Children of Light — Ephesians 5:1–14 | Season 2, Episode 11

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to drift? To feel like you're following God, but slowly, subtly, the world around you starts shaping you more than you realize?

That's exactly what Paul is addressing as he opens Ephesians chapter 5 — and he doesn't soften it.

In this episode of the Set Free Stay Free Bible study podcast, host Matt Dawson works through Ephesians 5:1–14 where Paul calls the church to something simple but demanding: imitate God. Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. And then he draws a clear, bright line between the things of darkness and the things of light.

With the temple of Artemis looming over the city of Ephesus and a culture where sexual immorality was literally wrapped in the language of worship, Paul's words weren't abstract theology. They were a call to look unmistakably different. And two thousand years later, in a world that blurs the same lines with different language, the call is the same.

Using the SOAP method (Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer), Matt unpacks why Paul hits sexual immorality and greed so directly, what it means to be a bearer of Christ's light in a dark world, and why the Holy Spirit's conviction isn't meant to crush us — it's meant to wake us up. The application lands in one honest word: confess.

This Ephesians Bible study is for anyone who has been slowly drifting and needs the light to shine on it.

In this episode:

• What "imitate God" actually looks like in everyday life
• Why Paul addresses sexual immorality and greed so directly to the Ephesian church
• The historical context of the temple of Artemis and what it meant for the early church
• Why greed is called idolatry — and what it's really about
• What it means to expose darkness rather than excuse it
• A closing prayer of confession and restoration for children of light

📖 Passage: Ephesians 5:1–14 (New Living Translation)

🔍 Keywords: Ephesians Bible study, Bible study podcast, SOAP method Bible study, Christian Bible study, Scripture-first Bible study, Set Free Stay Free, Matt Dawson, walking through the Bible, Christian discipleship podcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to another episode of the Set Free Stay Free Bible Study Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Dawson, and we are cruising into, I believe it's episode 11 in this study in Ephesians. We're moving into chapter five. But I do want to go ahead and start us with a quick question. Have you ever noticed how easy it is to drift? How easy it is to feel like you're pursuing and kind of going after God, but just get caught up in the world around us and sort of begin to drift a little bit in even some of the decisions we make and the way that we live. Paul's addressing some of this with the church primarily because we are now believers, we're now followers of Christ. We should be living a certain way, right? We shouldn't necessarily look like the world around us, even though we live in the world around us. We should look differently, we should act differently. And I believe sometimes Christians struggle because they don't really see the difference even in their own life because of the slow, subtle drift. As always, we are looking through the passage of Ephesians, this letter to the Church in Ephesus. We're using the Bible study framework soap, Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer. And if you don't know anything about that, I create a little video for you about how to read it and enjoy it every single time. But I also created a little download. If you would like some help in learning a little bit more how to soap through scripture, uh, you can download that. The link is in the description and also the pinned comment. And if you are listening to this through podcasts, if you just DM me or email me at info at mattdawson.tv, I will get you that free download guide to help you walk through and study scripture using the soap framework. All right. We're gonna dive in to Ephesians 5. Let's pray together first. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your word. Just open it up to us today. May we observe what you want us to observe, may we apply what you want us to apply. And God, as always, we're trusting in you to reveal your word to us as we read. We pray all this in your name, Jesus. Amen. I'm gonna go ahead and look at the first uh, I think 13 or 14 verses here in chapter five. Now, chapter four was already a heavy hitter because it was hitting us a lot with how to live and what it looked like to be united, even as the church, and how to live as children of light. And now he's gonna kind of move into this idea of what does it look like to live as people of the light, right? Because we we now embody this message of hope that we are bringing to the world. And so here's where we start in chapter 5, verse 1. Paul says this to the church Imitate God. Therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children, live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ, he loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God. Let there be no sexual immorality, impurity, or greed among you. Such sins have no place among God's people. Obscene stories, foolish talk, and coarse jokes, these are not for you. Instead, let there be thankfulness to God. You can be sure that no immoral, impure, or greedy person will inherit the kingdom of Christ and of God. For a greedy person's an idolater worshipping the things of this world. I'm pause there because right out of the gate, I think the challenge is made pretty clear. What does it look like to imitate God? Paul uses this several times in his letters to talk about how we imitate, basically imitate Christ, because Christ came to be the physical example of how to live in relationship with God and how to conduct ourselves in this world. And I love the fact that he gives some very specific instructions. And I want to give you some context again to the people of Ephesus and the church there. I think I shared with you in the very first episode that I had the opportunity to visit Ephesus. I had the opportunity to visit the Library of Celsius. I got to walk around through the port city at what it was at that time, see some of the ruins. I probably would have seen the square or the area that Paul was making tents and where he was doing ministry. I got to see the area in which he would have spoken, in which he would have uh cast vision and shared about who Christ was within an amphitheater, because there was a time in Acts that talks about uh him doing that and speaking to uh people because they kind of wanted to run him out of town. Um, but I also want us just to consider the fact that this was a very strong, uh the temple of Athena was there. It's a very strong uh presence of sexual immorality, kind of wrapped in the guise of worship. Okay, just again, in our Western sensibilities, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. But in that time, that was a big part of their version of temple worship, where these female priestesses that all served the goddess Athena, um, and sexuality was used as a part of worship. Again, you can have your own thoughts about that, but that's historically what we see. And so one of the things that kind of separated followers of Christ at that time, when they lived according to sort of the biblical sexual ethics of man and woman, of marriage, of um, you know, holding out and and and you know, following Christ in terms of being celibate and single until they got married and no sexual activity outside of marriage, and so they would get married and then they would have a family. We would look at those things even in our modern culture and just be like, well, that sounds trad. That sounds traditional, that just sounds like everything else that we've heard, you know, from grandparents and those kind of things. Well, that's because a lot of this is all what Paul wrote, and Paul talked about how that looked in the context of sexual sin and sexual morality. So here, here's what he's saying. He starts off saying, You're gonna imitate Christ because you're filled with his love and you're filled with his light. And then he says, So don't let there be any sexual immorality around you and among you. Basically, he's like, This is the easiest thing, not easy from a human desiring pleasure standpoint, but the easiest thing in terms of what separates you from everyone else who doesn't understand and doesn't follow Christ is that you're not going to be around sexual immorality impurity. And notice he uses the word twice here, greed, right? Greed. Greed, uh, people usually think of greed usually financially, uh, or just in the materialistic of things, never having enough, never really, you know, getting enough. Talks about greed being the idolatry here. And the reason that that is the case, okay, is because greed is such a big part of back in those days, it wasn't about money, it was about pleasure. And it was about the greed that people were dealing with, is that they weren't getting enough. And they would never get enough because it was feeding this, they were trying to feed this insatiable void that only Christ can fill. And so he's talking about sexual immorality, he's talking about impurity, and the reason he brings greed into it is because they were living in such a way. This is talking about the the people of Ephesus, that were living in such a way that they could not get enough. Greed was sort of driving all of this. He says, look, these people, people that live like that are gonna have no place in the kingdom of God, right? Because that's what they're they're choosing that. One of the reasons he used idolatry is because they're choosing to put that above all things, including faith, or in terms of terms of their understanding of the kingdom of God and of Christ himself. They worship the things. That's the last sentence I read. They worship the things of this world. Let's keep going. I want you to understand why there was such a heavy hit on sexual immorality right at the gate. But here's he continues to go on. Verse 6 Don't be fooled by those who try to excuse these sins, for the anger of God will fall on any of those who disobey him. Don't participate in the things these people do. Right? For once you were full of darkness, but now you have the light from the Lord. So live as people of light. For this light within you produces only what is good and right and true. Carefully determine what pleases the Lord, take no part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness, instead expose them. It is shameful even to talk about these things that ungodly people do in secret. But their evil intentions will be exposed when the light shines on them. For the light makes everything visible. And here he pulls from the Old Testament and says, This is why it said, Awake, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light. I'm going to stop there because when he st when he really just kind of gets down to the bottom of this, he's saying, We are not supposed to live this way. He says, We're not supposed to try to make excuses for this sin. And I think when I talked about the question earlier about the drift, the subtle drift that people experience, is because I really do believe there are a lot more people, especially in our country, in our world, this Western world, who are raised in the values and raised in the knowledge of God. They're raised in the understanding of some of these what I what you might call old-fashioned or biblical sexual ethics. But then very easily and very quickly, our culture wants to kind of blur the lines and it wants to say, hey, that's not a big deal. This is normal. Everybody's doing it. Uh, it would have been very similar to the church in Ephesus. Don't worry about that. That's not a big deal. Everybody, you know, this is part of the worship, this is just part of what we do. And what he's saying really clearly is, guys, you know, don't make excuses for this behavior. He's like, you're gonna try to justify it. You're gonna try to hold on to this new teaching about Christ and all the freedom and all the light and all the love that it brings, but you're still gonna want to go out and do some of these things and live in some of these ways and do this. He says, you need to understand the contrast here. Those are the things that are full of darkness. And look, at one time you were, that was where you were. He's trying to help him understand that there's grace because at one time that's where you were, you didn't have a choice, but now because of Christ, he goes on to say, you have a light from the Lord, and this light within you, right, wants to produce the things that please God. And we talked about this back uh last season in our study to the to the church in Galatia, right? Where he said, Look, the the flesh wants these things, and it's almost always sexual, it's always greed, and it's always materialistic, and it's always here, it's always the pleasures uh that we seek. He says, But the spirit, the Holy Spirit in you wants to seek the things of God. And this is very again, same thing to this church. He's saying, understand, that's that you need to draw a line here. This is those are the things of darkness, these are the things of light, and now you have the light in you. It's not just you're not trying to achieve the light by your good behavior. He's like, no, this light is in you. You are now bearers of Christ. You are now bearers of this light, which is why he uses the word imitate Christ. Don't have anything to do with that. He goes on earlier and says coarse language and bad jokes and those kind of things. Like, look, these you can spot them a mile away, people that are just living like anybody else in this world. That doesn't mean it needs to be you. Matter of fact, if you are a person who follows Christ, it shouldn't. That's what Paul's saying. It shouldn't be you. Like, flee from these things. Don't be a part of these things. He goes on and says that eventually, look, all the evil things will eventually be exposed to light. Matter of fact, he tells people, like, you should expose these things, the things that people do in secret that are perverse. And he says, and dark. He's like, expose, shine the light on them. Like that's part of what we do in terms of even among the community of faith, and when we see somebody going off the rails, when we see somebody uh living in such a way that dishonors God, it's like you're supposed to be able to say, dude, wake up. Matter of fact, I love when he pulls this out. He says, awake, right? Christ will give you light. So don't don't go to sleep on this. And and the way he talked about it earlier is don't try to justify this. Don't try to make excuses for it. He's calling us to be there. So part of the Christian journey is understanding that as we subtly drift towards what the culture tells us is natural and normal and those kinds of things, the Holy Spirit convicts us. The Holy Spirit, but even by reading his word today, maybe some of these observations are the Holy Spirit is kind of, you know, kind of tapping on you and convicting your heart, and you say, Oh, man, I'm really paying attention to that. And that conviction is good because that conviction is the light exposing things in you. And our response to that is not to justify it or excuse it. Our response to that is to go, God, I'm sorry. God, please forgive me. God, please forgive my sin. Forgive the thoughts that I've had, forgive the decisions that I made yesterday, forgive the joke that I told, forgive the things that I'm just continually being pulled and drifted towards. Forgive me. That's part of the confession of sin. And then God restore, right? That's part of what the Holy Spirit does. I want to feel love. I want to feel acceptance. I want to feel grace. That's what the Holy Spirit does, is He provides that on God's behalf through God. He provides that for us, right? That's how we understand this relationship between Father, God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit's that conduit for us because he lives in us and the power of God now lives in us, as we read earlier in Ephesians. So that's part of this process, right? Observe how do we apply this? Maybe the first part of application is just confess. Just say, God, I'm I'm sorry. You know, I I you've exposed that. You've you've shined a light on it. Maybe people in your life have shined a light on it. Maybe people have questioned things in your life. That's okay. You need to maybe find the courage to just instead of the thing you said that justified it or excused it or pushed it away, go and say, you know what, I appreciate that. I appreciate you saying something. I appreciate you calling that out because again, the light is going to expose it eventually. Whether we get caught, again, that's usually the way it is. But it's just going to happen. He says, I appreciate you saying something about it. And now I've confessed and, you know, I'm I'm I'm asking God to help me. I'm asking God to lead me to live as a child of light. And again, we've looked at all this through verse, sorry, through chapter four, all of these verses, all of these challenges of being humble and, you know, making allowances for each other's faults and forgiving one another and living by the Spirit and empowering the church to do the work that He's called us to do. That's all a part of what this living as children of the light looks like. And we're going to get ready to get into here in the next couple, I think, episodes, about what does that look like in relationships? And it's it gets tight. It gets pretty tough, not just individually, us ourselves in relationship to God, but what does that look like with others? But let's pray today and ask God to apply what we've read today to us as we go out and live as children of light. Father God, thank you so much for your word. Thank you for the way it convicts us that even as the word itself says that the light is going to shine and expose the things done in secret and done in darkness. God, I believe that's what even your word does, even without anybody. Your Holy Spirit just convicts us and shines a light on things. So God, may we, right now, just not make excuses, not try to justify our behavior, our thoughts, anything. May we just confess, may we ask for forgiveness because we know that you will forgive. And may we, and may we move forward as the children of light, who in the light that indwells us, which is you, Christ, indwelling us so that we can embody and be the people of God. That that even though we all live in this world, that there would be something about believers, there would be something about Christians that they that people look and go, you know what, you just you don't fit in. You don't, you don't necessarily just fit in easily and conform to the patterns of this world. There's something different. And God, that's because you are renewing our minds. You're you're you're continuing to convict us, you're continuing to make us more and more like you. So, God, as our goal is to imitate you. Please, through your Holy Spirit, continue to give us the power and the wisdom and the understanding of what that looks like as we try to live this out today and every day. We pray all of this in your name, Jesus. Amen. Thank you again, guys, for tuning in and being a part of this podcast. I really do hope that studying the book of Ephesians, I hope that studying uh if you are with us with Galatians, I really hope this is beneficial to you. That this isn't, I don't do this for my own joy and satisfaction just to talk into a camera. I I really do hope that it's benefiting you. I hope you're reading along. I hope that every time we every week we get into this new section, you're reading the section, maybe even more than once, and you're allowing through the soap framework, you're allowing God to speak in and through you. Don't forget to engage with us, maybe share where you're listening from or where you're connecting to us from. You can do that on YouTube through the comment section. You can like these videos. That helps us be seen by even more people with the algorithms. If you're listening to us through podcasts, please rate and review the podcast on the platform you're on, whether it's Spotify or Apple Music or wherever you're iHeartRadio, wherever you're listening to this. And we look forward to seeing you next episode.