Priorities

Good Morning Church

Thank you for having me today. It is a honor to get to preach God’s Word.

Let’s pray

With today being Super Bowl Sunday, there are a lot of stories going around about the Super Bowl. I heard this story Friday.

Super Bowl Story.

Even though this is a joke, I am sure that there are some people that this would be a true story about them. We need to make sure that we have our priorities in order. The things of this world must not be a priority. We must live for the life that we will inherit, our eternal life. It is not a sin to go to or watch the Super Bowl, but if you miss church to do that, you have forsaken the gathering of believers and sinned. There are too many times that we let the things of this world take us away from God. The things of the Bible must be a priority.

Today we are going to be in Ephesians 5:15-21. Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesians while he was in prison in Rome around A.D. 60-62. The first three chapters are theological, emphasizing New Testament doctrine. The last 3 chapters are practical and focus on Christian behavior. Let’s see what behavior lessons or verses have today.

Ephesians 5:15–21 (NASB 2020)

15 So then, be careful how you walk, not as unwise people but as wise, 16 making the most of your time, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 And do not get drunk with wine, in which there is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your hearts to the Lord; 20 always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to our God and Father; 21 and subject yourselves to one another in the fear of Christ.

Verse 15 tells us that we are to be careful about our walk. He is not talking about watching where we are walking. When we see the Bible talking about our walk, it is referring to how we act. In Deuteronomy 11:22, we can see an example.

Deuteronomy 11:22 (NASB 2020)

22 For if you are careful to keep all of this commandment which I am commanding you to do, to love the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and cling to Him,

1 John 1:6–7 (NASB 2020)

6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; 7 but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.

We are to be intentional about how we act. We can not live willy nilly, and call ourselves Christians. Jesus didn’t die on the cross so we could continue to live like the world. He didn’t die so we could have a get out of hell free card. He died so that we could live a life that glorifies Him and His Father. We must be the same at home when no one is watching as we are when we are gathered with our brothers and sisters. If we don’t think about how we are going to act, then we are going to do the wrong thing and we will hurt our witness to the world. I’m not saying that we must never sin again, but we should begin to sin less and less the more mature in our faith we become. We can only mature in our faith through studying the Bible and applying it to our lives. If we are not growing in our faith, then we are not being intentional about our walk. We must be intentional.

Next Paul tells how we are to walk, as wise men, not unwise. He is not talking about walking like a smart person. In the Bible, wise is often referred to as moral and unwise as unmoral. We are to live a life that is Biblically moral. We are not to live like the wise of this world. The Bible tells us that God makes the wisdom of this world foolishness. 1 Corinthians 3:19. When we live a life that is wise to God, the world is going to think that we are dumb, weird and even stupid. The world does not know the ways of God. If we fit in when we are out in the world, then we are probably not walking the way Paul is teaching us to.

Paul tells us next to make the most of the time we have here on earth doing the will of God and spreading the Good News. We must realize that our time here on earth is but a twinkle in the eye of time. The twinkle of light in an eye is about a billionth of a second. I can’t even imagine how fast that is. In light of eternity, that is the how our life will look in view of time. With that in mind, we must take full advantage of every opportunity we have to glorifying our Father. We must live the example that Jesus gave us while He was here for a short time. If we procrastinate what little time we have, we will regret it when our time comes to an end here on earth. The older I get the more and more this weighs on me, the time that I have wasted and the opportunities that I missed when I was younger. Paul knew, just like we now know, that these days are evil and time is fleeting. We must take advantage of these opportunities while we can.

In verse 17 we see that we are told to know what God’s will is. I here people say all the time that they don’t know what God’s will is. God tells us what His will is through His Word. If we are to know His will, we must study His word. There is no special revelation from God, God has told us everything we need to know about Him, about how we are to live and act in His Word. I like the saying, “ if you want to hear from God, read the Bible. If you want to hear from God audibly, read the Bible out loud.” We are Biblically illiterate today. Paul wouldn’t tell us to know God’s will if it wasn’t something that we can know. We have more access to the Bible than at anytime in history, yet we know less about the Bible and God then we ever have. We can not expect to know what it means to be a Christian if we do not know what God says. We can know what the will of our Father is, we just haven’t made time to do it. We have to know the Bible, if we are to know His will. If we want to make an impact on our community and for His kingdom, we have to know what the Bible says. If we do not study the Bible, we will not do the will of our Father, we will do our will. Study the Bible and learn God’s will so that we can do it and further His kingdom.

Verse 18 Paul tells us not to be drunk with wine for this is dissipation. I had to look up the word dissipation. It means a wasting by misuse. When we miss use alcohol, we waste our time. I am not going to get into whether or not a Christian should drink alcohol or not, that is a sermon for another day. Here Paul tells us not to be drunk. When we get drunk we lose control of ourselves and let something else control us. In my preparation for today, I heard a statistic that shocked me. Alcohol use in the US is on the decline. I think we have finally learned that alcohol kills, and this is the result of the decline of its use. The shocking part is that the teaching to drink alcohol from the pulpit is on the rise. Now the Bible does not tell us not to drink alcohol, but to encourage the drinking of alcohol is a dangerous, slippery slope. It is to easy to get addicted and become an alcoholic, for this reason I will never tell people that they should drink alcohol. We should never put ourselves into situations that we could lose control of ourselves. Part of the fruit of the Spirit is self control.

Paul tells us what we should be filled with instead of alcohol, the Holy Spirit. Now this is not indwelling or a filling like when we are born again. The Greek words used here are in a continuous tense, meaning to be being continuously filled with the Holy Spirit. This filling is not like filling a glass with water, it is like the wind filling the sails of a ship. The wind fills the sails and moves the ship. In Paul’s day, ships could not move if there was no wind. It means that we are to be moved along by the Holy Spirit. Another way to think of it is like a hand in a glove. The glove can not do anything unless the hand is in the glove filling it up. We must be like the glove, not doing anything until the Holy Spirit fills us and moves us to action. We are either filled with the Holy Spirit or and evil spirit(our flesh).

These all have been commands telling either what to do or not do, now we can see some results of these commands. If we are careful to walk in wisdom, make the most of our time here on earth, not being foolish, understanding the will of God, not being drunk with wine, but being filled with the Holy Spirit, we will begin to do the things listed in verse 19 and 20.

We will begin to speak to each other in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Psalms can mean the Old Testament Psalms put to music, but the term was also used of vocal music in general. We should be singing out loud to each other and praising our God. I know that not everyone had a good singing voice, I am one of those. The Bible doesn’t say to sing if you have a good voice, it tells us to make a joyful noise to the Lord. If we are truly worshiping God and singing to Him from our hearts, it will be a joyful noise in His ears. Those of us who can’t sing well, myself included, we should sing loudly, so that those around us who can sing will sing louder to drowned us out. Hymns perhaps were songs like the psalms except they focused on praising Jesus Christ. Spiritual songs were probably songs of personal testimony put to music expressing truths of the grace of salvation in Christ. We need to be praising and worshipping our God continuously. Paul tells us that we should be doing this with our heart to the Lord. The Lord Jesus Christ should be the source and the object of the believer’s song-filled heart. That is the kind of music that please God. We can see an example of this when the singing to God during the dedication of the temple, that it so honored the Lord that His glory came down. I am not a musical person, but the longer I server the Lord and the more I grow in my faith, the more I have a song in my heart and in my mind. I also never would sing our loud in public, but now I sing out loud and embarrass my wife sometimes. Now my wife can sing and she loves to use her gift to glorify her King. I love to listen to her sing about Jesus and God. Regardless of if you can sing or not, we sing to worship our King not to sound good to human ears, don’t worry about if the person next to you likes you singing. God is the one who we need to be worried about pleasing. Are we sing from our hearts to worship and praise our risen King?

Verse 20 tells us to sometimes give thanks for some things in the name of Lord Jesus Christ, God and the Father. Is that what it says? No, we are to always have a heart of thanksgiving and gratitude toward Jesus and God. We have so much to be thankful for. Jesus has done so much for us, how can we not be thankful? The creator of everything left heaven and gave all that He had to be born as a human and killed for our sins! If a Christian can’t be thankful, then no one can be. Even in our darkest days, we should still be thankful because of the work done on the cross! Everything we have, we should give thanks to God for it. We should live a lifestyle of thankfulness.

Finally Paul tells us that we should be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. We are all equal in Christ. We may have different jobs to do, but we are all equal and should be submitted to each other. We are all to be humble and submissive in our character. The pastor is not better than the church member. The deacon is not better than the elder. We are all equal in God’s eyes. This is foundational to all our relationships with fellow believers and non believers. We are not better than anyone else. In relation to the non believer, we were once like they are. We should not look down on them. We should be humble and love them and try to help them.

Paul gives us some commands to follow and some results of following those commands. I pray that we all will be more intentional about following these and we all see the fruit of our actions.

Are we being careful about how we are walking, in wisdom or like the unwise?

Are we making the most of our time here on earth?

Do we know the will of God?

Are we being filled with the Holy Spirit instead of other substances?

Are we sing His praises and speaking to one another in way that glorifies the Lord.

Are we always giving thanks for all things

Are we submitted to each other.

Let’s be the church that glorifies God and the world thinks is weird! Let’s be the church that people seek out because of the love that they have heard of coming from us.

I want to tell you a story about something that happened at my church this week. At FBC Anadarko, we get a lot of homeless and people addicted to drugs come in and get food and clothing from our ministries there. One day this week a lady that had never been there before came in and was struggling trying to get on her feet. She had a job and was trying to do the right thing. She came to ask for help and get some food and clothes. She asked about shoes, but we didn’t have any in her size. This lady at church asked her what size she wears? She said 8.5-9. That happened to be the size this lady wore. She took off her shoes and said try these on. The lady did and our member asked her if they fit. She said yes and that they were comfortable. Our member told her to keep them. She tried to refuse but started to cry and couldn’t believe it. Our staff got to pray with her and show here the love of Jesus. That is an amazing story of being humble and loving everyone. I tell you this story to encourage you. Let’s go be the church.

Pray