I want to read again our text for today without the italicized words. Walk in wisdom toward those outside, redeeming the time, your speech always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one. For the last several months, I want to say to you visitors, we've been working our way through this great letter of Paul to the Colossians. And we've seen how his great concern was to present the antithesis to the false teaching that was threatening this congregation. One of the things that these false teachers wanted to do was to bring them back again to a ceremonial kind of worship that really meant a reversion to an Old Testament standpoint. Another thing was their mystical speculation about angels and things of that kind. But in a way, the most devastating error that these teachers brought into the church was a tendency toward an ascetic view of holiness, where you go out of the world and you devote yourself to the cultivation of your own inward piety. When Jesus Christ said, we're to go into the world, not out of it, not to be of it, but we are to go into the world for him. This great error later on became very harmful in the ancient church. Indeed, it became so dominant that even great men like Augustine were led away with it. But nevertheless, we see quite clearly in this epistle that the apostles' answer to this false teaching was to go into the world and to all of the institutions that God himself had created to redeem them for the honor and glory of his name. That's why he begins with husbands and wives. Marriage is a divine institution. We're not supposed to flee away from it. We're supposed to rejoice in it and to see it redeemed by the glorious power of God that it might be like the marriage of Christ and his church. And then he deals with the subject of children and their parents because God doesn't want us to flee away from the institution of the human family. That's a divine creation. He doesn't want us to disparage it or to think that holiness comes in fleeing from it, but he wants us to redeem it to his glory and honor. And then he turns to work and talks about slaves and masters. And that also is something that God calls his people to do, to redeem the work in which they are doing by becoming servants of the living God in doing it, so that they're serving God while they're serving their human master, and they have an eye singled to his glory. And then, as you know, he goes on to talk about prayer, which is also another way in which we are in this world. to perfect holiness in the fear of God, and now finally, in the fifth place, he comes to this matter of Christian witness. And he says to these Colossian people, over against the error of these false teachers, people, you are to walk in wisdom toward those outside, redeeming the time Your speech always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one. You know, my trip last year to the continent of Africa finally taught me why the Bible speaks about walking the way it does. We are a riding civilization here. We get in the car and go where we want to go. It's even reached the place that you go to the golf course and you get a cart and ride around in it. We are a riding culture. Not a walking culture, a riding culture. Even Doris and I ride our bicycles rather than walk. Maybe we ought to start walking. But anyway, One of the things I learned by my visit to Africa last year was that that's not the way it is in some parts of the world. Especially in Malawi, I was just amazed at the constant sight of people walking. Walking everywhere, walking in the cities, walking in the countries, walking along the highways. Sometimes ladies walking along the highways with enormous sacks of grain balanced on their heads. Their whole way of life is characterized by walking, and that is why walking in the Bible became a kind of shorthand term for the whole of life. When the Bible says, walk, in wisdom it means that's the way your lifestyle is supposed to be characterized. Whatever you're doing, wherever you're walking, wherever you're going, you are to be doing it in wisdom. And of course, wisdom is something that we need to always remember is more than mere knowledge. You can have a lot of knowledge and the result is no more than to puff you up with the idea that you know a lot. But in the Bible, wisdom is not the same as knowledge. That is why people of very limited intellectual ability may have a lot of wisdom, And people of great intellectual ability may not have any wisdom at all. Wisdom is not only the knowledge of the truth of God rightly apprehended, understood, grasped, and made a part of oneself, but also, in addition to that, the knowing how to use that knowledge to the glory of God. You don't have wisdom unless you have the knowledge, plus the knowledge of how to use that knowledge, as we've seen constantly in our adult Sunday school class in our study of the Book of Proverbs. The writer of the Book of Proverbs was a man who had a lot of knowledge, but he also knew how to use that in the daily practice of life. And that is what he is talking about here. You people are supposed to walk, he might even have said ride, in wisdom. Whatever you're doing in your lifestyle today, just as in ancient times, you are to be doing it in the sphere of wisdom. Everything is to be characterized by a real grasp of the truth of God and of how the truth of God applies in every situation. Here then is the fountainhead of effectual witnessing for Jesus Christ. You can't witness for Christ unless you have wisdom. You might try it in a mechanical way. I remember I had a professor in college years ago who said he was in Grand Rapids one time and a man accosted him outside of a rescue mission. And he said to him, are you saved, brother? And he said, yes, I am. Now what shall I do? And the man said, wait a minute, I'll run inside and find out what I'm supposed to tell you. He didn't know what to say. You see, you can have a mechanistic approach to witnessing without any wisdom. But to have wisdom is essential if we are to be effectual witnesses for Jesus Christ, because only when we have wisdom can we redeem the time. Now that phrase is very interesting because redeem means to buy back or purchase out of one domain into another. And in this case it means we are to buy the time, this precious opportune moment, that's what kairos means in the Bible, we are to buy it back out of the dominion and power of the devil into the dominion and power of Christ. And in order to buy it back, to redeem it, we have to have wisdom as over against the lack of wisdom, in fact, the great shroud of darkness that now colors our whole culture and civilization. I'll give you just one example. Our entire culture is absolutely permeated today by the satanic lie called evolution. It's taught right over here at the school all day long. It comes through your television set every single day. If you subscribe to the National Geographic magazine, it is full of it from one end to the other. The whole culture in which we live is dominated by a lie that does not differ at all in principle from the false religion of the ancient Egyptians. Did you ever look at some of those strange-looking gods that the Egyptians worshipped? Do you know what they were? They were deifications of the powers of nature. That's what they were. The Egyptians attributed to natural forces with the dim understanding they had of those natural forces, a divine power and glory. And that's exactly what modern civilization has done in the doctrine, the dogma, the lie of evolution. It has ascribed to this blind, accidental process called evolution what really belongs to the one living and true God. We haven't advanced one degree beyond the superstition of the ancient idolaters in the land of Egypt, who changed the glory of God into the likeness of things that man could make, and deified the powers of nature just as we ourselves have in the doctrine of evolution. Now what our text is telling us is, and this is just one aspect, I won't go into others, that we are to buy back the time, this opportune moment that comes to us, we are to buy it back out of that dark dominion of Satan, which holds so many people captive by false ideology in every way, and we are to buy it over for the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. The opportune moment that comes to you and comes to me, it comes to every one of us as Christian believers. Just like it came to Jesus that day in Samaria when He met that Samaritan woman. That was an opportune time that Christ redeemed. And He redeemed it because He had wisdom. And He could see the great gulf between that woman as she was and that woman as he would have liked to see her. And that characterized Jesus' ministry on earth all the time. Think of Nicodemus. Christ had the wisdom to see the great gulf between where Nicodemus was and where he ought to be. And Zacchaeus, Christ saw the great gulf between where he was and where he ought to be. You have to have wisdom to discern that right here in Carson. And you have to have wisdom to be able to buy the opportune moment for Jesus Christ by witnessing. And that brings us to the method of witnessing. How do you witness, then, at that opportune time, buying it back for Jesus? Well, friends, you do it with speech that has grace as its universe of existence and is seasoned with salt. You and I as Christians are supposed to live and move and have our being in the universe of grace. Do you understand grace? as it's revealed in the Bible? I hope you do. You don't understand grace as it's revealed in the Bible unless you say, to start with, I am a hell-deserving sinner. If God had cast me into the flames of hell forever, he would have been just and righteous altogether. But, from all eternity, For reasons that surpass my ability to explain, understand, or analyze, He chose me in Christ that I might be holy and without blame before Him in love. I was predestined for the adoption as a son. Now that's grace. Didn't deserve it, didn't do anything to get it. God did it. And then in the fullness of time, being a dead sinner by nature, as all men are, and dead means absolutely helpless and unable to do anything to save yourself, the sovereign God, by the mighty power of His Spirit, and I'm using biblical terms, quickened me, and that means made me alive from being dead, and raised me up together with Christ to sit in heavenly places. Regeneration, we call this in Christian dogmatics. By the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, I, who once was dead, am now alive. I, once being blind, can now see. I, once being deaf, can now hear, and therefore respond to the glorious gospel invitation. And then what did God do after I did respond? Because He enabled me to respond, well, He justified me, and that's by grace too. He counted me as righteous altogether because of the atonement of his son Jesus as my substitute. He counted me righteous and counted Christ to be damn worthy for which he suffered on the cross of Calvary. And having justified me, he adopted me into his family. And having begun a good work in me, the Bible says he's going on with that work and he's going to keep on going on with that work until the day of Christ. And that means that from start to finish, the whole thing is by God's unmerited, unsolicited favor. That's grace. And it is in that universe that the Christian lives and moves and has his being. He's always conscious that it's all of grace and not of works at any point to any degree. As Spurgeon once said, if I sew one stitch in my celestial garment, the Lord God will say, get out of here, you do not belong in my kingdom. One stitch. It's all of grace. For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourself, it is the gift of God. Even your faith is the gift of God, and not of works, lest any man should boast." Now, if you've got wisdom, you're living in the sphere of grace, and then he says your speech should not only reflect that grace, but should be seasoned with salt. Have you ever been anywhere where there was no salt at all? I'll tell you one thing, it's hard to even eat the food if there isn't any salt. I mean, for cooking or anything else. Just try it sometime. You'll say, eh, and you'll probably spit it out because it's so unpleasant to eat. Salt is that which brings a sharpness to the flavor. It's a preservative in the Bible, It is something that is therefore quite often used symbolically in the scriptures, and here it is used for the fact that the Christian, therefore, in his encounter with the world, has a certain sharpness. And you can see that in the encounter of Jesus with this woman at the well. Woman, you don't know what you worship. Try that sometime on some of your friends in Carson. You'll just see what salty means. I've lived most of my life, congregation, in cities, and I've come to the conclusion that it is harder to be a consistent Christian in Carson than in New York City. Fundamentally, that's the truth. Do you know why? Because the pressures for conformity are greater here than they are there. The pressures for conformity are enormously amplified in a small rural community where everybody knows everybody and everybody belongs to some church. But I tell you the mindset of the community of Carson is not any less worldly and dark than it is in New York City. Do you know that? That's a fact. Let me give you just a few reflections that I myself have come to know right here in Carson. It doesn't matter what your denomination is. or the way that you worship. You can be a good Christian even if you sit under a lady preacher every Sunday. Just as good as anybody else. Truth doesn't matter that much. Doctrine isn't all that important. What counts is that we are all good people. I can't think of more horrendous heresies than I've just stated. Those are right out of the pit of hell and widely believed and accepted right here in this community. That is why the one thing that is utterly verboten in Carson is to criticize any other denomination. or to criticize what people do on the Lord's Day. For at all costs, and here's where the pressure is so great, we must maintain an atmosphere of unity and peace between denominations, even if they really hold to different religions under the label of Christian. And that's the fact, folks. That is what really If you've got wisdom, you see it. If you don't, you don't. All of these commonly held principles, so popular in rural North Dakota, are utterly condemned in the Bible. And our speech is not seasoned with salt if we just meekly go along with it. And so often we do. I want to give you an illustration right out of our own churches. past eight years. We had a funeral service some years ago in the old building, and after the committal we came back to the church building for dinner. And I happened to sit there with a woman from another denomination, and she began to talk about the awful decline in America. Well, I was really interested when I heard that. She was talking about the terrible moral decline of our nation. Do you know what she blamed it on? Immigrant people coming into America from Southeast Asia and the like. They're different from us, she said. That's ruining the nation. I'd say that's pretty standard North Dakota thinking. And I could have just sat there in silence and let it go by, but this time I bought some time back for Jesus. So I said to her as pleasantly as I could, no, that's a wrong diagnosis. What's really wrong in America is what's been happening in some of the churches that have congregations right here in Carson, where they now have lesbians approved by the highest officials of the church. Homosexuals allowed to be in the ministry. Women allowed to preach when God says they can't. Denials of the great truth of the Bible, and people here paying the salaries of those people who are denying it. It is the fact that the mainline churches of America have abandoned biblical standards, that's what's wrecked our nation. Well, I suppose you would guess she didn't like what I said too well. But at least I was attempting to buy the time back for Jesus. To speak because God gave me the wisdom to see what really is wrong. To speak it, I hope, with salt. But you and I both know that the trouble so often is that we remain silent. If we didn't remain silent, there would be more sparks flying than there are. You see, congregation, the world and life view of the unregenerate man doesn't differ from our world and life view only on peripheral matters or only on one or two things. The world and life view of a biblical Christian differs at every point from that of outsiders from the kingdom of God. And what we need to do is to learn to understand the wisdom of God, the scriptures, the truth of God, the system of God's revelation, and how to use it so that we can present the antithesis we can present the speech that is full of grace and seasoned with salt. Our text says we need to know how we ought to answer each one. Well, how did Christ answer the woman at the well? That was just a different denomination, you know. That's what they said. They're just a different denomination of Jews. That's what the Samaritans said. We believe the books of Moses. We believe the Messiah is coming. But what the Samaritans said were just a different denomination. Jesus said, you people don't even know who you worship. I say the same thing of the liberals in the churches of America today. They don't know who they worship. It certainly isn't the God I worship. Jesus had to tell Nicodemus, the Pharisee, you shouldn't be a teacher in Israel. You don't even understand the necessity of the new birth. Well, friends, wake up. The situation is the same in Carson. Really it is. Lots of religious people here do not have a clue, to use a New Zealand expression, A lot of people here think that people are basically good, and that is the absolute antithesis of the biblical teaching that God looked down from heaven and couldn't even find one man that is good. Psalm 14, Psalm 53, Romans chapter 3. And their delusions are not going to be dispelled unless we do for them what Jesus did for Nicodemus. You see why the monastic solution is so attractive? It's a lot easier, folks. It's a lot easier to go into a cell and read and pray than it is to be faithful at the senior meals over here. That's hard. To speak the truth of God in love and with salt over at the senior meals, that's a tough one. That's a tough assignment. Going into a cave like the hermits in the ancient church, that's easy. And God doesn't want us to do the easy thing. He wants us to build Christian marriages, Christian families, Christian workplaces. He wants us to be people of prayer, and He wants us to be people who witness toward those outside. So I want to ask you today, are you doing it? Or are you just going along and failing to redeem the opportune moment? Now come on, every one of you, you have opportune moments and you're supposed to redeem it for Christ. Don't you know it's a costly thing to be a disciple of Jesus? Well, take up your cross and follow Him. Sure, it's easier to be quiet and by silence to give consent to the most horrible denials of the Bible. You're tempted every day to do it, but you're not to do it. No, sir. You are to walk in wisdom, your speech always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer everyone. Well, I know that You're like me, sometimes you fail, and I hope sometimes you don't. May God give you the grace more and more to seize that golden moment of opportunity and bear faithful witness for Jesus. Amen. We thank you this day, O God, for this wonderful exhortation of the Apostle. Every one of us here, we have to confess, we have failed many times. The moment was there, the opportunity in front of us. We were cowards. We didn't say anything. We didn't redeem the time. But oh how we rejoice in those times that, however imperfectly, yet we did. Redeem it for Jesus. Help us more and more to do this. To the honor and glory and praise of His name. For we ask it in Jesus' name, Amen.