As we're here today, we we had
a time to start. A time to begin two o'clock. So we think we're in trouble
now, you're not in trouble for being late, I'm just reminding
you have a time get here whenever you can, three minutes after
three is fine. We don't care. The point is,
we have a time and the time is set so that we might know where
and when we must establish a specific location, a specific event, a
specific whatever that we have on our agenda. We have a time
to get up so that we might have the right amount of time to indeed
prepare to be where we are, to prepare to go where we need to
go. There was a time for all of us to be born, and that was
the day that we came into this world, either by cesarean, either
by birth, naturally, in a field, in a bed, in a hospital, on a
bus, in the trunk of a car, wherever our mother might have been. When
we were born, there we were, and that was the time for which
God had established for us to exist in the world. And, of course,
as we see in Scripture, there is a time for all men to die. Every man. Friends, it is not
just the time of age. It is the time of God. And that
moment in time where your life ceases to exist in this flesh,
in this day, you will not be alive again in the flesh until
the Lord returns. And if you die in your sins,
you will be raised to life unto judgment. If you die as a child
of God, you'll be raised to eternal life in the flesh. The difficulty
comes when we try to push back that which is inevitable. We
try to hide the fact that we are indeed fallible, finite,
decaying, corpses walking with blood running through our veins
and air through our lungs. We don't want to think about
it. We don't want to plan for it. And we think some of us,
well, I have many years. You do not have many years. You
have that number of years, that number of days, that number of
seconds, that number of nanoseconds in which God has established
before the world began for you to live on this earth. And someone in perfect health
will die of natural causes at the will of God. Someone with
no problems whatsoever could be struck down with cancer, having
been only free of cancer last week, just now. Do not put hope in that which
the world offers, nor do you put hope in that which the body
tells you, for God is superfluous to those things. He is not bound
to time, nor is He bound to the physical realm. For many places
in Scripture, we see that Jesus raised people from the dead,
and He Himself being raised from the dead as He laid His life
down, and then He told the Jews that He had the power to take
it up again. He had the power to take it up again. And as we think of time, we're
here in this text in Ephesians five before service, we read
the entire 21st, 21, first 21 verses, and today I want to finish
at least the sentence of verse 15 and 16 that we sort of grabbed
hold of last week. Look carefully, then how you
walk. Not as unwise, but as wise. Making the best use of the time
because the days are evil. Now, friends, I want to warn
you. There is a little phrase, a little word, not necessarily
a little word. There is a word that is little
used in the church and in the study of Scripture And that word
is I say Jesus. And what it means is that we
look at the Bible and then we ask the question, what does that
mean to me? And we pull out a full meaning, for example, and I'm
going to give you some things to think about today on what
it means to redeem the time, things that we should be redeeming.
But those things, as I list them out. Are not going to be from
this text. They're going to be, as I see
in the context of the pastorate here of Grace Root Church, that
would be fundamentally encouraging and equipping to you as the Saints
as we go there. But what the text is talking
about will close our service on. What we don't want to do
is to isogenically the process of looking into the Bible or
any ancient text and interpreting it based on what we want to see,
hear, think, feel, taste, smell, or devour. You cannot look, for
example, at Ephesians chapter 5 and get anything out of it
except that we ought to walk in the unity of affection given
by God and part of that affection is obedience. You cannot pull, though there
may be inferences to other theological things. Paul is not developing
an argument except for the fact that we ought to walk in love
and that love looks like holiness and that holiness is through
mutual submission and that mutual submission then is also very,
very relational. For the power of the gospel,
that's Paul's argument. Anything else? Honestly, if it
becomes the issue of Ephesians is demonic at the core, even
if the theology is right, because we have thwarted the word of
God. So I want to be careful how you
listen to the scripture. God's word is clear in its construct. And when we look at Ephesians,
especially Ephesians five, we must then be very aware because
it's going to be Seven weeks minimum for us to get to verse
22. And I know many brothers throughout
the history of my life, as short as it's been thus far, who like
to take verse 22. And stamp it on the foreheads
of their wives and say, submit to me, thou woman. And they go,
well, how what in the world? And they forget verse twenty
three. And they forget that the very issue at hand here is not
the submission. That's not what Paul is teaching.
He's reminding and then didactically commanding submit to your husband's
husband, die to your wives, die for your wives as Christ died
the church. Then he gives a simile and he
gives a metaphor. It says Christ is the is the true Christ. The
church is the true church. But the church cannot submit
The way Christ submitted, Christ submitted to the Father and Christ
submitted for the sake of the church. But the church cannot
submit to Jesus the way Jesus submitted to the church. You
can't die for Christ. He doesn't need you. In the same
way, and so you see how that works to an example. So even
here, as we look carefully, then how you walk, not as unwise,
but as wise, the full thing, as we talked last week, is that
we who are in the church indeed are wise. So walk in it. How are we wise? The spirit of
God in us, the word of God and the community of faith as we
guard one another, as we strive for unity, as we push and mature
so that God can be glorified by the by the people in which
he saved to the praise of his glorious grace. It all boils
down to one thing. The glory of God in his mercy
towards sinners. You hear that, kids? That's the
whole reason the world exists, is that the people that God has
saved would praise him for his mercy. It is not to do anything
else but that, and the outcome of that worship is both internal
and external. It is temporal and eternal. It
is individual and corporate. So what we see, then, is how
we are to walk. The first thing that we see is
we ought to walk. And what we'll know coming next
week is that we need to walk in a manner worthy of the calling
in which we've been called. And if we've been called, we've
been justified. God doesn't say come, please come, please come. They're not coming. He doesn't
do that. God does not call that which
does not come. All that God calls comes. All
that God calls comes. And if God has called you and
you've come, then you are indeed a child adopted when before the
world began, before God began to begin to begin to begin to
begin to plan the world for eternally has loved you eternally has saved
you eternally. He has provided propitiation
through Jesus Christ and he's established you to be part of
his kingdom. The kingdom of God is at hand.
And friends look in the mirror. If you are in Christ, you are
indeed of it. But as we grow, As we worship, we need to do
so in some urgency. And some people think, and I
know that probably Brother Jesse has heard this, being he has
a little bit of energy in his preaching. What in the world? I wish that I could have your
energy. You know what? Other than in the pulpit, I'm
pretty lethargic, unless I've had a lot of coffee. And then
I'm just ridiculous. I'm just tired all the time.
I don't care. I got to sleep before I got here.
And then I get up here and God just beats my heart so fast I
lose a thousand calories while I preach. Not a joke. Just bumps. If I quit eating cake, I'd be
in good shape. Walk carefully. Look carefully
how you walk, church, as wise. Children of the Most High God
who has saved us through his mercy to the praise of his glorious
grace in the beloved. We are the beloved. We are in
the beloved in Christ. God has provided true salvation
for his church. It's not possible if you get
it. It's not offered if you receive it. It's yours if you're his. And if you're his. One of the
ways we walk wise is we make the best use of time. Now, man,
would I love to help a bunch of parents out right now and
say, yep, we waste too much time on games and books and color
crayons and Xbox and transformers and iPads and iPods and iPhones
and iRacks and iMicrowaves and everything else. And, you know,
and I'll probably be stating the truth. We do waste a lot
of time. But what is it that Paul is saying
here? Several things. Look at this.
Look at it this way. There's some actions for the
church making the best use of what? Of the time. Why? Because the days are evil. You might think this is going
to be a simple thing, but it's going to stretch your mind. I
want you to know you are not going to be able to just go,
that makes perfect sense. I hope it makes perfect sense
about what I'm about to say, but it is going to stretch your
mind. The Word of God is supposed to
stretch you. It's supposed to cause you to
open up at the seams a little bit so that it can mend you back
apart. If it needs to cut you, Hebrews
4, 12, it's going to cut you. If it wants to heal you, it'll
heal you. If it's supposed to prune you,
it'll prune you and all of the above at the same time. But what we don't do when God's
Word is given to us is walk around defeated. And we also don't walk around
justifying our actions as a means to pleasing God, it does not
say, as we'll look. Two weeks. Do not be foolish. But understand what the will
of the Lord is. Paul's not saying figure it out. He's saying, you
know what? Walk in the understanding of
it. You know, the wisdom of God is no longer a mystery hidden
from you. For who is the wisdom of God?
Jesus Christ is the wisdom of God made manifest. John says
it this way, that which was from the beginning. That which we
have heard and seen and touch with our hands concerning the
word of life has been made manifest to you and we to us and we proclaim
it to you. That which we've seen. And heard
and touched with our hands. Contemplate that for a minute.
The wisdom of God in all the cosmos for creative purpose and
his divine pleasure, God purpose to create all that there is that
he might become a man. That the father would send the
son. And that he would subject himself
to that which he created and be under the authority, as some
of us were talking this morning, of his earthly mother as an earthly
child. He would learn obedience. It's
not in the contrast of being disobedient, learning to obey
out of disobedience, he was never disobedient, but he learned obedience.
He subjected himself to the creation of the womb, which he made, and
then he was birthed out of it. He was subject to the authority
of his mother as a boy, even when he was doing the bidding
of his father. God the Father, his mother took him home and
he obeyed. So what we don't want to do is
pretend like we're trying to find this hidden thing. It's
not hidden to us, church, the will of God is not hidden to
us, it is not there in the language to seek after that which is hidden,
then we do math out of Daniel. Then we get our scientific calculator
out and we draw circles about every four letters and we spit
in the wind to see where the picture looks like. And we go,
oh, there's a mystery. It looks like an alien. It must
be saying we're aliens. It's garbage. And you laugh because
you heard it. I've heard it. I was introduced
to a man this week, not personally, but to his thinking. He believes
that there's a race of lizard people ruling the world. Little Godzilla. Man, talk about
a stretch. So we need to make the best use
of the time. See, God has given us time. God
established time. Why? What is time anyway? Without going into an entire
hour of discussing philosophically what time is, let's just put
it out there for what it is. Time is that place are those points in which immutability
and the infinite has ceased to have effect. And what I mean
by that is Adam and Eve lived forever with no time. They rebelled
against God and time began. Let's put it that way. God said,
let there be light. He created things, time began. I believe time really began. In the context of how we view
it at the fall. And that now God would set a
course, when did he set the course before the foundations of the
world? Don't think that God is responding to the causality of
an infinite being. God cannot be moved by that which
he created. What do you mean by that? God
didn't plan for Adam and Eve to be in the garden forever. And then all of a sudden they
sent him. Oh, my gosh, I didn't see that coming. What do I do
now? OK, I'll do this. And at the
same time, be very careful to understand that the Scripture
teaches that God did not cause nor does he ever cause anyone
to sin, that it is their own desire. So time began. No matter however
you put it into one or two places, time began either at creation.
Or at the fall, I would say time in its philosophy began at the
creation so that there is something now spinning, the cosmos is moving,
everything's been created, there's life and there's order and there's
time. But I would say that the true
clock of time began to click at the fall and that probably
even though there might be time, how do we know there was time?
Because there was evening and there was morning and there was morning
and there was evening. So there was time. But was it
measured the same way we measure it? We look at time as what?
A priceless commodity that we wish we had more of. And so time
is different in the context of the creation and the Garden of
Eden before the fall. And then after the fall of Adam
and Eve, time became different. So just as God created the heavens
and the earth and just as Paul teaches us in Romans that the
creation was subject to the futility of sin, not willingly, but unwillingly
and longs, get this now, longs To be restored, if time is part
of that creation, then I believe time was also affected by the
fall. Now, see what I mean? It's going
to stretch you a minute. This is not the sermon. It's
just thinking thoughts, bullet points. Time, then, is a good thing.
God created it. He says it's good. Man's sin
brought death into the world. So therefore, time is now an
enemy. Of the flesh. What do you mean? Just like age,
the older we are, if we do live, the closer we are to death. I
love I don't love to do this, but I love the reaction of people
when they hear this for the first time. And I surely don't do this
at the at the bedside of a brand new baby and her mother. Look
at that little sinner. And and, you know, it's what,
seven, seven hours old at seven hours closer to death. And that's
special. I mean, but it's true. We're not growing to a peak and
then 30 years old start winding down, though we may feel that
way. Genetically and in the essence of time, from the moment that
baby takes his first breath to the very next second, he's getting
closer to the day it will die. It will never be as old, as far
away from the time of his death than at its birth. That's the
point of beginning. And it gets closer and closer
and closer to death every day. Death doesn't start at 50. Death
starts at birth. But God has established time.
Why? Because only in time does God give opportunity to display
His glory through His creation. And only in this time does God
give the gospel for men to be saved. And only in this time Do you have opportunity to believe? Today. Time. Is God's time, and I believe
God established time so that in the midst of what we see here,
look what it says, the days are evil. So we just call if I had
a whiteboard here, we're in the evil days. And these evil days is where
we live is where they live here and we live in evil days today. That's easy for us to go and
see what's not there, just as just as we understand how Paul
writes in other places, we also understand how he thinks. And
so one of the things we need to see here is that what the
scripture talks about, about the evil days or the dark days. He's not talking about a season
of time. He's not talking about a specific
years. He's not talking about things that are happening right
now or something that's about to take place. It's not a prophetic
writing. It's the essence of where the
world is in relation to the kingdom of heaven. And I will tell you
what it means. It means that where we are today
is in an evil place. When the world as a whole rejects
the truth of the gospel, hates the God of Isaac and Abraham
and Jacob, hates Jesus Christ, the Son, and rejects all authority
of God's Word. These are the days of evil. These
are the days of evil. Paul is saying, make the best
use of the time because the days are evil. Now, there's a lot
here in this argument, but for our sake, let's understand what
that looks like. If you'd like to turn to Second
Timothy, Chapter three, please do so. Second Timothy, Chapter three,
just listen to these. In these last days. When did the last days begin?
When Jesus was born. At the fullness of time, the
Kingdom of God is at hand. At the last days. Those are the
evil days. For the world is what? There
will come times of difficulty. What is that? And why? Times of difficulty, that means
the peace, peace, The unity, all of these things that everybody
hopes for wasn't there even before Christ. The world was a mess.
God destroyed the world already once countless wars, famine,
all of these things, even God's own hand against his own people.
But he saved them. Though they became desolate,
he redeemed them. And though we are out of the
darkness and for those of you on our study on Tuesday nights
in John three, you really see that you begin to see that this
fully comes together. Friends, here's what Paul is
saying. These days are evil. Listen to
these days. People will be lovers of self. People will be lovers of money.
In these days of evil, there will be people who are proud. And arrogant. Abusive. Disobedient to their parents.
Ungrateful. Unholy. Heartless. Unappeasable. Cannot be satisfied.
Slanderous. Without self-control. Brutal. not loving good, treacherous,
reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than
lovers of God, and even worse, verse 5, having the appearance
of godliness, but denying its power. And then there in 1st Timothy
3, Paul gives a direct command, avoid such people. Wow. Now see what happens, listen.
What happens, we hear that, make best use of the time for the
days are evil. And we automatically think of
the world and all the people in it and all the evil things
they do. And then we think of these texts. And this is not
the only place we see Peter with a couple of texts like that.
We see John with some texts like that. We see Jesus with some
texts like that. We see it. And all of a sudden we start
thinking, yeah, those people, those people, those people, those
people, man, I'm glad we're not like those people. But then the
fullness of what we understand, the New Testament is written
to one people. Regenerate believers, not unregenerate
believers, there is a difference. Many people believe and they
are not saved, they are not born again. Few believe because they're born
again, many believe and they're not born again. Paul is now saying the days of
evil are among us. We're here. We're in it. Make
best use of the time. And I'm going to blow your minds.
God prayerfully can help you see. But here's the fullness
of it. When we hear that, when I hear
that, I'm going to impose on my feelings and my ignorance
on you. But when I hear that, even now, and I know what it
says and I've read it a thousand times in the last year, probably. I always think about other people. And all of a sudden, I see Paul
say young Timothy and people have the appearance of godliness
and I'm like, whoa. See, I don't want to look at
me and say I'm proud and arrogant and love of money and lover of
pleasure and disobedient to parents. I don't want to look at me because
in my mind, I don't look that way, but I look godly. Now, Paul didn't say there'll
be people that look godly, period. He says there are people that
will look godly, but deny its power. People that will look like they
are indeed in Christ, but they are not born again. Why? Because they will be lovers of
money and lovers of self, haughty, proud, arrogant, hateful, disobedient
to parents. They will be slanderous, unholy,
heartless, unappeasable, no self-control. They'll be brutal, wicked, not
gentle and kind and loving and affectionate and generous and
dying to oneself. Not holy attire in the heart,
but holy attire on the outside. And Jesus says, why wash the
outside of the cup when the bowl is filthy on the inside? That's the evil days, friend. And what Paul has been arguing
since the very beginning of chapter one, verse one. Well, chapter one, verse three,
this argument starts. of Ephesians is that we are a
new creation. We are the bride of Christ and
we are indeed redeemed and we will walk so. Together. Forgiving and forbearing, put
away falsehood. Speaking to one another in love,
in truth. Not letting the sun go down on
our angry, on our anger. Do not get angry except for that
which angers God. Remember that sermon? The imitators of God walk in
love as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us. And now He
says, make the best use of the time because the days are evil. How
do we do that? By obeying that which we've been
called to do because we can do it. Perfectly, no. But properly, yes. Are we walking,
pursuing the world or are we walking, pursuing Christ? Are we redeeming the time? You
know what that boils down to? Urgency. What that means there is Paul
is saying we don't have time to get it and then do it. We don't have time to get it
all worked out and then walk in it. He's saying quit wasting
your day and make it up as you start walking wisely. It's like going to basic training.
How long does that take? Ten weeks? 10 weeks and you lose 30 pounds
and you look like you got cancer and then they shave your head
on top of it and you get out and they say, you're a soldier.
Well, that day is the least most day that you are actually a soldier. They give you uniform and they
give you whatever buttons and stripes and whistles and tassels
and all that. And they put you in there and
you get up every day and you're a soldier. But you're you least
deserve it that day. And then the whistle blows and
the enemy flies in. And your sergeant, your commander,
they don't come and say, OK, everybody come in here, take
out your manuals, turn to page 43 and the sirens go. Turn to page 44. Now look at
that. Everybody understand what's going to happen here. In just
about 30 seconds, they're going to drop the bombs. Our building's
going to blow up. And I want you to realize that what we ought
to have already been doing is running for our lives into the
bunkers. So on the count of three, one,
two, boom. Now, you don't do it like that.
You don't wait. You don't get everybody together and see what
happens. As we come to church, we come
to fellowship, we come to worship and we think, OK, today I'm going
to get a little bit more together. I'm going to get a little bit
more together and I'm almost there. I'm three fourths there.
I'm ninety nine point nine percent there. And when I get my picture
full, I'm going to start pouring it out and I'm going to start
living it out. I'm going to start moving. Not to create a pretext church,
but I hate to do this to you, but faith without works is dead. Simple words, words of obedience. Works of holiness, works of affection,
which were created in Christ Jesus beforehand, before the
world began, for us to walk in them, not figure them out. Walk
in them as we figure them out. The covenant of the church together
is for the sake of when I'm about to stand on a landmine, you've
been around a lot long enough, you know what they look like
under the sand. You go, whoa, whoa, whoa, brother. Not you, idiot. Keep walking. Keep just on a
boom. Try to tell That's not it. Well, we tried to tell Brother
James, he just wouldn't listen. No, you told me to keep walking.
Redeem the time, make best use of the time. It is not ours to
use, it's God's. And God has established so much
for us to do and so little so that His glory and His name would
be famous. So that when the world looks
back at our legacy, whether we live to be eight or 18 or 28
or 68 or 88 or 108, that what we leave is not our name on the
rips of history, but we leave a picture of the amazing God
who saved us. We need to work to make best
use of the time. And the argument of Paul here.
Could be shown in so many ways, all that we've learned in the
past 43 sermons of this letter, not counting the four first weeks
that we were there at my home for some of you. We are to proclaim the gospel.
Yes, by the way we live. Yes, by the way we serve. Yes,
by the way we worship. But most importantly, not most
importantly, but just as importantly, by the way we speak. By the way
we teach it, by the way we preach it, by the way we go and share
the gospel, we proclaim the gospel. We need to redeem the time in
proclaiming the gospel, not just to the dying world, but also
to our brothers and sisters. And matter of fact, I would suggest
to you specifically to our brothers and sisters. What is that gospel? It's the same gospel you then
teach to the world. That through the preaching of
the gospel to the world that God calls His own out and He
brings that which is dead to life. And He saves them by grace
that they join the ranks of the saints and become beloved. And
then we together work and walk and live and love and learn in
such a way that God gets all the glory and the praise for
it all. We have need to have an urgency
to maintain the unity of the peace. One of the most difficult
things for the church. In this country. is that we take lightly and loosely
our unity and affection with one another. Let me put it to
you this way. If there's someone in the fellowship of Grace True
Church that their presence in this building would keep you
from worshiping or coming or covenanting with us, or with
them, not with us, but with them, forgive them. Forgive them. Repent and believe the gospel. Trust in the holiness of Christ
who forgives us much. Remember that from which you
have been saved. And look at the prescription
that Jesus Himself gives us when it comes to settling our differences.
We need to have an urgency to redeem that. The glory of God is not seen
in the perfect doctrine of a person. The glory of God is not seen
in the absolute beautiful worship of a choir. The glory of God
is not seen in the establishment of foundational attack against
heresy. The glory of God is seen in the
unity of his people in the midst of their diversity. One faith. Diverse, unified, but diverse. We need an urgency to admonish
and to encourage and to love and to proclaim to one another
the grace of God. Here's the point. Does God's
grace offend you? Does it offend you when God's
grace is offered to you because it just has to be more than that? Friends, you're sitting in front
of the wrong pulpit. Sola gratia. Grace alone. For by grace you have been saved
through faith. This is not of your own doing,
but is a gift of God so that no man can boast. For we are
what? Christ's workmanship. God's workmanship. Created in Christ Jesus for good
works that He prepared beforehand for us to walk in. We need to have an urgency to
see God's grace and to teach God's grace and to proclaim God's
grace. When we minister or when we preach
or when we teach apart from the grace of God, we have failed
to preach the gospel. The evangel, the news of good
joy is what that means. Here's some news of good joy,
y'all. You're dead. See you later. That's why the text is written
the way it is. But you are a royal priesthood, but you are a new
creation, but you are holy and righteous, but you are a holy
nation, but you who once were dead and a slave to sin are now
made alive in Christ. You, if you walk in your sin,
be careful if you're a slave to it. You are not in Christ,
but you are in Christ, for you have said you were. So where
is the walking in Christ? You see, that's the exhortation.
Brother, you are not looking like Jesus walking in. But I
can't. Oh, yes, you can. Yes, you can. See, therein lies the problem
we have bought into the lie of carnal Christianity. We believe
that someone can be born again and live for the world. It is
not possible. Now, we may stick our finger
in the worldly things, but when we do that, listen to me very
careful, brother and sister, it is an absolute spitting in
the face of God. And if that is often and if that
is easy and if that is without consequence, whoa. Whoa, whoa. But we do not send so that the
grace of God may abound. We walk wisely, making the best
use of time. Because the days are evil, we're
not. We need to have a proclamation
of God's grace. We need to have an urgency of
doing life together. And so what we see now is that
Paul has developed this full picture of what life looks like. And in a minute, he's going to
get very personal. He's going to paint a picture.
He's painted a broad picture of many separate things. Look,
this is how the church looks. This is how you think. This is
how you speak. This is how you relate to one
another as an example of these things. Here's a picture. It's like us men when we buy
a grill and we get it and it comes in two boxes and we open
it up, we see that instruction book and we look at it for a
few minutes. We set the box up on the table. We see the picture.
I'm going to build that. And as long as it burns and as
long as it stays together, it doesn't matter how many pieces
are left over in the end. When our buddy from across the
street who has an engineering degree starts to walk over there,
we throw all those extra things in the trash can. We don't want him to see it and
go, what's all that? Because he'll take it apart and redo it for
us. Maybe it's a floor. Who knows what it is? But our attitude toward time
must change, church. You must realize we don't have
till next Sunday to get started. Living together for the gospel,
we don't have to the end of the year to decide how it is God's
called us to actively serve in ministry, we don't have to the
end of today to begin to celebrate his glorious grace in our lives,
we don't have another hour To see if we indeed love Him or
if we like to love Him. Some of us may not have the rest
of this sermon. To have the time, the opportunity
to understand and see and experience God's grace. So what is it ultimately? Let's give you a sneak peek into
next week. What is the one thing that Paul
has argued up to this point? Let's just pick out one word.
In the sense of the picture of the church, what is it? And let me give you an idea.
In literature, when people write and they argue from rhetoric,
they build their argument and they close it in the very beginning.
So let's listen. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual
blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before
the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless
before him. In love, He predestined us as
adoption, as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose
of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace with which
He has blessed us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through
His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the
riches of His grace with which He lavished upon us in all wisdom
and insight, making known to us the mystery of His will. According
to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for
the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in
heaven and things on earth. And then we have obtained an
inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him
who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so
that we who were first to hope in Christ might be to the praise
of his glory. In Him you also, when you heard
the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed
in Him, were sealed with the Spirit of God, who is the guarantee
of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise
of His glory. For this reason, because I've
heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all
the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering
you in my prayers that the God of the Lord Jesus, the Father
of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom. and the revelation
and the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of your heart enlightened,
that you may know what is the hope to which you have been called,
to which He has called you, what the riches of His glorious inheritance
in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His
power towards us who believe, according to the working of His
great might, that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from
the dead and seated Him at the right hand in the heavenly places.
far above rule and authority and power and dominion and above
every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in
the age to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave
him his head over all things to the church, which is his body,
the fullness of him who fills all in all. And then Paul begins
to argue. And you were dead. So what is
he saying? There's a lot there, but there's
one theme, and the theme is this. You are a holy people. Walk in it. You were wicked. You were dead. You were there.
How in the world do you get that? Because the whole reason God
saved us is for this. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ the
devil's spirit, who has blessed us in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in
Him before the foundation of the world. Now, if we stop there,
we think, well, I've just been selected. No. You've been decreed
that you should be holy and blameless before Him. And so if that's what God has
done, then everything Paul has written thus far and everything
he's going to do pushes us to that end. Do you see that, Church? Because the days are evil and
there are people who have the appearance of godliness but deny
its power. If you are a professing believer and you deny the power
of God to sustain righteous acts and righteous striving and holy
affection in your life, think again. Think again, it's not
there. And so what is the makes the
best use of time? Here's what it is. that we make the best use of
time being blameless before God and being blameless before each
other in our relations with each other, in our knowledge of the
Gospel, in our study of the Gospel, in our proclamation of the Gospel,
in our life as a church, in our life with the world and everything
in between, we are to make best use of the time being blameless
in all that we do for the glory of God. That's what he's saying. The days are evil, and as you'll
see, how that works is that we know the mystery of His will.
It's ours. It's given to us. All spiritual blessings are ours.
So we deny it? No. Some of us are hung up on
this maturity thing. I've got to wait till I'm mature.
Well, Paul commands us to crave spiritual milk, but to grow up. But you always crave it. Jesus
says to come as the children come. To have an empty bag. If I pull
out this little satchel and I unzip it and I go, hey kids, I got
some candy. All you got to do is come get
it. And there's snakes in there. They'll come. And they'll put their hand in
there and they'll get bit because they trust that that which I've
said to them is true. God says that you have every
spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus. God says that we are a
holy people. God says that we have been empowered
to forgive and forbear and to walk in unity with wisdom and
that we should make the best use of these days because the
days are evil and we are not. Let us make and seize every opportunity. That's what that really means.
I keep quoting the King James for some reason because it's
so stuck in my head through the years. making the best use of time,
make every effort. In other words, if there's a
second of the day, then make that second count for being blameless
in Christ, if at all possible. If there's a conversation to
be had, make that conversation being blameless in Christ. If you are in Christ. You will see. And you will strive
to walk in Him successfully. We don't have time to wait. Let
that urgency press on your heart today. Very few of us would say
there is nothing that God is pressing on my heart to respond
to, to act to. All of us probably would say
there are things that we must seize the opportunity to grow
by his power in grace. Let's see.