Untitled Sermon (3)

I was a big DC Talk fan growing up, and as we get started this morning I want to share with you a quote from the beginning of the song What If I Stumble. It goes like this: “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.” Not a very uplifting quote! But one that stuck with me, and one that we need to hear. In a series called Luminescence, this is why we need to allow Christ to shine through us! It’s because the way we live our lives communicates profoundly to the world around us. It’s good for us to feel the weight of this statement, because it reminds us of the fact that we are Christ’s representatives in this generation.

So what do we do when we are faced with a situation or decision in which it is unclear how we can shine Christ’s light? We’ve been looking at some helpful words from Paul about light and darkness, about white and black issues of sin. But what about the areas in between? How can I shine the light of Christ in my normal, every day, driving to work with a cup of coffee life. When It’s not as easy as just not committing an affair or making a coarse joke. Most of life is not going to feel like a black and white issue. So how do we shine the light of Christ in the in between? What we need is not just a list of virtues and vices—what we need is wisdom. And that is what we’re going to learn about today as we continue with the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians. My prayer is that as we continue to open the Word together, and as we continue to invite the Holy Spirit into this place and into our lives, that we will shine more and more brightly for Jesus Christ in the way that we live our lives.

*Read Ephesians 5:15-17*

In this passage, Paul continues a motif from throughout the book of Ephesians by using this word that the NIV translates “live.” Your English translations may read “live,” but the Greek word there is the word for walk. And we’ve seen Paul using this word in 2:10, etc.

What we’re finding is that this word is one of Paul’s favorite words to use when describing the daily Christian life. And today, we see Paul make a transition from talking about the image of light and darkness and the need to walk in the light to talking about this contrast between wisdom and folly. Paul is encouraging his readers not just to walk in love, not just to walk in light, not just to walk morally, but also to walk wisely.

Why is that significant? It’s significant because wisdom is a higher call than morality. To live rightly, or to live a moral life has a lot to do with avoiding bad behaviors. These are the black and white issues. Wisdom, on the other hand, is about knowing what to do in between—it’s about choosing between what is good, and what is best. So you can write down: Biblical wisdom is not just about what is good; it’s about what is best.

Rather than asking the question “is this okay,” it asks “will this bring the most glory to God.” This is key—we can “do nothing wrong” and still act like a fool. We can abstain from the sins that Paul has listed in Ephesians 5 and still stay in our Christian bubble and fail to shine the light of Christ. So knowing this, Paul is saying that the Christian life is about more than just avoiding bad behaviors, it’s about heading in a certain direction as well. And through the course of this passage, Paul is going to help us see how it is that we can walk not just rightly, but wisely, and so shine the light of Christ to a world in need.

Now if we look again at the NIV, we notice that verse 15 reads “Be very careful then.” This word “then” is connecting Paul’s thought in verse 15 with something that came before, in this case, back in verse 8, where he was talking about walking as children of the light.

Ok, so why is he resuming his thought and why does that matter? Well, imagine Paul on a typewriter, and he commands his readers to walk as children of the light, and then he elaborates on that for a few verses and ends by quoting this early Christian hymn that talks about waking up so Christ can shine on you. And with that thought ringing in his mind, but the previous paragraph finished, he slams the typewriter back to begin a new paragraph to elaborate on the call to walk in the light. The sense of the connection is this: We need to walk as children of the light, but there’s the temptation to remain asleep, so wake up and be careful. Stop hitting the snooze bar! Don’t choose the ignorance and escape of sleep over facing the reality of your life. You’ve got to wake up and be careful.

What’s interesting is that the imperative here in verse 15 is not walk, as it is in verse 8. In the NIV we read the imperative as “be”, but in truth the imperative is “look.” Live as children as the light, Paul says. Rather than remaining asleep and unattentive, look carefully at the way you’re living your life. So you can write down: In order to walk wisely, we need to wake up and look carefully. In other words, we need to wake up and look carefully and honestly at what is going on in our lives. We need to walk as children of the light, we need to walk in wisdom, but we’ll never know if we are unless we spend some time in introspection.

And what Paul is going to do next is help to see what it is we’re looking for in our walk, in our lives, in order to see if we’re walking in wisdom. So, what does it look like to live wisely according to Paul in this passage? What should we be watching for in our walk?

First of all, in the interest of living wisely we need to look carefully for intentionality. Introspection doesn’t happen by accident, and neither does shining the light of Christ. We need to ask ourselves: Is my life characterized by intentionally living out Christ’s mission for the world?

In this passage, Paul is contrasting a slumbering, inattentive person with an attentive, introspective one. Which are you when it comes to shining the light of Christ? Is it an afterthought, or is it a driving force? Is my level of engagement with the Lord based more on my feelings than on His infinite value? When Paul says “look carefully how you walk,” he is calling his audience to live life on purpose, to be intentional with how they’re living. Not to take the path wherever it leads, but to look at the path and see if it is leading to the glory of God, and if not then to find one that is. Because a wise person will live life on purpose for God’s purposes.

The good news for us is that intentionality is not a skill—it’s a heart issue. It’s an effort issue, just like playing defense in basketball. Any reasonably athletic person can play defense. You don’t have to be incredibly talented to hustle, and you don’t have to be a mature Christian to be intentional and introspective. All you have to do is care enough and be vulnerable enough to take a good, hard, honest look in the mirror with the Lord, just like the Psalmist, who writes “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Ps 139:23-24).

As Paul continues, he calls his audience to walk “not as unwise, but as wise,” and then proceeds to explain what wise walking looks like. What does wisdom look like for the believer? In this case, it looks like “making the most of every opportunity.” Second, in the interest of living wisely, we need to be aware of opportunities.

Now, what do you think about when you hear me say “make the most of every opportunity?” When I was first reading this passage, I was thinking to myself, “We’ve pretty much got this in the bag.” Like, we as Americans don’t waste any time. We’re known for our productivity. We’re always listening to podcasts while we do other productive things to double up on our productivity. Our heroes are the people who stay up all night working three jobs and build a crazy invention in their garage that eventually makes them rich. That is the American success story—and those people, we would say, have made the most of every opportunity. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that what I tend to think as “making the most of the opportunity” is really not what Paul is talking about at all. So then, what is Paul trying to tell us about walking wisely?

Let’s go back to the Text. When we read “Making the most of every opportunity” in the NIV, we are reading what is in the Greek only three words, which directly translate to: “Redeeming the time.” This is why the ESV translates this verse, “making the best use of the time.” So if the Greek word means time, and the ESV translates it “time,” why does the NIV use the word opportunity?

Well, in the Greek language, there are actually two words for time: chronos and kairos. Chronos is the word that gives us the term “chronology,” and refers to time in its chronological sense. You might think of chronos time as the kind of time that you can count on a clock. Kairos, on the other hand, refers to an appointed time, or a time that is especially fit for something. And this is the word that Paul uses here. It’s not time in general, but the right or proper time for something. This is the word that Jesus used, for instance, in Mark 1:15 when He said, “The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” It’s not that the minute or second has come, but the moment, the appointed time in all of history for the Messiah to begin his ministry.

The idea, then, is not to make the best use of time per se, but to take advantage of the special times or opportunities that present themselves. This is huge because, after initially reading this verse, you might get the impression that Paul wants his readers to get out a spreadsheet and make sure they’re making the most of every single second that they have.

This is not the best reading here—but isn’t that what we tend to do? We are so overstimulated as a culture. We feel like we are always busy, and yet we can’t find time to pray or read the Bible. We are always in a rush for fear that we will waste our time. We get extremely frustrated when the waiter or waitress doesn’t bring out the check in a timely manner, and we refuse to tip if the food takes longer than we’d like. Why? Because we really value our time. Because we think the wise thing to do is squeeze the most productivity out of every single second that we have. Church, let me be clear: The kind of wisdom that Paul is advocating does not look like trying to frantically squeeze the most productivity out of every second that we have. Should we be good stewards of our time? Absolutely. But the trouble is that we work as though the weight of the world was on our shoulders. We run around acting like every single second (chronos) is our moment (kairos). And that is not wisdom—that’s pride.

The tragic thing is that we are so focused on productivity and time management that I believe we are actually missing the opportunities that God is putting in front of us. Put differently, if we are so overscheduled that we can’t see the hurting people right in front of us, we are the foolish ones. If we are so concerned about making the most of every second that we never take the opportunity to enjoy time alone with the Lord, we are the foolish ones. If we are so convinced that our life will fail to have meaning if we stop working rather than accepting our God-given limits as human beings who need rest, then we are not wise, but fools.

And what kind of opportunities are we talking about? In context, we’re especially talking about opportunities to represent Jesus Christ as His ambassadors to our family, friends, and neighbors who don’t yet know Him. Opportunities to pray with people. Opportunities to serve people. Opportunities to love people. And this emphasis is made explicit in a parallel passage in Colossians, where Paul writes, “Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity,” and wouldn’t you believe it’s the exact same phrase we find in Ephesians. They’re opportunities to shine the light of Christ. There may be more in view here, but there is certainly not less.

A part of this phrase that we haven’t looked at yet is this word “making the most of.” Like I mentioned earlier, it’s the word “redeem,” and it’s a word that might have been used in the marketplace. So you know how, some of you, all year you make a list of stuff you want that’s too expensive for you to buy? And then on Black Friday, or on Amazon Prime day, you look carefully for an opportunity to buy up that thing that’s valuable to you. Well, in the same way that you keep an eye out for things that you think are valuable in the marketplace, Paul is calling for us to so value the eternal well being of those around us that we are looking out for opportunities to love and serve them. The call is to be aware of these divinely appointed moments to point people to Jesus, and then to, as it were, “buy them up,” or make the most out of them as they present themselves. The problem is that so many of us are so focused on our own lives that we don’t see these opportunities coming. So we need to ask ourselves, “Am I aware of the opportunities God gives to point others to the goodness, beauty, and truth of Christ and His gospel through my actions, words, and example?”

So we need to become aware of and make the most of the opportunities that God gives us to shine the light of Christ. And why is this so important? Well let’s go back to the Text. Paul writes, “Be careful then, how you live—not as unwise, but as wise, making the most of every opportunity [why?] because the days are evil. In the course of Paul’s argument here, he grounds his call to wise walking in the character of the days in which his listeners are living. Part of the motivation for wise living comes from the fact that believers are living in evil days. So you can write down: In the interest of living wisely, we need to discern the days.

So Paul is not just saying that we should keep an eye out. He’s also trying to add a sense of urgency for his readers. He is intensifying the call to walk wisely and shine the light of Christ by pointing to a threatening reality. And the threatening reality is this: The age in which we live is full of enticements into sin, and is coming quickly to a terrible end.

On the one hand, pointing out the evil of the days is a reminder to believers that they are not immune to the constant and manifold temptations to conform to the patterns of this world. They are not super humans who are no longer impacted by the insidious siren’s call of the last days. Rather, we have an enemy who is always seeking to steal, kill, and destroy us. As ambassadors of Jesus, we have a target painted on our back, and the enemy wants to turn us into an example of why following Jesus is of no value. And so if he can get us to live like the rest of society, he doesn’t have to worry about us looking like Jesus. He doesn’t have to worry about people seeing our good works and glorifying our Father in heaven. He doesn’t have to worry about us making the most of every opportunity. Because we binge Netflix like everybody else. We have extramarital sex just like everybody else. We live our lives in fear just like everybody else. We put our hope in a political agenda just like everybody else. We insist on our own way just like everybody else. The days are evil, and it is way too easy to just fall into line.

But when we do, we utterly fail the opportunity—and this is the second point here. These evil days are coming to an end, and that is why we need to make the most of every opportunity to point people to Jesus! This present evil age will not last forever. We don’t have forever to proclaim Christ to a world in need. One day, and the biblical witness always stresses that it will be one day soon, Jesus will return to this earth as the risen Lord and He will set things to right. And there are people that we meet every day who are on a path that not only leads to meaninglessness, but to destruction as well. Christ is the hope of the world, and we as His ambassadors need to make the most of every opportunity to point people to Him, that they might repent and find life. So, do we point to Christ by resisting the evil of the days, or do we obscure the goodness of Christ by conforming to the pattern of this world? We need to ask ourselves, am I regularly enticed into a way of living that leads to meaninglessness and destruction, and that obscures the winsomeness of Jesus?

Finally, in verse 17, Paul writes “For this reason, do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.” You can write down: In the interest of living wisely in these last days, we need to seek out understanding. Foolish here literally means “mindless,” and understanding here has the connotation of “making an effort to seek out and find knowledge.” This might remind us of verse 10, where Paul encourages us to “find out what pleases the Lord.” The idea here, then, is that rather than being senseless, we should try to find out how we can please the Lord in any particular circumstance. As we’re trying to navigate the evil days in which we live, and as we’re trying to shine the light of Christ, the wise thing to do is to find out what pleases the Lord, and to do it.

So, how do we find out about the will of the Lord? Isn’t it interesting that Paul doesn’t leave us specific directions on how to find out what pleases the Lord? Perhaps this is because he was rthinking of passages like Micah 6:8, which says “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to seek justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” Based on the way Paul is talking about it, it seems like the emphasis isn’t on doing a certain thing to divine the will of God. He doesn’t treat it like rocket science. He seems to have some confidence that understanding the Lord’s will is more a matter of effort on the part of the reader. It’s almost like Paul is saying, “if you would just seek it out, you would find it.” What can we make of this?

I think it’s appropriate to treat this the way you would treat it with any other relationship you have. If I am trying to buy a present for my wife, I don’t cast lots to decide what she would want me to do, and I don’t walk around looking for signs either—and neither do you. No one treats people that way. Instead, I remember what I know about her. I remember what she’s mentioned to me in the past. If I’m really struggling, I’ll even ask her what she would want!

And I don’t see any reason we can’t take the same approach here. If you want to know what God would have you do, remember what He has revealed of Himself. Remember what He has said in His Word. Ask Him what would please Him!

The more important issue I think is whether that thought even occurs to us. Are we even concerned about what would or wouldn’t please God? Are we willing to put in the effort to pray intently and to search the Scriptures in an effort to do whatever it is the Lord would have us do? Or would I honestly rather have a get out of jail free card than a crucified Lord? Would I rather profess Jesus with my words, but deny Him with my lifestyle? And so we can ask ourselves: If wisdom looks like following the Lord’s will, Do I care enough to seek out and do what pleases the Lord?

Let’s pause here for a second. In order to walk wisely, we need to look carefully. We need to do a little internal inventory. We need to take a good long look in the mirror with the Lord. Am I intentional about shining the light of Christ? Am I even aware of opportunities that God is giving me to proclaim Jesus in my day to day life? Am I regularly enticed into a way of living that actually obscures the goodness of Jesus, giving into the siren’s call of the present evil age? Do I really care enough to seek out what would please Lord Jesus? The wisdom of Intentionality and Submission. Am I so caught up in my own agenda that I don’t even care?

Church, the hard truth is that we fall so far. We miss opportunities. We misrepresent Christ. We miss the mark, and that’s called sin. We spend our days wishing we were asleep, and then we look back wondering if any of it mattered. Paul is trying to help us understand how to redeem the opportunities, how to do something meaningful with our lives, and as we discover what that looks like we realize we have spent much of our time and effort on vanities.

So what now? What should we do if we’ve missed so many opportunities? What should we do if we’ve failed so many times? What should we do if we’re unsure if we even have what it takes for this kind of Christian walk? We’re back to that DC Talk song: Will the love continue when my walk becomes a crawl?

Brothers and sisters, the call to walk wisely is high. But the unfailing love of our God and savior is higher still. And this is the good news. Will the love continue when my walk becomes a crawl? The answer is “absolutely yes, because you are not the hero of your story.” What should we do if we’ve failed so many times? We should remember the gospel.

The beauty of the gospel is that when we feel the weight of our sin, and when we are unsure if we have what it takes, it responds: You’re right. And actually you’re more right than you realize. Your sin is actually worse than you thought. You should live wisely; but as a fallen human being you simply cannot live wisely. The standard is so much higher than you think. The standard is perfection, and you will never measure up by your own effort, given a million lifetimes you would fall short every time. You are not the hero, and you can never be.

But while we are more dead in our sin than we dare to realize, we are at the very same moment more loved and accepted in Christ than we ever dared to hope. Church, Jesus is the hero. When Paul calls us not to live like an unwise person, but as a wise person, we need to recognize that Jesus was and is THE wise person. We should live wisely; we can’t live wisely. But Jesus did live wisely. He lived His life entirely on mission, so much so that He says in John 5:19 “the Son can do nothing by Himself; He can only do what He sees His Father doing.” And so over and over again throughout His ministry we see Jesus take countless opportunities to shine light into the world by calling people, healing people, seeing people, and loving people. What is more, He was tempted in every way, and yet He was without sin. How did He manage it?

Even though He was God in the flesh, He submitted Himself in every way to the will of the Father. That’s called surrender—and Jesus did it to absolute perfection. This was Jesus’ mindset, says Paul in Philippians 2, “being in very nature God, [He] did not consider equality with God something to be used to His own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” Surrender led Jesus to a moment in a garden on the night before He was betrayed unto death, in which He cried out, “Abba, Father, if it’s possible, let this cup pass from me. But… not my will, but Yours be done.”

He submitted to the will of the Father, He lived His life in this wisdom of intentionality and submission—why? Because He knew that we never could. By following the will of the Father, Jesus did what we could never do, dying for the sins of the world, and by His obedience He opened the door for us to find grace, redemption, and restoration.

And now, because of what Jesus has done, we live wisely not because we should, but because Jesus really is the motivation for our entire life, because He has renewed our hearts, because all we want is to follow His will out of gratitude. He gave His life for me, so I gladly return my life to Him. And this is really the wonder and mystery of it all, that Jesus can take a man like me who is bent on self-centeredness and turn his heart around so that he actually desires to live in the wisdom of intentionality and submission.

If you find yourself lacking today, don’t try to make up for it through effort. You can’t anyway. Instead, follow Jesus’ example, and either for the first time or the fiftieth time, surrender your whole life to God. Jesus did live wisely so that, through faith in Him, we may live wisely. It’s just as we read yesterday in our church devotions, in Galatians 2:20.

Our only hope at walking in a manner worthy of our call is to surrender, just like Jesus did. To lay our lives down and say, O God, I am not what this world needs—You are! I want my life to have meaning, but as long as I’m in control I’ll just keep on living for myself. So take over! Change my heart. If I must decrease so that you can increase, so be it. I want to live in the light, so, Jesus, shine through me. Father, make me more and more like Your Son. Pray that prayer, and pray it today! Because friends, we will only walk wisely when we follow Jesus’ example of living surrendered. That’s our only hope, and that’s what the world desperately needs. Let’s pray.

*Pray out*

COMMUNION

And what better way to surrender our lives once again than by coming to the table? When we celebrate communion, we come together to remember how Jesus became obedient to death on the cross on our behalf. We remember how Jesus submitted His body to be broken, and His blood to be shed for us.

So on the first Sunday of every month we come together to remember Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, to celebrate the forgiveness of sins in His blood, and to proclaim Him until He returns.

And you don’t have to be a member to participate—we invite anyone who confesses Jesus as Lord to celebrate with us. So as the elements come around, go ahead and grab the bread and the cup and then I will come back and lead us as we celebrate together.