(Clip) Fellowship with God Excludes Walking in Darkness

Fellowship with God excludes walking in darkness. We can't claim to have fellowship with God and continue to walk in darkness. Carefully read Ephesians chapter 4 verses 17 to 32 so that you get a clear explicit picture of what it is to walk. Walk not as other Gentiles walk in the darkness of the mind and of the spirit. What is it? Vanity of the mind, empty-headed, the understanding darkened, alienated from the life of God, full of ignorance, blind of heart, choosing uncleanness over righteousness and cleanness. That's the way those who are in darkness walk. We've not so learned Christ, said Paul in that letter. If we're His, we've learned to walk in the light, to put off the old man, to be renewed in mind, and to put on the new man. No. Fellowship with God excludes, totally excludes, walking in darkness. Now I go back and tell you that that person who has been born into the family of God has had certain things happen. Now we've seen how he's to walk, but why is it to be expected that he can walk that way? Last June I had the privilege of being here and speaking to you on so great salvation, at which time those of you were here remember we gave you some, a chart with some 50 numbers on it. The first of those were number one, when God wants to bring one out of darkness into light, out of death into life, the first thing he does is to put somebody up next to the sinner who's a sample of God's grace, to live Christ before the sinner, to intercede for and to witness to him. And the first phase of the divine operation is to awaken the sinner to his plight, to his danger, to his being dead in his sins. The second thing the Spirit of God does through the Word is to convict the sinner of his crimes, of turning to his own way, for sin is the committal of the will to the principle and the practice of pleasing oneself as the end and reason for their being. And on the basis of having discovered the nature of the crime, the Spirit of God then moves upon the heart of the sinner through all these agencies of grace to bring him to repentance. And to repent is to change one's mind, one's intention, one's purpose, one's rule of living, one's principle of government from pleasing himself to pleasing God. And the scripture so explains...