Blueprints of the Church: The Gospel-Motivated Walk

Notes:

Ephesians 5:15-21: Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the 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, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, 19 addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, 20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Learn how to handle life-situations

Shark standing on a lego

Pierce my foot once

Parenting has truly helped my ability to walk.

“Gotta respect the plates”

Avoiding pain points in your walk with the Lord

Look “strictly”

Summary and Climax of Gospel Motivated Morality

Walk “accurately, precisely, or given close attention.”

Live Carefully by comparing three important ways to live:

Unwise versus Unwise

Foolishness versus Understanding

Spirit-Filled versus sprits-filled

Unwise versus Wise

15 Look carefully then how you walk,

not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.

Look carefully HOW you walk:

Slothfulness

Don’t waste your time

Don’t be wise by reading a lot of books, or knowing a lot of theology, etc.

Snodgrass: “A call to moral discernment and a practical skill in making decisions.”

Stott: “Jonathan Edwards, the philosopher-theologian who became God’s instrument in the ‘Great Awakening’ in America in 1734–5, wrote in the seventieth of his famous Resolutions just before his twentieth birthday: ‘Resolved: Never to lose one moment of time, but to improve it in the most profitable way I possibly can.’”

v. 16: “Making the best use of your time, because the days are evil”

“Buying from”

“Redeem” in Galatians 3:13 “13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us…

Commercial Word

“Believers will act wisely by snapping up every opportunity that comes.” O’Brien

“It is used with reference to buying back a slave.” Snodgrass

Typical work associated with what Jesus did for us on the CROSS: OUR REDEMPTION.

But remember how we understand Gospel-Motivated Ethics:

He bought us back, we need to buy back time.

“Time is the devil’s workshop.”

“Use to the full” New English Bible

Foolishness versus Understanding

17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

Asophos and aphron

Asophos:

Ephesians 4:18 “18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.”

Proverbs 10:18 “18 The one who conceals hatred has lying lips, and whoever utters slander is a fool.”

Proverbs 10:23 “23 Doing wrong is like a joke to a fool, but wisdom is pleasure to a man of understanding.”

Proverbs 14:26 “26 In the fear of the Lord one has strong confidence, and his children will have a refuge.”

Proverbs 17:18 “18 One who lacks sense gives a pledge and puts up security in the presence of his neighbor.”

Walk carefully how you walk, WISE!

All the times Paul uses the word walk…

Be Wise:

Review last week:

Delve

Discern

Differentiate

Disclose

v.17: Do not be foolish=moral stupidity

Know what the will of the Lord is… HOW??

Seek to know

Romans 12:2 “2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

“Faith seeking understanding”

To know the Lord’s will=”way of refering to his saving plan. All of this necessarily involves the wise person in walking worthily of the Lord… But the unwise live as those who despise or have not true understanding of God’s gracious purposes.” O’Brien

Ch. 1-3: God’s will is God’s saving plan now revealed to them. God’s will was a mystery, but now it’s revealed in Jesus.

Ephesians 6:6 “6 not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart,”

God’s will=living out your salvation!

Know the GOSPEL! Don’t be a fool, but live in response to God’s Plan of Salvation!

Live logically as a response to what Jesus has fulfilled for you.

Philippians: “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”

Understanding is more than knowing:

“Understanding of God’s gracious saving plan is to lead to right conduct.”

J.I. Packer’s summary of John Calvin: Knowledge of God is always knowledge of God applied.

Understanding of Christ’s redemptive plan is applying Christ’s redemptive plan.

Stop understanding God’s will as a crystal ball.

This is God’s REVEALED will Paul is talking about. He’s already shared with us the mystery of his will:

Jews and Gentiles have fused together to make a new humanity, a new society, called the church.

spirits-filled versus the Spirit-Filled

Fullness as Theme:

1:23: Christ is the fullness of God who fills all things. 3:19: Christians are to know the love of Christ in order to be filled into all the fullness of God. 4:10: Christ ascended in order to fill all things. 4:13: Christians are to attain to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Snodgrass: “Fullness” expresses unity with the triune God and the completion that God’s salvation brings. The call to be filled with the Spirit is a call to live in that unity and to enjoy the wholeness of life with God. Christians must allow themselves to be the place where the presence and the power of God are evident. We are filled both by and with the Spirit.”

Scripture never condemns drinking accept in cases of a vow to abstain from it.

Leadership in the Church: Must not be a drunkard

Folkes: “the Christian knows a better way than by wine of being lifted above the depression and the joyless monotony of life, a better way of removing self-consciousness and quickening thought and word and action than by the use of intoxicants. It is by being filled with the Spirit.”

“Gordon Fee rightly calls this imperative the key to all others and is the ultimate imperative in the Pauline corpus.” Snodgrass

Be filled with the Spirit

Be filled=present imperative (not a one and done, but a daily dose!) “Let the Holy Spirit fill you.” NEB

“No other text in Ephesians (or elsewhere in Paul) focusses specifically on the Holy Spirit as the content of this fulness. It is better, then, to understand 5:18 in terms of the Spirit’s mediating the fulness of God and Christ to believers.” O’Brien

“Let the SPirit change them more and more into the image of God and Christ, a notion which is consistent with Pauline theology elsewhere.” O’Brien

5 Participles Modifying what it means to be filled in the Spirit:

3/5 have to do with Singing:

Addressing:

Speak to one another with psalm, hymns and spiritual songs

Can’t make hard lines between these three types of songs.

Walk up music in Baseball

“My name is Inigo Montoyo…”

Find songs I could:

Scenario of GREETING PEOPLE

Singing:

Two Audiences: God and one another

It’s okay to sing for worship, but not performance.

Sing about WHO God is.

Making melody (in the heart?)

TO the Lord

Sing FROM the heart, sincerely. Authentically.

WITH your heart

Giving thanks: Theme in his ethics.

20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Major aspect of Christian Ethics.

Thanks as a THEME in Ephesians.

Prayer: “Pray in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

ALWAYS giving thanks, for EVERYTHING

Grand Trinitarian Focus:

To be filled IN THE SPIRIT means giving thanks ALWAYS to the FATHER in Jesus.

TO God the FATHER

IN THE NAME of Jesus.

Submitting:

How does this fit into the scheme of things? Where’s the logic?

Submit=”arrange under”

“All Christians” No hierarchy. Equally ordained.

Submission is Christ’s actions in practice.

Mutual Submission: “Submission is nothing more than a decision about the relative worth of another person, a manner of dying and rising with Christ, and a way to respect and love other people.” Snodgrass

“FEAR” for Christ=Only time in the New Testament.

“Reverence” and “respect” okay translation. Loses it’s punch.

Folkes: “the Christian knows a better way than by wine of being lifted above the depression and the joyless monotony of life, a better way of removing self-consciousness and quickening thought and word and action than by the use of intoxicants. It is by being filled with the Spirit.”

How music has changed my life?

Meme: Watch the Lamb

Out of reverence (aka, fear) for Christ.