Walking in Wisdom
Walking in Wisdom
Ephesians 5:15-21
A Niagara Falls daredevil, Bobby Leach went over the 167 foot high Horseshoe Falls in a barrel on July 25, 1911. He was only the second person to do so at that time. He broke his jaw and both kneecaps. He spent six months in the hospital recuperating from his injuries. In 1925, Leach did a final stunt parachuting from an airplane over the falls. Perhaps the most amazing thing about the life of this daredevil is how it ended. In 1926 on a publicity tour in New Zealand, Bobby Leach slipped on an orange peel while walking down the street. He fractured his leg and gangrene set in, ultimately ending his illustrious life. How ironic that a man who had taken great pains to survive life-threatening stunts would end up losing his life because of a careless step while walking down the street.
Similar tragedies occur when we become careless in the walk of life. In Ephesians 5:15 we are urged, “Therefore, be careful how you walk…” The word careful means to do something accurately, precisely, with close attention. We are not to live haphazardly and thoughtlessly. Rather, we are to live with care and focus.
We have spent the last several weeks focusing our attention on what it means to live carefully. Building on the biblical mandate to walk worthy of our calling in Christ, we have seen that a worthy walk is to walk in unity, to walk toward maturity, to walk in newness of life, to walk in love, and to walk in light. Today we discover that a worthy walk is to walk in wisdom.
A Wise Walk
We have already seen the idea of God’s wisdom in Ephesians.
- 1:8-9 In wisdom God made known to us the mystery of His will regarding our salvation in Christ.
- 1:17 Paul prays that God will give us a spirit of wisdom to know the hope of our calling, the riches of God’s glory, and the greatness of God’s power.
- 3:10 God makes known His manifold wisdom through His establishing of the church by saving Jews and Gentiles.
So, the wise walk begins with understanding and embracing God’s redemptive plan in Jesus Christ. Since the ultimate expression of God’s wisdom is His saving work in Christ, we cannot begin to be wise without understanding and embracing this reality. This is critical. To reject Jesus Christ and the salvation offered in Him is the ultimate act of foolishness because it ignores the manifested wisdom of God. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:24, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
Once we have trusted in Jesus Christ and come to know Him in a saving relationship, the wisdom of God in Christ has implications for living. We are to live a wise life built on our knowledge of Christ. We are to reject foolishness and pursue wisdom.
These verses focus our attention on three things which characterize the wise walk: redeeming our time, understanding the Lord’s will, and being filled with the Spirit.
I. Wise people seize opportunities for the glory of Christ (v. 16).
A. Redeem the time.
1. There are two basic words for time in Greek. One is chronos
which is chronological time, clock time. The other is kairos
which refers to periods or seasons of time. The term used
here is kairos. It could be translated “opportunities, or
occasions.” It is like the difference between minute and
moment.
2. We are to redeem the time. The term redeem is a market
term. It means to buy or purchase something. The idea is
that we are to buy up the time while supplies last. It has to
do with seizing the moment. The latin phrase carpe diem is
a good explanation. It means to seize the day.
B. For the days are evil.
1. This phrase points to the fact that we Christians are living in
the overlap of the ages. The coming of Jesus to this earth
signaled the passing of the way of the old age and the
coming of a new one. This present age is an evil age. It is
governed by the evil one. This age is called “the last days.”
2. So, this is a reminder that the times we live in are passing. A
new time is one the way. Our time here is limited. We can’t
take a single day for granted. We must seize opportunities.
ILL/APP: Dear people, we must begin viewing time from a Christian perspective. A Christian world view teaches us that…
- Time is a limited gift from God. It is not limitless. The Bible says in Psalm 39:4-5 says, “Lord, make to know my end and what is the extent of my days; let me know how transient I am. Behold you have made my days as handbreadths, and my lifetime as nothing in your sight. Surely every man at his best is a mere breath.” Or as James 4:14 says it, “You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.”
- Our limited time must be seized and used for God’s glory. We must redeem the time and use it for God’s glory. We must not live carelessly and spend our lives on trivialities. John Boykin said it this way, Time is life--nothing more, nothing less. The way you spend your hours and your days is the way you spend your life.
Let’s think about something hard for just a moment. Let’s say you are on your deathbed. You know you have but a few hours left on this earth. How would you finish this sentence? “I just wish a had a little more time to ______________________.” You probably aren’t saying I just wish I had a little more time to watch TV or sleep or play video games or to be in the office. You might be saying I wish had just a little more time to spend with my spouse and kids…to develop my relationship with God... to patch up my relationship with my friend…to let those dearest to me know how much I love them…to witness to my lost neighbor.
Alright. I have good news. Right now, you do have a little more time. Don’t wait until you are on your deathbed to fill in the blank. Do it now. Seize the opportunities in a Christ-honoring way. Walk wisely.
TS – Not only does a wise walk have to do with seizing our opportunities, we notice secondly,
II. Wise people understand the will of the Lord (v. 17).
A. Do not be foolish.
1. The word here in v. 17 is aphrones. It means senseless,
lacking understanding, careless.
2. It is parallel to the word “unwise” in v. 15. It is the person
who leans on his own understanding and lives his life with
no concern for God’s truth. It is the equivalent of the person
who drives down the highway and pays no attention to the
traffic signs.
B. Understand what the will of the Lord is.
1. To understand means to grasp or comprehend. This means
that knowing and doing the will of God involves using our
minds to know His truth and weigh our decisions in light of
that truth.
2. Obviously, understanding the Lord’s will here is not just an
Intellectual exercise in fact gathering. The goal of using our
minds to grasp God’s will is so that we will live it out in our
decisions each day.
‘The doing of his will is not a matter of irrational impulse but of intelligent reflection and action’ (F.F. Bruce)
3. In this context, the will of the Lord refers to His teaching
about how believers are to live in a way that pleases Him.
a. Go back to 5:10. Our focus is to discern what pleases
the Lord.
b. The way we discern that is to remember the truth
that we have been taught in Jesus (4:21).
c. Basically, Paul has been telling them what the will
of the Lord is throughout this section.
d. Understanding the will of the Lord is understanding
Scripture and how it touches each decision of life.
APP: The will of God is not like the hunt for the River Fest medallion. God doesn’t hide his will and string us along with little clues and make us sweat to find it. Understanding God’s will is all about knowing His Word and putting it into practice. In areas where Scripture does not specifically speak, we implement Scripture principles for wise living.
The real question is whether we are willing to do God’s will.
TS – A wise walk involves seizing our opportunities. It involves understanding God’s will. Thirdly,
III. Wise people are filled with the Spirit (vv. 18-21).
A. Do not get drunk with wine for that is dissipation.
1. Drunkenness is uniformly condemned in Scripture. It
is associated with the darkness, not the light. It is listed
as one of the deeds of the flesh in Gal. 5:21 It is strongly
condemned in Proverbs 23. It is among the lifestyles which
are barred from inheriting the kingdom in 1 Cor. 6:9-10.
2. Drunkenness leads to dissipation. The word means total
recklessness and thoughtless living. It was often associated
with wild parties involving lewd sexual practices. It is out
of control behavior.
3. This sort of behavior must not be associated with Xns.
B. But be filled with the Spirit.
1. The present imperative means “keep on being filled with
the Spirit.” It is to be an ongoing experience of the Xn life.
2. We have already noted the language of “fullness” in Eph.
In 3:19 Paul prays that we will be filled with all the fullness
of God. In 4:13 we are to grow to maturity which is the
measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Now, we are
told to be filled with the Spirit.
3. To be filled with the Spirit means that the Spirit is the One
who is influencing, controlling, and enabling you to have a
life of obedient joy in Christ. Just like the alcohol fills a
drunk person and controls and animates them, the Spirit-
filled person is animated and controlled by the Spirit.
4. When we are filled with the Spirit, certain things will follow.
a. A life filled with joyful song.
1) This will have a corporate aspect as seen in
“speaking to one another.”
2) This will have a private aspect as seen in
“making melody in your heart.”
3) Both aspects can occur at the same time, say
in a worship service.
b. A life of thanksgiving.
1) Always giving thanks.
2) Always giving thanks for all things.
3) Giving thanks to God through Christ.
c. A life of proper submission.
1) A willingness to submit to God-established
patterns of authority in relationships.
2) I do not think this refers to a sort of blanket
mutual submission among all Christians. The
verb submit in v. 21 controls the thought of
submitting in vv. 22-6:4.
3) We will see more about this later.
ILL: Today, there is such a tendency to associate the filling of the Spirit with a kind of weird spiritual experience. There is Pentecostal preacher named Rodney Howard Browne who actually calls himself “the Holy Ghost Bartender” because he presumably helps people “get drunk on the Holy Spirit.” There are testimonies of people getting glued to the floor by the Spirit, people laughing uncontrollably in the Spirit, people getting knocked down by the Spirit and such.
This is utter silliness. If you have the fullness of the Spirit it will show up in a heart that is full of joyful songs of praise to Jesus. It will show up in an attitude of thankfulness to God through all the highs and lows of life. It will show up in the humility that is willing to submit to God ordained authority in your life because you have an awe-inspired love for Jesus Christ. These are the evidences of the Spirit at work in you and me.
CONCLUSION:
Beloved, let’s walk in wisdom. Let’s take hold of the opportunities in our lives because we realize our time is limited. Let’s know and do the will of God because we want to please Him above all others. Let’s be filled with the Spirit because we want our lives to be controlled by God and no one or nothing else.
