Be careful how you walk
Ephesians 5:15-17 · Randy Peterman · Oct 21, 2018
Ephesians (2018-19), No. 39
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261912312677

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

So last week, Bob got to teach on the darkness of the world around, which as it turned, you know, I got three, what I will say, deceptively short verses. They're short in words, but dense in meaning. I find myself challenged by them because they're part of a theme in the book of Ephesians that that Paul is trying to cover from every facet, so I found myself challenged by them as well. So he's carrying on, if you will, from verse 1. Ephesians chapter 5 verse 1 and I believe Roger you got to teach the beginning of chapter 5 here.

Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love just as Christ also loved you and gave himself up for us an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. But immorality and impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among the saints." And he continues on talking about, these are examples of carnality, we don't want to have that in the church. And he instead wants us to walk as children of the light and be producing the fruit of the spirit, not the fruit of the flesh or darkness.

And then we move forward here to verse 15. He says, Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And as we consider this, and as we look at these verses here, kind of look at this from a big picture. What is Paul talking about for us as believers? I think one of the core principles here is that we have a stewardship. Paul wants them to consider time and space and the whole person that is created in the image of God and stewardship throughout chapter 5.

And the Jewish believer would be used to the phrase, the walk. The Jewish believer is used to the walk. The Gentile believer wouldn't necessarily use the phrase the walk. But what Paul is doing here as we look at this is he's going to use some Jewish vocabulary with the walk, but he's also going to talk about foolishness, which would have been offensive culturally to a Gentile.

It's almost like Paul, having spent two and a half years in Ephesus, knew his audience. Maybe we could say it that way. Paul is going to give them both points of reference. And luckily for us today, we can understand those in context. And maybe we can gather some of the meat from that as well. So I started there.

Look carefully. The translation in the NASB is kind of smooth. Value smooth is kind of the way that they're always trying to come as close as they can. to word-for-word translation, from one Greek word to one English word, and have it smoothly read. That's why I'm saying it's smoothed there. But in the Greek, I would personally, giving myself the liberty of not being bound to the word-for-word order that they're trying to maintain, I would say, therefore, because you were spiritually awake and alive from the dead in Christ, which we get from the previous verse, look carefully at how you walk. Okay? So examine or look carefully at how you walk. And that's a ponderous thing. Blepo is the Greek root for look or to see. Okay? Blepo is to see.

So he says, therefore, see and then carefully at how you walk or look carefully at how you walk. And so let's ask an important question. What does looking carefully at how you walk mean to your day-to-day life? How do you put tennis shoes on this recommendation from Paul that you look carefully?

Well, you might say, first of all, your focus might be pretty important in all that. Yeah. So you have the focus, I'm guessing you're hinting at Colossians 3, 1 through 3, where we set our minds on things above. I thought I saw a hand back there. Pay attention. And the thing that I think is fascinating about this, and that's why I emphasized stewardship when we got started, is Paul is looking at the time value of our ministry on the earth for each one of us. You remember in Ephesus they are surrounded by pagan mythology and car rituals.

Last week, after the lesson, I was able to share some pictures I got from archaeological stuff in Boston. That was the coolest part of the trip, I think, was getting to see the archaeological exhibit in Boston, which I had no anticipation of. And we got there, and Jessica and I ran out of time at the museum. We were just out of time, despite there being more to see, which is cool. If folks want to see it, I'd be glad to show you pictures later on.

But the thing is that they're surrounded by pagan mythology and pagan rituals. When I grew up, I had Jewish neighbors for a couple years that were a few houses down. And they were Orthodox Jews. So the Sabbath was a day that you had to stay home. The Sabbath was the day I was not at school. I was so Gentile. I had no idea. I'd go over and knock on the door. Hey, can Danny and Sharon come play? And they're like, no, it's the Sabbath. I was like, you keep saying that. What's Sabbath, right? So I had to go home and ask my parents. They keep saying the Sabbath. What's this Sabbath business?

And they're like, we can come out tonight. So when the sun goes down at night, that's the day's over. So we could play in the twilight, right? But the Jews are following this rigid law. They're following their traditions. But it's not about fellowship. It's not about relationship. It's not about redeeming the time. It's about the tradition. We have the tradition.

Well, if you are a Jew surrounded by Gentiles, the law is supposed to separate the Jew from the Gentile so that the Gentile will know, without a doubt, that you are God's chosen people. But now this church thing is coming around, and so the two cultures are Both are not God's culture. The Gentile culture and the Jewish culture are not God's culture. God's culture is now this church entity. And so they have to examine it. They have to be looking at what's going on. Because they don't have the law to lean on. And they don't have the Gentile culture to lean on. Which is really good, let me tell you.

That was one of the things. Seeing the household idols. Because they had a whole display of household idols. If I sent my daughters over to somebody's house and I knew they had some of the household idols out, they were pornographic. There's no other way to describe it. I would not allow my daughters. I said, listen, you don't get to go over to the Smiths next door. That's not reference to people named Smith at our church. You don't get to go to the Smiths next door or the Jones next door because the stuff they have out on their house is really not appropriate. But if you're the Smiths and the Jones, that's every day. Your kids are growing up with this Gentile, carnal, pornographic, hedonistic culture.

And so Paul, he's challenging the saints. He says, Hey, you, you, you, you and you, second person plural, examine your walk. Does that make sense? Everybody gets that? Because we have a stewardship. We only have so many hours we're alive on this planet. And that means that we should redeem them and consider those things. So I've got a list here and you'll forgive my first list item. I said, in stewardship we have a sense of timeliness.

And then I used that really, really terrible acronym that seems to be popular with the kids. YOLO. You only live once. Right? Okay? So you'll forgive me for that. I mean, I know no one in this room has YOLO'd ever. And I praise the Lord for that. But there's a sense of timeliness that Paul is concerned about here. You've been redeemed. You have the chance with every second of every moment for the remainder of your life to be reflecting Jesus Christ to the world around you. So timeliness matters. When is the rapture happening?

I don't know. I hope I don't finish this lesson. I would be okay with that. I think you would too. I think you won't even remember the lesson. What were we doing? It doesn't matter. I'm looking at Jesus. But there's a sense of timeliness that whatever is remaining in the days that we have on this earth, that the world would see that. There's a sense of place where you are walking. See, the idea of walking is not stationary. Right? If we're walking and it's stationary, well, I mean, you get your steps in on your Fitbit if your arm's moving right. but not a lot else. Walking implies the living that we're doing out around in front of people.

When I go to work, it matters what I'm doing, how I'm behaving, what I'm thinking about, what I'm talking about. Predominantly based on the contract I have with my employer, I have to be very careful what I say. But what I do should not be in high contrast to what I believe. A sense of stewardship. What resources that impact your walk, along with time and space, are we given?

I have on multiple occasions, and this is not me bragging, this is just me saying I have been aware of this, I have sometimes got more time. This week was not one of them. And so if somebody needs help working on something, I can come help. But sometimes what I have is a financial or a physical material thing that I have that someone else has need and I can offer that. Time is good. Money is good. Sometimes it's other resources. Sometimes, as James illustrates, it's food. Oh, you're hungry? Here, I've got food. I don't just say go and be filled by something.

So stewardship is sometimes not just about time and space or money, but it may be other material things we have. The other thing is being created in God's image and made spiritually alive with Christ. Remember that's what Bob covered last week as part of verse 14. For this reason it says, Awake sleeper and arise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. We've been made alive in Christ. We're spiritually alive in Christ and we have a body, soul, and spirit that are able to be used volitionally and completely. When Adam sinned, God said, surely you will die. How did he die? Did he die just physically? He didn't die instantly physically. What happened? What was the consequence? Spiritually he was dead. When we believe, what does Romans 5 tell us about being made alive? We're a new creation in Christ.

We're spiritually alive. We're connected with God. The Holy Spirit indwells us. I know I reference it almost every time I teach now, but when Roger was teaching through Romans 8 and 26 during the main service, he talked about the Holy Spirit being inside of us, knowing everything we need, and then praying on our behalf. We're spiritually alive. We're connected. So we have a stewardship that is a body and a soul and a spirit that are fully and completely alive and that matters in a big way.

The world around us doesn't have spiritual life. They think they do. How many of you know somebody who is based on recommendations around them practicing meditation and yoga or those kinds of things. Does anybody know that? Unfortunately for me that's becoming more and more normal for people. Groups like AA that used to be kind of rooted in churches are now moving more and more and more towards Middle Eastern and Buddhist type practices because they stepped away from the good book, the Bible, and moved towards whatever your spirituality is okay. And the trend right now for spirituality is paganism and hedonism and Buddhism and all of these ideas that are there.

So we are spiritually alive and so our bodies are vessels, right? Jars of clay. Our bodies are vessels. And our soul, our minds, our personhood, the way that we think and the way that we act, we have the mind of Christ. That's a really big deal when you think about stewardship. If I don't have the mind of Christ, what would you expect the outcome to be?

What's the best version of a non-saved person look like? Garbage in, garbage out. Well, it's not even garbage in. There's nothing. They don't even have the... Even if you fed them the best ideas in the world, but they don't have the Holy Spirit, they don't have Christ, they're not fully capable of exhibiting the life of Christ, which is where perfection is. So what we have here in this sense of stewardship is that we, when we recognize as being made alive in Christ, that we are able to function on that level, we have an opportunity. So then we can examine and do some comparison and contrast.

Is Paul encouraging legalism? Let's ask that very, very, very important question. He's not encouraging legalism. But he is encouraging evaluation. He is encouraging consideration. Here's also another important element. As we grow in the Lord, is our ability to evaluate going to change? For sure. That's encouraging for me. That's a good thing. As I grow, as I walk with the Lord and as I grow with the Lord, the things that I might consider to be good or useful or valuable or reflective of His life, I may have clarity and certainty as the doctrines that are revealed and the Lord teaches me become impactful.

I didn't know, I'll give you an example from my own life, this is not anecdotal though, I didn't understand grace. And so I thought grace was a covering for every time I sinned. That was my definition of grace. When I sin, there's grace. For the rest of the time, I better do it right.

Does that sound familiar to anybody? Because that's unfortunately how I grew up thinking. But then someone taught me about Grace. In fact, the first time I heard the Chester McCauley series on Grace, I was over at Mike Doyle's house in his basement because my wireless connection was down for the internet and I needed to work on the internet. So I was like, Mike, I called him up. I said, Mike, can I come over? And he said, sure. What do you need? I'm like, electricity and a Wi-Fi connection. So I sat down and he started listening to this Chester McCauley thing over off to the side.

And if my former employee ever hears this, he'll not be surprised. But I wasn't really doing a lot of work that day because my mind was being blown because I was understanding grace. Then when I understood grace at that point in time, I had to set aside everything I had formerly thought about because suddenly grace meant something far more rich. And so when I evaluated, when I looked closely, like Paul is saying here, when I looked closely, suddenly what I saw was with greater clarity.

It was like I put some glasses on, right? With the lenses on. And not everybody here is wearing glasses. Maybe you're wearing contacts, right? But that clarity showed up. And so when I did the evaluation, I could say, hey, these don't line up. They don't match up. That matching up, that lining up is something that Paul is saying you can do this and consider growth and consider where you're walking. It isn't for legalism. It isn't so that you can say you did the spiritual push-ups. This is because you've been made alive with Christ. You can do the evaluation. Let's say, and this isn't in my notes, but I just thought I'd better mention this. Let's say you do the evaluation and you came up short. How much shame should there be in the church? How much shame is there in Christ? Zero. So we came up short. This week, I will tell you right now, I came up short. I did. Just like most weeks, right? I think every week if I'm honest with myself.

I came up short but I came up short because at times I was not walking in the spirit I was walking in the flesh and I did fleshly things. I know that's a shocker when you're walking in the flesh you might bear the fruit of the flesh. I didn't get enough sleep for part of the week and that never helps anything. The good news is I got good sleep last night so I'm really set. I'm joking.

If we consider these things and we say that shame has no place in the church, when we find ourselves coming up short, does that drive us to try harder next week? Too much of the time it does. Yeah, but that's what the flesh wants. The flesh wants me to try harder in myself, in my own strength, next week. You'll do better next time. That's the flesh. What does the Holy Spirit want us to do? What does the Holy Spirit draw us into?

To trust. To be walking in fellowship. To be abiding. Our relationship is secured. Just abide. So we have this idea of evaluation. We've been made awake. We've been made alive. So we're to look carefully at how you walk. Now the cool thing is that this is second person plural. So each one of us is responsible for it. But each one of us is a member of one another. We saw that in chapter four. Each one of us is a member of the other. So guess what? That doesn't mean we get to come in and pick on one another and say, I saw you walking in the flesh. Therefore, you know, in some of the John McCarthy stuff that we see bandied about legalism and burdening one another.

But that means we can come alongside in the Galatians 6.1 sort of way and say, Let's restore that fellowship. The relationship is established. Let's walk together. So he says, not as unwise, but as wise. Now, we said the translation is unwise there. That's not a bad translation.

But if you were a Gentile, being called a fool was extremely insulting. Because in the Gentile, the Roman, and Greek culture, wisdom was important. When we talk about Greek philosophers, Greek philosophers were some of the heroes of the time. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, all these names that in my humanities class we had to talk about when I was in college. But we have this idea that if you call someone a fool, In the Greek culture, that's insulting today, but it would have been extra insulting today, or then, at the time of Paul's writing this. Now the thing that I think is interesting is that there's a whole spectrum, right? There's a spectrum of wisdom and foolishness.

We can evaluate these things. And so our minds easily, this is because we think like Greek people, okay? We're looking for our edge case. We're looking for the how. But Paul uses that terrible, what's translated as two letters here, but it's actually as. So as is a comparative word. It's an approximation.

If we were to approximate your walk, is it going to look foolish or unwise? Or is it going to look wise? What we see here is Paul saying, evaluate it, look closely, look carefully at it, so that your life, your walk, would be evaluated as wise. Now we just said something important about the Gentile mind. Are they alive in Christ? The Gentiles, they're not part of the church. These are the unwashed masses, and I say that with sarcasm. The idea here is that if you're a Gentile, what are you trying to draw people into?

The philosophy and the way that you think. Come think like me. But they can still see if your life looks wise or unwise. They may not agree with it, but they will know that you're living in a way that is in respect to something that is outside of you. Something that is maybe going to lead them to ask questions. Why are you living differently? Because your life looks different from mine, but it doesn't look bad.

When Paul says quit stealing in chapter 4, he says quit stealing. That's going to stand out because there's a whole bunch of people who are stealing and then trying to make their way to the temple so that they can possess legally the thing that they stole. The Gentiles are going to see that. They're going to go, hey, why are you not stealing anymore?

Why did you get rid of your household idols? I know you had a necklace to Artemis last week. I know you were worshipping whatever was important in your household. Praying for fertility, praying for wealth, praying for orgies, praying for whatever it was that the secular mind was praying for.

You're not doing that anymore and there's something that's different there and I can evaluate it and I can see it. So the idea, if you were coming from a Gentile perspective, is a very high contrast idea. But even if you were Jewish, you would still notice this difference because these people are suddenly not observing the law.

Now, I don't know when bacon was invented, but I can guarantee you that if a Jewish neighbor sees you eating some pork, they're going to notice. Because it doesn't look like chicken, and it doesn't look like beef. Or maybe you're going to have some lobster, although I don't know that lobster would have been... I still think that lobster is a more modern cuisine choice.

I think a lot of people were like, this is nasty. It's a bug in the ocean. Leave it alone. But the idea is that if you were breaking the law, the Jews would definitely notice that, but you had the liberty to exercise. You might even wear clothes that suddenly your clothes change, and you're shopping and you're buying the blended clothes, the blended fabric.

We don't think a lot about that, because when I go to Target, or I go to Walmart, or I go to Kohl's, or whatever your store of choice is, I don't ever read the label and go, oh, mixed fibers. Unless I go, those are the right fibers. Some of those stretch and I need to stretch. Or whatever it is that I'm looking for in the materials. The Jews couldn't do that. No mixed fibers. So the Jews are going to notice when they see one another. When they walk, when they're walking, they're going to see it. And that change is going to be obvious to them.

So the Jews may see your actions and go, that's not wise. And then they're going to come to you, because they know that's what they're supposed to do. And then what do you get to do? You get to share the gospel. So the Gentiles are going to come, the wise and the unwise, and they're going to come and they're going to say, Wait, what are you doing? And the Jews are going to come and they're going to say, I already know you're unwise. They've already figured that one out.

And then they're going to talk to you and you're going to say, Do you know in Isaiah 53, I don't know that they have the chapter numbers, but they'll probably say, Do you remember in the scroll of Isaiah? and they talk about the Messiah. This was what we went over this last Easter, this last Resurrection Sunday. Was that Isaiah 53 or was that two years ago? I think it was two years ago that we did Isaiah 53. And we went over it. And I tell you, that's my chapter.

If you want to see Randy cry, and you want to get a good consistent cry out of Randy, so let's read Isaiah 53. Because it's such a rich chapter that talks about the sacrifice of our Messiah. That Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah, came and offered himself as a sacrifice.

And the Jews are going to pay attention to that. Today they interpret that chapter entirely allegorically so as to not be confronted by the Messiah so clearly described in chapter 53. But Paul knows that this is before they've been able to adapt to liberalism. They haven't adapted to liberalism yet, and so Paul knows that when you live in a way that is wise and consistent, but is not the law, they're going to ask questions. And so you can say, well, let's look at the prophecies of this Messiah. I know Him. Let me tell you about Him.

So it's a powerful, powerful place where we are not hypocrites. We're not inconsistent. We're not operating with malice. We're not operating with all the fruits of the flesh. We're operating by the power of the Holy Spirit. And it's going to get some attention. And if we're not, if we do the evaluation, if we look closely and we're not, then we can grow and we can begin doing that by the power of the Holy Spirit. It's not by our own strength.

So Paul continues, making the most of your time because the days are evil. So when we consider the stewardship of our lives, we can consider more carefully why Paul has built the letter up in the way that he has. So let's consider the bullet points here. If I had to make a summary outline that's extremely terse of what we've covered already, it would look kind of like this.

Our position in Christ is secure. Chapter 1 verses 3 through 13 are a giant run-on sentence of God's blessing and our position in Christ. Actually, chapter 2 goes a little bit more explicitly into position. We're adopted as sons. I think that's a pretty positional and relational aspect there. We've been empowered by the Holy Spirit. That's huge.

We're saved by grace because God loved us. Remember when Bob did the summary, he asked what our favorite verses were? We didn't all have the exact same favorite verses, but we could all agree that being saved saved by faith through grace was really, really, really important. God's love is something that we should be learning about and growing together.

In Ephesians chapter 3, verses 14 through 19, he talks about this architectural quality of love, the height, the width, the breadth, and the depth of the love, that we would know them together. And then my favorite part, that we would know the love that was beyond comprehension. So know it, but it's beyond everything that you could know in all time because it's infinite.

That's a pretty powerful thing. That we would be working in unity by the Holy Spirit. And when I say working, I don't mean works. I'm not talking about legalism. But Paul describes a unity that is interactive, shall we say. And then in 5.1, that we should be seen as imitators of God's righteousness and not imitators of carnal fleshly behaviors. And then moving forward to our current context here, that we should be stewards of our time in light of all this. So make the most of your time.

The Greek thinkers were not about testing their ideas. It was really great if you could think and get to the hypothetical, but nobody cared if you put tennis shoes on it or the rubber meets the road. They didn't care about the actual proving it out. They would just talk about the hypothetical.

So when Paul writes this, this would have been a challenge to understand their stewardship of time. Because if you're Greek, the idea of having stewardship of your time in a secular way is how much pleasure can you have before you die? Does that sound familiar? Maybe you've seen that on a commercial or seven million. How can you have the most pleasure in your time?

Well, you should definitely take this pill. You should definitely own this car. You should definitely have this computer. You should definitely be listening to this song or watching this TV show. You should definitely make the most of your time through these things. Now, none of those things that I just mentioned are evil by themselves, right? Listen, you may need to take the pill for your health. It may be good to take whatever the pill is.

You may choose to drive one of the cars that they're telling you. I rented a really nice car while I was on my vacation. And I was like, this is really cool. And I texted somebody at church who had one. I was like, I see why you like your car now. But the car doesn't make the person saved. Listen, if you show up in a beat up, nearly dead car and you're at church, and I look at you and I judge you by your car, we have a problem.

So this is not about cars. It's not about pills. It's not about that you did or did not watch a show. But when the rubber meets the road, making the most of the time matters. Now, Paul doesn't say something here. He does not say, literally, all the ways that making the most of your time will impact everything. And why is that? Why does he not tell us every possible way that we can evaluate making the most of your time? In the end, it's abiding with Christ and not trying to go through a whole laundry list. It's not a laundry list. It's not a checklist. It's not the law.

Now, we're going to see in the upcoming verses, there's still, and we saw in previous verses, there's still some easy low-hanging fruit things we can watch out for. If you're raging angry all the time, that's usually not considered a fruit of the Spirit. low-hanging fruit. If you're stealing all the time, chapter 4, I think it's verse 26 or 27, if you're stealing all the time, oh now I have to look that up, is that 28? It's going to bother me if I tell you the wrong verse. Yeah, 28, steal no more. But if you're doing those things, if those things don't line up, they're easy, they're low-hanging fruit.

I work in technology, so I've actually spent way more time thinking about technology than I should, probably. Technology is moving rapidly. And one of the things that the law fundamentally cannot handle is technology. If Paul had started to give very specific things that were culturally relevant, and he's like, listen, don't take your chariot in the fast lane if you're going slow. And he starts to iterate through all the things that were culturally narrow, Do you know, Christians are really good, and people who are of the Bible are really good at being literal, because we're like, I just want to make God happy.

And in technology, as the technology adjusted, the law did not adjust with it. But when I think about the Internet, which is how I make my living, so I think about that again a lot. When I think about the Internet, I think about how many wicked things can come through the Internet. and it's easy to get discouraged. It's easy to think this thing is just like a septic system that's just draining into my screen. Or, if the Holy Spirit is using us, then the internet is a tool for God's glory.

I happen to do a weekly Monday, Wednesday, Friday podcast with Brad Mastin up in Fort Collins and it's called A Minute for the Bible. I'm not advertising A Minute for the Bible. But we use YouTube and Facebook to put a minute to a minute and a half. Sometimes it's a little longer than a minute for the Bible. A little video together to teach a truth from God's word. Brad said the same thing that I've observed is that we're so busy now we don't often make time for study. So maybe we can get somebody to look at the Bible or think about the Bible for a minute. Out of 24 hours a minute seems like a small commitment.

But a minute for the Bible. And we use the technology other people are looking at what the Kardashians are doing. Other people are looking at what's in the news and saying, oh my gosh, it's the end of the world. And we can still use that same technology to say, this is God's truth. So make the most of your time. The technology is there.

He says the days are evil. When we look at the idea of the days being evil, what do we take away from the days are evil? This is a tough one. So I understand if when you read this you go, The days are evil. Is the day by itself evil? God made the day. We go back to Genesis 1. Who made the day? God made the day. Fundamentally, the day is not evil.

So he's not talking about a 24-hour period of time. What is he talking about? Steve? Well, even though he has them said, different ways to redeem. I think a key word right there, it's a very pivotal word. It's because the days are evil. He gives us reason. And then it's a matter of putting together what your core questions are. What is the evil component of these days? But the word because is very pivotal. So because the days are evil, we need to be doing what? How does this first pivot? It pivots on because. So the days are evil. What's the other side of this pivot in his reasoning?

Make the most of your time. So there's some contrasting going here. Because the days are evil, we need to make the most of our time. I'm covering this in written order. We could have swapped this. If one side is make the most of your time. I'm going to put a clock up here because that's short. And the days are evil. And we want the most of our time to be winning. And when I say winning here, I don't... Again, this isn't legalism. The idea is that the Holy Spirit is reflected in our lives. We've evaluated it. If the days are evil, why are they evil? What makes them evil? If God made a day, why is a day evil? Well, for starters, it's a fallen world. It's a fallen world.

God made the days. He set the week in order. He set up the structure of the sun and the moon, and He made all the things. Adam fell, became spiritually dead, and everybody who was born after that out of Adam and Eve got that same beneficial spiritual deadness.

And when I say beneficial, I'm being heavily sarcastic. So why are the days evil? The world's fallen. I'm going to write these down because this is good. There's actually possibly a long list. But this is probably the foundation here. The world has fallen. He'll forgive my writing. I worked at a pharmacy for a couple of years. I'm blaming the pharmacy, not my laziness. Steve? I think evil has a working power in itself.

It's almost a Pac-Man game. The guy is just gobbling, gobbling, gobbling. So in the process, to overcome that, it's a matter of me redeeming time. Because these evil days are gobbling up people, philosophies, and everything else. So we redeem time to fight that. The influence or the power of the flesh in the day-to-day.

The walk, using the Hebrew word, the walk of the world is dark. Paul just said that in the previous verses that Bob went over last week. Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them. So we have the world, the flesh, And then who's the third one?

The devil, right? So Satan's influence. And what is Satan's number one tool for influence? I know some of you are thinking talk shows. He comes across as an angel of light. He is the deceiver. He comes in and says, did God really say that? Did God really want for you to not have fun? Because that's what he does, right? He twists the power of the Holy Spirit and righteousness into looking like not fun. Right? That's one of his fundamental tools. What did he offer Jesus when he was out in the wilderness? He took him to the top of the temple. Wouldn't it be fun to have all the kingdoms? God has promised you all the kingdoms. I can promise you all the kingdoms. It's a switcheroo, right?

So the days are evil, and it's not that the day by itself is evil as a time span, although if you've ever programmed around dates and days in the computer world, they can be evil in that regard. But the point of things here is that Paul is challenging them in this context that they would look at the opportunity to be righteous exemplified. Righteousness exemplified. This is God's righteousness through you.

And you'll forgive me, I just saw a typo. My computer didn't highlight it because it's correct. The second sentence under the days are evil says however we we. It should say see. I was leaning on the little squiggly red line which I didn't get there and I missed it when I was reading through it earlier. So sorry about that.

However, we see in context here that we're given the opportunity to be righteousness exemplified through the power of the Holy Spirit. Not of our own strength, but the Holy Spirit's strength. We will contrast with secular living, secular thinking, and secular myths representation of goodness.

Steve? Well, another thing I'm just kind of jumping out at me is, in all three of these verses, 15, 16, 17, there's a phrase in each of them that ties together. Be wise, redeeming the time, understanding the will of the Lord. All those three components are married to each other. That's how we redeem time is by understanding God's will. I think I rephrased what I said earlier a little bit.

It's not that I'm fighting something, it's growing in the Lord. That's where the fight succeeds. So this idea of fighting against the world, the flesh, and the devil is actually thematically, we're at a pivot point where we're going to go into chapter 6.

He's going to build, he's doing a lot of comparison, contrast, he's going to build to chapter 6 where we're going to see the spiritual warfare element. And what's powerful about the spiritual warfare element, and I'd always Listen, I grew up charismatic in my high school years, so I heard some really humdinger things about spiritual warfare that I will never repeat to anyone, even as a joke, because it was pretty bad. But the spiritual warfare stuff that's coming up is about chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, where Paul has continued to emphasize unity. togetherness. The spiritual warfare is you're a unit together, guarding together, standing together, armed together, protecting together.

And so this principle here, the days are evil, we're not up against evil days alone. We're up against evil days together. So yes, Steve, he is building a comparison and contrast ideas. He's been building this. Next week we're going to hit more comparison and contrast ideas and then transition into the last part of the chapter, which is our favorite wedding chapter, right? Or verses, unless you're a First Corinthians 13 person. But the idea is it's building with this comparison and contrast.

Then in 17 he says, so then do not be foolish, and again we've talked about foolishness and how that would be perceived, but understand what the will of the Lord is. God's will contrasts foolishness. And that's a really important thing for us to consider. That we know what the Lord's will is, and we're going to see what that is in more depth in the coming verses.

One thing to consider, I haven't done a lot of cross-references in this, but let's jump over to Romans chapter 8. I'm sorry, Romans chapter 12. I was thinking of a different thing. Romans chapter 12, starting in verse 1. See if this sounds familiar, not just because you read the verses, but because you're comparing it to Ephesians.

Okay? Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. Verse 2. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

Does that sound kind of familiar, like Paul maybe being consistent in his message? So God's will is in contrast to foolishness, and so we need to consider and understand what the will of the Lord is. Now here's my favorite, this is Greek geek, okay? But it's good, it's good. And not overwhelming.

But he says to understand or consider together. It's a soon prefixed word. It's a together, that's where we get symphony, right? Soon is a prefix for symphony. Come together and understand together what the will of the Lord is. So that means, if we understand it together, that means you know. That means you understand. That's good. I have understanding. But it's understanding together. It's a common understanding. And that right there is a really powerful thing to consider.

Do you know what God's will is? Do I know what God's will is? Do we know what God's will is together? It contrasts foolishness. we need to come together in understanding and we need to be making the most of our time and we need to be walking in God's wisdom and growing and coming together and again that's not legalism but that's the life of Christ lived out in the body so there's a lot to consider in these short verses there's a lot of contrasting the two sides of things there's some things to consider about evaluation I have to tell you The world that we live in today, whether we use technology or not, tends to be able to fill up our time.

I was up past midnight three nights this week, and I got up early almost every single one of the mornings after that. And I didn't slow down in between, other than to make time to make more coffee to get through the next cycle, right? But due to obligations I made for myself, which are good, I do this on purpose, I had to have time to study God's Word. I'm not telling you you should do that. I'm saying that if we don't make the time to look closely, if we don't take the time to look, are the days evil? Am I countering the evil days? If we don't take the time to evaluate those things, what's the outcome?

I don't mean this as a legalistic proclamation, but the outcome is that the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write this, and we're not fulfilling the fullness of what could be there in our lives as believers. We'll be missing out on the opportunities to encourage one another. We'll be missing out on the opportunities to love one another. We'll be missing out on the opportunities to be preaching the gospel.

Because no one will look at you and go, oh that's wisdom compared to foolishness. Right? That's what he's saying there. So we have an opportunity to be growing together and coming together and understanding together and loving together. Not. We also have the opportunity not to do that. But we know one of them is better than the other. That's an easy evaluation. Any other thoughts or questions? Again, I'm not trying to be legalistic.

I'm trying to challenge you to consider what Paul wrote here because I have been extremely challenged by it myself. I was thinking about when he said the Pac-Man thing was really good. When you were talking about that, I thought the Pac-Man thing will come and eat us up and then we'll lose a life. It shows you're a little dated in my games. I don't even know that there are modern games like Pac-Man. But there is Pac-Man at one of the pizza places near our house.

The thing that I found to be really cool in this is that Paul has used the sun prefix, the together prefix, throughout Ephesians over and over and over again. And that's exciting for me because I love people. And Jesus loves people. So we have some people-ness, people of Christ, that Paul was excited about. Two thousand years later, still relevant.

All right, let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the truth of your word, the challenge that it brings. We pray that instead of the flesh rearing up in legalism, that instead the Spirit would live through us and we would see that in coming together and studying and encouraging and teaching and loving as your word reveals in Ephesians. We just thank you for the life we have in Christ. In Jesus' name, amen.