The text today is in Ephesians 5 verses 15 through 17. Ephesians 5 verse 15 through 17. Let me read from the beginning of chapter 5 down to verse 17 so we get the context. Paul is writing, therefore be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor crude joking. which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving, for you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure or who is covetous, that is an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore, do not become partners with them, for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true, and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them, for it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. Here are our verses. Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. So here Paul is continuing his exhortations to the church in Ephesus. We know that he has begun the letter by talking about what God has done for them, God's work. God has elected them from eternity past. The Son, Jesus Christ, has redeemed them from their sins. The Holy Spirit has applied the work of redemption on them, so that they have become new creatures. They have been risen again with Christ, raised to new life. They were once dead in trespasses and sins, but God, who is rich in mercy, has brought them to new life, to walk in them. That is what God has done, and God keeps on working, Paul says there in 2, 8 and 10. through 10. First what God has done for them, what they were dead in trespass and sins, and God has prepared good deeds for them to walk in. So although Paul is exhorting the church here, Paul is still talking about the continuing work of God in them, because these deeds that Paul is exhorting them to do are those good deeds, that good works that God has prepared beforehand so that they would walk in them And he has talked here to them about walking as children of light, walking in goodness, righteousness and truth, and to have nothing to do with the deeds of darkness and shameful acts, instead they should expose them as light exposes darkness, light shines and exposes and rebukes and exhorts That's how they are to walk as light. And here in this section, we have here these three verses. It talks about our responsibility that they are to live wisely in days of evil. It talks here about our responsibility, the importance of making good use of the time that God has given us. God has given each of us time here on earth. Our lives are already measured up. Our days are already decided. How many days we are gonna live here on earth, how many years, God has already decided them. God has appointed a certain amount of days for each and every one of us. in His sovereignty and we are responsible to use them rightly, to make the best use of the time that God has given us. To use the time wisely, to understand and live according to God's will. to understand what is God's will and to understand how are we to use the time further, how are we to obey God's will. He tells them in verse 15 to walk as wise and to see carefully to it that they walk as wise people, not as fools. but to look carefully, to be careful about how they walk, how they live their lives. The word here for walk is what is used previously. It means how to live the way of life, walking the path. And there is a necessity to be careful how we walk. because the days are evil. When days are evil, we have to be careful. When someone is driving a car in a storm and it's hard to see where he is driving, those of you who have a driver's license and have driven in heavy rain or storm and you can barely see anything, your windshield wipers are going the fastest they can but you can still the only thing you can see is maybe the lights from other cars but you don't see anything then you have to slow down and drive carefully because the environment you're driving in necessitates you driving carefully you can't go 150 miles an hour when you don't see anything drive carefully this is how it is here we live in days of evil we live in evil days there are wickedness around us distractions bad things in everywhere. The days were evil at Paul's time. The early church in their time, they were under heavy persecution from the Romans, from the Jews, from everyone around them. Days were evil for them. There were temptations around them. There were the old sins that used to live in, that still existed, the old temples, the old idols, the old idolatry sacrifices, the allurement of friends who wanted to bring them back into the orgies, into all the temptations and sins. and also the violent persecutions from the Romans who caught Christians, took them, gathered them up and threw them to the lions for the entertainment of the Roman people. The days are evil, says Paul. Look out for all these things that are around you, these dangers, temptations and sins. See to it carefully. The main reason he gives in this passage is because the days are evil. Because the days are evil. See to it carefully how you live and redeem the time. We remember the parable that Christ gave us about the foolish virgins. There were the ten virgins and the foolish virgins. They didn't have enough oil in their lamps. They didn't make good use of what they had. They didn't make sure to have all the oil they needed so that when the bridegroom came that they would be able to turn on their oil lamps that were fueled by oil. They were foolish. They didn't buy enough oil. And the price of their foolishness was that when the bridegroom came, they were out of oil. The wise virgins had their oil that they needed for their lamps. They couldn't give their oil to them. So the foolish virgins ended up outside. They were shut outside in the darkness. That's the consequences of being a fool and not using rightly what God has given you. Not using the time properly. That's the consequences of not being wise, but being a fool. You will one day, when it finally comes, the day of reckoning, that you will be left outside in darkness. Jesus gives many parables like that, how we use what God has given us. That's why it's important to live according to God's will and that's why it's important to live wisely. To live wisely. What it means to live wisely is to live according to God's will. To live righteously. To make right use of what we know, what we have been given, what God wants of us. Here this expression comes in verse 16. Redeem the time or make best use of the time, but the literal words are redeem the time or buy out the time. And there are many, many theories or many, many interpretations on what does it mean to redeem the time. Some say it means that you have to make the best of the circumstance that happens to you. Make best use of the opportunity you have. When an opportunity comes, you have to take the opportunity. You have to seize the moment. Seize the opportunity. But that sounds like you have to sit around and wait and roll your thumbs until an opportunity comes so you can grab it. So that's not what this expression means. The expression is also found in the book of Daniel where those who are interpreting the dreams and the king says to them that you're just trying to buy time. you're trying to win time, you're trying to, because they couldn't interpret the king's dream so they procrastinated, they tried to make time longer, they tried to buy themselves time to find a good interpretation for the dream. That's the other place in the Bible where this expression comes from and obviously It doesn't mean that we should procrastinate as Christians and try to buy time. But the fact is that we have a limited amount of time in our lives. Our time is limited. Our days are counted. We need to use, take that time. It is as if God has given us time, but the devil wants to take that time from us. And if we're not careful, if we're not active to redeem that time, the devil will keep it and make us do all bad things with our time on that time. We have to try to buy it back from the devil, or try to steal it back from the devil, because the devil has his plans for us. He has his plans on what we are going to do with the time we have. We have to be active. to say no, to not let the devil allow us to do what he wants us to do. We have to be active in grabbing back that time, buying back that time, and that means that it costs us something. There is a price for buying out that time. It costs us to deny ourselves. It costs us to say no to those entertainments. You know, if you sit around and just don't do anything with your time. You sit around and you're bored. You start looking at the phone. Scrolling in social media. Maybe look on television or on something fun because you're bored. You don't have anything good to do. It means denying those things. Denying yourselves those entertainments or easy times. Taking things easy. So we have to pay that price to redeem our time and to do something active and something good, something that is according to God's will instead. It's also like investing time. The time you are giving can be invested in the better things so that you will gain something better from that. Again, Jesus talked about the parable of the talents. Each were given talents and someone dug them down into a hole so that they would not go lost. Another one took them and traded with them and made even more money with them. He invested them Jesus says that this man who just dug it down in a hole in the ground, he wasted his opportunity. He was a fool. He could have put it in the bank and earned some interest instead, and make something of it. In the same way we have to invest our time. We can't just dig down our time into a hole and hope that it will stay. Our time will run out. We will run out of time one day. We have to take that time and invest it rightly. to do right and good things with them so that we will gain something for our holy lives, for God. There is a price to buying time. To use that time to understand God's will, he says. Be not fools, but understanding what is the will of God. He's not here talking about some mystical way, understanding what is God's hidden will, what is his specific hidden will. It's not in some mystical way as we try to redeem time and walk wisely that we will, in a mystical way, have God's hidden knowledge downloaded into our brains by a mystical charismatic experience. That's not what it's talking about. It's not talking about, for example, who are the elect? What is God's hidden will about election? It doesn't mean that our eyes will suddenly be enlightened. We will understand God's hidden will and see who are the elect or who are not the elect. But rather, this is about God's revealed will, which is revealed to us in Scripture. God's revealed will in the Bible, from reading Scripture. Not from having your personal revelations, because you are so godly that now God speaks to you and reveals hidden knowledge into your brain, but rather this time used on Bible reading to learn his law, his Bible, his word as Psalm 1 verse 2 says, the godly man, the blessed man delights in the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night. And Psalm 119 verse 9 that we're reading through. How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. He also talks about walking. Carefully guarding your way. How? According to your word. According to God's word. So being wise, understanding what the will of God is, means to meditate upon his word, to read and learn from his word, to guarding your life according to his word. What is God's will for your life? So many Christians wonder, what is God's will for my life? And they sit down and maybe go to a prophet or someone. They want to understand, what is God's will for my life? Well, you have God's will for your life in the Word of God already. in his holy law. You know, you learn how God wants you to live. That's God's will for your life. Start there. Start with God's will. Revealed will in the law. God's will is revealed in the plan of salvation, which is revealed in the Bible. His plan to save a people through Jesus Christ. to make them holy and to sanctify them and to make them walking in holiness throughout their lives. That is God's will for your life, that you might be saved and that you will walk in holiness, that you will learn from his commandments in scripture Here we also need to understand that we cannot do these things without God's help. We can't simply, yes, I'm going to obey the law of God, like some religious person who just reads the rules, but they don't have a new heart, a new renewed nature. The first is to realize that this cannot be done without God's help. That's how Paul has begun this book of the Bible, that God has done a work in them. First, they were dead in their sins and trespasses again. They can't do anything on their own unless You're raised to new life. You need to be risen with Christ. Firstly, become a new creature. Understand that if you want to live according to God's will, the first thing is to become saved, to repent and trust in Jesus Christ. Become a new creature. And that as Christians, we still need the help of the Holy Spirit to live according to God's will and law. To live according to this will that we are trying to learn. The Holy Spirit helps us to learn from Scripture as well. And to walk according to it. That's the message for us here from this text, is to seek God's will and pray for his help to live according to it. That's how we can apply this text. From this text, first step is that we need to recognize that our days are also even. Our days are not less evil than back for the early church, although we do not have physical persecutions or lions to be afraid of right now. But we have evil all around us. We have an evil world around us, a world of confusion. The world is so confused. The world is so foolish. They do not want to understand God's will. They're not trying to. And they don't know they are astray and confused. The world is full of distractions around us. We may think that this is the age that we live in that has the most distractions ever. But every age has their evil. This is the evil we have to live in. With all the social media, all our iPhones, telephones. Again, when you're bored, just pick up your phone. Watch some YouTube videos on how to do something useless. Go to Instagram and look at some useless stuff that people are pushing on you. Or Facebook. People are spending hours just with their phone, scrolling up and down through their feed, looking at useless things. Things that have no value. That's what the devil wants us. That's the plan that the devil has for your time. That's why you have to take that time from the devil and redeem it and buy it with your self-denial. Deny yourself that fun, that laziness. Do something active. So much sin everywhere. You can find sin on the internet easily. You don't even have to search those naked pictures anymore. You just go to Instagram. They send commercials about women who sell their bodies on Instagram. You get a friend request from someone you don't know. Even my wife got a friend request from someone, a woman, a naked woman, selling their bodies online. Don't even have to ask for sin to come down on you. It's delivered to you in your phone. You don't have to, you know, like people used to dress in a trench coat, hide their face, go into the adult store. without anyone seeing you. You just go, go to your phone. Don't even have to search anything. You might be innocently looking at whatever your friends have posted and some ungodly stuff shows up. Just like that. So many temptations. So many distractions. So much evil around us. We have to be so careful, fight so hard, almost more than others throughout the ages, it seems. But of course, each time has their... That's the first step to recognize the evil of the times we live in, in connection to how we use our time. that phone takes and steals your time. You have to redeem it. You have to take it back. You have to buy back that time. You have to steal that time back. Redeem the time. We cannot make time. We cannot prolong our time. We know what our Lord Jesus said. No one can add a single qubit to your lifespan. That moment is gone. The moment spent on distractions, frivolous activities, that moment is gone and you can't win it back. You can't get it back. You can't prolong your life. You can't do anything. to prolong your life. Talking about YouTube, there is a man on YouTube who tries to prolong his life. He was a rich... He sold his business for 800 million dollars and now he's retired and he spends all this money on scientific studies on his own body in order to try to live for 200 years. He is 46 years now, I think, and he spends all his days trying to prolong his life. He spends an hour in exercising. He spends a total of five hours, I think he said, to try to prolong his life by 50 years or whatever. Of course, he doesn't know that he can't prolong his life, as Jesus has said. But what a foolish man, because He, all this time, five hours every day, he wastes five hours every day just to try to gain 50 more years, or to try to live 200 years as it is. But what kind of life is that? He doesn't gain any time really because he spends it on working out and trying to become younger. He's trying to become younger. He wastes more time than he thinks he's gonna gain. And one day the Lord will tell to him, fool, Today I will take your life. That's what happens when you're not rich before God. Either you redeem your time or you waste it. In order to try to redeem the time, to grab that time, snatch it back from the devil, you have to plan. your days. You have to have a plan for how you are going to spend your day. You need to have routines every day. You need to have a morning routine. You need to have an evening routine. You have to have a routine every day that you follow, so that you take control of your life. so that you don't let your flesh or the world or the devil take control and just let you do whatever you feel like. When I was a child, I came home from school and that was my free time. I just did some random stuff, played some video games, did whatever I felt like. I didn't plan my time. I didn't invest my time. I didn't do my homework. Sorry kids, I'm not a role model if you want to do homework. I didn't invest my time. Then I became older, started understanding that my time is so limited. I work eight hours a day. Then I come home, have a few hours before I have to go to bed so I will be able to go up in the morning again. I have to plan my days, do the right things during that time that's been given. We have examples from from the Bible of men who had their morning routines. They started their day by praying. One thing you have to plan to do every day, otherwise it will not happen, is that you have to plan times of prayer during the day. You have to plan them, otherwise they won't happen. You have to have set aside that time during the day. And in the Bible we see they had a morning habit of praying first of all. For example, we read about Abraham in Genesis 22 and 3. Abraham, he rose early to sacrifice. The first thing he did early in the morning was to go up and sacrifice to God. Of course, we as Christians don't need to sacrifice things or sacrifice animals to God. But there is a sacrifice where the first thing we have to do in the morning has to be devoted to God. The word devoted means to sacrifice something. Reading the book of Psalms, Psalm 5 and 3. O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice. In the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch. The psalmist, the Israelites, read these Psalms and did as it said. They went up early in the morning to pray and sacrifice to God. The prophet Daniel, we read, He got down on his knees three times a day and gave thanks before God, as he had done previously, Daniel 6 and 10. Jesus himself, he rose early. In Mark 1.35, Jesus rising very early in the morning while it was still dark, He departed and went to a desolate place, and there he prayed. We have the godly example of Christians who had a morning routine where they started first and foremost in prayer. The same thing with the early church. The early church did the same thing. They got up early for prayer and devotion, morning, day, and evening. They put Christ first in their lives. They started the day by praying. They spent their day by doing good deeds to the poor, helping the poor. They ended their day by praying and devoting themselves to God. And the Puritans were no worse The Puritans had clear and strict daily routines and habits. They had planned it down to the least, smallest detail. The Puritans also had the habit to get up early. They rose early before sunrise, which is hard for us to do here, of course, in the summer. In the winter it's very easy to get up before sunrise. They went up before sunrise for personal prayer and devotion Then they had breakfast with the family and then they had a second family devotion together as a family before heading out to work, working in the field. Then they came home. How did they spend the day after work? Same thing. They might have worked until six in the evening, came home for supper, then for family worship and prayer, devotion, put the children to bed and then another. Final, they ended the day with personal, private prayer and devotion. They had time for self-examination and reflection. That's how we need to do to redeem our time. We have to plan in. Plan in routines where you pray in the morning and in the evening. and in the midday. Even the Catholics and the Orthodox, in their false way, they have seven times where they pray every day. From their books where they just read something. It's not really prayer. It's not really personal prayer. It's some kind of priest thing. if even they have such prayer life, shouldn't we? Shouldn't we plan, make time, devote time, redeem time, put it into prayer? And to understand God's will by Bible reading, again, Psalm 119, 147 through 148 says, I rise before dawn and cry for help. I wait for your words. My eyes anticipate the night watches so that I may meditate on your word. Meditating, knowing, reading the Bible morning and evening. Prayer and Bible reading. Start your day by prayer and Bible reading. Get up early enough before you have to do all your other things. Get up so you will have time for personal Bible and prayer. It's not an empty ritual. Someone said that I used to read the Bible a lot, but then I came to a passage where it says that your sacrifices are empty. You serve me in vain because your sacrifices are empty. This brother felt like it's just an empty ritual. Why should I just read the Bible like down through the page. The reason why we read the Bible is to know and obey God. I have a catechism for my son where it says, why did God make you? For his glory. How do you glorify God? by loving Him and doing what He has commanded. And how do you know how to love and obey God? Only in the Bible. You read the Bible so that you might know how to obey and love and glorify God. That's the reason. To know and obey Him and understand His will. Again the parable Jesus gave with the woman who had lost her coin under the bed. She spent the time to seek, to look, clean out the whole room just to find it. God's will, God's teaching is such a valuable teaching. thing worth more than a thousand pieces of gold and silver. Shouldn't we spend that time to seek his will in his word? And then, after knowing his will, we have to do it, of course. And people criticize us Calvinists for, yeah, we're just about head knowledge. We don't really do God's will. That might be true. We spend a lot of time in theology and in our books. But we have to know what God's will is first, so that we can know how to act rightly. Everyone has their theory on how to live, which one comes from God's word. To seek and trust God in everything you do. Redeem your time. Do what you have with the time that you have been given. Remember that life is a vapor. And for you, you will be dead for a long time. You will live just a few moments. Like a vapor that goes away and is gone. but you will be dead for eternity, for a very long time. And this time you have here in your life, this is the time that you have to seek God, to repent toward Him, to trust Him, seek Him while He may yet be found, Redeem this time, seize this day. Today is the day of salvation. Trust in Christ and be saved. These days are evil. We have to use our time wisely in order to live wisely. Be careful and do what's right. live more wisely. Let us all endeavor to live more wisely, use our time wisely, according to God's will. Amen. Let us pray. Lord, we are thankful for your word, for your exhortations through the Apostle Paul, the wisdom that we found and are finding day by day. Help us. Keep us, Lord, in these days of evil, these days of distractions, temptations, entertainments, sloppiness, laziness. Help us as Christians to be as Christians have always been. Devoted to you. Spending our time. I know. I repent myself when I read this text. I repented. How I spend my time with stupid stuff. Lord, help us in all these things. Let us live lives that glorify you. In Jesus' precious name, Amen.