Don't Be Foolish

Over the last few weeks we’ve been talking about imitating Jesus. Being like him in loving others and being a light in the moments of our lives.

Does anyone here have someone they look up to, someone in your life who you want to be like? Someone who you would label as wise? (Take quick responses).

When I was a kid a person that my friends and I looked up to was Michael Jordon. Not sure if you recognize that name. But he is the guy who is on the Air Jordan’s doing this, he was in the movie Space Jam, he was an ok baseball player, but he was really known as a killer basketball player. When Jordan played he was a crazy dominant force on the basketball court. Players feared him and he was unstoppable. Off the court he had and equally great reputation, where people genuinely liked him. He was a good person in the community and someone who appeared wise. He allowed his fame and position to be used to direct people down good paths. I remember as a kid having a poster in our school where Michael Jordon was telling people to read. We were being encouraged to be like Mike and read in order to excel in school and life. Even for how great Michael Jordan was he still had areas in his life which weren’t great.

You know what there are a ton of examples of people in this world like that. Who are wise good people and who encourage us to do good things, but they are only good to a point. People who we look at and are encouraged to imitate, follow their example and to live like, but then they do something that may cause us to think whether they were really that good. And then we have people who are the opposite. Who we might refer to as fools. Who did something in their life which caused them pain and hardship and even resulted in their life not being very good.

Kim talked about last week and a few weeks ago that we do have one person who we can place our full trust in who will never fail us, who will never let us down, who will never desert us. Jesus is the person who we can know who will be there for us, whose life we can imitate and is the person who deserves to be imitated. How can we know that? Well one way is that we can look and see the change that he has made in the lives of people who have placed their trust in him.

We can see this in the Bible. In the book of Ephesians, which is a letter that is written by this guy named Paul who wrote this letter to a group of people in a church in a city named Ephesus. Paul was a really interesting person by the way. He’s someone in the bible who started out actually hating everything to do with Jesus and Christianity. He even went as far as killing Christians. And then one day God changed his entire life and he went from someone who would kill Christians to someone who was telling everyone around him about Jesus. In this letter he is teaching the church, he is helping them to understand what they believe and why they believe it.

In Paul says, “15 So be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise. 16 Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. 17 Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do.”

In these verses we see Paul explaining that we need to be careful in how we live. We are to think about the things that we do. Why? Because we want to make wise choices according to what God wants us to do and not live like a fool, like someone who doesn’t do the right things. Paul then says that we need to make the most of every opportunity. Wisdom folks is making sure that we are considering what we are doing and why we are doing it and in the case of the people that Paul is writing to, he is telling them to make sure that they are being wise and understanding what the Lord would have them to do.

Anyone ever do something that was dumb? That they knew deep down was dumb? (Raise hand). I know for sure that I’m in that boat.

When I’ve done something dumb or foolish I look back and think to myself why in the world did I just do that and you know what I can really feel how dumb it was. I remember when I was in high school I worked at the local aquarium in Bermuda and I was asked to clean out the tank of some crayfish, which are little lobster looking creatures. Not thinking, and kinda being foolish, I took it upon myself and I miss identified the tank that I was supposed to clean and instead began cleaning a tank of some rare shrimp that in my mind somehow became crayfish. So that’s not bad to begin with but these tiny rare shrimp were from the ocean. And foolish Germiko took it upon himself, again being thoughtless, decided to fill the cleaned tank with fresh water instead of water from the ocean which is salty. To make a long story short these rare shrimp ended up dead and guess how I felt? Foolish, like how could I have done something so dumb. There were many signs in the tank that pointed to this being a salt water tank and I just wasn’t thinking. And I remember my supervisor asking me a bunch of questions, which all pointed to the fact that I should have realized that the tank was for salt water creatures. Talk about feeling dumb. And you know what this could have been avoided if I stopped and thought about what I was doing and used a little bit of wisdom. I know its kinda an insignificant story but its a reminder to me that there are some serious consequences that can happen when we don’t stop and use a little wisdom.

And so what I want to encourage you with and what I think this verse is telling us is that when we are trying to imitate Jesus, when we are trying to be like him, we need to seek to be wise. And with that we need to be reminded that the wisdom that we are seeking comes from Christ. When we follow him and live for him he provides us with the wisdom that we need. What Paul is telling these guys to do, and what he is telling us to do in this entire chapter is to imitate Jesus and to seek his wisdom. And I know that in my life I’ve seen Jesus change the way that I think I’ve seen him cause me to stop and think about what I’m doing. When I said yes that I was going to accept him as my Lord and saviour he changed the way that I view situations and even how I act. And I really believe that my life has been better because of it. And I would encourage each of you to consider that.

And if you don’t know what it means to accept Jesus as your Lord and Saviour I would encourage you to pull aside a leader; myself, Kim, Jonny or one of the student leaders and ask us what it that means.

I remember times where I would say things to people that I knew weren’t good or right. And after I accepted Jesus I could see myself realizing that what I was saying and what I was thinking was wrong and unacceptable.

Let’s pray.