Walking in Wisdom
Text: Ephesians 5:15-21
By: Ken McKinley
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I have an uncle that has a certain phrase that he often uses when someone comes to him with troubling news. He will listen to the person and then he will say, “This too will pass.” Now he doesn’t say that flippantly or without compassion, he is sincerely trying to get people to see that the troubles of this world are only momentarily. And as I was thinking about this, I guess we could use that saying for the good times as well. Now it probably wouldn’t be wise to say that to someone if they were telling you about a great event. I mean; could you imagine if someone came up to you and said, “Hey guess what! Things are going great in my life. I just got a promotion at work and a dollar an hour raise. My kids are doing well in school and life is just great.” They might get a little upset if you looked at them and in somber tones said, “This too will pass.”
But the reality is, that both the good times in life and the bad times, are not constant. There is another saying that says, “All which pleases is but for a moment. All which troubles is but for a moment. That only is important which is eternal.” And I think that being able to distinguish between these three options is the key to living a life of contentment. And that’s not always an easy thing to do, it calls for wisdom which God supplies in His Word and which the Holy Spirit applies to our everyday lives.
So as we’ve been looking through Ephesians we’ve seen how Paul has told us to put off certain things, and to put on other things, and now he begins by telling us that we should walk in wisdom.
You can have all the knowledge in the world and still lack wisdom. Wisdom isn’t knowledge; it’s the correct application of knowledge. Luck and sill might make you a lot of money, but wisdom will help you to keep it. Charisma and kindness might make you a lot of friends, but wisdom will help you keep them and make sure that they are true. Wisdom will keep a person out of trouble, wisdom will help you avoid danger, and wisdom will help you make the right decisions in life. In-fact I would say that wisdom is supposed to guide our lives. Unfortunately; we live in a world where thinking through the implications of one’s choices is a rare phenomenon. And what’s bad about this is that this world lives in us too.
The impulsive person will base their decisions on feelings, desires, instincts and immediate circumstances. Impulsive people rarely count the cost of their decisions, but a wise person will think things through, they don’t act impulsively or on a whim.
(Spec Ops Mission Planning Illustration – end to beginning)
So this is what Paul tells us in verse 15, to walk with wisdom, not as a fool, and we need wisdom so that we know how to take full advantage of our time and make the most out of all our opportunities. That’s what vs. 16 tells us to do, redeem the time, because the days are evil. If Paul had written this in Latin instead of Greek he would’ve said, “Carpe Diem!”… “Seize the Day!” And he says we need to do this because they days are evil.
Our text tells us we need to redeem the time because the days are evil, so therefore don’t be unwise, BUT… in contrast… understand what the will of the Lord is.
You see what Paul is saying here? He’s saying that if you can understand the will of the Lord, then you are not being unwise…
Wisdom is found in knowing God’s will.
Now that word “Fools” in verse 15 is not the same as the word “unwise” in verse 17. The fool is a clown… a person who is willfully ignorant and proud of it. Now when a person is ignorant of something that simply means that they don’t know about it, but to be willfully ignorant means that they have chosen to not know and they have no desire to know… it’s a close cousin to apathy. Well the fool is that kind of person. And so Paul tells us to be wise, and we are wise when we understand God’s will.
In verse 18 Paul tells us that we are not to engage in drunkenness but instead, we are to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
Now it can be a scary thing when Baptists start talking about being filled with the Spirit. Unfortunately this term has been hijacked by those who have not examined the context of Scripture. Paul is talking about the third Person of the Trinity. This isn’t some strange mystical “force.” The Holy Spirit is a Person with whom we can have a relationship with; He seals us til the day of redemption. It was the Spirit who was active in creation as He hovered over the face of the waters, and He is active in our re-creation as the Word was made faith, and we were convicted of our sins, drawn to Christ, and regenerated so that we could in turn be lead and directed by the Holy Spirit in our daily walk.
So Paul tells us that we are to be filled with the Spirit. That word “filled” here is used when speaking of wind filling the sails of a ship, in other words it is a directing force, or a picture of something that controls a person. We might say that a person is filled with joy, or maybe filled with anger, or filled with jealousy. Well all of those things control our actions and our behavior; and in the same sense Paul is saying we should be filled with the Spirit. Or in other words, that we should be controlled by the Holy Spirit.
Now notice that Paul contrasts this with drinking wine to the point of drunkenness. It’s not a comparison, it’s a contrast… Our Pentecostal and Charismatic friends would ask why then does Paul even use drunkenness in this phrase? If he didn’t mean to show that being filled with the Spirit resulted in an altered state, speaking in other languages, and having an overwhelming sense of euphoric joy? And the answer to that question comes from knowing your history. Many of the Greek religions taught that in order to commune with the God’s, a person had to enter into an altered state and wine was the preferred way to do that. And so; in these pagan religions, getting drunk was seen to be a sort of religious experience. In-fact, many scholars say that the Greek word for drunk “mequw” comes from the preposition “meta” (meaning “after”), and “quo” (meaning “sacrifice”). Because in many of those pagan religions, after the sacrifice was given the worshipers would engage in drunkenness and revelry. This would explain the problem Paul faced in Corinth where people would get drunk at the Lord’s Table. It was part of their culture. So Paul says, “don’t be drunk with wine, which is dissipation.” Dissipation is the same thing as debauchery. In-other-words, drunkenness is a sin that often results in other sins.
The last statistics I saw stated that alcohol is associated with 70% of all murders, 41% of all assaults, 50% of all rapes, 37% of all suicides, and 55% of all arrests in our nation. Drunkenness is involved in 66% of all fatal motor vehicle accidents, 53% of all fire deaths, 45% of all drownings and alcohol is the #1 killer of people under the age of 25.
So what Paul is saying here isn’t that people who are filled with the Holy Spirit will engage in crazy things. He’s saying that when a person is drunk with wine, or any alcoholic drink he (or she) is under the influence, and when a person is filled with the Spirit they are under the influence of The Holy Spirit. Being filled with the Spirit is not a loss of self control, in-fact, “self control” is one of the fruits of the Spirit.
Paul goes on to tell us that we are to speak to one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs; that we are to sing and make melody in our hearts to the Lord, and that we are to give thanks always, for all things to God the Father in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Then he finishes this teaching by saying that we should submit to one another in the fear of the Lord.
Submission means to yield my rights to another person. Literally it means to be placed under the authority of another.
Paul’s command for us to submit to one another is about as counter cultural as we can get. We live in a world that has a “me first” attitude. We place a high regard on independence, but what we often times don’t understand is that we tout independence while at the same time we are running to serve the greatest tyrant of all, our flesh.
The Bible tells us in several places that we are to submit. We are to submit to our spouse, we are to submit to one another, congregations are to submit to their pastors, deacons and elders, but also church leaders are to submit to their congregations.
I think that we lack this today. The average stay for a preacher in the Baptist church is about 3 and ½ years. And I think that one of the reasons for the short stay is a lack of submission. Congregations don’t want to submit to their pastors and pastors don’t want to submit to their congregations.
To me this is shockingly hypocritical. For two reasons, and I’ll tell you why.
1st because the congregation calls the pastor, and in doing so they are saying that they believe that he is the man chosen by God to lead their congregation. But if he does something that the congregation doesn’t like, all of a sudden that calling becomes null and void.
2nd the pastor; by his very vocation, believes that he is an under-shepherd, called by God to feed and watch over God’s flock, but many pastors are looking for a flock that doesn’t have a problem with straying and that isn’t targeted by wolves.
If I have any aspiring pastors listening to me today, let me just tell you this… God’s flock is God’s flock, and it doesn’t matter if they are located in NY City, Dallas Texas, London England, Hong Kong, Timbuktu, or Fort Supply Oklahoma. If God has called you to watch over them, then you should watch over them.
Now granted; there is a time for a pastor to leave, and that’s when God tells him to, and the same goes for other leaders in the church. The work that we do must flow out of a willingness to serve a joy of sacrifice, and an understanding that it is God who calls us to serve, not our own desires.
I’ll close with this little ditty, it’s from an article I saw once and it’s a real eye opener: If you are 35, then on average, you have 500 days to live. Let me explain that. If you’re 35 and you subtract the time you spend sleeping, working, tending to personal matters, eating, driving, doing household chores, attending to personal hygiene, and the miscellaneous time stealers, in the next 35 years (70 total) you have about 500 days to spend as you wish.
Are we redeeming the time? Have we numbered our days? Are we using the time we have to walk in wisdom?
INVITATION AND CLOSING
