WORDS OF WISDOM ON YOUR WALK

Ephesians 5:15-17

INTRODUCTION

As a way of introduction, let me just say that we are about to deal with a Bible text that is obviously simple, yet utterly profound. I think you would agree that that is the nature of the Bible. The simplicity of Scripture is so accessible that even a child can understand it, yet it is utterly deep to drown an elephant. As a person who gets paid to observe and study this sacred text almost every day, I can assure you that such experience is weekly for me. Once again, I stand before you this morning simply humbled by the power of God’s word that it had on me during the week; and once again, I have the privilege to deliver this life-transforming word to you.

In addition to pointing out that we are about to deal with a text that is so simple, yet utterly profound, I also want to say that it is very practical. Paul’s letter to Ephesians is not only amazingly theological, but also amazingly practical. For all of us at Sovereign Grace that love all the Bible-enriched doctrines, we need to keep in mind that knowing theology is not the final goal for Christians. As much as we love doctrines and how they are so precious to us, they are not the end. Rather, they are the means to an end, namely holy living, a life that is separated from sins and consecrated to God. Or to borrow Paul’s own words from the previous section, that is, separated from the works of darkness to the fruit of the light.

We cannot merely look at the Bible as a systematic theology or as an academic subject. Without a doubt, the Bible needs to be studied and it needs to be studied hard with every ounce of our being. But the Bible also needs to be obeyed, especially, its explicit commands. And this morning we come face to face with some of those explicit commands.

Let me make two exegetical observations from our text. First, all the verbs (four to be exact) in these three verses are in the present tense. In other words, these are not future or past suggestions, but something that needs to be done right now. Second, all four verbs are imperatives and they are: 1) be careful, 2) making the most, 3) do not be foolish, and 4) understand. In other words, these are not future commands, but commands that need to be obeyed right at this moment. When there is negligence or willful disobedience – that is when it becomes a sin issue.

For those of you that want to treasure God and his word above all, I encourage you to take heed to this message. My sermon points come straight out of those four imperatives of this text. But before we look at each of those practical commands, I want to first draw your attention to the basis or the foundation in which these four commands stand. In other words, each of these commands cannot stand on its own if there is no foundation.

Furthermore, the foundation in which these four practical commands stand is uniquely Christian. To say this in another way, if the foundation is not uniquely Christian, then these four commands become mere moral suggestions at best. I can assure you that many religions of the world can give you moral suggestions that are good and practical. In fact, I heard many atheists and non-Christians give some good talks on all these four practical commands that we will be studying this morning. They are smart, articulate, intelligent, and even religious individuals. But what sets them apart from what you are about to hear is the difference of foundation, namely it is uniquely Christian.

So, what is so christianly about the foundation in which these commands stand? The clue is the first word in verse 15 – therefore. This clearly implies that our text does not stand on its own, but directly links to the previous section. In other words, what determines our text is its context, beginning with its immediate context.

Let me show you from verse 14. Here’s the reason or the basis why you are commanded to be careful how you walk, making the most of your time, not to be foolish, and to understand what the will of the Lord is – because you are not dead and because you are not asleep. And to move beyond verse 14, namely from verses 3 to 13, here is another reason – because you are not of the darkness, but now you are in the Light!

There is also another reason, namely verse 2 – because Christ also loved you and gave himself up for you, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma! These are the reasons that make these commands uniquely Christian. These are not mere moral imperatives, but theological imperatives that are deeply rooted in Christology and soteriology. With that in mind as the basis for this morning’s message, let me point out four practical commands that we need to obey, for God’s glory and for our good.

I. Look Carefully in How You Walk (v. 15).

The verb for “be careful” in Greek literally means “look carefully.” In the NT the word “careful” is used in reference to searching diligently (Matt. 2:8), investigating everything carefully (Luke 1:3), speaking and teaching accurately (Acts 18:25), or having a full awareness (1 Thes. 5:2). Hence, what Paul is implying here is that there are people in the church who are not very careful or who do not see things very carefully. In other words, they have problems with perception. It can be a biblical perception, a theological perception, a pastoral perception, or an ethical perception, or all the above. They have ears but cannot hear; they have eyes but cannot see.

We are, by nature, people who do not examine things carefully. If this is true in the natural sense, how much more is that true in the spiritual sense? We rush in our observations, interpretations and judgments, and yet we wonder why we are in such and such condition.

Even at this very point, we need to carefully raise a question, that is, in what we need to be careful of? That is a very important question to ask.

According to the text, we are commanded to be careful how you walk. Notice it doesn’t say, be careful when you walk or where you walk or who you walk with. That is because, first of all, when is already given. Christians do not simply walk (which is a metaphor for how you conduct your life) only on certain days of the week, but all the time. Also, the word how encompasses the entire where, what, how, when, and with whom. In other words, how refers to wisdom. In fact, that is why Paul says, not as unwise men but as wise.

At this point, let me counsel you with a few words about wisdom. You cannot equate wisdom with intelligence, knowledge, ability, or academic degrees. A person may have all those but not be wise.

The Bible speaks of two types of people, namely wise and foolish. This is especially evident in the Proverbs. Since we are given a negative command, that is, not to be unwise men, let me describe some characteristics of unwise/foolish individuals.

• Emotionally-driven, rather than rationally-driven.

Scripture gives various examples of foolish people that are generally driven by feelings, rather than reasons. I can think of one example in the Parable of the Sower. In reference to the seed that fell on the rocky places, Jesus said:

The one on whom seed was sown on the rocky places, this is the man who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no firm root in himself, but is only temporary, and when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he falls away (Matt. 13:20-21).

Martyn Lloyd-Jones gives his observation on this type of people:

There are so many people who are governed entirely by their feelings and they do not want to use their minds and their brains. Even in a religious service they just want happiness and enjoyment. They want to have a good time, as they call it, to get excited, to work themselves up by singing hymns and songs and choruses, and to keep on repeating and repeating until they are in a state of mental intoxication. They do not want to be made to think. Life is hard enough as it is, they say, without having to struggle with this thought and that, so let us have more singing and less preaching and so on. Feelings! Just a riot of enjoyment – that is a foolish person.[1]

• Driven by discontentment.

Another way to say this will be driven by desire to have more and more. They say, I must have what I like, and what I like is right. They have appetites that cannot be satisfied, whether it is power, pleasures, or material things.

In his book A Call to Spiritual Reformation, D.A. Carson writes, “If the things I value are taken away, is my joy in the Lord undiminished? Or am I so tied to my dreams that the destruction of my dreams means I am destroyed as well?”[2]

• Driven by zeal that is without knowledge.

A person may have passionate zeal and sincerity, and be sincerely wrong! Paul referring to his fellow Jews in Romans 10:2 said, “For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge.”

• Driven by impatience.

This is a common characteristic of every child, isn’t it? He wants things at once. He doesn’t like to hear the words like wait, no, or later. He wants things now. Although this is true of every child, it should not be of every Christian. And because unwise are impatient, they often do not consider consequences.

• Driven by only one perception, while missing the whole point.

This is what narrow-minded means in a negative way. A fool only sees one thing at a time, while being blinded to everything else. It’s like a person who sees only one particular doctrine and forgets to see the whole picture. It’s like being so caught up with a particular text that he forgets about the whole context. It’s like being so enamored by one particular tree while missing the whole forest. This is what we call a problem with perception.

Those five characteristics are helpful descriptions for us to put off, since they are what foolish or unwise person looks like. If so, then what is a wise person looks like? And this leads to our second command.

II. Redeeming the Time (v. 16).

I don’t like the translation in NAS. To say, “Making the most of your time,” it wrongly implies as if time belongs to you. The literal rendering of this in Greek is: you all redeeming the time. There is no implication that you own time. Rather, like everything else in life, time is a gift from God.

In fact, there are four things that God providentially gave all of us – people, place, time, and resources. And you know what? We all are responsible to God for how and what we did with them.

• ^NAU 2 Corinthians 5:10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.

Does that even faze you? What do you think about the thought of standing before God and being accountable? I am terrified with this biblical reality, because I am so guilty for wasting so much of what God has entrusted to me. And my goal and prayer is that I don’t repeat these past sins of mine presently. If so, then I haven’t really repented from those past sins (not mere mistakes).

In his famous Resolutions, Jonathan Edwards wrote seventy resolutions when he was just nineteen! I’m going to cite about ten resolutions that relate directly to redeeming the time.

• Resolution #5: Resolved, never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.

• #6: Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live.

• #7: Resolved, never to do anything that I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life.

• #9: Resolved, to think much on all occasions of my own dying, and of the common circumstances which attend death.

• #17: Resolved, that I will live so as I shall wish I had done when I come to die.

• #18: Resolved, to live so at all times as I think is best in my devout frames, and when I have clearest notions of the things of the gospel and another world.

• #30: Resolved, to strive to my upmost every week to be brought higher in religion, and to a higher exercise of grace, than I was the week before.

• #37: Resolved, to inquire every night, as  I am going to bed, wherein I have been negligent, what sin I have committed, and wherein I have denied myself; also to inquire so at the end of every week, month, and year.

• #43: Resolved, never henceforward till I die, to act as if I were any way my own, but to act entirely and altogether as God’s.

• #52: I frequently hear persons in old age say how they would live if they were to live their lives over again. Resolved, that I will live just so as I can think I shall wish I had done, supposing I live to old age.[3]

And who can forget John Piper’s book Don’t Waste Your Life, a theme that is so appropriate for all Christians. Let me read just one line from that book:

We waste our lives when we do not pray and think and dream and plan and work toward magnifying God in all spheres of life. God created us for this: to live our lives in a way that makes him look more like the greatness and the beauty and the infinite worth that he really is.[4]

III. Do Not Be Foolish (v. 17a).

Paul is so concerned for the church that is foolish (the verb is in the present tense, as in already established presently as foolish) that he mentions this warning twice just within these three verses (vv. 15b and 17a). The emphatic repetitions within short verses are considered something to pay close attention to, as in this text. Hence, this warning is very important.

Do not be foolish. That’s a biblical idiom for don’t behave like unbelievers. For instance:

• ^NAU Psalm 14:1 The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.”

• ^NAU Romans 1:21 For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. ²² Professing to be wise, they became fools,

• ^NAU 1 Corinthians 2:14 ¶ But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.

Since fools are consumed with themselves and satisfied by their own perception, they have little regard for authorities, especially, God’s authorities. According to John MacArthur:

Sin is that which is against God, and since the fool does not recognize God, he does not recognize sin. The spiritually self-sufficient fool makes his own rules and justifies his own behavior, and in doing so he refuses to acknowledge sin and its consequences.[5]

When I hear those words, my mind immediately goes to Proverbs 1:7, which reads, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; Fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

IV. Understand the Lord’s Will (v. 17b).

To use Paul’s own analogy of put off and put on, we see the most vivid point here. We put off being foolish but we don’t stop at that, but we immediate put on the intentional effort to understand what the will of the Lord is.

In this letter Paul repeatedly points out the importance of God’s will (cf. 1:1, 5, 9, 11; 5:17; 6:6-7). That’s seven times just in this short letter!

Notice Paul does not say read the Lord’s will. He doesn’t say sing about it. He doesn’t even say pray about it. Rather, understand what the will of the Lord is. The verb for understand does not mean in a mere classroom knowledge or academic intelligence. It is one thing to say you own some knowledge, but it is quite another when certain knowledge owns you. That is to say, you are possessed by knowledge or that you have a deep understanding in life-transforming truths. That is the meaning here.

Such knowledge does not simply stay within you. Rather, it overflows from you to others. It is contagious. You say you love the Lord, but how so? Is it a type that merely stays within you or does it overflow from you to others? How can you say that the Bible is life-transforming when only certain area of your life has some changes while other areas or the majority of your life is untouched? Do you really understand what the will of the Lord is? That is why we are commanded to comprehend or have some insights to what God’s will is.

CONCLUSION

The Greek word for time in verse 16 is not chronos, which refers to the clock time. Rather, Paul uses the word kairos, which refers to the fixed season. The point is your time already has been fixed by God. You may know when you were born, but you do not know when your time would expire. And because you do not know when your time is up, the word of God commands and warns for you to redeem your fixed time.

Your time is ticking. At this time you are living on the borrowed time. That is why I cannot help but to keep reiterate the point, don’t waste your life! That is why I cannot help but to echo verse 14: wake up!

• ^NAU Romans 13:11 ¶ Do this, knowing the time, that it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep; for now salvation is nearer to us than when we believed.

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[1] D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Darkness and Light: An Exposition of Ephesians 4:17-5:17 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 428.

[2] D.A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 142.

[3] Jonathan Edwards, Jonathan Edwards’ Resolutions, edited by Stephen J. Nichols (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2001), 17-26.

[4] John Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2003), 32.

[5] John MacArthur, Ephesians (Chicago: Moody Press, 1986), 216.