MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR TIME
Ephesians 5:11-17, 15-16
The double idea is compressed into one sentence: “See (take heed) how ye walk,” and “See that ye walk circumspectly.” The manner, as well as the act itself, is included. See how ye are walking, with a view to your being circumspect (literally, accurate, exact) in your walk.
In a larger sense, the whole season from the time that one is spiritually awakened, is to be “redeemed” from vanity for God (compare 2 Co 6:2; 1 Pe 4:2–4). “Redeem” implies the preciousness of the opportune season, a jewel to be bought at any price.
Sins are exposed by shining light into sin’s darkness. An amazing thing happens. Darkness can no longer hide its nature and acts in secret. All is exposed to light. Light that makes everything visible brings an even more radical element.
What Happened to Time
• When as a child I laughed and wept, time crept.
• When as a youth I dreamed and talked, time walked.
• When I became a full grown man, time ran.
• And later as I older grew, time flew.
• Soon I shall find while traveling on, time gone.
David Wilkerson, of The Cross and the Switchblade fame, preach a magnificent sermon to a great crowd of youth at the old Syria Mosque in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He titled his message “The Number One Teenage Sin.” Do you know what he said that sin is? It is not stealing, or murder, or dealing in drugs, or committing immorality, or being disobedient to parents. “The number one teenage sin,” he declared, “is wasting time.”
BE CAREFUL TO MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR TIME.
Wake Up. 14
Paul introduces this quotation in the same way he introduces a citation from the Old Testament (see 4:8), yet this is not a verse from the Old Testament. What is he then quoting? Most likely he is citing oral tradition that was passed on in the early church—here from the context of Christian worship and exhortation.
Wise Up. 15-16
As wise (5:15). Paul commends to these believers the vast Old Testament teaching about wisdom, especially as represented by the books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. There they can find ethical insight into God’s will.
because the days are evil—The days of life in general are so exposed to evil, as to make it necessary to make the most of the seasonable opportunity so long as it lasts
Will Up. 17
This is another injunction regarding the walk of the believer. He is to walk wisely. His walk is to reveal the urgency of the hour and the importance of living for God. The entire objective in his walk is to stay in the will of God. He walks in the will of God as a train runs on the track. His walk in this world demonstrates that he belongs to Christ.
When you walk into a place of business, you will find the salesman in there on his toes: he is dynamic. If a man is a child of God, how does he act when he is not in his place of business trying to make a dollar? Is he on his toes? Is he dynamic? Is he living for God? The believer is to walk in this world as though he belonged to Christ.
1. prop. to set or bring together, in a hostile sense, of combatants, Hom. Il. 1, 8; 7, 210.
2. to put (as it were) the perception with the thing perceived; to set or join together in the mind, i. e. to understand,