Ephesians 5:15-21 Walk In Wisdom

 Okay, friends, if you would please begin to find your seat and open with me to Ephesians chapter five. Below your chairs underneath you should be a copy of God's word, should you need one. And if you do not have a Bible at home, we invite you to take these. They are our gift to you. It is a privilege to be able to have access to God's word so freely.

You know, there still are nations around the world. Peoples around the world that don't yet have the Bible in their own native tongue. Translators at Wycliffe and other great organizations are working hard to translate scripture into their mother tongue. And we find that God's word comes to us so easy in God's word.

Through the Bible printed. Many of you probably have dozens and dozens and dozens of copies of God's word at home. And so as we read it in worship, we read it with a sense of gravity and a sense of purpose and intentionality because men have died, women have died to translate God's word from the Hebrew.

And a Greek into English. And so we come to Ephesians chapter five, beginning at verse 15. And if you're willing and able at stand together this morning for the reading of God's word. And as you stand, lemme remind you that if you would like a copy of these scripture journals, they are available in the book Nook.

Please take one. There are more available, and we'd love for you to have a copy to take notes throughout our series in Ephesians. Ephesians five, verse 15 through 21.

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is and do not get drunk with wine for that is debauchery, but be filled with the spirit. Addressing one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart.

Giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but God's word stands forever. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Please

meet Halle. She's 32 years old. She works a demanding office job that feels a little like life is slipping by in fragments. Her alarm goes off at 6:00 AM and the first 30 minutes of her day is scrolling on TikTok and checking email by nine o'clock in the morning. She is fighting deadlines. By evening, she's exhausted and she pours herself a glass of wine, maybe two.

She flips on Netflix. She wants to find a show just to watch something lighthearted, and suddenly it's midnight and a day has gone by. Now, Halle would probably say that she's a Christian. She believes in God. She shows up at church about twice a month. But here's the question that Paul presses right into Hallie's life and Hours.

How are you walking, Halle? What is filling your life? Who are you becoming day after day after day? Now meet Connor. He's 37 years old.

And Connor has two kids that are under five. And for him every morning feels like chaos. Do you get 'em? Cereals, spilt shoes are lost and there are tears. Oh, there are lots of tears. He leaves for work, he's stressed. He spends the day putting out fires, and he comes home tired, but in some kind of way, he's also wired dinner and then bathtime, and then bedtime routines, and he often finds himself too short tempered, too impatient and too drained.

Are you, do you hear me? Connors Hall. When the kids are finally asleep, Connor collapses on the couch and some nights are just endless scrolling, trying to catch up with the world. And other nights is one more glass of bourbon or one more round of late night emails. And in the quiet moments of Connor's life, the guilt begins to creep in.

His days are slipping by. His time with the kids are filled with frustration. He feels sometimes like they're wasted. His heart feels dry, his marriage feels thin, and his soul is more anxious than thankful. Listen, Halle and Connor, they live in completely separate worlds in Tulsa. It spiritually, they share the same struggle.

They are both adrift. They're filling their lives with substitutes. They're living as though their time and their influence were neutral. When Paul says, indeed they are not. And because there are so many Halleys and Connors in our congregation, even in this very room, and there's so much of Halle and Connor even in my own heart, that is why we need to look at the book of Ephesians because we've called a Beautiful Mess.

And indeed it is because we are. The church is beautiful because Jesus has claimed and filled us with his spirit, but it is messy because like Halle and Connor, we so easily waste our days with distraction and substitute fillings and unwise living. And Paul, my friends, does not sugarcoat it. In Ephesians chapter five in these verses, he says, walk carefully, not foolishly.

Redeem the time because the days are evil. Don't be controlled by substitutes. Be filled with the spirit. Sing the gospel to one another. Give thanks in all things and submit to one another at a reverence for Christ. Paul here is sketching out the vision of what a spirit field community in a local church in Ephesus, in a D 60.

In the original context, and dare I say, in Trinity Presbyterian Church today. But we first have to face the mess if we're gonna see The beauty of this passage and the mess is that we waste our lives when we treat time and influence as neutral rather than contested battlegrounds in an evil age. And here's where the passage takes us this morning, A sermon and a sentence.

In evil days, we are to live wisely by shaping our communities, not with distraction, complaint and pride, but with spirit-filled song gratitude and humility. That is the challenge of this particular text, which we are about to look at in depth together. And that's also our hope because am midst of all of our distracted and all of our hurried and anxious life.

God offers us his very spirit to fill us, to lead us, to transform us into a people who walk carefully and joyfully and encourage one another with gratitude and humility. And so in verses 15 to 17, first we see instructions to examine how you walk. Examine how you walk.

Paul begins this, this way. Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise. He starts out with a command.

Ate. Look, it's present. Active indicative. I'm not trying to geek out on you. I'm just trying to reinforce the fact that all of these verbs and these participles that are gonna be listed in this passage, they all continue or contain the sense of, keep on looking, keep on singing, keep on submitting, keep on giving thanks.

It's an ongoing action, which means that it should mark us not just one day in seven, but it should mark us. All through the week. This is our rhythm. Paul is trying to lay out for the Ephesians and for us this, these are the qualifications that should mark your life, keep on paying attention, and then he uses this adverb.

ABOs to carefully do so. To do it precisely to do it accurately. To do it in ESV, carefully be intentional with the way that you examine your heart and how you live as God's covenant people, which means very practically, it means that you've gotta be really good at sitting in the midst of worship and fighting the distractions that are always claiming our time.

Because God has ordained this very moment for him to speak to you in a very personal way. Do you hear it? It takes as much energy. Do you know, to listen to a good sermon, especially when they're not great as it does to give a sermon, even if it is, and so we have to examine our lives carefully. And notice too that Paul frames it in a contrast in the last half of verse 15, not as unwise, but as wise.

That's Old Testament covenant language. In Deuteronomy chapter 28, he lays out the blessings and the curses for those who walk in line with his commandments. If you obey me, there are blessings. If you disobey me, there are curses. You heard the Williams read it earlier in Proverbs chapter nine, where he calls us to walk wisely with wisdom.

You see it in Proverbs one seven. You see it in Psalm 111, verse 10. To be wise is not about having intellect or certain points on the IQ scale. It is about living as if God's promises matter because they're true. Wisdom in the Bible is expressed in obedience and light of all that Jesus Christ has done for us.

And then verse 16 brings the rationale and the urgency. It says, making use of the time because the days are evil. There's a, there's a funny Greek word here, uh, ex azo, which basically means to redeem or to buy it. It's the idea of, of a man sitting down and documenting intentionally what he plans to do with his family this year.

It's someone who intentionally sits and says, am I being intentional with the ra the way that I raise my children? Or am I just gonna let social media raise them for me? Am I just gonna let the church do it for me? When I bring 'em to Trinity Kids, it means that a husband and wife sit down and say Honest feedback on how I'm doing as a husband.

Honest feedback on how I'm doing as a wife. Do you have that kind of relationship? And if you don't, may I encourage you to start there. Make the best use of time because the days are evil. And when he says the days are evil, he doesn't just mean that time itself is cursed, that our age is an age that is marked by rebellion and darkness.

It has been that way ever since Genesis chapter three, and yet even in the midst of these evil days, God can and cause us to redeem the time to seize it for the expansion of God's kingdom. Kingdom, yes, through evangelism and going to the nation's and missions, but also in extending his work in the way that you treat your coworkers, the way that you exhibit.

God's faithfulness in the way that you exercise your calling as a plumber, as an engineer, as a physician, whatever it is that you do.

And then he says in verse 17, he circles back with a warning and a call. Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. Foolishness means to be spiritually dull as though you didn't know God's. Will and the verb to understand literally means to put the pieces together. Together.

There's a built-in plural sense of to understand here. Sun in Greek means soon. In Greek means with it means you're doing it with the body of Christ. It means that if you're going to understand it is not a solo project. You have to understand together. What God is calling you to do and to be. It's a call for discernment as a church to understand the times and the step forward in obedience to the times without being held hostage to anything but the centrality of the gospel.

And then he says, you the will of the Lord. What is the will of the Lord? Now Paul here is not trying to crack some secret code of the will of the Lord is to marry this person, see him walking down the hallway at Tu and go, oh, that's it. That must be the will of the Lord. It means that you are to do what he says in Ephesians one to three.

And he says that God has revealed his covenant promise to unite all things in Christ. You are to see his unfolding plan. You are to be a holy people by his spirit. That is his will for you. You are to display his wisdom in and through the church. You see this in chapter one, verse 10. You see it in chapter two, verse 22.

You see it in chapter three, verse 10. Our calling is to live wise, gospel shaped lives that fit the pattern of Christ's kingdom. When you are walking wisely, you are doing so in an intentional way that redeems you buy back all of this wasted time. When Jonathan Edwards was 19 years old, he started to write resolutions for his life.

Thanks a lot. Jonathan makes us all feel like slackers, and one of the resolutions that he wrote says, resolved never to lose one moment of time, but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can. Edwards is trying to resolve to do what Paul calls us to do in this passage. Redeem the time for the days of evil.

Listen, Edwards knew the temptations that came for him. He knew the temptations that come for you. 'cause he knew the human heart and the Holy Spirit knows you. He knows the halls. He knows the Connor's in this room. He knows that each of us like to drift, like to waste our hours, but we ought to be resolved by God's grace to measure our life, to use it wisely and to use every moment for Christ's glory.

And I don't use the illustration of somebody his in history, who is amazing in his perhaps America's greatest theologian ever, in order to make you feel less than I simply use it to say, you can do it. You can do it. And before we, you know, start to say, oh, great, the great Johnson Edwards did it. I can never measure up.

Listen, Elizabeth Dodds wrote a book about his marriage to Sarah, his wife, and you know what she called that book, marriage to a Difficult Man. And so if Edwards were in this room, he would say, yes, go for it. I'm a total dud when it came to my marriage. I did not lead my family as I should have. And yet all of you look at me as great.

So the point is, however unsuccessful you may be, he calls us to start to redeem the time to be intentional about it, to lean in.

Point number one, examine how you walk. Point number two, live filled with the spirit, not wine. Paul shifts from wisdom to ask, what is your influence? What fills and controls you? He says it in verse 18, do not get drunk with wine. He use. He's using this as a analogy and as a veer Real illustration for that is to bot rate, but be filled with the spirit.

Do not get drunk with wine. That first command means to stop letting yourself be controlled or intoxicated by something. It's in the passive voice. Stop letting yourself, you're not the victim. Paul leans in. He shows that a person that is under the control of an outside influence is not walking in the will of God.

And in this case, wine and wine is given here as a particular application because it illustrates a much broader principle. Yes, indeed. We should not get drunk on wine. That is exactly what scripture says. But Paul isn't just warning against poor decisions on a Friday night. He's describing a way of life.

Do not live your life under that kind of control. Why? Because he says it is debauchery. In Greek, the word debauchery means without salvation. It is a way that means you are awe soso. You are without salvation. Awe is a negative way to say salvation. You are without salvation if you continue in that way because you don't manifest that you actually have faith.

If you continue to worship to be controlled by something else other than the Lordship of Christ. A life that is habitually controlled by alcohol or any other intoxicate ends in waste. Paul says it's beyond recovery, and let me just say that Paul is using this as an illustration to demonstrate how stark it is when we do not walk in light of Jesus', control of our life.

But brothers and sisters in this room, if you struggle with alcoholism, there is hope and lean in and let us walk alongside you with that. Which of us in this room can say we don't have an addiction to sin. Of course we do. If you struggle with alcoholism, if you have gone beyond just enjoying God's good gifts for His glory to be, please lean in and let us help you.

We want to help you. Oh, this is the safest place in the world to get help. Please do so.

Paul is saying, you belong to Jesus. He says in chapter one, verse 13, that you are sealed with the Holy Spirit. And so when he says that you are to be filled with the Spirit, he is saying that you are to keep on being filled. Well, wait a minute, Blake. I don't understand. I thought when I became a Christian, I was filled with the spirit.

Yes, indeed. You were. You were sealed with the spirit, as he says in chapter one, verse 13. As a Christian justified by faith, you have a new nature. The old nature is gone. The new nature has come. And when God, when Paul uses the word filling here, he uses it in the sense of you have an awareness of the spirit's power in your life.

It's one thing for my car to be full of gas and for me to be trying to push it up a hill. I'm not aware that the car actually has a combustible engine that can drive up the hill. I'm trying to push it up the hill, and that's the way some of you live. You become a Christian by grace, and you begin to live your life as though God looks at you and he judges you faithful because of your good works.

Now you're saved by grace and you're sanctified by grace. And Paul is simply saying, listen, you've got a tool name, the namely, the Holy Spirit that fills you. Would you recognize the awareness of his power and presence, and would you lean into it for your identity and your belonging and your understanding of yourself and of your community?

And you had the power to walk in obedience and light of the spirits in dwelling presence in the 19th century, the evangelist, uh, DL Moody was one time asked by a cynic when DL Moody would always talk about being filled with the spirit, and the person in the crowd said, why do you, Dr. Moody, always talk about being filled with the spirit and moody?

Replied in classic moody fashion because I leak

and so do you and so do I. And we don't have to try to manufacture lather yourself up spiritually. On Sunday morning. We get to sing. We get to encourage each other. We get to bring ourself into the presence of our. Triune, infinitely beautiful, holy God together. And we don't try at this church to try to do a lot to emotionally manipulate you.

We just wanna sing together. Why? Because the Holy Spirit is the one who fills you, and he does through, does so through the means of grace in the church, even as Paul has described it for us throughout the course of this book. He goes on to say that because every one of us leaks, we need to continue to be filled with the spirit, continue to be filled with the spirit.

And I want you to notice that all of these, uh, verbs and Les Les are the ING words in the text. All of them are plural. Not one of them is singular as though to say there is no solo Christian. And those of you who are new to this church, I just wanna say thank you for coming. Please keep coming and know that everybody in this room needs the other person's voice, countenance presence, to see a beautiful picture of the gospel at work in you because we are called to be a community together in order for us to walk holy sanctified before him having a quiet time.

By yourself in the morning is a beautiful and right and just fruit of the root of your justification. It is a beautiful thing to do that, but also bringing it into the community where you are sharpened and strengthened. That is where the New Testament epistles assume that person is growing. They're growing again together.

All of these are plural. I wish that we had a way to take the ESV and say y'all instead of you all the time, because it's hidden in English. All right. Point number one is that you are to examine your walk. Point number two is that you are to live filled with the spirit, and point number three is that you are to display spirit shaped community life.

Harold Hoener, the New Testament scholar, says that the four part symbols that follow the command.

To be filled with the spirit. You see the four disciples addressing, singing, giving, thanks, submitting, you see those? Those are all participles of result. That means these things naturally happened as a result of us being filled with the spirit. And I, I just frankly love this because if I'm reading this as a good legalist at heart, you know what I expect him to say?

You are to go out and you are to. Fast for 40 days alone in the wilderness, you are to memorize the book of Ephesians. You are to go and learn the Psalms, but what does he say? He says, you're to come to worship, you're to come on Sunday morning and you are to address when another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

Isn't that so counterintuitive to what you might think? He says, how are you to grow in your relationship with Jesus? The evangelical world tells you, buy this new app, do this new Bible study, and all those things, of course, are good and right, but even those things can become over desires and fill you in a way that is not godly because you begin to measure yourself by how much you're learning.

Instead, he says, oh, I want you to come and rest Jesus. We are resting, resting in the joy of what you. Are and we are finding out your greatness, the greatness of your loving heart as we address each other with Psalms, hymns, and spiritual psalms. Singing and making melody. Pastor Mark referred to this earlier, the first song, the first use of instruments in the Bible is Exodus 15.

They stole those instruments from the Egyptians when they crossed the Red Sea and Miriam sings as they crossed their Red Sea. That should also mark us, our families, our community groups

when, uh, uh. In the second century, the Governor, Pliny the younger, was reporting to Emperor Traian about the testimony of, of these strange people in these assemblies, uh, called Christians. He wrote almost in surprise, they were in the habit of meeting on a fixed day before dawn and singing response, uh, responsibly a hymn to Christ as if to a God singing has always marked the church.

And a century later, Tertullian described the same pattern. He was writing about a Christian feast, and he explained that each is asked to stand forth and to sing to God, either from the holy scriptures or from their own heart, as they are able between Pliny's surprise and Tien's celebration. The same story is told that when Christians gather together, they sing joyfully, and I'm always surprised.

By the way that I try to help catechize my children, help them learn the Westminster short of catechism, and I'm just waiting for the day when they're going up my stairs and they're reciting the chief and of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But you know what they say is they bound up the stairs in our house.

They sing the songs that we've sung on Sundays that gets into their heart. And so we should never underestimate the power of the lyric of the songs that we sing. That's why we wanna sing songs that are rich and full of deep theology. We want to be able to glorify God in the way that we sing. 'cause as we sing, we're discipling our children and we're discipling our own hearts addressing one another.

In Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, and then notice what he says. Giving thanks always and for everything to God, the Father, and the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. When, uh, the German Protestant reformed church was trying to articulate what it is that we believed, they set themselves apart from the Lutherans and the the Catholics in the regions of Germany, and they wrote something called the Heidelberg Catechism in the 16th century.

And the Heidelberg Catechism describes the whole of the Christian life in terms of gratitude.

Think about that. The framework of their entire theology was gratitude. And so in question 86 it says, why should we do good works if we've already been saved by grace in the answer, so that with our whole life, we may show ourselves thankful to God for his benefits and he may be praised through us. And later in question 116, it goes even further as his prayer is the chief part of thankfulness.

Which God requires of us. Do you see the connection here? Friends, Paul is not just giving us a list of checklists. He's trying to paint for us a worldview through which we understand all of life. That if we do indeed have the ceiling of the Holy Spirit, which he says we indeed do. If you believe in Christ, then it gives forth into a life that redeems, the time that seeks to examine our life, that seeks to live in a worthy way.

It's manifested by addressing to each other, not solo projects, but together encouraging each other with the gospel, singing, being grateful people. And then lastly, he says, submitting to one another at a Reverence for Christ. Notice submission here is not about inferiority. It is about reverence, fabo kristos.

It is about fear of Christ. That is not a boo scary fear. It's a reverence, a holiness you submit to one another at a reverence for Christ, which means person A submits to person B in certain areas, and person B submits to person A in certain areas. In the context of the church, we lay down our personal preferences.

Jesus said, the world would know you by your love for one another. Speaking to the disciples, Paul says that we should honor one another, Romans 12, 10, that we should in humility, count others better than ourselves, Philippians to 10. These are all applications of what it means to submit to one another out of reverence for your savior.

And so spirit filled submission leads to mutual edification. We're building each other up in song. It leads to wholehearted worship. We're singing Praising Him. It means that it leads to constant gratitude and it leads to a profound humility. I wonder if that marks your life.

When the Spirit fills us, he doesn't just change our private devotions, he transforms entire communities. And so may people look at us as Pliny did writing to Emperor Trajan so many years ago and say those Christians as people of Trinity, whatever else people say about them, they sing to Christ as though he were a God.

I think they really believe what they sing. I think there's a joy about those people marked by a profound sense of gratitude, not entitlement. I think their community groups are contagious because I long to be in a home where people are honest, authentic, and joyful about their need for grace, not just about their conquering.

Other challenges, oh, wouldn't that be a great place to worship? So friends, as we prepare for the table, Paul shows the Ephesians and us that we are to examine our lives, that we're to live filled with the spirit, not with wine, and that we are to display a spirit shaped community in our life. And we celebrate those things as we come to the table because this table proclaims for us a better story than the things that we have feasted on all week.

And we feast upon the one who gave us life and Rose again on the third day for you and for me, so that because of his work for us, Ephesians one to three, we can begin to live out in obedience all that Paul calls us to do and be in light of Jesus in chapters four to six. So as you come this morning, don't come with pretended righteousness or pretended strength, or pretended humility.

Come broken by your need, confessing your need for Christ. Come with gratitude, come with reverence, but above all, come however you are by faith into his presence because he sings over you with love having filled you by his spirit. He's reminding you of his presence and power for the weeks ahead.

Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Let's pray together. Father, would you help us to be people who examine how we walk, who live filled with the spirit, and who display spirit shaped community because of all Lord Jesus that you have done for us? Lord, would you, would you help us to come to this table in repentance even of our false repentance?

And enjoy that you have enabled us by your spirit to be the kind of people that you call us to be. And oh, holy Spirit, would you help us to be that kind of people? Would you help this church to be that kind of church? We're sinners saved by grace, our welcome and indeed expected. Because the Lord Jesus Christ has died, has risen again and has given us his comforter, his Holy Spirit, to strengthen us, that we might be the kind of people you call us and indeed expect us to be, and we pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Sermon transcript is computer generated.