A name you won't hear in the church much is Henry David
Thoreau. He wrote an essay called
Walking, where the whole intention was to help the people
that read his essay to do just that, to put 1 foot in front of
the other, to get out in nature and to walk.
And he lived in the mid 19th century, and he feared the
encroachment of industry and commercialism as the cities were
rapidly expanding. And he was afraid that there
wouldn't be anywhere to go and walk anymore.
Just shortly after him was Ulysses S Grant, who signed the
Yellowstone National Park Protection Act into law and
established the first National Park, in part.
So we would always have a place to go and put 1 foot in front of
another and to be out in nature and to walk.
It would always be part of our experience.
And there's a lady named Cherie Harder, president of the Trinity
Forum. She said to throw a walk in
nature was something significant, sublime, even
sacred, a spurt of vitality, a revelation of beauty, and even
at times, an act of resistance against injustice.
And while Thoreau was critical of the Church and religious
institutions, he preached walking as a form of liturgy, an
embodied practice that formed the thinking, imagination and
values, and therefore the character of the practitioner.
It was a way to become more alive and more fully human, a
way he followed throughout his own life.
There's much to learn from walking to enhance our gratitude
for the natural world and our appreciation of our place in it
and our awe of the Creator. And so he was critical of
Christianity. But he still says of walking, it
requires a direct dispensation from heaven to become a Walker.
And so us as the church, we would say the same thing.
We would agree and say that this Christian life on this Christian
walk must be granted. It's a direct dispensation of
heaven that we get the gift of walking after God.
And so we, we want in our wisdom to understand that this is not
just an, an intellectual conception of walking with God,
but truly walking biblically with God.
That's why Christians are called adherents of Christianity, are
called being on the way. The way implies our religion.
We walk in it and Jesus Christ saying I am the way and the
truth and the life. And he invites every Christian
to follow after him, which implies some level of walking
and following in his footsteps. And as you follow Jesus, you'll
see in Scripture that he's never portrayed as being in a hurry.
You never see Jesus anxious, you never see him stressed.
You never see him run. You see him walk, He withdraws,
He stops, he waits, and he walks first.
Peter 221 Christ left you an example so that you might follow
in his footsteps, walking after him.
And those who walk after Jesus closely and follow his heart are
called those who walk with God. Genesis 524 Enoch walked with
God in Genesis 69. Noah was a righteous man,
blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.
And in the summary of the Christian life in Micah 68, a
passage you all know they probably have memorized, he says
he has told you, Oh man, what is good and what does the Lord
require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and
to walk humbly with your God. Turn in your Bibles to Ephesians
515 and we're going to see the the 7th and final time that
Christians are called to walk in the book of Ephesians.
And you can listen so that you can become one who truly
understands what Scripture means when it tells you to walk after
God. Ephesians 5, we're going to look
at verses 15 to 21. Paul says, 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. To go back to Ephesians one to
three. This was theology.
This is giving our our new identity and it's all rooted and
found in theology proper in God the Father.
He says that you are to walk and the unity that God has created.
We were to preserve the unity of the Spirit and the bond of
peace. It's unity that we preserve, but
that is given by God. He goes in Ephesians 41
summarizing all of that theological content.
He says, therefore walk worthy of the calling to which you've
been called. Walk of the calling.
Skip to Ephesians 417 As we've moved through these these
metaphors of walking, he says walk not how the world walks,
but walk in holiness. And we move to Ephesians 5, one
to two. We were commanded to walk in
love, walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for
us. And then 57 to 9 commanded to
walk in the light, for at one time you were darkness, but now
you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of the light,
for the fruit of what is right and found is found in all that
is good and right and true. And then you come to our text
today, Ephesians 515. He says for the last time we are
to walk, but now in wisdom and in the fullness of God's Spirit.
And the command for you today is to look carefully how you're
walking, not as unwise but as wise.
And the beauty of the metaphor is in its simplicity.
We talk about walking over and over because it keeps coming up
again. And it's comprehensive of all of
life and as because it is comprehensive of all of life.
And it's so simple. Paul's going to take this
concept and apply Christianity to all of our life, all aspects
of our life. And so the command is look
carefully. And the word look means direct
your attention to this. Consider this, give thought to
this, and He's giving us an opportunity to pause for just a
moment and look how you're ordering your life.
Is it ordered spiritually? Is it Spirit ordered?
And He helps to us to examine our lives by looking at 3
particular areas. He does this by bringing up 3
contrasts that we're going to do together.
Look through together. The first one's in verses 15 to
16, He says don't walk as unwise but as wise, redeeming the time.
That's the first contrast. The second one comes in verse
17. He says don't walk foolishly,
but know what the will of the Lord is.
And then the third contrast is in verses 18 to 21, not drunk
with wine, but filled with the Spirit.
Not filled with wine, but when filled with the Spirit.
And these contrasts are our focus.
They represent idolatrous distortions to what our hearts
are prone toward. There's these good and gracious
gifts that God has given and in our in our flesh, we, we distort
them and they remind us of these, these gifts that our time
understanding and pleasure and we see that God has given the
gifts. We distort them and God redeems
them. We'll put it in a simple
outline. The first one will be we redeem
the time without worshipping efficiency.
We redeem understanding without worshipping autonomy and then
finally we redeem pleasure without worshipping the world's
goods. And we steal that word
redemption from verse 16. It's a very purposeful word that
Paul uses and it means to buy back.
Redemption is a salvation word. We were we were bought with a
price. And here he's saying you are
buying back that which otherwise might be wasted or corrupted
from the powers of this world. So Paul saying these our
understanding and time and pleasure, these are the gifts of
God. The world can't take them from
us, and neither will we corrupt them ourselves.
All right, These are the gifts of God.
And so Paul redeems them so that we can walk in a manner worthy
of the calling to which we've been called.
Look at the first one with me, verses 15 to 16.
We will redeem the time without worshipping efficiency.
Sherry Harder, president of Trinity Forum, explains that the
pressure on Christians to live as machines or as avatars grows
every year. The pressure to be endlessly
productive, ever available, always online.
If you feel that way, can you nod at me?
You feel the pressure to be productive like a machine.
And some of that desire to be efficient and to be productive
is a good thing. We preach all the time.
Protestant work ethic is is to be celebrated.
We look out in the world and we see the the heaviness and the
weight of all the ministry that needs to happen.
And thinking of an old hymn called Rise Up, O Men of God, it
says that the power of the church is unequal to the task
that we've been given there. We don't have enough power for
this calling that God has given us to.
And so there has to be some level of of measured effort.
And so we look at at the pressure that 7.772 billion
people in this world, as counted by the IMB, need fellowship and
discipleship and salvation. And by their estimates, 59% of
the world has no access to the gospel.
That's a weighty statistic. There's 328,947 children in the
foster care system. A point in Time count revealed
last year that there were 771,480 people experiencing
homelessness on a single night last year.
And there are 117,300,000 refugees displaced in the world
right now because of persecution, war or violence.
So you hear that and you say, who has time for a weekend away
to rest with that going on in our world?
Who has time to go to the bathroom when 59% of the world
has no access to the gospel? And so here's where you feel the
pressure toward efficiency and optimization and scale.
And God's given us time as a gift.
That's what he's saying in this passage.
And it's meant to be stewarded according to God's Word more
than it's meant to be optimized. Scripture brings balance.
And he's going to remind you in a moment, you can't change the
world. I'll just relieve that pressure
from you. Your, your call is to be
faithful, to shepherd your time and to steward your time, not to
optimize it. So these, these statistics can
burden you and they can crush you.
And here's the temptation to worship efficiency and
optimization and scale. We could say, what if we could
disciple Christians faster? What if we could make disciples
of Jesus Christ five times as efficiently as we do now?
What if we could scale righteousness and holiness and
plant more churches more quickly?
What if Chris and I and John and Hudson could optimize our sermon
prep time down to two or three hours a week so that we could do
more and more and more? What would be the result of
that? Would it be good?
One modern missionary organization says that their
goal is to reach the maximum number of people for Christ in
the least amount of time in the most efficient way.
And when the Scriptures are saying here redeem the time for
the days are evil, it doesn't mean redeem the time because the
days are passing away and there's only so little time you
have to have. And so we need to do as much as
we can. That's that's not what it's
saying. It's saying redeem the time
because the days are evil, meaning we're part of this evil
wicked world system and there's evil people all around us.
So use the God-given opportunities as they present
themselves. The days are evil.
That's Ephesians 2. Two, you're living among a
horrible wicked system. And so your call is to seize the
opportunities in front of you as God leads.
Your call is not to distort the gift of time.
One other way of distorting it on the on the the edge of
efficiency and doing everything you can and as much as you can
would be to do nothing. That's the opposite of redeeming
your time. And so there are some that are
lethargic and lazy. You're not pushing back darkness
with light. So Scripture teaches on wisdom
using wisdom, how much time to rest versus how much time to be
active. I love Ecclesiastes.
We're going to go back there someday.
Ecclesiastes 46 says better as one handful with quietness than
two handfuls of toil and a striving after the wind.
This is your balance, right? Better.
No handfuls. You're lazy, you're doing
nothing, you have nothing, you're doing nothing. 2 handfuls
is your, it says it's toil and striving after the wind.
And so it doesn't say this is how you order your day.
God's will for you is, you know, you do this at 9:00 AM and this
at 10 AM. It says 1 handful with quietness
is better than none or two with striving after the wind.
There's your balance and you go to the book of Ecclesiastes.
It's going to tell you as a whole what that whole book is
doing is reminding you, you cannot change the world.
There's one person that can do it and it's Jesus Christ and he
takes the pressure off of you. What you are called to do is to
be faithful in the sphere that God has given you.
And so we bring balance. Scripture balances this idea of
redeeming the time with another virtue and it's long-suffering.
James in the last book of his chapter of his book says be
patient. Therefore, brothers, he slows
you down. He says be patient until the
coming of the Lord and see how the farmer waits for the
precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it until it
receives the early and the late rains.
So also you be patient. So he says you are to be like a
farmer and he slows you down and he says be patient, be patient,
be patient, be patient. And sometimes things in the
church, if you've been here for any amount of time, you know,
sometimes we move very quickly and praise God for that.
It seems like the Spirit will sometimes open up a doorway and
we move and everything falls in place and we seem to just move
effortlessly. And then there's other times
where progress seems very, very slow.
And that's in the eye of the beholder, I think even of the
replant. When God opened the door for
that, it was 8 months, it seemed like we were blazing.
He opened the door. We moved over 200 people to this
building and to merge with this congregation.
We lost no members as we did it. It was the supernatural work of
God. And then other times it feels
like we're standing still. And so this is the balance of
Scripture. I think it comes with wisdom
that we move as the Lord moves and as a general role.
When you move and establish things hastily, they fall away
hastily. And when things come with a
certain slowness, I've, I've learned to, to actually love
this about our elder board here. Elder board is that things come
deliberately and they come slowly.
And I think that attends wisdom. It's, it's a good thing.
It's well said that individuals tend to underestimate what they
can do in five years and overestimate what they can do in
one. And so we need to be wise.
We need to be patient. We blend these two virtues,
urgency and patience, and they fit together in God's Kingdom.
You are called to be urgent and you are called to be patient.
So it is in Scripture. Proverbs 19 Two.
Desire without knowledge is not good.
Whoever makes haste with his feet misses his way.
Proverbs 21 five. The plans of the diligent surely
lead to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to
poverty. So when you feel that pressure
of the world to to be a machine or to be an avatar, consider the
optimization of the prophet Jeremiah, who after a lifetime
of ministry had no converts. And consider the scale of Jesus
Christ, who spent his entire life ministering in a small
region of the eastern Mediterranean and after pouring
himself out had a Church of only 120 people.
And you can consider the efficiency of parents like Lois
and Eunice as they taught Timothy.
You can consider you as a parent as you try and teach your
children it. They resist efficiency and
optimization. We spent all last week teaching
Lily the letter L. That's what she learned last
week. They resist progress.
It it's there's only so far efficiency can take spiritual
growth and discipleship. And so I'll take the pressure
off you again with the wisdom of Ecclesiastes.
You will not change the world. Your call is to be urgent.
Your call is to be patient and to stay in the sphere that God
has given you. George Mueller wrote
beautifully, every child of God is first to get into the sphere
appointed of God and there exercise full trust and live by
faith upon God's sure word of promise.
You get in the lane that God has given you and you serve
faithfully in your context. And so our culture, when we
think of redeeming the time, we think along the lines of speed
and efficiency. But when God and the Scriptures
talk about redeeming the time, it's along the categories of
wisdom, morality, and relationship.
And so it leaves room for efficiency, but it brings this
balance. Scripture is so balanced and
this verse on redeeming the the gift of time is in the context
of being wise. You can look down and see it in
verse 15. He says look carefully then how
you walk not as unwise, but as wise.
So your manner of life has to be characterized by wisdom and not
the absence of it. And you see that there's the
translations of this make a stark contrast.
That's there in the original. You don't walk with without
wisdom. Ah, Sophia, but you walk with
wisdom, not ah Sophia, but Sophia.
And so we actually saw these, these passages, we were to walk
in wisdom and we were to walk in light.
So we named our daughter Sophia. And her name is Sophia Elaine,
which is literally wisdom and light.
But like, if we name our child this, maybe she will embody
this. But it says you don't walk.
Ah, Sophia. But Sophia and wisdom goes
beyond intellectual understanding and cognitive
awareness. There's no biblical category for
for wisdom. That is just merely the
accumulation of knowledge. It's living it out, which is why
it says here you are to walk in wisdom.
Lu Anita, define it in their lexicon.
It's one's capacity for understanding and thus to arrive
at insight. Wisdom is insight into known
facts. So it's one thing to to know the
verses on walking and that you can you can categorize it.
I'm to walk in love. I'm to walk in light.
I'm to walk in in wisdom. And it's another thing to
actually do it. And so that's what Paul is
saying. He's saying, examine your walk,
examine your heart and walk in holiness.
Knowledge is knowing that you were to walk in these things and
it's to memorize the verses. Wisdom is living it out
faithfully. And so the first gift that God
gives you that Paul highlights in this section is the gift of
time. And we tend to disorder it by
worshipping ourselves and not making any use of time.
We worship it on one end of squandering our days and
laziness and lethargy. And I think more of us,
especially in a church like this where we we work so hard is we
tend to overwork and we prioritize efficiency and
optimization and output. And we worship the God of
efficiency. And so God orders our time
toward faithfulness and stewardship, not maximal output.
So you're called a steward your time and to redeem it, not to
optimize it. And you look now to the second
gift as we continue to verse 17, redeeming discernment without
worshipping control. So God gives also the gift of
understanding. Look at verse 17.
Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of
the Lord is. So I think we take this gift of
understanding and we warp it in a couple of key ways.
I think #1 again, we worship ourselves as gods and we say, I
want to be. I want to do my will.
I want to go the direction that I see and deem is best for me.
I will determine the pathway that I will go.
We could call this autonomy. The word autonomy literally
means self rule. I am my own law.
I determine where I go. Now, this is captured in the
famous poem, I know you've heard it, William Henley's poem
Invictus. I am the master of my fate.
I am the captain of my soul. And so while we might not say,
you know outright that this is the way that I live.
We, we default to it on accident when we say I'm going to submit
to, to everything God says so long as it doesn't interfere,
interfere with my will. So long as this doesn't
interfere with my will and my plans and my design for my life,
I'll submit to God's word. Or I'll take the Scriptures so
long as they don't cost me something, so long as it's
convenient. I'll submit to the Word of God
so long as I don't have to reshape myself from my
lifestyle. Forgetting the words of First
Corinthians 619 to 20, he says. Or do you not know that your
body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, whom you have from God,
and you are not your own? You were bought with a price.
Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which
are gods. You're bought, you're redeemed,
you've been purchased. You are a slave of sin.
Now you've been bought and you are a slave of righteousness,
but a slave you remain, and we submit to the will of God.
You can't confess. Jesus is Lord while using the
understanding and the discernment that He has given
you to determine the way that you will go.
You submit your understanding to His control.
And if you want to see how it works out in Scripture, you see
it in Isaiah 68. Who will go for us?
Whom shall I send? And Isaiah submits himself to
the Lord and he says, here I am Lord, send me.
And it makes you understand that there's the, the metaphor of of
a throne. There's a throne in your heart.
And only one person can be seated on at an at a time.
Either you are seated on the throne determining where you
will go, or the Lord is seated on that throne.
You give your understanding, you give control to him.
First Samuel 310 When he says, Samuel, Samuel, he says, speak
Lord, your servant is listening. Luke 138 Mary, submitting
herself to the Lord, says, Behold, I am a servant of the
Lord, let it be to me, according to your word, Jesus to his own
Father in heaven. Luke 2242 Nevertheless not my
will, but yours be done. And Jesus says to Paul from
heaven, I am Jesus of Nazareth. And Paul says, What shall I do?
Lord, You can practice and rehearse saying that what shall
I do, Lord? What way do I go?
That's your reminder that Jesus says not everyone who says to
me, Lord, Lord, will inherit the Kingdom of heaven.
But who inherits the Kingdom of heaven?
The one who does the will of the Father.
Look at verse 17. Don't be foolish.
Understand what the will of the Lord is and the implication is,
and then do it. Submit to it, remembering that
you were bought. And there's a second way that we
distort this gift of understanding that the Lord has
given us, and it's by submitting to the gods of the age, the
revelation of the gods of the age, rather than the revelation
that God has given us in the Bible.
And so we we speak of scientists like we would speak of priests
saying, would you please look into your microscope and give
some revelation about what I am and who I am?
Where we say to the cosmologists, we look to them
and speak to them and say, look into your telescopes that we
might have some new revelation about where we came from.
And we go to the soft sciences, we talk to psychologists and
sociologists and anthropologists that we might be granted
revelation about how we are to live.
And it reminds us that there's the wisdom of the world and
there's the wisdom of God. And the wisdom of the world says
you can be wise in this world if you would study gender theory
and if you would study performativity and de
naturalization and intersectionality and queer
theory, and the world will look at you and they will say you are
wise. The Bible says don't be foolish,
but understand what the will of the Lord is. 74 times in
Proverbs he contrasts wisdom with foolishness.
These same words, the one who walks in the ways of the Lord
and the one who follows the path of wisdom versus the fool and
the fool is the one. It's the same word used in Luke
about the guy, remember, the one who who has such a big harvest
that he says, I don't have anywhere to store all my crops.
So he says, what am I going to do?
I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones.
And I'll say to my own soul, this is the wisdom of the world,
soul, relax, eat, drink and be merry.
And the Lord looks at him and he says, you fool, it's the same
word. So in contrast to being foolish,
Scripture says, use the understanding that God has given
you to discern what the will of the Lord is.
Reason it out with the help of the Holy Spirit.
Read the Scriptures, submit to God's revelation, and see for
yourself what it is you should do.
As a theologian named Michael Allen, Rafael Bello introduced
me to he. He has a a quote talking about
this text that has become one of my favorite quotes ever.
And he says this text reminds us of a mature church who knows the
will of the Lord. Not because a minister has told
them what particular choices to make, but because a minister has
instead equipped them with the word of the Lord and has LED
them in a community marked by these formative rhythms.
Do you love that as much as I do?
It's not that you need to be told what to do is that we are
part of a church body that is continually getting into
fellowship. It's going to put these rhythms
and wash these rhythms over you in just a minute.
The rhythms of fellowship and of worship and of gratitude and of
submitting to one another. And he says because we are being
washed by this each and every week and indeed every day, we
know what the will of the Lord is.
We've made it a habit of submitting to the Word and
understanding the Word and engaging in fellowship.
And he's saying this is the great gift of God.
And so understanding doesn't come from, you know, what seems
best to our wandering hearts. And it doesn't come from
submitting to the revelation of the present evil age.
It's it's also the will of the Lord's not whispered to us in in
private moments. And it's not mystically found on
some Ouija board. It's understood by exercising
our understanding in reading God's Word.
It takes intellectual effort. It takes the gift of the Holy
Spirit who illuminates our mind. If you study the Scriptures, if
you submit to them, then the will of the Lord is clear.
Third gift that the Lord gives. The third contrast, redeeming
pleasure without worshipping the world's goods.
Read with me verses 18 to 21, Paul says.
And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be
filled with the Spirit addressing one another and
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. So the final contrast, he says
don't get drunk with wine, but instead be filled with the
Spirit that the issue is control.
Are you yielding control of your faculties to wine, which is no
control at all, or are you yielding control to the Holy
Spirit and being fully in control by the Holy Spirit?
And so it's helpful here to see to the prohibition is not to
refrain from wine. He's redeeming the pleasures of
the world. The prohibition is to refrain
from intoxication. He says intoxication is
debauchery, which literally means incorrigibility.
It's a word that means lacking understanding or lacking
control. And this is coming back to
redeeming the time. We can't be drunk because
there's work to do, right? We can't, we can't waste our
time and be lethargic because there's there's work to do.
And so oppositely, he says you have to be filled with the
Spirit. Colossians 316.
If you put this passage in alignment with that, you'll see
that being filled with the Spirit is letting the word of
Christ dwell in you richly. Being filled with the Spirit is
being fully submitted to Jesus Christ, being fully submitted to
his word. And there's a kind of a, a
decision that you have to make, I'm going to put before you and
let you make it. It's very interesting that
downstream of this main verb, which we're going to see in
multiple weeks, even getting into husbands, loving your
wives, these are all participles hinging on the main verb of be
filled with the spirit. That's the main verb that's
going to all this is going to come from it.
And so we have to understand how do all of these participles,
what's their relationship with this main verb?
There's kind of two ideas here. The first option is to say that
they are simply a result, that if you are filled with the
spirit, the result is that you worship and you fellowship and
you sing and address one another in psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs and you submit to one another and you're
there's so much gratitude overflowing from your heart.
It's it's the first option, the result.
And the second one is much more interesting.
It indicates means meaning if you are doing these things, if
you are coming to church to fellowship and to worship and to
mutually submit to one another and to express gratitude, then
you will then you will be filled by His spirit.
Meaning that when you do these things, then the Spirit will
come and fill you. And there's some precedence in
this second chronicles. The people are singing and
playing instruments and raising their voices.
And then the temple of the Lord is filled with the glory cloud
or you come to Acts in Antioch. It says that the church is
worshipping the Lord and fasting.
And then the Holy Spirit says, set apart for me Barnabas and
Saul. So you choose which one you
think is the most faithful. But I want you to see wherever
you land. Paul's telling you this is what
ought to come out of a Christian household naturally.
This is what is to identify your fellowship.
This is what is to be part of your church.
These are like the gifts that came before.
Paul says that God has given the gift of pleasure.
Like the other contrasts, we take these good gifts and we
distort them. How do we distort the pleasures
that God has given us? He says it here that we use them
in excess. We take the gift of wine and we
become drunk rather than enjoying wine.
We get drunk with it, or we seek our joy in the gift rather than
the giver of the gift. Have you ever been guilty of
that replacing the joy of a relationship with God and his
church with the temporary highs of alcohol or substances, or we
use those substances to cope and define coping as dealing with
and attempting to overcome problems and difficulties.
And so you think this goes back to Paul saying we're redeeming
the time because the days are evil.
We live in terrible times. Remember those statistics.
There's, there's wickedness all around.
And so you can cope with that through substances or you can
cope with that through these measures that God has given.
So God redeems these things. We have to ask as he left us
with nothing to draw pleasure from, as he left you no ways to
cope with the difficulties of the evil days, Is there nothing
that will help you overcome the negative emotions like drugs and
alcohol can? And this is where he says he's
left you fellowship, He's left you worship, he's left you
gratitude, and he's left you submission.
These are gifts of God. These are pleasures.
These are how you cope in the last days with all of the the
hardships that come on you. He begins with fellowship.
Being around other believers is balm for your soul.
Being around other believers is literally healing for your soul.
Have you ever experienced this before?
It's incredible what happens. And so when you're in a bad
mood, when you're in a funk and you can't shake it, what you
don't need is alcohol. What you need is to be around
your church. And so for me, when I'm in a
funk, what I don't need is alcohol.
I need Jeff and Debbie Goss to come to my back porch.
I need them to come with vanilla bean ice cream and strawberries
and aged balsamic vinegar. And I need to light my chiminea.
And I need to be there with my wife, and we need to fellowship.
And you know what? By the end of the evening, I'm
feeling pretty good. It's it's healing.
It's literal healing for your soul.
Not just fellowship, but worship is part of the pleasure of the
world. Verse 19 addressing one another
in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
Jeff was very careful in selecting the songs this
morning. So we sang psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs together, making melody to the Lord with our
heart. It's amazing how you can enter
church on a Wednesday night or a Sunday morning completely
defeated and completely exhausted and walk out
rejuvenated. It happens to me.
We've resolved that on the days we at least want to go to Life
Group or at least want to go to church, we will especially go
because we know when we leave, we will leave healed.
So we sing. It says here psalms and hymns
and spiritual songs. I wanted to go through that.
It's hard to even make any distinction between them.
They're synonyms. Psalms is the word psalmos,
which means literally plucking, which is why we've taken that.
We we see that word and we deduce from it that the psalms
were all set to the Old Testament Psalms were set to
stringed instruments because of that word.
And so most likely the word psalms means the Old Testament
psalms. We tried to prioritise,
prioritise this as a church recent sermon series was, was
surrounding this exact thing. We built the whole sermon series
around singing Psalms. And the second word is, is
hymns. The, the literal word is hymnos.
It's where we get our words for hymns.
And it doesn't even necessarily mean singing.
It's, it's reciting or singing poetic material.
And it's, it was used in the Gospels to singing the Psalms at
Passover. Some of you know, at Passover,
they would always sing songs before they would go out.
Jesus sang hymns before he went out to the Mount of Olives.
This is the word that it used or when Paul and Silas sang hymns
while they were in prison, This is the word that was used.
It's it's songs of praise to God.
And finally, he says spiritual songs Odice where we get our
word ode. And most often it refers to
songs of joy or praise or just simply singing.
So again, you it's hard to make distinctions between these
words, but the the point is clear.
We hear his message. The people of God are meant to
sing. We are meant to sing and to
worship through song. The third one is gratitude.
Read verse 20, giving thanks always and for everything to God
the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This is corporate Thanksgiving. There's entire Psalms in the Old
Testament that are under the category of corporate
Thanksgiving. Look, when are you to be
thankful? It says always, and it says what
are you to be thankful for? And you continue reading.
It says always and for everything, all prayer being
directed toward God the Father. Remembering what James says,
that every good and perfect gift comes from above, from the
Father of lights in whom there is no variation or shadow due to
change. We give thanks toward God the
Father. We give thanks for time,
especially here. We give thanks for the
understanding that he's given us, and we give thanks for the
pleasures that he's given us in this world.
And if you lack something to give thanks for, turn here and
give thanks for those. And finally, verse 21,
submission, submitting to one another out of reverence for
Christ. And so mutual submission is a
requirement for membership. Every single time somebody
stands up here, we say, are you willing to submit to this person
as they even submit to you? And that's why we say yes and
Amen, because that's part of, it's not just part of
membership, it's part of being filled with the Spirit.
This is characteristic of what it means to be full of the
Spirit. We submit to one another, and
I've gotten to the point where I trust my church more than my own
wandering soul. And so I come to you all more
often than I even come to myself.
And I say, should I adopt more kids?
Just tell me. You tell me.
Should I go back to school? Please, elders of my church,
just tell me. Should I go back to school?
I don't know. I'm clouded by all my interests
and all my sinful heart. And so you can do.
That's why we come here. And it's not it's, it's, it's
humility. It's not a weakness to come and
submit to your church. It's humility of saying there is
somebody else in the world who has the Spirit of God and
there's somebody else in this world who can discern what's
best for me outside of myself. And so we come and we submit to
one another because this body can see things that send clouds
in ourselves. We listen to the body because
Paul says we are one body. Ephesians 425 Extremely famous
saying from John Calvin. A quote from him.
It was in every commentary I read this week.
He says God has so bound us to each other that no man ought to
avoid subjection. Where love reigns, there is
mutual servitude. He says, I do not even accept
kings and governors, for they rule in order that they might
serve. Therefore, it is very right that
he should exhort all and to be subject to each other.
So we submit to one another. So faith church is experienced.
If you didn't get this impression, I'll make it clear.
Faith is expressed and lived in community.
It's in all of this solitude is important for a time, but you
can't read this passage and escape without the understanding
that church, corporate church life is essential for life and
godliness an essential for spiritual formation and worship.
Walking in wisdom is walking in community since it's being
together, fellowship, being together, worshiping together
and singing and being grateful and submitting and the command
for you today is in verse 15. Look carefully how you walk
saying direct your attention to this.
Consider this God has given you good and perfect gifts.
He first gave you the gift of time.
Are you redeeming the time that he's given you or are you
squandering it in lethargy and laziness, or are you
overworking? He's given you the gift of
understanding. He says pay attention to this
and consider this. Are you submitting to no one or
are you submitting to the revelation of the wrong
authorities? He says you need to make sure
that there is not one word, not one letter, not one iota of the
Bible, that you are not submitting your will to submit
to it. Make much of the Scriptures.
And then finally, the third gift is the gift of pleasure.
Are you seeking pleasure in the gifts of the world, or are you
seeking pleasure in the giver of those gifts, even God himself?
Are you seeking joy and pleasure from the appropriate places,
fellowship and worship and gratitude and submission?
Paul says make much of your church, make much of this local
congregation. Do these things.
Walk in wisdom, walk in love, walk in the light, and you will
be like Enoch in Genesis 524, whom God said he walked with
God. Or you do these things and you
will be like Noah in Genesis 69, righteous and blameless in your
generation. Noah walked with God, we say.
May it be said of Heritage Church.
This is a church full of people who walk with God.
Deacons, please come forward as we look toward the Lord's
Supper. I'm going to pray for us.
And then we will pass out the elements and everybody who
confesses Jesus is Lord. All those who walk with God,
however imperfectly, we will take this meal and celebrate
together. Church, pray with me, Lord, we
are so grateful. God, we express our gratitude
corporately as a church for all the perfect gifts that you've
given us. You've given us a body, you've
given us like Elijah, there are 7000 men who have not bowed the
knee to bail. There will always be fellowship
because God is in control of all things and he has brought us a
church, a local body, and a fellowship that we can submit
to. So Lord, even when it's hard,
when we're prideful and we don't want to or help us to come to
church, help us to submit to one another.
Give us the courage to submit ourselves to your word even when
we're afraid, when our when our trust weakens, Lord, and we know
that you will prove yourself to be the great gift giver and that
your gifts are good and righteous and true and just.
Lord, give us strength, Give us wisdom that we may walk in it.
After you and your and your Son's name we pray.
Amen. Thanks for listening.
To learn more about Heritage Church or if you'd like to
respond to this sermon, visit our website at
www.heritageshawnee.org.