Ephesians chapter 5 verses 15 through 21. Ephesians chapter 5 verses 15 through 21. Therefore, be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. So then, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father, and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, again, as we come to your word, we bow before you and we submit ourselves to your holy word, to your sovereign word. And Lord, we ask that you would move in our hearts and minds, that you will also not only tell us what you desire, but Lord, you will empower us so that we might also obey, and that we might please you in everything that we do, for your glory, for your honor, in Jesus' name. Amen. Again, as we come to verse 15 here, we have the Apostle Paul concerned with our lifestyle, He uses the word that is translated in New American Standard as walk for now the seventh time in this epistle. If you have the New International Version, it's translated as live, or how one lives is the idea. Really, the New American Standard brings out walk as a literal translation of how one does live their life, how one conducts themselves in the world is what Paul is primarily interested in here. As he uses it, a number of times he uses it in a couple of different places to characterize the walk or the lifestyle or what characterizes the ungodly, those who are not believers. He says they walk according to the course of this world dominated by the prince and the power of the air and they are sons of disobedience and children of wrath. Another place he talks about their walk as being that is in light of the futility, the hardness of their hearts. They're becoming callous to God. As it relates to believers, he said in a number of places. First of all, in chapter 2, verse 10, he said that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which He created in order that we might walk in them. In other words, the good works that God desires for us to do, being prepared in advance for us to do, we are to be obedient and live a lifestyle that comes in line with what God has already ordained to take place, the good works which He's already created for us to be involved in. And so our lives must be characterized by those good works. Our lifestyles must be characterized by what he has talked about in chapter 4, the putting off of the old self, the things that are characterized by ungodliness, and futility of thinking, and hardness of heart, and callousness of heart. And yet we're to take that off and to lay it aside, and to put on the new self which is created in the image of God, to be like God. And so then, now he's talked to us in a number of places. In chapter 5 alone, this is the third time where He's told us to walk or to live in a certain manner. He's very concerned that we take those things that we know about what God has done for us, what God has made us. He's very concerned that we live consistently with that truth. Live it out. What does it mean for you to know that you have been chosen by God before the foundation of the world? What does it mean for us to know that He predestined us to be adopted as His sons and daughters? What does it mean for us to know that we have been sealed with the Holy Spirit? What does it mean for us to know that we were once dead in our trespasses and sins, but because of God's great mercy and His grace, He raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms? What does all that mean? That's exactly what the Apostle Paul has been telling us. Walk. Walk in consistency with that. Walk as God's beloved children. Be imitators of God. Walk as children of light, and all that that represents, and walking in holiness and obedience to God. Here again, he's going to say, walk as wise men, or walk not as unwise, but as wise. The very thing that here again says, therefore again, closely connected with what he's already said, but really all the therefores, you can almost connect them like a chain, and each link going all the way back from the beginning, from chapter 1, verse 3, all the way to the end of the epistle, the therefores are all linked, and as they go back, the one link is connected to the next one, so that you really can't separate what he's saying, because it's all a progression of thought. And so when he tells us to therefore walk as children of light, that's based upon what he's already said before that, as being imitators of God. And what he now says is, walk as wise men, is based upon what he said before, as walking as children of light. And especially the immediate context is when the The significance of the urgency of what he's saying in verses 13 and 14 says, But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light. For everything that becomes visible is light. For this reason it says, Awake, sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. And they said, Therefore, in light of that truth, be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise. The literal translation would be, Look. Look carefully. at how you live your life. Watch out, watch how you walk. Watch what you are involved in, what characterizes who you are as a believer. Take heed, would be another instance, another translation possibly, on how you walk. Be careful. That word careful means almost the sense of accurately. Walk accurately. looking to make sure that you are living a life that accurately reflects who you are in Christ. And especially in chapter 5, verse 1, where it tells us to be imitators of God as His beloved children. We must take extra pain, extra care to walk carefully, accurately, because the life that we live reflects to other people what we really believe about God, and what we say about our relationship with Him. So that, what we looked at last week, walking in light and walking in darkness. John the Apostle says that God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with Him, yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. So we need to walk carefully, to live our lives carefully, so that reflects accurately that we are in fact children of God. That we are, in fact, those whom He's chosen before the foundation of the world. That He's set apart to be holy and blameless in His sight. That He's chosen to be His sons and daughters. That He's filled with His Spirit and sealed with His Spirit as a guarantee of the inheritance that is to be ours. It all has significance for how we're to live our lives. Walk carefully. Take great care in how you live your life. Not as unwise men. But it's wise. In the Old Testament, especially in the Proverbs and the Psalms and the literature, wisdom literature, we oftentimes come across those portions of Scripture where it contrasts the wise with the foolish, the righteous with the unrighteous. And especially as we looked at Psalm 1 and Connie sang Psalm 1 this morning for special music. The idea is what characterizes the righteous and the blessing that they have, they receive. because of what they do and who they are. It says, how blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers. But his delight, the thing that drives him, the thing that he desires, the thing that he wants, is to meditate upon the law of the Lord. In this law, he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree firmly planted by the streams of water which yields its fruit in season, and its leaf does not wither, and whatever he does, He prospers, the wicked, and oftentimes the wicked are also considered as the foolish, those who are unwise. They are like chaff which the wind drives away, therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous, for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. The contrast is oftentimes there, and in Proverbs, and Psalms, and Ecclesiastics, and Job, it tells us that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God. is to walk in the fear of God. You want to know what it means to be a wise man? Walk in the fear of God, in reverence and respect for His Word and what He says, who He is as the sovereign God of the universe, who has all power. To fear Him is the beginning of wisdom. To conduct your lives according to the things that He says. To walk carefully, that's the mark of wisdom. To not care, to walk foolishly, to live as the world does, is when we claim to be children and we bring reproach and shame upon Him. When we walk in darkness and the things of this world characterize our lives, that's walking as a fool, as unwise. But if we do in fact know God and we have the beginning of wisdom, we will walk carefully. Our lives will be characterized. not in self-righteousness, not in a lifestyle of perfection, for we will sin. We will fall on our sin. We will not always be perfect. But even when we sin, we know that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We know where to go. We know we can get back up. We know that God will enable us to get back on our feet and to walk before Him. We don't do that in our own strength. We do that in His power that He gives us. But He says part of that then, what it means to walk as the wise, to walk carefully, is brought before us in verse 16 where He says, making the most of your time because the days are evil. Making the most of your time for the days are evil. The NIV has making the most of every opportunity. And that really kind of grasps the idea that there are many opportunities. Time is seen as opportunity. And in Galatians 6, that word time is translated in the same manner. In Galatians 6, verse 10, when it says, So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of faith. So time is seen as opportunity. Making the most of our time. Making the most of the opportunities that God gives us. In the literal translation of that The word making the most of means really, and literally, if you have a King James, I think it translates it this way, as redeeming the time. It's the same word that is used, same root word that is used, that talks about our redemption. Christ redeeming us. Buying us out. It's a market term. It's saying buying us out of the slave market. Purchasing us at a great price. And making us His. So that we're no longer the slaves of the world, the slaves of the things that characterize by this world the slaves of the prince and the power of the air, but we become his slaves. We're his servants. The idea here of redeeming the time, I think, is something that we need to grasp in light of being careful how you walk. We need to ask ourselves, how do we redeem the time? How do we make the most of every opportunity? And I guess the thing that keeps coming to my mind as I look at this, it has the idea of almost in the same idea of making investments of our time. How we spend our time. Much like you do in the world, you make investments in stuff. You see something that is important or is valuable to you, you will invest in that so that you might own it or have part ownership or you might be a beneficiary of whatever you are investing in, whether it's for retirement, whether it's for a house, car, whatever else, we see something, in essence we are investing in something. We're investing our time and our money because money, to get money we need to invest time. Here he's saying we need to redeem the time. We need to make the most of every opportunity that we have. How do we do that? How do we do that? The reason he says in the sense of urgency is that the reason we need to redeem the time, the reason we need to do that is because the days are evil. The Days of Evil has a sense of urgency. We need to make the most of the opportunities that we have, the most of our time. As I see that, my mind goes back to, and I know I've been harping on this for the last, I don't know how long, but somebody once said in relation to different things, when somebody comes to a new truth, it's almost like being converted. You know how new Christians can be kind of so gung-ho and almost obnoxious at times because they're so thrilled about the redemption that they have because they know that their sins are forgiven? When somebody is set free from something, sometimes they can just go so strong towards it that it becomes obnoxious to people around them. I'm probably almost like that, especially when I talk about redeeming the time because I think the greatest killer of time is the television. The amount of time that we spend watching television. I think that the television has become one of the symbols of the god of this age. Because we sat before it. Now it doesn't come on by itself. That's one sense. We need to turn it on. But in other senses, what we do is we turn on the television and We give it things. We offer up to it. Not specifically, but it's almost as if we do in a non-conscious way sometimes. We offer up to this God of the television. We offer to it sacrifices of our time. We offer it our minds. There are studies that show that the brain becomes inactive. For most people, after they've been stimulated, it might stimulate for a while, but after a while and watching television, the mind becomes deadened. It almost puts it in neutral, and this doesn't do anything. It just sits there like a zombie. Yes, we'll be able to remember the things that we see, but it really does nothing to stimulate or benefit the mind. Especially if the things that we're watching are the things that we've been looking at are characterized by the things of this world. Especially when the things that are on television are the things that oftentimes are the antithesis of what we read in Psalm 1. Blessed is he who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, but comes across the television, who sits in the seat of scoffers. What does the television do? It scoffs at us. It scoffs at our God. It scoffs at people who are serious about Christianity, about living for Him. We're sitting in the seat of scoffers when we watch television. We invest in our time and we allow our kids to watch it unchaperoned, so that they can see whatever? That's one of the things, again, I know I've been saying it over and over again, but I think the thing that really clicked for me was when I went to the pastors conference up in Minnesota. I was so challenged there. I had so many different ways. Finally, that was the straw that broke the back. If you are going to be what God wants you to be, yes, God chooses you. God chooses you for salvation. God predestines you to be adopted as His sons. God does great and many things and point out His grace to make us His children and to redeem us and to adopt us and all of those things. But we come to the place where Philippians talks about in chapter 2, verse 12, it says, Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to do His good pleasure. And so there we see after salvation there is a working together with God to accomplish the things that He desires to work in our hearts and in our minds. We work out our salvation with fear and trembling. And there are things that as we come back and as we know the truth of the Word, as we are convinced of our salvation and that all of the things of God's Word, we are to work those out in our life. to appropriate them in our life, to walk carefully according to those truths. But that's not going to happen if we don't invest in the right things. If we don't feed the right things into our minds. If the Word of God has no place in our hearts and in our minds. If we don't invest the time into the Word, if we don't invest the time into the scriptures, we're not redeeming the time. And I think the thing that really drives this home for me is, is especially when Paul says, because the days are evil. And yet, we might not have the evil imminent upon our doorsteps at this particular time, like other people around the world and people in Kosovo are suffering. People in Littleton, Colorado, who have experienced evil that we've been bombarded with. We've seen what's taken place there on television. And yet, I think what Paul is saying is that there's a sense of urgency that now, in our security, in the day in which maybe the evil isn't as apparent as it is in other places, or as pronounced as it is in other places, that we need to make sure that it's during these times now that we are redeeming the time, we're purchasing the time, storing up the time. and investing it in the right manner, in the Word, and in prayer, and cultivating our relationship with God and the knowledge of His Word, and storing His Word in our hearts and minds, because there will probably be a day, whether it's as intense or as blatant as what we saw on television in Columbine High School or Kosovo, but we can be assured that the days are evil. And the chances are that most likely, at some point in our lives, we will have to interact with that evil in some fashion or another. And the question is, will I be ready? Will I have redeemed the time? Will I have hidden His Word in my heart? Will I have it in my mind so that when that day comes, I'll know how to react, I'll know what to do, I'll know what to say. As I look at what's going on, and as you look at the pictures that come on the television and the news, and you see the people that are walking out of Kosovo into Albania and those places, the blank stares on their faces, the sense of shock in their eyes. You thank God. Be with them. Help them. Move your children, in some fashion or another, to those who know you. Move them into that situation so that they might take that which they know about you, take that gospel message into their work. God, work in our hearts and lives. Move our hearts and minds so that we'll go, if that's what you want. That we'll take them the message. If you think about what happened in Littleton, Colorado, the day of evil that they've experienced, You see, especially the story of the one girl who was there reading her Bible, and as one individual went up to her and asked her if she still believed in God, ultimately she said, yes. She knew. She was convinced in her heart. Whether she thought it all through, or whether it was all there, or whether it was just natural for her, some say she hesitated. One of the commentators says she actually maybe even was thinking about the choices she had at that time. Who knows what went through her mind? But we know what her answer was. Her answer was yes. Yes, I still believe. She gave her life for that. None of us knows when the day of evil is going to come upon us. No one knows when the day of suffering is going to come upon us. The chances are in this world as we live, We especially as God's children will have to experience something, whether it's death, loss of a loved one, whether it's even talking to people and they're saying, how could God let something like that happen? Why doesn't God do something? What is your answer going to be? What are you going to tell them? If you're redeeming the time, if you know the Word, you're going to have an answer to give to them. Ultimately we don't know the purposes of God, why God does certain things. But ultimately we know that God is in control of all things. God is good. He makes no mistakes. And if you're not convinced of that in your heart, you're not going to have an answer to give to people. Our confidence must be in the sovereignty of God over all circumstances and believing that He has a purpose and knowing that even when it affects our own lives, that there is nothing that can happen to our own lives that God cannot and will not make to our good for His glory and for His honor. But there comes a point where we have to be convinced of that, we have to redeem the time, we have to be ready for that. No one knows what the end of this year will bring, a Y2K. I'm not a doomsayer, but I don't know what that's going to bring. Nobody does. Nobody knows when a Littleton Colorado is going to be in our own high school, our own family, our own neighbors, or our own lives. We don't have that assurance that we're going to go through this life without that. One of the things is for sure, we need to redeem the time now. And the redeeming of time is not going to happen when we watch television. I still think we need to watch the news. I think we still need to be informed. Whether it's watching the news or reading the news, we don't want to just go around the corner and not know what's going on in the world and separate ourselves and monasteries. We want to be interacting with the world and the things that they're experiencing. See, there are so many things that are so much better to be investing our time in. Whether it's in the Word, memorizing Colossians says, let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. It's really, I think, somewhat synonymous with what he's going to say about being filled with the Spirit, because the results are exactly the same. The production of that, what it produces is the same. He prayed in chapter 3, verses 6, 17 and following, that Christ would dwell in our hearts through faith, that He would take up His residence and dwell in us. Control our hearts and our minds. Those are the things we need to invest our time in. Invest our time in our children's lives. Cultivating a spiritual relationship for them. We need to ask ourselves, how can I redeem the time? And what do I have to do to do that? knowing for us that the days are evil. And he puts it especially in chapter 6 verse 13 as we see it, especially in light of spiritual warfare. He says that there will be a day of evil. We need to be prepared to take up the full armor of God so that you will be able to rest in the evil day, standing firm. So many of us experience the evil day whenever we have temptation. in some senses or another, in the spiritual warfare that we're involved in. But the thing that sticks out in my heart and mind here is that there has to come a point in time in our lives in which we say to television or the investment in this world principles alone, that's enough, I can't do it anymore. And invest your time in the things that are eternal. Cultivating your own heart and mind. through the Scriptures, knowing what the Word says, storing it in your heart and mind. There's this one story in Pilgrim's Progress in which Christian and Hopeful were in the dungeon of despair. And in that time, the giant of despair came to them and he beat them, and he beat them up pretty bad, and he even told them, he said, it's worthless, you guys might as well take your own lives because you're not going to get out of here. You're just going to experience this suffering, this beating all the time. And so they even got to the point where they were saying to one another in the conversation as you read the book, saying, you know, maybe he's right. Maybe we ought to just end it right now because it's too tough. And Hopeful comes up to him and says, no, we can't. We can't give up. And after a few days of this, then all of a sudden it's like after they spent time in prayer and asking God for help, Christian, it's like the light comes on. And Thomas, he says, oh my goodness! How could I have been so silly? How could I have been so foolish? I have here, hidden in my chest pocket, a key that I'm assured that will open up every door. And Hopeful says, well, take it out. Use it. And he does, and he takes it out, and he inserts it into the lock, and it unlocks the first key. And they go out, and they go to the next one, and the lock's set. And the third door that they come to this lock is a little harder, and it's harder to turn the key, but yet they get out, and they get away. And the whole idea that Bunyan is trying to communicate to us is that that time when we hide the Word in our heart is the Word of God, hidden in our hearts. That during the evil days, the days of temptation, the days of despair, the days of discouragement, whatever it be, it is the key that is going to enable us to endure. You hear testimonies from Chinese pastors who went through the great persecution, especially under Mao Zedong. In one of the books that I read, he said, you know, it was during this time that we found out that those who had memorized the Word, and those who had memorized the hymns, they were the ones who endured the suffering and the persecution. The rest of them couldn't handle it. They either took their own lives, or they renounced their faith. It's just the ones who had memorized the Word, the ones who had memorized the hymns, the ones who knew what they believed about God, that were able to endure. They had invested the time. They had redeemed the time. So also my heart is with a sense of urgency. Memorize the Word. Spend time memorizing the Word. Spend time knowing what you believe about God, because there's going to come a day, possibly in this life, when they're going to ask you. They'll say, you believe in God? Don? Scott? Fred? Wally? Chuck? Todd? You believe in God? Tell me. How can God let something like Littleton happen? How can God let something like Kosovo happen? What are you going to tell them? What are you going to tell them? What's your answer going to be? on a day of your own trouble. None of us knows the day when we go to the doctor and he says, we found a tumor. We found cancer. You've got three months to live. What's your reaction going to be? What are those who you've witnessed to for so long, what is your reaction going to be to them who you've told for so long to hope in God, to trust in God? He is the one who has the answers. He is the one worthy of trust. What's your response going to be when it's told that it's you particularly? What's the response going to be? None of us ultimately will know, but we can make the preparations for that day, the day of evil. Part of that is going to be what we're going to look at next week when Paul says, know what the will of the Lord is. Part of that, knowing what the will of the Lord is, is to be filled with the Spirit of God. For now, a sense of urgency in the days in which we're living. Live not as wise men. Be careful how you walk. Be careful how you live. Live as wise men, not as unwise. Making the most of your time. Making the most of opportunity. Redeeming the time. Investing in spiritual things. for spiritual benefits so that when that day comes you'll be ready and be prepared. Lord, you are our only hope. Lord, we look to you and ask that you will move in us. Allow this sense of urgency to grasp our hearts and our minds. Deliver us from the vain things of this world in which we invest so much of our time and money and effort into. And Lord, allow us, in purchasing that time, that we have this time of relative ease that we all experience on a daily basis, and some of us, most of our lives have been that way. Move in our hearts and minds, so that when the day of evil comes, we'll be ready as a mighty army, prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks us the reason for our hope. Glorify your name in our lives. Empower your church, those in Littleton. My God, move your people so that they will be able to give the answers to people who are hurting, people who are suffering, and people in Kosovo, move your church. Even now, Lord, even if it means that motivating people in this church to pray for workers to go into the harvest. Even if it means that people in our church praying that their own sons and daughters go into the harvest are moving us. Accomplish your purpose and your will for us and in us. In Jesus' name, Amen.