Sermon for 6/19/2005
Don’t Waste Your Time
Ephesians 4:19- 5:21
Introduction:
Rules to Help Women Understand Men:
1. Learn to work the toilet seat. If it’s up- don’t come tell us about it. Put it down.
2. Don’t make us guess.
3. If you ask a question you don’t want an answer to- expect an answer you don’t want to hear.
4. Sometimes we’re not thinking about you.
5. We’re never thinking about “the relationship.”
6. Sunday = sports.
7. Shopping is not everybody’s idea of a good time.
8. You have enough clothes.
9. You have too many shoes.
10. Crying is blackmail. Use it if you have to, but don’t expect us to like it.
11. Ask for what you want. Subtle hints don’t work.
12. Share the bathroom.
13. “Yes” and “No” are perfectly acceptable answers.
14. Check your oil.
15. A headache that last for 17 months is a problem. See a doctor.
WBTU:
A. Raymond P. Murray- Wanted
The great want of this age is men: Men who are not for sale; Men who will condemn wrong in friend or foe- in themselves as well as others; Men whose consciences are as steady as the needle to the pole; Men who will stand for the right though the heavens totter and the earth reels; Men who can tell the truth and look the world right in the eye; Men who neither brag nor run; Men who neither flag nor flinch; Men who can have courage without shouting it; Men in whom the hope of everlasting life still runs deep and strong; Men who know their message and tell it; Men who know their business and attend to it; Men who are not too lazy to work, nor too proud to be poor; Men who are willing to eat what they have earned and to wear what they have paid for; Men who are not ashamed to say No with emphasis.
B. Last week we started our sermon with Ephesians 5:15-17. We talked in a positive tone about what we need to be doing with our lives. Our lives need to be spent in service, worship, fellowship, discipleship, and evangelism. Our whole life needs to be given to God. We are living sacrifices.
C. Today I want to spend our time talking from verses before and after Ephesians 5:15-17 about how we waste our time. This applies to everyone but in honor of Father’s Day we want to focus our thoughts on men.
Thesis: Let’s identify how many waste their lives on the following things from Ephesians 4 and 5. They start with the letter “S.”
For instances:
I. Speech
A. (Eph 4:25 NIV) Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body.
1. Exodus 20:16- You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
2. At a trial, the prosecuting attorney asked the defendant if he committed the murder. The defendant said he did not. The attorney then asked the man if he understood the penalty for perjury. The man said, “I sure do! I understand the penalty for perjury is a lot less than the penalty for murder!”
3. We are like witnesses in court; we are called to tell the truth. We are all witnesses for Jesus Christ. The witness in court eventually steps down from the witness chair, but the witness for Christ never does.
4. Daniel Webster, “There is nothing as powerful as the truth and often nothing as strange.”
B. (Eph 4:29 NIV) Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.
1. Unwholesome talk- Malicious gossip and slander.
2. Women are the only ones who gossip. At breakfast in a men’s group!!
C. (Eph 5:4 NIV) nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.
1. Obscenity- Cursing
2. Foolish talk or coarse joking. When someone tells a dirty joke, racial joke, a joke that puts some particular group down.
3. There should be more thanksgiving than anything coming from men’s lips. Examine your speech!
4. We cannot have any fun. Not fun to put someone down, not fun to get a laugh from something perverse.
D. (Eph 5:19 NIV) Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord,
1. If we must exercise our mouths, may we do it in spiritual songs.
2. My son Andy loves to sing at home. I don’t see a lot of men who love to sing at church or at home.
3. When I am having a difficult day, a song on my lips helps to ease the tension.
4. Christianity needs to be felt in the heart and music helps best to express the heart. Do not despise music!
II. Soreness
A. (Eph 4:26 NIV) "In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, (Eph 4:27 NIV) and do not give the devil a foothold.
1. Women have a better way of getting rid of anger. Talking. Men don’t want to talk about their anger and it builds up over time.
2. Make sure that these grudges and conflicts are resolved quickly or they build up over time.
3. Pressure cooker.
B. (Eph 4:31 NIV) Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.
1. Some men have problems with abusing their spouse and their children. They take out their anger upon them.
2. (Eph 5:28 NIV) In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.(Eph 5:29 NIV) After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church--
3. Less severe are the people who push our buttons. They make us angry.
4. What Paul is saying here, “Don’t avoid button-pushers. Disconnect the button.” How?
C. (Eph 4:32 NIV) Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.(Eph 5:1 NIV) Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children(Eph 5:2 NIV) and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
1. We need to forgive. When we choose to forgive, we shed a huge burden we simply don’t need to carry through life. It can make us absolutely “Lighthearted” to put down the burden of a grudge.
2. Do we think that God grows tired of us pressing his buttons? He hates sin and we constantly sin.
3. He sent Jesus Christ to bring us forgiveness.
4. When we do this we can live a life of love. Foreign to some men!
Transition: The next three all apply to lust, coveting. (Eph 4:19 NIV) Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.
1. Joshua Harris- Lust is always a desire for the forbidden. Though lust longs for an object or a person, ultimately this object is not its prize; its goal is the very act of desiring. The result is that lust can never be quenched. As soon as the object of lust is attained, lust wants something more.
2. When it comes to sexual immorality, when lust reaches one level, it always wants more. Never satisfied.
3. When it comes to greed and stealing, when that money or object is ours, we don’t stop, lust wants more. Never satisfied.
4. When it comes to getting drunk, when that moment of false happiness is over, lust wants more. The next time have to take more to get the same feeling. The next time have to do harder drugs to get an even bigger high. Vicious cycle!
5. Lust is our master and we are its slave.
III. Sexual Immorality
A. (Eph 5:3 NIV) But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.
1. John Piper says: Lust is a sexual desire minus honor and holiness.
2. Why set the standard so high? This is impossible.
3. Joshua Harris- This is something that only God can bring about in your life and mine. God’s standard of not even a hint quickly brings me to the end of my own ability and effort. It reminds me that God’s standard is so much higher than the standards I place for myself that only the victory of Christ’s death and resurrection can provide the right power and the right motive needed to change me.
B. (Eph 5:12 NIV) For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.
1. I can’t believe that I did that. Had an affair.
2. I can’t believe that I was so sick in looking at child pornography.
3. Indulgence doesn’t lead to the satisfaction of lust any more than if you were to indulge a child’s every whim. The spoiled child wouldn’t wake up tomorrow and want less. As C. S. Lewis noted, “Starving men may think much about food but so do gluttons; the gorged, as well as the famished, like titillations.”
4. Just a little bit. Watch out!
IV. Stealing
A. (Eph 4:28 NIV) He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need.
2. The Bible is also saying that the point of working is to share with those in need.
3. I am going to get this and that. Work so that we can have them.
4. The gospel frees us to do what we were originally created to do: enjoy and glorify God with our whole lives. The gospel sets us free to be holy.
5. God isn’t just saving us from sin; He’s saving us for a life of love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, and self-control.
B. (Eph 5:3 NIV) But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.
1. Why is the improper?
2. Men work and work for many reasons but money and the things of a career should never take the place of God.
C. (Eph 5:5 NIV) For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person--such a man is an idolater--has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.
V. Sottishness
A. Sot = A chronic drunkard
B. (Eph 5:18 NIV) Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.
C. My daddy was a good man but when he got drunk he was terrible.
D. Seeking an escape from problems, seeking an escape from responsibilities, seeking an escape from reality.
E. Again never satisfied. Some men drink themselves to death.
F. Many times people go to AA to help them with their addictions. This is good but by itself it will not work.
G. Years ago they had prohibition that outlawed alcohol and sought to eliminate drunkenness but it didn’t work.
H. To impose laws upon society or upon oneself will not deliver us from this lust.
I. What we need are more resolutions in our lives. We break them.
J. Just giving into this problem will not help.
K. There is only one solution: to accept Jesus Christ. To renounce all hope in our ability to save ourselves and to place our faith in Christ’s ability to save us.
L. Both legalism and indulgence in sin imprison us. But when we place our faith in Christ, God frees us from both and gives us His Spirit to lead us into the freedom of holiness.
M. The safe path of grace and Christian freedom travels between the pits of legalism on one side and indulgence in sin on the other.
N. Take the drink out of the man but he will be empty and hallow. He must be filled with the Spirit. Must not be filled with alcohol or drugs but have his empty soul be filled with God.
Conclusion:
VI. Stiff
A. (Eph 5:21 NIV) Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Unsubmissive. Stiff in that they will not give up their will. Bull headed.
B. (Heb 12:9 NIV) Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live!
C. (Eph 5:17 NIV) Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.
D. I am going to do what I want to do and no one can stop me. Macho man!
E. Fine, your will be done!
