This whole year we’ve been looking at the subject of Play The Man, which is a line from one of the Protestant martyrs as he was being burned in Smithfield, England. He turned to one of his young martyr friends and said, “Play the man.” Be courageous, stand for Christ, and give your life for him in the fires of martyrdom. And I think you and I want to hear that rallying call. This is not a day for Christian wimps. This is a day to stand up, to live for Christ boldly, and to leave your mark on our culture and society. And so we’re glad you here. You’re coming in on the tail end of the series, but we hope that you’ll be blessed by it. In fact, I’d invite you to take your Bible. I’d invite you to take your Bible and turn to Ephesians, chapter five.
I want to return to a subject we started to look at the last month we were together, the subject of the discipline of time. We have been looking at different disciplines that ought to mark and capture the mind and heart of a Christian man. And certainly if we’re going to live a life of significance and if we’re going to live on purpose, we’ve got to get a handle on the management of our time, because that’s going to bleed into everything else that we do.
And so in Ephesians 5:15, we hear these words from Paul. I’m reading from the New King James translation of scripture. “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil. Therefore do not be unwise but understand what the will of God is.”
Let me read that from another translation, the New Living Translation, which kind of captures the kind of dynamic impact of the words and the concepts that lie behind them. Here’s what it says. “So be careful how you live, not as fools but as those who are wise. Make the most of every opportunity for doing good in these evil days. Don’t act thoughtlessly, but try to understand what the Lord wants you to do.”
Guys, there’s no time to waste and let me reinforce that and underline that. I would say the majority of guys in this room are over 35, and if you are, did you know that when you subtract the time you spend sleeping, working, tending to personal matters such as hygiene, odd chores, eating and traveling, that you have 500 days left to live if you live another 35 years. 35 days that are at your disposal to invest as you see fit. That’s striking. If you’re 35, you’ve only got 500 days left to live and you don’t want to play with time because time ought not to be played with.
In fact, in a lifetime the average American will spend six months sitting at traffic lights waiting for them to change. One year searching through desk clutter, looking for misplaced objects. Eight months opening junk mail. Two years unsuccessfully returning phone calls. Five years waiting in lines, and three years in meetings.
Guys, we’ve got to redeem the time. The bottom line is that there is no time to waste and that thought has got to grab us and grip us. It did Howard Hendricks, who for many years has taught as a professor at Dallas Seminary in Texas. He’s often a spokesman on the subject of management and time and he says this, quote, “The crush of time has given me a greater sense of urgency. I saw the change occur when I turned 60, and I realized I didn’t have eternity in which to make an impact for the Savior, only a little slice of time. Psalm 90, verse 12 is my gyroscope. My wife and I sat down and determined a focused set of goals. We asked, if the Lord gives us 10 years to 20 years more to live, how will we spend them in the most productive way given the limitations of time and eternity?
Psalm 90:12 are those familiar words. “Number your days and apply your hearts on the wisdom.” And just as Psalm 90:12 has acted as a gyroscope in the life of Howard Hendricks, I trusted Ephesians 5:15-17 will act as a gyroscope to you and me to remind us that we’re not going to live forever, and yet we are going to live forever. Sometimes we forget, as we saw last week from the life of Thomas Chalmers, we forget two great magnitudes, the littleness of time and the greatness of eternity.
We’ve got to make our days count and we’ve got to count our days. Or as the old preachers put it, “Only one life to live. ‘Twill soon be past. Only what’s done for Jesus will last.” And so I want to re-enter the stream of Paul’s thinking here in Ephesians 5 and I want to challenge you and I again about this whole matter of not wasting time, because we can ill afford to waste it. We’ve got to invest it for kingdom purposes. We realize that if we’re going to discipline ourselves on the godliness, we’ve got to discipline our use of time towards godliness.
If you were with us the last time, and if you weren’t, we hope we can certainly make the CD available to you. We looked at verse 15 and we saw that Paul was challenging us to be perceptive. To be perceptive. “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise.” And we concentrated on that verb “to walk circumspectly.”
It means to walk deliberately, to choose our steps carefully and we realized that we couldn’t in any shape or form dilly-dally our way through life. We’ve got to make our mind up about who we are in Christ. We’ve got to make our mind up about what Christ wants us to do. And given the fact that the sands of time are sinking, get about the business of living for Christ and redeeming the time. Live carefully.
We saw that image in the cat that walks along the edge of the wall that’s embedded with glass, and deliberately, circumspectly, carefully puts one food in front of the other. We reminded ourselves that our Christian life and our Christian legacy can’t be left to feelings or circumstances. We have got to walk circumspectly. We’ve got to be perceptive. We can’t trifle in the light of the littleness of time and the vastness of eternity.
So we’re moving on. We’re moving on now because Paul asks a second thing of us. In verse 15, he asks us to be perceptive. In verse 16, he asks us to be preemptive. He asks us to be preemptive. He’s carrying his thought forward. What does it mean to walk circumspectly, to be deliberate and decisive about your Christian life and legacy?
Well, it incorporates this thought of redeeming the time. If you’re going to be judicious and thoughtful about the way you live, you’re going to be perceptive. You’re going to be preemptive. You’re going to redeem the time. “See then that you walk circumspectly,” take out the little parenthesis here, “not as fools, but as wise,” and you’d go straight onto this thought. “See then that you walk circumspectly, redeeming the time.” That’s the thought.
Walking in wisdom involves the proper allotment of our days to the right things done at the right time and done in the right way. Guys, the greatest misstep in life is to flitter away our days wantonly and wastefully. There is no greater crime to be given the gift of time and to waste it. We don’t want to end our days with our life being an unfinished symphony. We’ve got to redeem the time.
In fact, this must have been a challenge to the Ephesians because many of them had come to Christ late in life. Many of us have come to Christ early in life, but many of them had come to Christ late in life. We can tell that by going back to chapter 2:1-3. “And you hath he made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath just as others. But God who is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses, he has made us alive.”
They’ve come to Christ, they’re wonderful trophies of God’s grace, but this must pierce them. They lived according to the desires of their flesh. Now they’re in Christ. They’re under new management. They want to live significantly. They want to live substantially, and that means redeeming the time to the end. That you try to understand what God wants you to do. You’re no longer doing your own thing. You’re under the lordship of Jesus Christ and that’s a pressing matter. They were being challenged here to be preemptive, to seize the day for God’s glory because they had spent so much of their life on themselves.
He wants them to not waste any more time, to help turn the tide of evil and to punch some holes into the darkness. Although we speak of saving time, we speak of making time, we speak of borrowing time, none of those things are possible. Time is a precious, limited, diminishing commodity and resource and we have got to, guys, grab it greedily, spend it carefully and invest it wisely, like a good mutual fund manager. We’ve got to live this day for that day. This day for that day. We can’t beat about the bush anymore. We can’t sit on our hands. We can’t punch the air.
Now, before I unpack that, there’s two thoughts, what I call the requirement and the reason. I want you to understand that the Christian understanding of time feeds into Paul’s sense of urgency here. Feeding into this whole thought of redeeming the time is a Christian’s unique understanding of time. Christianity and Judaism understand time in a linear sense. We believe that time had a beginning point. We believe that time will travel to a terminus in the future when the Lord Jesus Christ will come, and according to the Book of Revelation, time will be no more.
The clock will stop. And we believe that there is a God who exceeds time and space, but who created time and space, who has sat in motion history and that history has purpose and significance, and hours and days and weeks count because they echo out into eternity. We don’t believe that history is going in some kind of cyclical motion round and round and round, and if anything, it’s simply repeating itself and spiraling down to some unknown undetermined end at the hands of madmen.
No. We believe that God has a purpose in time and instead of time spiraling down to some unknown end at the hands of madmen, we believe that time is moving upwards and forwards towards a climactic moment when Jesus comes. And when you understand that, and that’s a biblical worldview for you and a framework by which you live your life, then history has purpose, and direction. And you’d better my friend have some purpose and direction.
You can’t dilly-dally through life. It’s headed in a direction. It’s called the judgment. It’s called the greatest assize. It’s called standing before God to give an account for the stewardship of our time and our talents and our treasures. We are not, nor is time the product of random natural selection. It has a definite beginning, it has an appointed end, and therefore when you grasp that, you live differently. You live distinctly. You walk circumspectly, Redeeming the time.
Because, guys, if you think about it, this is great. History finds in Christ its integrating center. In fact, if you were to take history from beginning to end, I can summarize it in three sentences from Genesis to Revelation, which takes in all kinds of epochs and episodes across different ages and different stages. But here’s what it is: Jesus is coming. Jesus has come. Jesus is coming again.
That’s history because as A.T. Pearson said, “History is His story.” And when we understand that Christ is the integrating center of history, then as Christians we have a particular take on time and we don’t waste it. We don’t flitter it away, and we don’t spend it on ourselves. That’s why the old Puritan Richard Baxter said this, “Spend your time on nothing which must be repented of and nothing in which you might not pray for the blessing of God and nothing with which you could not review with a good conscience on your deathbed, and nothing with which you might not safely and properly be found doing if death should visit you surprisingly.”
So with that in mind, guys, let’s look at what I might call the requirement and the reason behind the requirement. “See then that you walk circumspectly not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil.” What’s the requirement? To redeem the time. Or as the New Living Translation puts it and it puts it very well, “We need to buy up the opportunity.” And let me explain that because this concept of redeeming the time is the thought of buying up the opportunity that sits before us so that we might maximize our effectiveness for God.
Now while a literal translation of the Greek word is redeem, not opportunity, lying behind the concept of redeem is this thought of opportunity. Let me explain it. The verb redeem means to buy up at the marketplace. In fact, this verb is used in Galatians 3:13 and 4, 5 to speak of someone buying a slave back from slavery and then releasing them into freedom. And in this context it’s accompanied by another word, “time.” Buy up, or buy back time.
Interesting thing is there’s two Greek words for time. One is chronos from which we get chronology and another one is kairos. And it’s interesting under the supervision and superintendents of the Holy Spirit, Paul deliberately chooses kairos. And that’s important because we as evangelical Protestants believe in the verbal inspiration of scripture. We believe every word is the word of God and therefore every word is significant in terms of the selection and superintendents of the Spirit’s work. And why didn’t Paul use chronos and he used kairos? Because the word kairos carries the idea of something qualitative in the passage of time. Chronos speaks of the quantity of time, it’s passage, it’s measurement, days, weeks, months. But kairos speaks of something qualitative within the passage of time. It speaks of an event, a happening. It speaks of a point in time, an opportune occasion or a particular event.
And I think that’s reinforced because the grammar of the Greek suggests that the definite article “the” accompanies time. Redeem the time. This opportunity. This possibility. And so kairos time is not so much dealing with the passage of time in terms of its ordered sequence, but in turning points within it, those special moments that cut across our paths if we have eyes to see it. And I think that’s important for you and I to grasp. That’s why the New Living Translation, paraphrasing the literal, is you need to “buy up the opportunity” because that is the thought.
Paul is urging the Ephesians to buy up every opportunity. And to buy it up you’ll have to pay a price in terms of focus and deliberateness and thought if you’re going to make your life count according to kingdom priorities. The expectation of this verse is that every day and across the expense of our life, special opportunities will come our way. Opportunities to turn a life towards God, opportunities to serve our communities, opportunities to lift up the fallen and the bedraggled, opportunities to bear one another’s burdens, opportunities in whatever we do to glorify God by our actions.
That’s why Paul says in Ephesians 6:10, these words. “Therefore as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith.” Guys, that’s a challenge and here’s an application. Here’s the imperative. The requirement is redeem the time, buy up the opportunity. But what does that mean? I don’t want you to misunderstand something. Because if we’re not careful, you and I will read into this that we’ve got to leave this morning and make sure that our calendars are full, and from sunrise to sunset we’re busy doing stuff. And we typically understand redeem the time. “Okay, I can’t sit and watch my favorite television program as sitting, nursing my kid on my knee is a waste of time eternally.” That is not the thought here. In fact, that’s a kairos moment with your child.
Redeeming the time can mean actually taking time to yourself to rest and reflect so that you are better placed when the opportunities come to take them with a clear head and a strong heart and a vibrant body. So don’t misunderstand this concept of redeeming the time and thinking that it means to fill your plate more and more with things to do, and therefore the busier you are, the more you’re fulfilling this command. No. Kairos time is about what we do, not how much we do.
It’s not so much about efficiency as about effectiveness. Some people do a lot but do nothing. Some people don’t do as much but do more. That’s the difference. It’s about doing the right thing at the right time. You can fill your day and still not fulfill God’s will. Redeeming the time is not about squeezing more into life. Redeeming the time is about squeezing more out of life, making room for those opportunities that are significant turning points in your life and other people’s lives.
Most Christians are busy. I usually find that. For the most part I don’t have to whip my congregation into doing something for the Lord. In fact, my concern is some of us are doing too much, stretching ourselves. Because one, others aren’t stepping up and using their giftedness in the body life. And two, because we have misunderstood this idea of redeeming the time and we become guilty at the thought of not signing up for the next thing that needs to be done.
No guys, redeeming the time is not about squeezing more into life, it’s about squeezing more out. Someone has suggested that the most important thing about a person is not how busy they are, but how they are busy. It’s a difference between what we call efficiency and effectiveness. And one writer says this. “Time management trainers suggest the wisdom of discerning between effective and efficient.” Miriam Martha in Luke chapter 10 presents the useful example of the difference. Martha represents efficiency, right? Wasn’t she busy? Hey Lord, what do you want? And she gets into the kitchen. Mary didn’t follow her in there and she comes out like a bear with a bad headache and says, Hey Lord, tell Mary to get up. She was efficient, she was busy. She wasn’t being lazy, she was trying to redeem the time in a sense.
But on the other hand, Mary was sitting at Jesus’ feet, listening to his word. And if Martha represents efficiency, Mary represents effectiveness. You can be efficient without being effective. You can do many right things without doing those things right. And the Lord says to Martha, hold on, Martha, Martha, calm down. You’re very busy but you’re missing the point. This is a moment where I’m teaching my word, the supper can wait. This is a kairos moment. This is an opportunity you don’t want to miss or waste.
And guys, we’ve got to be challenged by that filmmaker Walt Disney was ruthless in the cutting room. If something was good but it got in the way of the best, it was cut. In fact, a story I read by a man by the name of Ward Kimball, one of the animators in Snow White, a Disney classic, he talks about working 240 days on a four and a half minute scene and sequence when the dwarfs make soup for Snow White and almost destroy the kitchen. Remember that scene in the movie? No. Why? Because he cut it out. This guy worked 240 hours on a four and a half minute sequence. It was good, but it got in the way of the best and Walt Disney cut it onto the screen floor.
The writer who tells that story says this, “When the film of our lives was played by God on the final day, will it be as great as it might be? A lot will depend upon whether or not we eliminate good things in order to make way for the great things.” Redeeming the time. Redeeming the time might mean putting people over things, because people are more important than things. Redeeming the time means ignoring the clock and taking time out. You can redeem the time by rest and time alone with God. Redeeming the time means prayer and the study of God’s will, because how can you redeem the time if you don’t know how much God wants you to pursue in terms of his purposes for you?
Redeeming the time means seizing the moment but allowing for interruptions. Sometimes we think in terms of time management. You know what? I don’t want to be interrupted, but the interruption may be a kairos moment intersecting chronos time, a God-appointed turning point, which is actually an opportunity you must seize.
But let’s look at the reason. The reason. What’s the reason behind the requirement? What’s the impetus behind the imperative? “You need,” says Paul, “to walk circumspectly.” You need to be more deliberate and decisive about your walk with Christ and that means redeeming the time. And I’ll tell you why you must buy up every opportunity, because what? The days are evil, the time is evil. If you are not going to use time for good and purposes, they will use it for evil godless purposes.
That’s the challenge. The days must be seized for gospel advancement, for kingdom work, because it’s fleeting and because our enemy and his minions and those in his slavery have captured it as well. They’re seizing these opportunities for evil purposes. Abortion advocates are more busy than pro-life advocates. Godless legislators don’t turn the light out because they have an agenda, and the days are evil because men are busy being evil. And the only way we can stand in the way of that, the only way we can perhaps the dike deluge is by being busy ourselves in spiritual pushback.
I like the way one writer puts this. Paul encourages the Christians in Ephesus to indeed produce some compensating goodness. The days are evil, but you redeem it. Display a compensating goodness. Let your life be the opposite. As they act wickedly you live righteously. What they call evil you call good, and what they call good you call evil. The days are evil and here Paul cautions the Christians, he says, look, if the days are evil, one of the temptations you’re going to find is to misuse your time like others are misusing theirs, to be a conformer rather than a transformer.
Romans 12:1-2, right? “Don’t be conformed to this world but by the renewing of your mind, live out the will of God as you prove it day by day.” And that’s the caution here. They are getting up with no thought of God and his holy will. You must get up every morning consciously and deliberately thinking about God’s will and how can be fleshed out today in opportune ways. That’s the caution. If you don’t use it for good, they will use it for evil. And there’s the call. The call indeed is to inject this world with some compensating goodness, to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world that Jesus talks about in Matthew chapter five.
Guys, further to that before we move on to the last thought. I think this is also a challenge not for us to throw our hands up in horror. You don’t get the impression where Paul says, oh guys, do you know it’s evil days? That’s taken, that’s a given. The time is evil because we’re living in a fallen, sin-cursed devil-infested world where every imagination of man is evil as in the days of Noah. And if it wasn’t but for the rainbow of God’s mercy, the floodtide of his wrath would sweep all men away.
But as Paul says to the Ephesians, but God is rich in mercy to those who are the children of wrath. No, he doesn’t say to them, Hey, hold your hands up in horror. Isn’t this a surprise? No. He says, look, the days are evil, but you inject this world with some compensating goodness. That you redeem the time through the reproof of a godly life. Look at chapter five and verse 11. “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness but rather expose them.” That word expose is an interesting term in the Greek. It means to cross-examine and I think there’s a good thought there.
Our lives ought to represent some spiritual pushback. Our lives must put the world on the defensive. Our righteousness and our virtue should cross-examine and question the way they act and the way they live. No, there’s an alternative we’re saying and it’s a better alternative. We are not to hide from evil. We are to expose it, and oppose it, and that’s our calling because the days are evil and we need to redeem the time.
There’s a story relating to a Anglican minister during the days of Cromwell. Cromwell is one of my heroes, so to some degree I’m putting him in a bad light by the use of this story. But he tried to divest England of its monarchy. He tried to democratize England and in democratizing the government, he also tried to disestablish the church. And so he ransacked the Anglican church in England. He burned some of their churches. He emptied some of their churches and defamed their clergy. And during this time a man by the name of Robert Shirley ministered in a little English town called Staunton and after his death, this epitaph was written of him.
Here’s what it says, and there’s a phrase in it I just want to pick up. “In the year of 1653, when all things sacred were throughout the nation destroyed or profaned,” which isn’t altogether true but we’ll run with it, “this church was built to the glory of God by Sir Robert Shirley whose singular praise it was to have done the best of things in the worst of times.” I loved that phrase when I read something of that story one day. That’s a great epitaph, to have lived your life, to have redeemed the time, to have died and fallen asleep in Christ and for your friends and for society to write on your headstone and my headstone, “In the worst of times he did the best of things.” He redeemed the time even though the days were evil.
Let’s move on to the last thought in the minutes that remain. Be prescriptive, be preemptive. Sorry, be perceptive, be preemptive. Be prescriptive is the last thought here. Look verse 17, “Therefore do not be unwise but understand what the will of God is.” And just to let you know, I’m starting a series on discovering the will of God this Wednesday night coming and we hope to see many of you there. We’re going to do an eight to 10 week series on biblical decision making.
We’re faced with multiple choices all the time and here’s a verse that will play into the series where Paul is encouraging these Ephesians indeed not to be unwise but to understand what the will of God is. And these verses we’ve been looking at are like cylinders of a telescope, one thought as an extension of the other thought. Did you see it? Be careful. Okay, Paul, what does it mean to be careful? Redeem the time. Okay, Paul, what does it mean to redeem the time? Do the well of God. That’s the thought and the train of Paul’s reasoning here. Paul is saying that there is no substitute for the confidence that at any time and in any place you and I are obeying the will of the Father. There’s just no substitute for that success. Anywhere else is failure here.
We’ve got to live in a way that we do those things that please the Lord. Back up into verse 10 of the chapter we’re looking at. In fact we’ll read from verse eight, “For you are once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the spirit is in all goodness, righteousness and truth,” there’s that compensating goodness that punching holes into the darkness, “finding out what is acceptable to the Lord.”
What does it mean to redeem the time? It means what would please the Lord right now in what I do? In the choices I make? In the commitments I give myself to? In the people I indeed give myself to also? Time’s not going to allow me to do all that I would want to do here, but Paul’s basically saying it’s a no-brainer. It’s a no-brainer. When it comes to redeeming the time, there’s only one surefire way and that is to understand and then to implement God’s will for you. And that won’t come automatically.
That’s something you’ve got to work at and give due diligence to. In fact, when he says here, “therefore do not be unwise,” he’s using a verb that means to become. Don’t become unwise. Implication being you could be moving towards the fulfillment of God’s will, and then there’s a misstep and you become unwise. Therefore, to know God’s will and to do God’s will is going to take constant oversight by you and me. A constant taking in of God’s word. A constant understanding of God’s thoughts because this word “to understand” in verse 17 means to comprehend intellectually. It’s to get our head around God’s clear purposes for us. That’s why Paul says in Romans 12, “Prove the will of God.” How do you prove it by the renewing of your mind.
And guys, we have listened to too many Christian teachers that turn God’s will into an Easter egg hunt, or they turn it into some mystical experience. But it’s not. For the most part, God’s will is an open secret. It’s the worst kept secret in the world. And yet I have listened to so many preachers, and as a young Christian I got this impression that God’s will was like a needle in a haystack. And I sweated feverishly and I acted fervently to try and find it, when all the while I needed the grasp that God’s will is plainly taught in his word for the most part.
Now there is a general will and there is a particular will. The general will of God for all of us, which is the same for all of us, is taught in his word. And the particular will that’s unique to us is not taught in his word, but as we understand his general will, we’ll be better furnished and fitted to do his particular will.
So in the moments that I’ve left, I’m going to just take you in a quick excursion through some of the verses in God’s word and I think as I apply it in the end here, it’ll help you to understand what God’s will is for you and we’re going to start with the big picture. See, some of you are thinking, what’s God’s will for me? Is it that job? Is it that girl? Is it not move? Is it this church? Is it…? And those are all important questions, but you don’t start there. You start with what’s specific, what’s clear, what’s very clearly disclosed. And on the basis of those principles and the precepts that issue from them, you can make those other decisions. Let me help you see this.
If you read God’s word, you’re going to see, number one, it is God’s will that we receive the Savior and I know time’s going, but give me an extra few minutes here. We’ve got to wrap this up. In First Timothy 2:4, what do we read? “God desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” What’s God’s will for you? It’s first of all that you receive the Lord Jesus, that you bend the knee in repentance and submission before him who died on the cross for you, who poured his life out in death for you. Everything else is moot, because what is it if you gain the world? What is it if you make a success of your business? What is it if you make a triumph of your marriage? What is it if you’ve got a great circle of friends who love you? All those things are good, but if you’re lost, it’s all moot.
And so you say, well then what’s the most important thing? The most important thing is for you to be sure that you’ve got a real abiding relationship with Jesus Christ. That’s God’s desire for you. God desires for all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. And that truth is in his word, and you have had the privilege of being born in a country where there is access to that truth in multiple, multiple ways.
What’s the second thing? It is God’s will that we allow ourselves to come under the control of the blessed Holy Spirit. Go back to Ephesians 5. In fact, Paul goes on after verse 17 to tell us, okay, what’s will? “Not to be drunk with wine,” verse 18, “in which is dissipation but be filled with the spirit speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” When you and I got saved that moment we were baptized by one spirit into the body. We don’t need to seek a baptism of the spirit beyond the moment we trusted Christ.
We do need to seek a continual filling. We do need to continually be under his control because that’s the image. The drunk man is under the influence of drink and we must be under the influence of the Holy Spirit. But while he makes a comparison, he also makes a contrast. The drunk man under the influence of alcohol is out of control, but the evidence of being filled by the spirit is being under control. This idea that barking like dogs and squealing like cats on the church floor is an evidence of the filling of the Holy Spirit is bogus, because he makes a comparison but he makes a contrast. To be filled by the spirit and to be directed by the word will mean that you have your life under control. It doesn’t mean you’ll be a deadpan Christian, and you’ll be sore and you don’t know how to laugh and if you had hair, let it down.
No, no. But it does mean that you’re sober about the things of God and you’re not wild and out of control. You’re not being driven by impulses and emotions. But anyway, that’s another part of God’s will. You need to be saved. You need to be Spirit-filled. You need to be sexually pure. Look at first Thessalonians 4:3. Write these things down guys. Share them with your kids. Share them in your men’s group for this is the will of God, your sanctification that you should abstain from sexual immorality. You say, Hey pastor, what’s God’s will for me? He desires that you’re saved. What’s God’s will for me? Not to be drunk with wine but to be filled with the spirit. What’s God’s will for me? To stay sexually pure.
God does not want you and I as men prior to marriage or during marriage to miss his good pleasure in sex. He wants us to retain the gift of sex and not to drink from the stolen bitter waters of illicit pleasure. Here’s another thing. Go back to First Thessalonians 5 again, verse 18. In verse 18, we read these words. “In everything, give thanks.” I told you God’s will is the worst-kept secret in the Bible. “For this is the will of God for you.” God wants you to give thanks in everything. That’s another thing he wants you to do today.
What does it mean to redeem the time? It means to live in the good of your salvation. It means to develop your relationship with the Holy Spirit through the word of God. It means indeed to fight off the temptations of lust and sexual impurity. And it means this day to take account of your life and give thanks in it all. You mean it all? Yeah, because all things can work together for good. And so the point is you’re to give thanks for the things that are directly good and the bad things that can become indirectly good. And that’s another story.
Fifth, it’s God’s will that you submit to everyone in civil authority. First Peter 2:13. What does Peter say? He says this. “Therefore, submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake, whether to the king as supreme or to governors or to those who are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers. For this is the will of God.” We are to live such a radically different life as saved, spirit-filled, joyful, sexually pure Christians that as we submit to them. Those who are not naturally predisposed to us, according to 15, by doing good, we put to silence their ignorance. One of God’s will for you and I is to live such a radically different life that we silence the critics of the church. And if they’re going to get us, they’re going to have to make stuff up on us like they did with Daniel.
Here’s the last thought, guys, thanks for hanging in. It’s God’s will that we suffer at times for doing the right thing. That’s another thing. Stay in First Peter, go to chapter three verse 17. “For it is better if it is the will of God to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.” There’s God’s will. God’s will that you understand that morally speaking as a person redeeming the time in evil days for the purpose of living out God’s will, you’re going to ultimately in your office, in the LA fitness or wherever life finds you on a given time, on a given day, you’re going to be a square peg in a round world. Or you’re going to be a round peg in a square world, whatever way you want it. And sometimes by living the way you do, you’re going to be mocked, ridiculed, and opposed.
But that’s okay. That’s God’s will. Jesus said, did they not hit me and will they not hit you? Here’s the thought as we close. These six principles and we’re only beginning to look at this subject, that’s why you need to start coming out over Wednesdays in the next few weeks. God’s will, according to these six principles, really is not a guessing game. We’ve turned it into this guessing game. We’ve allowed mystical, medieval Christianity to infect biblical Christianity. God’s will is revealed in his word. We don’t need a word of knowledge. We don’t need to hear prophets. We don’t need to have dreams and visions. It’s the worst-kept secret in the book. And you and I need to take these six statements, and whenever we have a thought that could lead to an action, we need to take it on a test drive and we need to derive it in the direction of these six principles. Let me turn them on their head and we’re done.
So we’ve established that there’s a general will for all of us. It’s all the same. God has a will for every man in this room and it’s the same, but will be fleshed out in particular ways which are individual and unique to us. We’re not all married to the same woman. We don’t all have the same job. So how do you take the general will of God, which is so clear and helps inform you in the particular incidences? Well, I turned those six principles into six questions and I think if you think about it, they’ll help you make a decision whether it’s choosing a girlfriend, choosing a spouse, a job career.
Listen to them. Is this something that the Holy Spirit is leading me to? You think about his character, his person, and his work. Is this something the Holy Spirit is leading me to do? Because if it’s God’s will for you to be under his control, then when you make a decision, he must also control that decision.
Secondly, is this something the Bible does not condemn, since the Holy Spirit under whose control I exist wrote the Bible, and to be filled by him according to Colossians is to be filled by the word of Christ? So is this something that won’t grieve the Holy Spirit? Is this something the Bible condones or is this something the Bible condemns?
Thirdly, is this something that is a threat to my purity or integrity? If we were to expand the whole idea of purity a little bit, it’s the whole idea of holiness. Is what I’m about to do, or give myself to, that which will impinge upon my purity and integrity and character. If it isn’t, we can do it. If it is, we should halt.
Fourth, is this something I will do with unsullied joy? Because is it something you can give thanks to God for?
Fifthly, is this something I can submit to man or God, because we’re to live under submission both to man’s ordinances and God’s law.
And sixthly, is this something that entails the avoidance of costly discipleship? The thought is there. When we’re making decisions, don’t always look for the easiest way out. Sometimes we have to say yes to things that are going to cost us for Christ. And sometimes we’re driven to say yes to things because we know we don’t have to pay a price for it. And so when you’re thinking about God’s will, don’t be frightened to do the hard thing and suffer for doing the right thing. Is this something I can submit to man or God? Is this something I can submit to man or God?
Guys, George Truitt was the founding pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, and here’s what he was fond of saying. “To know the will of God is the greatest knowledge. To do the will of God is the greatest achievement, and the will of God is not always easy, but it’s always right.” Because what does John say? The fashion of this world is passing away. In all its evil and all its trends and all its hype, it’s all passing away, but he who does the will of God abides forever. That’s why when George Truitt was buried in his coffin, his left hand with its finger was pressed on his open Bible at Matthew 6:10. “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done.”
Guys, history is on the move and it’s got purpose and it’s got direction and it’s being governed by the will of God, and those that do his will abide forever. There’s no time to waste. If we don’t use time for good purposes, they will continue to use it for evil ones. There needs to be from us a compensating goodness, and we need to look at the flow of our days and our hours and the minutes and be sensitive to those kairos moments, those turning points whereby we can make a greater impact for the Lord Jesus Christ. If you’re 35, you’ve only got about 500 days that are truly at your disposal.
The other things you can turn for God’s glory. I’m not writing those off, but time is passing. And whether we are serving God in the employment of others or we’re free to make choices that directly impact the kingdom, we’ve got to make them soon because we can so easily forget two magnitudes, the littleness of time and the vastness of eternity.
Let’s pray. Lord, we thank you that these men have not chosen ease this morning, but they have indeed, deliberately and decisively chosen to come here to be exposed to the penetration of your word. It shakes us. It challenges us. It kicks us out of our armchair and tells us to go to the drawing board of our decision making.
Lord, we pray indeed that we may be challenged to live more purposefully. That we may get about the business of truly understanding your will and doing it. That we may realize that time is short, only one life to live and it’s soon going to be past. Only what’s done for Jesus will last.
Thank you for this bond of brothers. Thank you for these new men that have come. Oh God, help us to encourage each other, so much the more as we see the day of his return approaching. Lord, help us not to go out into our society, which is so sin-infested and throw our hands up in horror. But oh God, help us to live so radically different in Jesus Christ that we will silence our critics. That we will win people’s admiration and attention for Jesus Christ. And that indeed that this passage will become to us a gyroscope, setting our direction, and helping us act and think more clearly. And everybody said Amen.