mad and they say nasty things about me and they threaten to do nasty things to me. And I say, join the crowd. This is what God's people have always endured.

And through the foolishness of the preaching of the cross, God has been pleased to save those who hate him. Will you participate in this work? Do you want to be a part of it? Do you want your marriage to get better? Here's what you do. Believe in the power of the word of God and start talking about it. You want obedient kids? You got bad little kids? They don't listen? What do you want to do? You want to fix it? Start believing in the power of the word of God and start... talking about it and start praying that god would hear you and then he'd answer you and you'll be surprised pleasantly so so what does this work look like for us what does it mean to be a light in the world well it means going to the darkness you remember i said you build holy conduits to the darkness and then you hook up a 10 million candle fluorescent whatever kind of light dan can tell you what kind of light the bright one and flip the breaker turn it on shine the light in there so

Where are we trying? What is one area where we're building conduit? With the purpose of setting up a light, it's abortion. It's one area. It's not the only area. There's lots of conduit that needs to be run, actually. And we're all here to do it, and we'll be doing it until we die. There's lots of darkness that needs to be exposed, that needs to be driven out. But right now, we're talking about a particular one. And it's our place to shine the light over there. And to keep shining the light over there and to keep turning the power up until there's no more darkness. And so we go to the mill, the abortion mill. We go to the place where the murders are happening. And we bring the light. We speak. We preach. We call out. We counsel on the sidewalks. We pray in the place of darkness. We bring light to the dark place.

And in every way we can come up with, we shine light. So we preach to the people who are coming by. And we talk to the people who are walking down the sidewalk. And there's amplification so that the people in the building can hear. Like the people on the other side of the wall where it's actually happening, they can hear what's being said. They can hear God's word. And we call out to the women. And we plead with them. And we counsel them. And we pray with them. Can I pray with you? Before you go in there, can I pray with you? We bring light into the darkness. We expose the wickedness. We refuse to pull the cover back over our head. We refuse to go back to sleep. Another way that we expose the wickedness is with signs of what's actually going on. Something that people get all wrapped around the axle of. Why would you have that sort of sign? Why would you expose that? You're going to, I don't want my kids seeing that. I say, I don't want my kids seeing it either.

But I want my kids prepared and knowing the wickedness that they're surrounded by. I want them to know what's going on. Those who have that sort of response, I'm sensitive to kids being exposed to it, kids who don't know what's going on. But isn't it strange to you that we live in a culture that glorifies sex and death? That's all our entertainment is. It's sex and death. And you look at the video games that kids are playing. And we gripe about these pictures. All of it would be done away with. When you want to build a conduit and a light over into the video gaming world and say to hell with all of this wickedness, go for it. And God bless you in it. But largely those who are opposed to the use of graphic signs are opposed because it rouses something in them that prevents them from going back to sleep immediately. That's disturbing. That's awful. How could you have a picture of that? And I say, this wasn't made on a computer. This is what's being done right there. This is real.

And I want to see it ended. I long and pray for the day that I don't have to hold this sign. But so long as the lie, the disgraceful thing that's going on in secret is still going on, my work is to expose it. And this is the sad, awful, gruesome truth. The light has to shine into the darkness. And the light, you can't convey, carry, shine. of God's truth without having the darkness come after you, without there being shadows created. You ever watch a professional sports game? And it's amazing. They play inside buildings that are dark. And if you ever watch them, there's like shadows going every direction from them, right? And the reason is of all these shadows and their dim shadows is that they shine light from every direction to try to get rid of the shadow. That's the goal. That's the aim.

And that's our work. That's our goal. Shine light from every direction to try to just do away with the darkness. So if you shine light from this direction, you're going to end up with a shadow over here. And then you shine it from over here and then over there and there and here and there and everywhere until there's no more darkness. And people say, I don't want you to expose my darkness. You know, when you have your picture taken, don't you have like your good side, your slimming side? You don't want the light to expose your darkness. And I say, honesty is far better. I'd much rather see a picture of just exactly how fat I am so that I'm not led to any misconceptions about being thin. Because I'm not. And I'm lying when I go, that's a lie. Because I'm not that wide, I'm that wide. So light's good. Light's meant to cast out the darkness. And when the light shines into the darkness, it will have implications for you. You won't be able to say, I didn't participate. I didn't do it.

That's not me. All of a sudden, you'll have the light shining into your cracks and crevices. That'll be good for you. Very good for you. So go and do the work. Be about the work. Join in the work. Pray for the work. Ask how you can get involved. Host families. Come to the rally. Talk to your neighbors. Invite them. You know that this is an evangelistic service we're having? You want to invite somebody to something? It's not this intimidating Sunday morning worship service where it's all uncomfortable and they don't know how to dress and how long is it going to be and I don't know what kind of music. None of that. You invite them to an evangelistic worship service. Light's going to go out into the darkness and I'm serious. Invite them. Participate. You can participate in this work. That's one way. You should come to this. It shouldn't all be John Klug's work to make sure there's, that that place is filled. You should make John life, John Klug's life miserable because there's no room for people. That's what you should do. You should be light. Abortion needs to be abolished in our land. It needs to be done away with. There needs to be no excuse or reason or lie that is left untouched that points in the direction of saying this is okay and this is good and this needs to be allowed. It should all be done away with. It needs to be abolished entirely in the same way that slavery needed to be abolished.

It needs to be done away with. It didn't need to be regulated. It needs to be done away with. And so here's what Charles Spurgeon, I'll leave you with this, regarding slavery and its abolition. Here's what Charles Spurgeon said in The Best War Cry regarding abolition. He says, a healthy church kills error and tears evil to pieces. Not so very long ago, our nation tolerated slavery in our colonies. Philanthropists endeavored to destroy slavery. But when was it utterly abolished? It was when Wilberforce roused the church of God. And when the church of God addressed herself to the conflict, then she tore the evil thing to pieces. I've been amused at what Wilberforce said the day after the passing of the act of emancipation. He merrily said to a friend when it was done, is there not something else we can abolish? That was said playfully, but it shows the spirit of the church of God. She lives in conflict and victory.

Her mission is to destroy everything that is bad in the land by shining light into the darkness. Let's pray. Father, you've given us your son. You've made us light in the Lord. You've redeemed us by his precious blood. Would you loosen our tongues and free up our hands to convict the world of sin and righteousness in the judgment? Would you give us faith and conviction in your word? And would you give us love for those who are perishing? When we were perishing, you loved us, Father. And we love because you first loved us. And so help us to love in the way that you have loved the people you have loved, those who were your enemies, those who sought your son harm. Give us grace, Father, and give us victory. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.