Ephesians 5:15 Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, 16 making the most of your time, because the days are evil. 17 So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; 20 always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; 21 and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.
Paul begins this section by saying, WATCH CAREFULLY HOW YOU LIVE… i.e. How am I doing? And he presents us with two options:
Way to live #1) unwise, foolish, drunk w wine —> dissipation
Way to live #2) wise, redeeming your time, understand what God wants, be filled w Spirit —> speaking/singing, giving thanks, subjecting to one another
So what do we have here? We’ve been looking at contrasts. God’s beloved children vs sons and daughters of disobedience, children of wrath. Truthing in love with gracious grateful words which build up vs rotten me-first words. Light vs Darkness. Polar opposites. Totally opposite directions. Completely opposite outcomes. Diametrically opposed. And the stakes are eternal. They could be no higher.
So Paul says, wake up, and be on the lookout. Be watching very carefully how you are walking. [which conjurs up the old Monty Python Silly Walks skit, arms and legs and neck doing all kinds of ridiculous undulations and gyrations ...]
Obviously Paul’s not thinking about thinking about feet and legs. He’s thinking about how we live our lives. The choices we make. How we spend our time and our days. God called us out of darkness, bought us and set us free from sin and death by the blood of His Son, and set us apart to be His children, children of the Light, lighting up the darkness with goodness and righteousness and truth (of Christ!). He called us into His family, into this beautiful diverse body of Christ. He calls us to guard the oneness of this body and build up this body. This is what God set us apart to do and be in Christ, why He sent His Son to die for us and then left us here. For a divinely appointed season of opportunity. And it is on us to make sure that that happens. So Paul exhorts us, wake up, and watch out! Be constantly on the lookout, and look carefully at your life, what you are doing, what you are saying. Wake up sleeper! We are the ones who are responsible for waking up and letting the light of Christ shine in our hearts and through our lives. God has given us Light - what am I doing with it? How am I doing?
There are two possible polar-opposite responses here. One is unwise. The other is wise. Unwisdom fails to take God into account. The unwise path is taken by the one who in spite of receiving the Light decides to acquiesce and even join in with the deeds of darkness, to live a life of hiding, a life of immorality and greed and filthy words, a life of me-first, always putting something else in God’s place in my heart. Pleasing myself instead of pleasing the Lord. The unwise path ignores the Light and pursues counterfeit lesser realms of satisfaction. It is the choice to subsist on so much cotton candy. For someone to see and come out into the Light and still walk in darkness is not only unwise, surely it is the height of stupidity. Psalm 14.1 The fool has said in his heart, there is no God. Wisdom, however, says there is a God with Whom I have to do - and I am not Him, a great I AM, always and forever every moment of every day. He is far greater, and He is way better. Unfathomably better and wiser. Wisdom journeys in this Light, His light, soaking up all the shining rays of God’s blazing breathtaking goodness at every turn (no sunscreen necessary). The wise response involves being on constant lookout for ways which my life may not be in sync w what God wants, may not be pleasing to Him, which may not be showing off His breathtaking goodness and holiness and truth.
So we ask, how am I doing w my time…? Because my life is time measured out to me by the hand of almighty God, my Father in heaven. In 24-hr installments. Time is a gift, one which we can squander so thoughtlessly. Time is precious. Irreplaceable. The Greeks have two words for time - chronos, which means literal clock time, and kairos, which refers to a special season of opportunity. A divine moment, or moments, if you will. So Paul says, be redeeming the kairos. Buy these up and make the most of them. Don't waste them! Recognize that each day and moment of your life is a gift, an opportunity to shine. Time to shine, Paul says. Make the most of it, this season of opportunity. It’s harvest time, ya’ll. It’s go time. And time’s a-wasting. Too often God’s people, we are straightening pictures on the walls of burning houses. Or doing nothing at all. Squandering our gift.
We have one job, Paul says… [picture one job fails, which tend to be quite entertaining] So then avoid the fails and don’t be unwise, don’t be foolish. Instead understand what the will of the Lord is. The will of the Lord. We’ve talked about this. It is the Greek word thelema, and it refers to wants and desires. This is the question of what does God want. And this then becomes my one job. I have one job. Wisdom asks, what does God want? And so there is this confluence. Have you ever seen a "conflu" [confluence, where two rivers merge together]? That’s a great picture of the word Paul uses here. “Understand”: literally a flowing together, a merging together of heart and mind, of desires and wants. Our wants merging together with the Lord’s, our wants getting caught up into His. You and I have one job - walking in the Light begins and ends with this one profoundly simple yet humanly impossible task. Flow together with what the Lord wants. (And didn’t Israel rise or fall on whether or not they “inquired”…?)
So how does this confluence, this flowing together of wants happen? Next Paul gives us the key. Remember how the oneness of the body is produced? Who produces that? The Holy Spirit. Third person of the Trinity. The promised Helper. The Spirit of Christ Who dwells in the heart of each and every person who has put their trust in Christ, each believer who God has joined as a part of the body of Christ. Paul says, be filled with the Spirit. Present tense. Constantly. Every moment of every day.
John 7:37-39 Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’” But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive…
What does it mean to be filled? Paul gives us a picture to help us out - he says, don’t be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit. That which fills you controls you. If I am drunk, it means something else (alcohol) is controlling me and changing my behavior. It could be some kind of liquor. But there are many different things which can be in control of my life, my heart. It could be anger. Greed. Jealousy. Fear. Lust. Food. My appearance. My body. A relationship. So many things which I can allow to control my life. It could simply be me. Paul calls this dissipation. It means unsaved living, me-first, walking in darkness. You and I were not meant for this. When my lovely wife & I worked with Cru we learned a great illustration to help us understand this: [our lives are like circles and there is throne in that circle that represents the control center of our life]
But now it is absolutely critical here to understand that this is about more than just control. It is not only about guidance - where the Lord sort of sits next to me in the passenger seat and nudges the steering wheel from time to time. Like some spiritual GPS. Turn this way. In 1/4 mile, turn this way. Oh, you didn’t do that - recalculating. It’s nothing like that. This is about complete dependence and reliance. Total surrender to Christ. He is in the driver seat. But not only that, He is the engine, and He is the fuel. Philippians 4:13 I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. Do you realize what Paul is saying there? He is in prison, in chains. He’s not necessarily talking about the power to break those chains and bust out of that prison. He’s not talking about being happy only when everything goes the way I want. He’s talking about the power to make it all about Christ with a heart that overflows with gratitude and joy and love - even in deep dark dungeon. Even when life isn’t turning out exactly the way we wanted it. When my body breaks down. When my car or my stuff breaks down. When life is messy. We get so bent out of shape and sideways by how the brokenness of life makes things more inconvenient for us. I can only do all things through Christ. How am I doing?
And Paul is saying, watch out! It is a slippery slope of baby steps and compromise, indulging my wants, my fleshy desires in small little bites and before I know it I am journeying away from the Light in my heart. There are two ways this rears its ugly head in the church today. The first (so, unwisdom) says, I don’t need daily bread. I don’t need the Lord, fresh fire for the battle this day. We fail to wake up cognizant of the fact that this day there is nothing we can do apart from Christ. Nothing. My job. My family. My school. Much less show off God’s blazing goodness to the people sitting in dark dungeons of darkness all around me. The second way God’s people journey away from the Light is by saying, I don’t need you. My brother and sister. Maybe I need daily bread, sure, I need to rely on Christ today and every day, but I don’t need you. I don’t need the body. I can make it on my own. Me and Jesus - we got this. And we drift away from life-changing world-shaking engagement with the family of God. We take our little light and try to wave it all by ourselves instead of joining it to the would-be bonfire of a local assembly. We need to wake up and watch out! You and I must be on constant watch each and every day against both our flesh and against any outside influence which may endeavor to entice us away from connection to Him and His people, back into the darkness, back into hiding, back to what C.S. Lewis described as making mudpies in the slum. Watch out, my friend…!
There are no lone ranger Christians. I need you and you need me. We need each other. We journey together. That’s what family does. But the heart that says, I don’t need you, I can make it without you, me and Jesus we got this - that’s just me-first. Yes I get it that too often people’s experience of church means that they maybe have been wounded by someone else’s brokenness. Or perhaps they have become disenchanted with an expression of faith which is devoid of joy and love and true community. Maybe their experience was one of lemon-sucking legalism. Or maybe there was some two-faced hypocrisy. Or perhaps it was just a meeting, some slick program where folks seemed to care mostly about noses-and-nickles, largely devoid of real community. I get it. There are a lot of churches. Especially in this part of the US. And they’re all full of broken and messy people - just like me. And so things don’t always look the way they’re designed to look. But that doesn’t change the fact that God designed His people, the church, you and me, for oneness. For community. For this truthing in love, building up one another. And it is incumbent upon each of us to journey with this realization of the true reality of the world - these days ARE evil - and then to pursue this growing understanding of the want of God. His thelema. God wants us to want Him, and to journey in this common unity, oneness, community, to build up this body of Christ which will blaze forth the light of His truth and love for a world lost in darkness.
Be watching carefully how you live. Not as unwise but as wise. Understand what is really important, what really matters, what is most valuable, irreplaceable. That which needs to be stewarded with utmost care. Which is: your soul - each precious soul of those living all around us - and your time. Buy up the time, make the most of your precious time - because the days are evil. The days are evil. We are contending with evil. I think as we grow up our general assessment of life is that it’s either too short, or that it’s too broken. Life is too short, my days are too short, I’m too busy, there’s not enough time in the day, too much to do, always something I gotta do, running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Or it’s just broken. Can’t be fixed. Some sickness. Some woundedness - somebody hurt me. Something’s not right, and it’s holding me down, holding me back. There is certainly some truth to this. Life is short. And it’s not perfect. And do you understand that in saying these things we reveal the truth that we are wired for something else, something higher, something better? The rest of the creatures on this planet have none of these concerns. They don’t sit around lamenting the fact that there’s not enough time in the day or that things are broken. Our cat, our dog, the bird in the tree - they’re not thinking about how they need more time in their life, or how they need a change of circumstances. Ball, squirrel, food, lick, sleep, bite, attack, fly, run - their existence is what it is. But we humans - we are wired for life that isn’t short, that isn’t broken. We are wired for paradise. Rivers of living water! And what we’re talking about here are hearts which are tapping into this unseen reality, this eternal Kingdom of God, tapping into what God wants and to His unfathomable resources, His breathtaking goodness and limitless power - and it changes how we live. It changes our hearts - because the King of Heaven is making a home in our hearts. And yes, sometimes it breaks through and even changes the physical world around us. Miracles. Supernatural living. Greater things than these you will do, Jesus said.
But we don’t need to get hung up on the grandiose. The outcome Paul describes for us here is far more simple. What is the fruit of wise and understanding Spirit-filled living? There are four things, Paul lists four participles which flow from this Spirit-filled living: speaking to one another, singing together, thanksgiving, and subjecting ourselves to one another. Speaking to one another, singing together, always giving thanks, and subjecting ourselves to one another. There is this journeying together. Mutual dependence. There is this grateful celebration. Hearts of joy. Rivers of living water. We were meant for this!
And so, we need to stop hold ourselves back from the Lord. So many things we put in His place. So many things we give our hearts to. And we need to stop holding ourselves back from one another. Lots of excuses. We need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. How am I doing?
No comments:
Post a Comment