There is a lot of talk lately about what is wise and unwise. We see this especially in relation to the financial world. With economic times being tough, it seems that there are “experts” popping up everywhere like weeds to tell us how to invest wisely. They tell us that we need to diversify our portfolios, or that we should be buying only gold and precious metals, they say we should sell off our houses, or we should buy more houses. You hear that we need to buy cars, or that we should avoid buying cars, and on and on. It’s hard to figure out which advice is wise and which is foolish. Sometimes, what is wise and what is foolish changes! A good investment in a strong economy may not be a good investment in a poor economy. Investing in an audio cassette tape factory would have been smart in 1981. It would have been a bad idea in 1991!
Talking about wise investing often times seems like trying to hit a moving target! But something I read recently changed my mind. I was read a book a few months ago that talked about an island off of the coast of Georgia that became known in the late 1800’s as the Jekyll Island Club. It was a place where the richest of the rich in America would go to play. They built, “cottages” on the island, and by cottages I mean palaces. And they had all the creature comforts that anyone could imagine. The list of members was more like a list of the Titans of Industry. They were almost all household names: Henry Hyde, Marshall Field, J.P. Morgan, Joseph Pulitzer, William Vanderbilt, just to name a few.
I caught myself wondering what it was that all these men had in common. I thought, “How great would it be to listen to their conversations and learn what made them so successful to listen to their wisdom on life and investing!” And then a thought hit me. I do know what they all have in common. And this thought challenged how I think of wisdom and investing. Do you know what they all have in common? They are all dead. What they have in common is that none of their investments, or their money, or their houses, or their business mean anything at all to them now. All of them had great earthy investments that were worth a lot of money, but not ONE of those investments can last, or will last forever. I pray that they invested in the Grace of God and not just in the material world.
So what does it mean really to “invest wisely” when it comes to our faith? My prayer is that in our time together, God would use his Word to answer this question for us and to guide us and direct us to value and invest in the things that HE says are valuable and important and worthwhile. Or maybe to put it another way, that we would have the kind of focus that our reading from Proverbs leaves us with in the last verse: The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.
This seems like such a simple thing to focus on, but too often as a church and as individual Christians, we lose sight of the things of God, we lose touch with the wisdom of God, we end up investing in the things that don’t matter as much as God.
We see this in Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus. The people of this church lived life with a certain amount of tension. I think we can all relate to them. On one hand, they dealt with all the pulls and pressures of the world around them, and on the other hand, they had another calling, a higher calling, to live life with a focus on the Gospel. And we can see right at the beginning of the reading, that there were those who were trying to divert them from the Gospel: Let no one deceive you with empty words. Paul is saying to them; don’t let anyone or anything distract you from what really matters. Easier said than done! They had all kinds of distractions. In this pagan town, sin ran rampant, sexual immorality, drunkenness, blasphemy, shady business transactions, you name it, you could find it in Ephesus! You can find it in Columbus too. You can find sin wherever you go.
The thing that all of these sins have in common is that they are all focused on immediate gratification, on self-indulgence, on what do I feel like doing right now. They all focus on the almighty ME. But how much does the world tell us that we need to “focus on ME?” The message is plastered on billboards, on television shows, in magazines; it bombards our senses every day! And the worst part is that we buy into it. We internalize it. We love it. We even bring this garbage into the church sometimes.
In the church in Ephesus, the people were fighting because each had his or her own vision for how the church should work according to their own desires. They wanted to make the church the Body of Christ fit into their own image, rather than seek how they could fit into the Body of Christ. They wanted to make God fit into their lives and follow them rather than seeking to follow God and see where he wanted to fit them into his plans. This selfishness played out in their fighting and arguing about things that really didn’t matter. And Paul has some tough words for them.
He says, you are acting according to darkness rather than walking as, “children of the light.” He points out their foolishness and their foolish investments in things that won’t last and won’t matter in the long run. I love how the Holy Spirit uses Paul to get them back to a right focus. He says, “Try do discern what is pleasing to the Lord.” This is such a simple phrase, but imagine how different your life would be if you lived by this statement. If before you gossiped about a co-worker, or before you said something mean to your family member, or before you started browsing the internet, or before you took out your credit card you asked yourself, “Is what I’m about to do pleasing to the Lord?” Challenging thought!
It’s challenging because it pulls us out of looking just at ourselves and our desires and gets us to focus on real wisdom, on the source of wisdom and life, on God himself. It causes us to act differently and to have a different focus. And this is important because Godly wisdom calls us to be different from the world around us. The Holy Spirit makes this point so powerfully in the last part of the reading:
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.
How we live is important. We aren’t saved by our works, only by the grace of God, but how we live is a witness to the faith and the gift of salvation that we have. And to live wisely is to invest wisely in the limited amount of time that God has given us in this world. The reading says to make the best use of time, but the actual literal translation is, “to be buying up the time,” and I love that. Buy up every opportunity to witness to the grace of God in your life! Invest in what is good and holy and avoid what is not because time is limited and the days are evil.
That’s so true but we don’t often think about time do we? I have a friend who was telling me that his company rewarded some salespeople by sending them to Costco and telling them that they could keep whatever they could fit into a shopping cart. I enjoyed thinking about what I might do, what my strategy might be. What would you go for? How would you fill up your cart to get the most into it? But then he told me something that completely changed my thinking and what my strategy would be. He said that they were given a time limit of 5 minutes! You would do things differently if you knew you had a time limit wouldn’t you!
Well Paul calls us to consider that we don’t have all the time in the world, that the time we do have is precious, and should be spent like it matters. He says don’t waste time with anything that might hurt the message of Jesus Christ! But be wise and invest your time wisely because really, no one knows how long they have.
He goes on to give some specifics. Rather than engaging in what fulfills our own desires, spend your time building one another up and glorifying God: 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. Rather than investing your time in grumbling about all that you don’t have, he says, give thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Rather than always trying to get your own way and forcing your agenda on others, be Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
In other words, look carefully at how you walk and make sure it’s according to God’s wisdom, not the world’s folly. Investing in God’s wisdom also means getting to know what his wisdom and will is for you. Our reading from Ephesians says, “Try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.” The Proverbs reading says, "the knowledge of the Holy One is insight." The Gospel ends with Peter’s great words, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” We are blessed to be able to get to know who God is and what he teaches us, and what he wants for us through the means of grace that he gives us. Through his Word, through His sacraments, he connects us to him and we are wise to take advantage of the Word and Sacraments often!
And above all else, to know the Love of God is to have the greatest wisdom of all. Because the truth is that we can find areas in our life where we have lived according to God’s will for us, and we have God to thank for that. But we can also look at our lives and see where we have been foolish, where we have lived according to darkness rather than light, where we have lived according to our sinful desires rather than according to the high calling of God. But
God’s wisdom still speaks to us in these moments as well. He says to us, come out of the darkness and into the light, come away from the unfruitful and once again bear fruit, stop walking blindly, and walk as children of the light. He says to us, REPENT of your sins, and be forgiven and made whole in the blood that I have shed for you.
I love the hymn that Paul quotes: “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” This is wisdom! This is where we invest ourselves. This grace of God is where we find our hope, and security, and our eternal joy. We invest ourselves in the one who invested his own son, his own blood, his own life in us, to be our future, our hope, and our eternal joy. There is nothing better.
That great club at Jekyll Island lasted 54 years. It’s now a state park and people can go and learn about its history. But it’s not what it used to be. You can say, “it had a great run!” and you would be right. But how sad would it be if that’s all that could be said of us after we died. That our friends and family would gather around and say, “they had a great life, but now it’s over.” I am thankful that Christ invested in us. Invested his own life and blood in sinners who didn’t deserve it. Invested in us and gave us life eternal with him in heaven. I am glad that we have much more to say when we die. Not that, “they had a great life,” but rather, “now they are really living!”
This is where we put our hope, this is where we find our peace, this is what really matters, this is the wise investment that God gives us and allows us to make through repentance and forgiveness.
As we close, I want us to spend a little time in prayer using verses 15 and 16 as our guide: “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.” And as we close, let’s take an honest look at those things which have been stealing our focus lately, those sins that are bogging us down, those temporary things that are clouding our view of God’s eternal plan for us and let’s expose them to the light of repentance and receive God’s grace, and mercy, and forgiveness. And let’s also ask God to help us focus on the things that matter, and to invest our lives wisely and for his sake.
PRAY
… at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.
AMEN
