Ephesians 5:15-21
Introduction:
Time management – most of us could use some help
Time keeps moving faster and slipping away
Many have a sense that their time is not used well.
Thanksgiving and time management are related? Yes!
How to make best use of the time? Ephesians 5:15-21 helps!
Introduce Text: Ephesians 5:15-21
Theme: Live a wise, thankful, spirit-filled life – this is how we make the best use of our time.
Read Ephesians 5:15-21
Review/Context:
- Reflect upon God’s love and forgiveness as motivation to…
- Be an imitator of God. Being an imitator of God means:
- Avoiding the works of darkness
- Walking in the light
- Speaking with thankfulness
- As we walk in the light, some might step into the light themselves.
Link: “Look carefully then how you walk…” ties into previous thoughts. Because we should not form partnerships with darkness, but instead walk in the light and in the hope that others might also step into the light we should look carefully how we walk, “not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.”
Verses 15-17
Walking, as you no doubt know, is a biblical metaphor for how we live our lives. A metaphor we still use today. We are called to live wisely and use our time well.
Time is something that you can never get more of and you can never get back.
*Illustration from Kid’s Club – can’t take back words, can’t get the toothpaste back in*
People might forget the words. You can apologize for them.
Using way too much time, you could get a lot of the toothpaste back in the container.
But you can never get back all that time you wasted trying to put the toothpaste back in the container.
We spend a lot of time thinking about and trying to get money. But when our lives start to come to an end, we are ready to throw all the money we have away just to have a little more time. And when people come to the very end of their days, they don’t usually reflect on their money and wish that they had had more money. They reflect on their time and how it was spent. And we all know the phrase “my life flashed before my eyes.” I’ve never heard “my money flashed before my eyes.” Time is something we rarely think about, until we don’t have much left, but time is one of the most valuable resources that we have.
To a young person, “making the best use of the time” might sound like a burdensome way to live, or overly responsible to the point of boredom. But the older people, and those who have faced tragic loss know – be wise. Make the best use of your time.
The need for wisdom in how we use our time is magnified by the problem that evil is everywhere in the world. Pretty much, if you aren’t being intentional about living in a wise way and making good use of your time, then you are going to find yourself mixed up in evil. There is plenty of it, and we don’t need to belabor that point, because we all know very well that the days are evil.
“Idle hands are the devil’s playground.” Might be cliché, but there’s a lot of truth in that statement.
Verse 17 more or less repeats and defines verse 15. “not as unwise but as wise… do not be foolish but understand what the will of the Lord is.” Proverbs 9:10 says “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. Proverbs 1:7 says “fools despise wisdom and instruction.” To understand what the will of the Lord is, is wisdom. To do things contrary to the will of the Lord is foolishness.
So wisdom in the Bible is not about how good you are at history and math and things like that, it’s not about having a scholarly look, it’s simply about knowing God and His will.
Making the best use of the time is living according to God’s will. Making poor use of the time is disobeying God’s will. It’s that simple. But of course, just because it is simple, does not mean it is easy to do.
Link: in verses 18-20, we are given an example of a foolish time waster and multiple examples of making the best use of the time.
Verse 18
A sure way to find yourself using your time poorly and walking in an unwise way is to become drunk. Alcohol is a depressant, so it slows you down. More seriously, it works to remove our inhibitions and dull the conscience. Memory is typically impaired and things forgotten. The result is that a drunk person does not live in a wise way, they don’t make good use of the time, foolish behavior comes about, and the Lord’s will is forgotten.
This is why getting high on marijuana or other drugs is also a sin. Drugs like these impair your ability to live a life of wisdom and make the best use of your time. You do the opposite of wisdom and good time usage on drugs. I’ve heard it said before that the Bible says nothing about getting high or not, so it’s OK. But it does address that point, here, in these verses. We are to walk in wisdom, making the best use of our time, and that means not abusing substances that leave you drunk and foolish.
This is also why, for medicinal purposes, prescription drugs can be OK. If you need some light surgery done, painkillers are a very wise and good use of your time. Neither you nor your doctor would appreciate your behavior if you tried to do it without the pain killers. If your life would be lived in crippling pain without painkillers, so that you wouldn’t be able to function, then you are better off taking the painkillers. But if you are just taking them to get a drug induced positive feeling, then that’s not good at all.
Instead of abusing substances that impair our decision making, we should pursue the Spirit filled life, which enhances our decision making. X2
The Spirit filled life comes about by being in fellowship with God. If you are communicating with God, learning from Him, seeking to love and obey Him then you are going to be filled with the Spirit. If you are not fellowshipping with Him, then you won’t be.
Link: Verses 19-21 describe what the Spirit filled life looks like.
Verses 19-21
The Spirit filled life affects our 1) speech, it affects our 2) hearts, it affects our 3) attitudes, and it affects our 4) relationships with others.
Making the best use of the time, walking wisely, living the Spirit filled life – here is what that looks like.
- The Spirit filled life affects our speech in that our speech…
…particularly our speech directed toward one another, takes on a spiritual quality, having psalms and hymns and spiritual songs be a part of that. It also involves singing. The type of speech that verse 19 is talking about is song. Some fellows sometimes feel that singing isn’t masculine, but since God designed masculinity, and He says that we ought to sing, then probably we should readjust our idea of what is masculine. And some don’t want to sing because their voice isn’t beautiful.
Now, psalms are poetic songs found within the Bible. Most psalms are found within the book of psalms, but some are found elsewhere.
Hymns, here, doesn’t actually mean the hymnal – although the hymnal does contain a lot of hymns! But hymnals began to be produced long after Ephesians was written. A hymn is a song of praise to God. It’s a song focused upon God. Many songs in hymnals fit this category, and some songs written in modern times also fit this category too – they just haven’t been around long enough to make it into a hymnal yet.
Songs like “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” – one from the hymnal – and “God of Wonders” – one from today – would fit this category.
Spiritual songs are songs focused upon spiritual truth. They aren’t first and foremost about who God is, or praising Him. They are focused instead on godly living in some way. A lot of songs in hymnals and a lot of songs written today can fit this category too.
Songs like “Trust and Obey” – one from the hymnal – and “O Church Arise” – one from today – would fit this category.
By the way, this isn’t calling on us to live our lives like a musical. I’m not saying to go forth in a musical. Just so we’re clear. The Bible is a large book and we’re just talking about a few parts of Spirit-filled living this morning. Singing is one of those parts, not the whole. But it is a necessary and crucial part.
- Spirit-filled living also affects our hearts…
…all of this should be done with our hearts and to the Lord. Not just a checkbox you mark as a thing you do because you have to or you just want to look spiritual. You feel it and have emotion and sincerity behind the song.
- Spirit-filled living affects our attitudes…
…our attitude toward life should shift from things like complaining, negativity, being critical, cursing, perversion, etc., to an attitude of thanksgiving. Always and for everything.
Just like with singing – the Bible is a big book. We ought to be singing, but we ought to take into consideration other truths as well. We are told here to give thanks for everything – but elsewhere in the Bible we are told many times and in many ways that certain things are not good. Sin isn’t good, pain isn’t good, torture isn’t good, loss of loved ones isn’t good, and this verse isn’t calling on us to say that those things are good.
But the Bible says that God will one day take everything that happens to those who love Him and He will turn it into something good. We can give thanks, therefore, not because something evil and horrible is good, but because we have confidence that a good God will one day make the bad thing right again.
Think of the beatitudes:
Luke 6:20-23
And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.
“Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.
“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man!
Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.
“God can produce good out of even the most unpromising situation… thankfulness, therefore, can be felt because of the confident hope that in some wonderful way God will make even disaster and suffering an occasion for later blessing” – C. L. Mitton, Ephesians, London, 1976
- Finally, Spirit-filled living affects our relationships with others…
… verse 19 speaks about addressing one another in a positive and spiritual way, verse 21 speaks about submitting to one another.
What does this mean? It means, when what someone else would do is better or wiser than what you would do, you ought to recognize that and submit to them, out of reverence for Jesus Christ. If someone comes to correct you about something, and you realize that they are right and you are wrong, you should submit to what they are saying.
If it’s a non-Scriptural issue, like are we going to go with the red carpet or the green carpet, we shouldn’t fight about it but should be considerate toward others and ready to say “okay, the color of the carpet is not crucially important, I will submit to the decision that’s been made here.”
“There must be a willingness in the Christian fellowship to serve any, to learn from any, to be corrected by any, regardless of age, sex, class, or any other division.” – Tyndale Commentary
People who have been a Christian their whole lives should be prepared to learn from or be corrected by those who have not, and vice versa. The deacons, elders, the pastor, ministry leaders, etc., are not above the need to bend a little or learn a little when someone else is correct. Your status or God-granted position does not make you by default correct, but neither should people ignore or disrespect those that God has put into authority.
Instead of a preoccupation with “my way” or “I’m correct” or “I should be honored” or “I’m better than that person” or “you can’t tell me what to do” – we should have a reverent respect for Christ that leads us to consider Jesus, His ways and His word highest above all, and therefore we should submit to others when they are clearly right.
I won’t go into verse 22 and following much, because it should be its own sermon, but I would like to point out that verse 22 – wives submit to your own husbands – becomes much less controversial when one realizes that verse 21 comes just before, we should all be submitting to one another. That doesn’t make verse 22 meaningless; God said this for a reason. Verse 22 would not have been written if verse 21 nullified it. But it does mean that marriage is not an ugly one sided and abusive dictatorship, like many have claimed it to be.
Application: Live a wise, thankful, spirit-filled life – this is how we make the best use of our time.