"Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children; and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."

The Christian knows that the action of God in salvation is predicated, not on the inherent merit of that person, but upon the unmerited love, grace, mercy, and favor of God. We are sunk without the love of God.

The love of God is not a sentimentalism, neither is it romanticism. The agape love of God is based on decision. It's a decision to be primarily concerned with the of the beloved regardless of their condition, irrespective of their reaction.

Christians are to live a life of love modeled on the love of God to us.

That is the challenge of the Christian lifestyle: to live a life of love that is modeled on the love of God to us. Human love tends to love the lovely, the loving, and lovable. Divine love loves the unloving, the unlovable, the unlovely. There's the difference.

Christians believe this. Because they believe this, they take seriously this tremendous challenge: "Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children; and live a life of love" This is a sacrificial lifestyle, and it is deeply pleasing to God.

John Calvin said, "If a preacher is not first preaching to himself, better that he falls on the steps of the pulpit and breaks his neck than preaches that sermon."

I wouldn't dare get up here and say, "Okay, folks, be imitators of God as dearly loved children and live a life of love," without hearing those words resonate deep in my own heart and thinking, Briscoe, there needs to be a deeper work of grace in your life. I suspect people like me may be sitting in the pews today.

We embrace what the Bible teaches concerning the beautiful truths of the love and the grace and the mercy of God. We must also embrace what the Bible teaches concerning the holiness, righteousness, and the justice of God.

A holy, righteous, just, loving, gracious, merciful God loves us to distraction. And out of his love, knowing what is best for us, he's outlined that which is acceptable to him. He's said that his deep disappointment, disagreement, and rejection of our behavior rests upon those who are disobedient. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against those who hold down that which God has revealed.

If I take seriously the love of God and I begin to imitate him, that of course will affect my lifestyle. By the same token, if I take seriously the wrath of God and I deal with that, guess what? That will change my lifestyle in a hurry.

For God says this: Those who persistently engage and persist in an immoral, impure lifestyle, however loudly they profess to be Christian, should expect not so much the grace of God as the wrath of God. They may have walked a dozen aisles. They may tell you all kinds of stories of how they were born again. But if they are living a persistently immoral, impure lifestyle, Scripture says that person is not a member of the kingdom of Christ in God.

Paul gets quite specific here. "Among you there must not even be a hint of sexual immorality or of any kind of impurity." He goes on to talk about obscenity, foolish talk, and coarse joking. The Scripture says the wrath of God is against those things.

Sexual immorality is sexual intimacy that contravenes that which God has ordained for sexual enjoyment. God is not a sexual spoilsport. God is the one who invented sex. The first sexual thought anybody had, God had it. Ought he not be consulted, seeing that he invented it?

This is what he says: "Sexuality is something I have ordained for humanity for a variety of reasons, and it is to be thoroughly enjoyed within the divinely ordained framework of monogamous, heterosexual marriage." Anything outside of monogamous, heterosexual marriage is sexual immorality.

"For of this you can be sure. No immoral, impure or greedy a man is an any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God." Deep repentance is no doubt in order at this point.

In order that we might be balanced and recognize that Paul is not just clobbering people who have certain attitudes toward sex, he puts a greedy person in the same category as the immoral and the impure. Why would he do that? He gives us a clue by saying that the greedy person in an idolater.

The Greek idea of greed is a continual desire and insatiable appetite for more. Are there people who are never, ever satisfied with a continual obsessive demand for more? Yes. What's their problem? Their problem is that they're not finding their satisfaction in the Creator, so they're trying to find it in the created. The created now becomes the object of their worship rather than the Creator. When the created becomes that which matters, as opposed to the Creator, I become an idolater. That's the ultimate insult to God.

"God, I don't find you satisfactory. I don't find you all that you're cracked up to be. I don't want you to be God of my life. But thanks for all the stuff you made for me. Now get out of my way. Let me ignore you, and let me worship what you made."

God says that's idolatry, and not the attitude of those who are part of the kingdom of God. The righteous indignation of God is leveled in that direction.

Certain beliefs will determine behavior. If we believe certain things about the love of God and we believe certain things about the wrath of God, we will embrace that which comes from the love of God and seek to imitate it in the power of the Spirit, and we will avoid like the plague that which merits the wrath of God.

Paul makes an emphasis on the light of God (verse 8).

In verse eight Paul is making an emphasis on the light of God. The Bible writers talk a lot about light and darkness. They talk a lot about truth and error. Very often when they're talking about light, they're talking about truth. And very often when they're talking about darkness, they're talking about error and confusion. Scripture teaches that when God begins to shine his truth into our lives it's not unlike the early morning sun dissipating the mist. The warmth and the brightness moves away the darkness and the confusion.

We hear testimonies all the time of people saying they were heading in a certain direction in their lives, but they knew an inner sense of dissatisfaction and emptiness and discouragement and dismay. Then they discovered that God in Christ loved them, and Christ gave himself for them, and that the risen Christ in the person of the Holy Spirit could come to live within them to change them from the inside. For some of them it was like a laser beam; for others it was like the slow birth of dawn. But the light shone into their hearts. The darkness was dissipated. They began to see things in the light of the glory of God. That was wonderful. They discovered that light not only banishes the mist and the darkness and the confusion, but it also exposes what is there.

You can wake up in the morning on a mountain, look down into the valley, and see the mist as the sun rises. It's beautiful. But when the mist dissipates, you look underneath and see nothing but urban sprawl and ugliness. The light not only dissipates the darkness, but it exposes what is left.

Now says the apostle Paul, "Live as children of light." If you rejoice in the fact that truth was beamed into your error, and reality took away your confusion, and light shined in your darkness, then begin to live transparently before God; for his light exposes the darkness.

We're adept at developing our behavior to suit our environment. There's no question that some of us are entirely different people at the county club than we are at Elmbrook. There's no doubt that some of us are utterly different at home that we are at work. Perhaps most significantly, there's little doubt that often, the persons we are in public is far removed from the persons we are in private.

We are to live in the light of the searching truth of God, transparent before him. There's nothing hidden from his eyes; all things are naked and open to him. That knowledge is going to affect my lifestyle more than anything else.

But Paul goes a step further and says, "it is light that exposes." If we begin to walk as children of light, we'll begin to expose darkness around us. It can get ugly.

When you start living like that, the lifestyle is so different, it begins to challenge. It begins to reveal. It begins to draw people to you; and it begins to repel people from you, because light is that which exposes.

Paul tells us to live according to the will of God (verse 15).

Verse fifteen talks about living according to the will of God. Many people live their lives on the basis of I want. That becomes the dominant theme. "I want this. I want that. I want her. I don't want this. I don't want that. I don't want him. Based on what I want and what I don't want, I will now craft my lifestyle."

There's a different way to create a lifestyle, not based on I want, but on what God wills. Scripture teaches that God's will is good and perfect and acceptable. And people underline it in their Bibles and doubt it. We're frightened silly of it, resistant to the very idea. What might it mean if we abandoned ourselves to God's will rather than to I want?

A happy person is the person who says, "God's will is just what I want." But it doesn't work when you start with I want and try to manipulate God's will to fit I want. It doesn't work. As you submit yourself to God's will and he works on you, you begin to discover his will becomes I want.

There was a time in my life when I was excited about a business career. I knew what I wanted. I knew where I was going. And I was concerned because I had a nasty, niggling feeling that God wanted me in the ministry. I made all kinds of rationalizations, all kinds of explanations of why I should stay in the business world. I thought, Anybody could be a preacher. It takes a real man to be a Christian in the business world. The latter is true; the former is false.

There came a glad day when I said, "Lord, whatever you want to do in me, do it." My wants were changed. Instead of trying to manipulate God's will into I want, God graciously turned my wants into his will. The peace was unbelievable.

We read in Scripture that those who are prepared to discover and do God's will, will not be unwise; they will be wise. They will make the most of every opportunity. They will begin to discover and understand the days are evil.

When a person lives a life predicated on the will of God, they recognize the potholes. They can recognize the evil days. They know what to avoid. They're not going to go on making stupid mistakes. They're not going to find themselves confused, and they're going to recognize opportunities.

Instead of stumbling in the dark, falling into potholes, making stupid mistakes, asking God to get them out of a fix, they put themselves into an attitude of "Lord, help me to discover and do your will." It's good and it's perfect and acceptable. You can identify people whose lifestyles have been predicated on their knowledge of God.

Verses fifteen through seventeen raise a couple of interesting questions.

How many of you were planning to leave this service and go get drunk?

How many of you were planning on leaving this service not filled with the Spirit?

Did you notice the difference there? Nervous laughter on the first one. Stony silence on the second one. We know that you don't go to church with every intention of going straight out and getting drunk. That's not acceptable. But for some strange reason we don't worry too much about going to church and not going away filled with the Spirit. In fact, some of us are frightened to be filled with the Spirit. Some of us are not even sure what it means.

Paul tells us the Christian lifestyle is one filled by the Spirit of God.

It would be as unthinkable not to be filled with the Spirit as it would to be drunk. So the fifth thing we discover is that the Christian lifestyle, according to God's plan, is the lifestyle filled by the Spirit of God. When a person is drunk they are captivated and motivated and activated by alcohol. When a person is filled with the Spirit, they are captivated and motivated and activated by the indwelling Holy Spirit.

From a grammatical point of view, verses nineteen, twenty, and are dependent upon verse eighteen. Paul talks about four areas that will be indicative of the person living in the fullness of the Spirit. Speaking and singing and thanksgiving and submitting are all dependent on being filled with the Spirit.

"Speak to one another," doesn't mean going to church and talking about any old thing the minute church is out. It refers to an upbuilding that is committed to helping people grow.

"Singing" is worship. Singing is not the only kind of worship, and all singing is not worship. The determining factor is whether it's from the heart to the Lord.

You can have superb music that's not from the heart and isn't to the Lord. You can have awful music that is from the heart to the Lord. Personally, I enjoy the former better. God accepts the latter. I think what he really likes is beautiful music from the heart to the Lord.

Isn't it sad that we get into big debates about the kind of music and decide what's acceptable or not according to our stylistic preferences, as opposed to saying, "That came from the heart and it was directed to the Lord. That's worship."

There's no shortage of people who can give criticism, make complaints, or know what's wrong.

But there's often a shortage of people who are thankful; the kind of people who have submitted their lives to the captivating, motivating, activated activity of the Holy Spirit. Their attitudes are not determined by their circumstances, rather by their knowledge of God brought through the Spirit within.

You can tell the folks who are operating on the basis of the Spirit of God. You can tell the people who are operating on the basis of the will of God. Those who are operating on the basis of the light of God. Those who take seriously the wrath of God. Those who respond to the love of God. Because it helps them continue to grow in behavior and in lifestyle.

Were it not for the fact that it is God's truth, and God never calls without enabling, I would never have preached this sermon. It's too challenging for ordinary human beings like you and me. But if God calls, he equips. And that's what he's expecting.

Stuart Briscoe has been pastor of Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin, for more than twenty years. Among his numerous books are Mastering Contemporary Preaching and Hearing God's Voice Above the Noise: The Minor Prophets Speak to Us Today.

(c) Stuart Briscoe

Preaching Today Tape #169

www.PreachingTodaySermons.com

A resource of Christianity Today International

Stuart Briscoe is minister-at-large of Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin, and author of several books, including What Works When Life Doesn't (Howard Books).