Mimicking God
So last week we talked about how God wants us to be entirely transformed from head to toe: our heart, mind, and strength. He wants us to leave our old life behind, the life that says, "I have to do it myself" and instead trust God to do it. We trust God when we allow the Holy Spirit to get past our defensive brain blocks and reveal the truth about what we really want. And what we really want is for God to fulfill all our needs.
Our passage last week ended with this beautiful verse: Ephesians 4:32, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” And now Chapter 5 continues that thought with, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
Those verses work so beautifully together. Don’t they? They describe how God treats us, not like homeless beggars, but like his beloved children.
This week we’re going to talk about our mimicking of God, our “imitating” him, helps us pass on what he has given us to others. It’s how we’re able to not just tolerate each other, but enjoy being around each other. It's because God doesn't just tolerate us, but enjoys being around us.
We can be patient with others’ slowness to change, because we realize how patient God is with our slowness. We can forgive other’s repeated hurtful behavior, because we realize how often God forgives our repeated rebellion against him. We can be understanding of people who have a hard time with silly things, because we’ve found how understanding God is with our silly things. We can allow others the time they need to make up their minds, because we realize how God has patience for our mind games. We can empathize with the troubles that others seem to heap upon themselves, because we realize how much empathy God has for our self-inflicted troubles.
Our calculated measurement of how good we think God has been to us must increase as we grow in Christ, and as it does, our kindness to others grows too. This calculation, this understanding or deciphering of God’s ways that we do is the first way we mimic God.
Look at all the words that talk about this understanding in today's passage: vs. 3 “as is proper,” vs. 6 not letting other’s deceive you, vs. 10 try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord, vs. 11 exposing the evil deeds for what they are, vs. 13-14 “becoming visible” for our understanding, vs. 14 we see this admonishment to wake up, vs. 15 looking carefully to walk as the wise do, and vs. 17 "understand what the will of the Lord is."
When I read these words I think of putting together a puzzle or solving a mystery with clues and diagrams and charts and analysis and reading lots of Bible commentaries. It actually stresses me out just thinking of all the study I’ll have to do to learn God’s will and avoid being fooled. But I don’t think that’s what Paul is talking about here. And let me tell you why.
The Kingdom of Heaven is something God made available for all types of people, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, clever and simple. So this understanding or deciphering of God’s ways must be something that anyone can do no matter how clever or educated they are. It must be different than the world’s way of acquiring knowledge.
The world says that we can't understand life in any certain terms unless we're really smart or a psychologist or Mother Teresa or have a phD in something. But 1 Corinthians 2 tells us that God’s wisdom is different. Let me read it to you starting in verse 4. This is Paul talking to the Corinthian believers.
4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. . . . 9 . . . as it is written:
“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”—
the things God has prepared for those who love him—
10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit . . . 12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. 13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. 14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.”
Remember last week we talked about having brain block? This is a theory that psychology calls filter theory, which says when in a threatening circumstance, we block out all new information except what we think we need to survive. We also talked about how it’s only through God’s spirit that we can accept God’s truths because otherwise we’d block out God himself because God is a threat to our old self.
God’s wisdom is not something discovered through our own brain power. Wisdom is not the fruit of our labor at all. Wisdom is the fruit of relying on God’s understanding. Proverbs 3:5-6, which says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your path straight."
Satan and the world and our old self would like us to believe that it’s all up to us to understand how to behave in every circumstance. Adam and Eve in the Garden thought it was all up to them to get the knowledge of good and evil, so they took it themselves.
If we try to understand what God wants us to do in life by relying on our own brain power, we might live a pretty good-looking life. In fact, we might even do all the “right” things and avoid all those sins listed in our passage in verses 3-6. But we will never attain the spirit-filled life, the trusting-life, the transformed life, the forgiving life that mimics God's miraculous grace to others.
To the worldly-wise person, this God-wisdom doesn’t make sense. Joseph forgiving his brothers in Egypt after they'd sold him into slavery doesn't make sense. Jesus dying for rebels who hated him doesn't make sense. Jews befriending their Nazi captors, doesn't make sense. Confessing our secret grudges against one another and asking for forgiveness doesn't make sense.
I’ve been reading these missionary books written for children. They’re by Janet and Geoff Benge. Our library has them. And in them I’ve been reading all about the Lord’s wisdom.
In England in the 1800’s, a man named George Muller felt lead by the Lord to start an orphanage relying soley on the Lord for all the money, the building, furniture, and staff. He didn’t want to ask anyone for donations. And when people first heard his idea, many scoffed and said, no way. That’s not how it’s done. It didn’t make sense to them. But do you know what happened? People gave without being asked. People volunteered their cooking skills and gardening skills and money to purchase the land and build the buildings. That’s the wisdom of God not the wisdom of a financier or investor.
There was an occasion where the orphan school had run out of food and the staff asked George Muller what to do. George told them all to sit down and pray because God would provide breakfast that morning. And low and behold a milk truck broke down in front of the school and the baker came and donated rolls. This is the wisdom of God not an experienced manager of a company.
Sundar Singh, an Sikh Indian who converted to Christianity and who preached in India and Tibet was thrown out of aTibet town and told never to come back, but he marched back and preached anyways. He was tied up and had a bucket of leeches dumped on him and despite the pain, he preached the gospel to his captors and those who were watching him. His boldness and courage and peace moved many people to believe. That's the wisdom of God not a master in self defense.
Similar miraculous things happened to Hudson Taylor. He boarded a ship for China, and the ship was becalmed. No wind at all for days, and the ship was slowly drifting towards danger. Hudson prayed and then told the sailors to let down the sails because God would act, and the first officer sneered. But along came a wind… This is the wisdom of God not the wisdom of experienced sailors.
I could tell you more stories and you could probably guess how they end because we've had a taste for God’s miraculous work, but do we really believe God will provide for us if we don’t do it ourselves, if we don’t figure it out ourselves, measure, calculate, decipher, etc.
We don’t have to be particularly clever or educated to decipher God’s wisdom, we just have to hand over all our own wisdom into his hands.
Do you know the story in Luke 21 of the poor widow who gave her two small copper coins, and Jesus said her small gift was more than the rich man’s because out of her poverty, she gave all she had to live on. A single mom without higher education who is so overworked trying to provide for her family that she has no time to study theology, that single mom who gives to the Lord all her meager brain power gives to God far more than a professor with a phD in theology who thinks theology is just his 9-5 job.
The Lord delights to exalt the humble and bring low the proud.
The wisdom of God says, yes, you can give more than you have. It says huge obstacles are no concern. It says you have the power to stand up for what is right even in the face of insurmountable oppression. It says God has all your tomorrows in the palm of his hand. It says, even this darkness can be turned into light.
I love how Paul uses this analogy of light throughout this passage. It goes hand in hand with the action of mimicking God, which is how we use our strength to mimic God. We Act.
Look at the words that describe our active participation throughout this passage: vs. 2 walk in love, vs. 4 let there be, vs. 8 walk as children of the light, vs. 11 taking no part, vs. 13-14, expose, vs 14. arise, vs. 16 making the best use of time vs. 18 be filled. And finally the last several verses talk about all sorts of active participation in worship.
Paul says we’re to imitate God by keeping out all wickedness and then letting in the light, letting in God’s revealing truth. Thus, our action in God’s kingdom is very much like a gatekeeper. We are to Act as gatekeeper.
My guess is you probably find it easier to do one than the other: let in or keep out. Some people find it hard to say no. Some people find it hard to say yes. And still others have so snuffed out their desires so that either option makes no difference to them; they’ve stopped caring.
I am of the “no” camp, so I naturally didn’t realize the “yes” camp existed until somewhat recently. I didn't know that some people say yes even if they shouldn't say yes. They're the compliant, submissive types who go along with other’s ideas and don’t stand up for their own needs. They are the trusting people who assume others will consider them as they are considering others. Strange people.
So for the yes people out there, the ones who have a hard time drawing boundaries, these "let there be" phrases that I boxed on your worksheet are specifically for you. Use your God given-power to keep out the over-committing and over-service and over-acceptance that you tend to do. It’s okay to say no. God will safeguard your righteousness, your like-ability, your reputation, your needs, your acceptance, your peace regardless of other’s reactions to your saying no.
What about what we are to let in?
Verse 8 says, "for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of the light." And then verse 13-14 says, "But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light."
What peculiar statements these are. Aren’t they? That we were once darkness and that anything that comes into the light becomes light itself. Does Paul mean that all the evils listed above in verses 3-6—The sexual promiscuity, the lies, the crude jokes and covetousness—that those become light? Aren’t those the things that need to be blocked out?
C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce has this beautiful story of a man tormented by sexual sin. The sexual sin takes the form of a lizard on his shoulder that whispers suggestions into his ear that he obeys. But on this man's field trip to Heaven, he allows an angel of God to kill the lizard on his shoulder. The angel wrings the lizard's neck and then drops it where it writhes and then transforms into a great white stallion. And the man then breaths into the nostrils of the horse as he has now become the horse's master.
The man goes from being a slave to the sexual sin, to being a master of his sexuality. God made us to be masters not servants to our desires. In fact, when our desires are let out of our own clutches and bathed in God’s light, they become good and right and true like verse 9 says.
In fact, all our sins are desires for God twisted inside of us, concealed, hidden in the dark, kept close to ourselves and not lifted up to him for fulfillment and transformation. This darkness is all our attempts to quench the God-ache.
Sundar Singh described our ache for God within us as a blazing fire and only God's quenching water could put it out. Everything else in the world was like gasoline thrown upon that fire. It only makes the fire worse. The darkness is like gasoline on the fire. Darkness represents all our attempts to put out the God-fire within us.
We could go through the sins listed in verses 3-6 and I could try to describe what Paul is talking about, what qualifies as sexual immorality or impurity or covetousness. But the bottom line is people who are empty of God are immensely motivated to find something else to fill them up. The emptiness is so vast and painful that people are using all their ingenuity, all their creativity, all their strength to invent a God-substitute. And the harder they try, the worse their ache gets.
When sex with one person doesn’t fulfill a need for joy or power or love, people seek sex with many. When sex with many doesn’t fulfill, people seek sex with different types. When different types doesn’t fill people seek children, animals, dead people, demons . . .
Or how about an example that’s probably a little closer to home: covetousness: When making a descent paycheck doesn’t satisfy our need for comfort, we seek two jobs, playing the stock market, stockpiling vast quantities, building bigger barns, purchasing all forms of entertainment and accessories to fill our garages and cupboards and dresser drawers.
People will sell the most valuable thing they have—that is the image of God within them—in order to put out the God-fire or deaden it or make it go away. Every new invention of man—the wheel, the printer, the automobile, the telephone, the computer—has been taken by empty-man and used to try to put out that God-fire, that burning emptiness within us. But the vastness within them just seems to grow bigger.
But you know what Jesus says about those empty people: Matthew 13:12 “Whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him.” but “Whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance.”
Acting as a gatekeeper means being the gatekeeper to our own desires as well. What will we do with them? Will we keep them in the dark or let them out into God's light? If we take these God-aches, bring them into the light and acknowledge them for what they are—a need for more trust in God—we will be filled to the brim with God’s own spirit and all the fruit that spirit provides.
Then in God’s presence, every invention of man becomes a tool to imitate God, to spread his goodness and forgiveness and love. Now, we mimic God by using these inventions to bring others into the light. We use the car, the internet, the cell phone, the podcast.
I listen to FEBC’s podcast called Until All Have Heard. And when COVID hit, millions of people around the world tuned into FEBC or listened to them on social media because people were searching for hope and joy and comfort during the pandemic. God used social media to spread the gospel to them.
Man meant it for evil, but God means it for good.
Never fear a new invention, no matter how people us it. God is making the best use of man’s inventions, and no one can stop God. And never fear the wickedness of man either, no matter how grotesque it becomes. There is no darkness, which God cannot bring into the light and transform into light itself.
Prostitutes turned into counselors. Megalomaniacs turned into servants. Misers turned into givers. Pharisees turned into preachers. The Bible is filled with examples. History is filled with examples of people God took from darkness to light. Saint Francis of Assisi, Josh McDowell, Becket Cook etc.
Never fear evil as if it might take over. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit and evil won’t get the chance. The taste of wine won’t draw you in. The taste of sweets won’t either. The potato chip shall have no dominion over you nor shall the tantalizing sale for things you don’t need, or moping around waiting for someone to love you, or the regrets about the past. Be filled with God’s light and darkness will flee.
That is an active thing to do, not a passive thing. Like Ephesians 5:14 says, "Awake! Arise from the dead!" Bring your dead desire into the light and let Christ shine on them and they will live and have power for his kingdom!
To Expose in Light is to Bring all desires to the Lord to Empower.
Let me give you an example. Have you ever had a thought that frightened you, and you thought, "NO! Get out of my head. I can’t think about that. That's bad!" This seems to happen to me most when I'm trying to go to sleep, like I start worrying about terrible things happening to my children.
This imagining the worst is this darkness in me. And I have an active option here: I can use my own strength to shove those fears back into the dark recesses of my mind or to bring those fears out before the Lord to transform them into something powerful.
"Lord, I confess that I'm worrying about these worst case scenarios. I want to know the future, that my children will have long and good lives. I confess I don’t trust you to take care of my loved ones. Lord, increase my faith in your plans for me and my children."
Or how about this one: "Lord, I just spent the last ten minutes justifying myself to that person in a made-up conversation in my mind. Lord, I confess I have not been looking to you for unconditional acceptance or believing that your son justified me already," OR "Lord, I just reimagined the last twenty-years of my life differently, as if I’d made different choices. Lord, I have not been trusting that you are making all things right." OR "Lord, I just planned my own memorial service in my head. Lord, I have not been believing that you’re still at work here in me, and that your power can continue to sustain me."
Use your strength to bring all that is dark into the light for God to transform.
When we witness how God transforms what we thought was shameful within us, it's nearly impossible for us not to turn our faces heavenward and worship. As surely as Los Angeles will be alight with fireworks if our sport’s teams win, the Christian will give thanks when God conquers darkness.
Did you notice in verses 3-6, that little positive statement there in the middle of that paragraph listing all this wicked behavior. One little thanksgiving in the middle of this list of evils is enough to counteract them all.
It reminds me of how Paul and Silas sang in prison before an angel of God broke them out of jail in Philippi. They were surrounded by evil and darkness and unjust punishment, but by God's strength, they sang.
This is the third way we mimic God, through worship. We see the specific mention of thanksgiving in verses 4 and 20. Verses 14 has this poetry stanza, which some commentators thought might be a song people sang when baptized. And then in verses 19-20, we see a beautiful list of corporate worship. Let me read it: “addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
God doesn’t want lip-service here. He doesn’t just want us worshipping with all our strength, willing ourselves to sing or write thankfulness lists. He wants our heart involved in this.
What does this mean? It means: don’t fake it. I don't think Paul’s talking about emotions. He doesn’t mean feel it. He’s talking about our desires, what we set our hearts on. When say, we have our hearts set on a vacation, it means we really desire to go on that vacation. Likewise, when we worship in heart it means our hearts are set on God. We really desire him. We really believe he can save us.
Let me rephrase it for you. Let’s say you're sick and want to get better. So you have to get onto this strict vitamin and pill routine everyday as well as take some nasty-tasting syrupy-sweet medicine. Do you want to take the medicines? No. But do you want to get better? Yes. So you take the medicines with all your heart because you desire to be healthy.
Likewise is worship—specifically corporate worship. Worship and singing and giving thanks is like the medicine that reminds us that God alone deserves our allegiance and can cure us. Maybe we don’t like that rather repetitious or rowdy music. Maybe it’s overly-sweet and syrupy. But we desire God to cure us of sin’s hold. We desire God to bring all the dark parts of us into light. So part of our hospital recovery program is corporate worship.
Do you want to sing the song? No. You hate that song. But do you want God's healing. Yes. So you sing. You look to God for your salvation.
This has nothing to do with how we feel about the music. It has to do with what we’re hoping for in singing. We are hoping for God to remake us. Worshipping God with others is another way we realign our hearts with his. It’s a way we mimic Jesus. We do it because it’s good for us.
Now, music tastes aside, what if we just don’t feel like it? They’re playing all our favorite songs and we still don’t feel like it. I’ve often heard the saying: Act as if you did and the feelings will follow. This is a good proverb, but it isn’t a promise. Sometimes, you sing and make melody to the Lord, and you still feel like you’re standing under a black raincloud.
A few years ago, I developed Hashimotos, which is an auto-immune disease that attacks the thyroid. And I didn’t know I had this for a number of months. During that time I was really drained of energy and any kind of enjoyment in life. I was tired all the time, trying to take care of the kids and living in a house that I felt like I couldn’t keep clean or repaired. I went through a time of depression and darkness until I was finally diagnosed and got medicated. And during that time, it didn’t matter what I did, my emotions were unresponsive. I was always under this cloud.
Sometimes because of life circumstances, our emotions get paralyzed or stuck. But we can still worship because worshiping is done with the heart, not the emotions or even sometimes the body. When our voices fail or we are too weak to raise our hands, we can still worship because our faces are looking to him. We have faith that God is still at work. Our hope, our face, is turned towards the Lord. He is with us even in the darkness.
Psalm 139:11-12 says: "If I say,
'Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,'
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you."
I don’t want you to be confused. The Psalmist is using darkness and light differently than Paul uses it in our chapter today. Paul means man’s depravity and sin. The psalmist means his depression and pain. But here’s the cross over. When we feel pain and sorrow, we often think it is because we’re doing something wrong. But that is not true. God has removed our transgressions as far as the east is from the west. God is just as near to those in emotional darkness as he is with us in emotional light.
Thus, we can worship regardless of our circumstances or feelings. We can understand God’s wisdom without being particularly clever. And we can act as gatekeepers, letting in God’s light, saying no to misguided attempts to quench the God-fire.
Link to audio of this lecture (GHFC Link)
Other WOW Ephesians Lectures: (Eph 4:1-16, Eph 4:17-32, Eph 5:21-6:9, Eph 6:10-24)
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