Welcome to Timeless Truth with Pastor Jim Thomas. In season 1, Pastor Jim is leading us in a study of Ephesians. Today’s passage is Ephesians 5:7-14.
“Our churches are the Saviour’s golden candelabra, and if they are to be lights in this dark world, they must have much holy oil. Let us pray for ourselves, our ministers, and our churches, that they may never lack oil for the light. Truth, holiness, joy, knowledge, love, these are all beams of the sacred light, but we cannot give them forth unless in private we receive oil from God the Holy Ghost.”
– C. H. Spurgeon
Let’s think of some of the ways light is essential to existence:
- Photosynthesis for food formation and growth
- Pacing our asleep-awake cycle
- Temperature regulation
- Drying and evaporation
- Microscopy, Spectroscopy, & Phototherapeutic and Laser therapies of many kinds
- Light signal beacons onboard ships for communication
- Light houses on shorelines
- Headlight/tail lights as we drive our cars at night
- Street lights in our neighborhoods
- Stage lights at a concert
- Flashlights for household use
- Floodlights for home security
- Reading light for the sheer enjoyment of reading!
- Etc, etc, etc
For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
– 2 Corinthians 4:6
“Here is the great truth that, only when we see things in the light of God, do we see things as they are. It is only when we see things in the light of God that we see what things are really important, and what things are not.”
– William Barclay
The away of the wicked is like darkness; They do not know over what they stumble.
– Proverbs 4:19
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
– Psalm 119:105
“Called out of the world to be a light in the world, to be a united family among the disunited families of earth, to be indwelled by Christ himself, to be the apple of God’s eye, to be graven on Christ’s hands, to be the glory of the image of the Holy Trinity, to be an embodiment of the infinite love of the cross, to be a collective portrait more beautiful than any other in the world—that is the church, the local church, the new people of God.”
– Timothy Savage, The Church: God’s New People
