USING YOUR HEAD WHILE MOVING YOUR FEET
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on September 3, 2023 under 2023 |
Bethany Bible Church Sermon Message from September 3, 2023 from Ephesians 5:15-17
Theme: We must give careful attention to the paths of our feet—walking faithfully in God’s wisdom.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
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Over the past while, we’ve been looking together at Ephesians 5—and especially at what it teaches us about our ‘walk’.
Our ‘walk’—as the apostle Paul wrote about it in his letter to the Ephesian Christians—is a symbolic name for one of the most important aspects of our Christian life; and that is our daily conduct. The reality of our faith in Jesus is meant to demonstrate itself in the way we live throughout the course of our day—how we do our work, the places we choose to go, what we say, what we think, what we believe, how we treat others, the decisions we make, the priorities we hold to, and the causes we serve. Just as someone can chart out the course of our daily travels by the steps of our feet, they ought to be able to see the reality of our relationship with Jesus Christ by our day-to-day manner of living … that is, our ‘walk’.
Paul highlighted four aspects of our Christian ‘walk’ in Ephesians 5:1-17. We’ve learned about three so far. First, he spoke in verses 1-2 about our ‘walk in love’. Then, in verses 3-7, he wrote of our ‘walk in purity’. And last week, we looked at verses 8-14, and about our ‘walk in light’. And now, this morning, we’ll look at verses 15-17; and at the fourth aspect of our walk—our ‘walk in wisdom’. Paul wrote;
See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is (Ephesians 5:15-17).
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A couple of months ago, Marilyn and I had an opportunity to visit our son and daughter-in-law in San Francisco. They live in a small house in one of the historic districts in the heart of the city. And we stayed in a hotel just a short distance from their home—only four blocks away.
After a day of sightseeing together, we agreed to meet at their place for dinner. We had a great time eating and playing games. It was getting a little late, though—around 10:30 at night. And so, we decided to head back to the hotel. My son asked, “Do you know how to get there? It’s late; and it’s pretty dark.” And with great confidence, I said, “Sure! It’s just a few blocks downhill. How hard can that be?” I had a map on my phone; but because the hotel was so close, I didn’t bother consulting it. (You can already tell where this story is heading; can’t you?)
So; out the door, we went. We turned the corner from their place, and started heading ‘downhill’. Now; in San Francisco, half of any direction you can go is going to be ‘downhill’. And so, naturally, we walked ‘downhill’—thinking it was the right ‘downhill’. As we went past two blocks, I confidently told Marilyn that the hotel was just a couple more blocks away. By the sixth or seventh block, we began to wonder if something was wrong. It was dark, the fog was rolling in, we were getting just a little tired and chilly; but I was still confident. “Just a little further away,” I said. “We were going in the right direction, after all. It’s just downhill.”
But it wasn’t. After passing the tenth or eleventh block, we looked at the opposite corner and saw the bottom of the famous, curvy ‘Lombard Street’. That didn’t seem right. And that’s when I finally consulted the map … and found that we were about a half-hour’s walk in the opposite direction of where we should be. We gave up and called for an Uber ride home.
Once we got to the hotel, we called our kids, and told them what had happened—assuring them that we were safe. We all had a laugh about it the next day. But it actually could have been dangerous for helpless, confused wanderers like us. And I was reminded of an important lesson: When you have directions that get you through the dark, use them! It’s foolish to ignore them.
And the other day, I thought of how that experience of meandering ignorantly through a dark San Francisco night was an illustration of the way I used to live.
You see; before I placed my trust in Jesus Christ as my Savior—before He became my Lord and Master—I wandered through life in just that way. I thought I knew the right way to go. But I really didn’t; and the more I wandered, the worse I made things to be. I would make some foolish decision to participate in some sinful act; which caused problems. And then, I would try to cover up my problems by lying about them; which caused more problems. And that led to more sins … and more lies … and more problems. I would try to follow the bad examples of some other foolish people … and that would cause more problems. When confronted about it, I would respond with harsh words in the way that I saw other people respond … and that would cause still more problems. I would ignore the rules for ‘right and wrong’ that God has established—thinking I could solve things my way … and that made even more problems for me. My growing problems made me arrogant; and so, I dug my heels deeper into my sin and pride … and that made even more problems.
Everywhere I turned … and every direction I went … I just made more problems. I was just like what it warns us not to be in Ephesians 4:17-19;
This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness (Ephesians 4:17-19).
I knew that I was separated from God, and that I was destined for eternal judgment because of my sins. And yet, all that I was doing was wandering further and further from where He wanted me to be. And when I finally heard the message of the gospel of Jesus—that He died for my sins, and would save me if I trusted Him, and would guide my life if I’d let Him—I took Him up on the offer. I was washed clean of my sin and was saved! He was my Uber ride home.
But you know; even after that, I still had to learn to follow His instructions faithfully. I had to be taught—over time—the instructions He gave in the Bible. And when I’d wander from them—and try to follow my own path of wisdom—I’d end up causing problems for myself again. But He would forgive me and restore me. I had to learn that this whole matter of ‘walking in wisdom’ is an ongoing process of discipleship. I had to learn the danger of ‘meandering’ through life thoughtlessly—without consulting Him. I had to learn, by experience—and sometimes, by painful failure—to be careful where to put my feet in life in my daily walk with Jesus.
And that’s why this morning’s passage is so important. After having considered all the other aspects of what our ‘walk’ in Jesus Christ means, these three verses encourage us to learn what I had to learn; and that is. to walk carefully. We need to listen to His word, follow His directions, and put our feet upon the paths of His revealed wisdom that He calls us to put them.
Paul’s words in Ephesians 5:15-17 then, teach us that, as followers of Jesus, we must give careful attention to the paths of our feet—walking faithfully in God’s wisdom.
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Now; look with me at how Paul began in verse 15. Do you see the word “then”? In some Bible translations, it’s rendered “therefore”. And this tells us that what he’s about to tell us is motivated by what he has already told us.
So; what did he tell us? In verses 8-14, he told us about how important it is that we walk as “children of light”; that is, as those who used to walk around in darkness, but who now live in loving fellowship with the heavenly Father—walking around in the ‘light’ of favor with Him. He shines His light on the path for us; so that we can now clearly see how to walk with Him. In verses 10-11, we’re told that we’re to now live differently than we used to; “finding out what is acceptable to the Lord”, and having no “fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness …”
And so—consequently—we’re to stop ‘meandering through life’ in the manner that we used to walk. We’re not in the dark any longer. We’re to quit walking around in a blind, ignorant, foolish, careless manner. As he puts it in verse 15, “See then that you walk circumspectly …” That means to walk with our eyes wide open and with our mind alert—that is, to walk “prudently” and “carefully” and in such a way as to be alert to any traps or pitfalls. The English Standard Version puts it well when it says, “Look carefully then how you walk …”
It’s very dangerous for us not to pay attention to the paths of our feet. After all, we used to be deceived by the devil in the way that we walked. In Ephesians 2:1-3, Paul wrote;
And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others (Ephesians 2:1-3).
Most of us who have trusted Jesus look back at how we used to walk—and we shudder! Praise God that He has made us alive and has raised us to walk in a new way. But because of how we used to walk back then, we must pay diligent attention to how we walk now! We must be careful to walk in God’s words of instruction in a deliberate, intentional, and committed way. We must do as King Solomon instructed in Proverbs 4:20-27;
My son, give attention to my words;
Incline your ear to my sayings.
Do not let them depart from your eyes;
Keep them in the midst of your heart;
For they are life to those who find them,
And health to all their flesh.
Keep your heart with all diligence,
For out of it spring the issues of life.
Put away from you a deceitful mouth,
And put perverse lips far from you.
Let your eyes look straight ahead,
And your eyelids look right before you.
Ponder the path of your feet,
And let all your ways be established.
Do not turn to the right or the left;
Remove your foot from evil (Proverbs 4:20-27).
Did you know that God Himself carefully watches our steps? In Proverbs 5:21 it says;
For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord,
And He ponders all his paths (5:21).
And dear brothers and sisters in Christ; if our Father ponders all our paths, shouldn’t we?
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Now; how do we go about doing this? In verse 15, we’re given the command: ”See then that you walk circumspectly …” How does Paul tell us that this should happen?
As we read on, we find that he urges us to do this in three ways. First, we do so by paying attention to the examples that we follow. In the later half of verse 15, he says that we’re to walk circumspectly; “not as fools but as wise …” That word “as” suggests the idea of examples that can be either imitated or avoided. And we must pay attention to those examples.
Now; we need to be careful to understand this correctly. In the Bible, the ideas of ‘foolishness’ and ‘wisdom’ aren’t based on the degree to which someone is either intelligent or unintelligent. Rather, it’s based on how someone responds to God and His authority in their life. It isn’t about the content of our brains, but rather the submission of our hearts. The Bible tells us in Proverbs 1:7;
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge,
But fools despise wisdom and instruction (Proverbs 1:7).
“The fool”, we’re told in Psalm 14:1, “has said in his heart, ‘There is no God’”. So, true ‘foolishness’ and true ‘wisdom’ aren’t descriptions of the intellectual contents of the mind. Rather they’re descriptions of the moral attitudes of the heart. And what the apostle Paul is telling us is that—in walking in God’s wisdom—we must pay attention to the moral source of the examples we follow and the bits of advice we receive. Are they coming from someone who doesn’t believe in God and who turns their nose up at His commandments in the Bible, or are they coming from someone who reverences God and honors His word? Is it coming from a fool in the sight of God, or someone who’s truly wise before Him? The advice we receive may sound ‘smart’, and the examples we see may be humanly impressive; but we must ask, “Is it truly from God?”
Back in my days before I met Jesus—when I was walking around in the darkness—my most frequent downfalls came about because of the examples I followed. The only examples that I had of decision-making, or of responding to the trials and difficulties of life, were bad ones—ungodly examples of action from people who didn’t love or listen to the Lord. I got into trouble when I imitated them and followed their advice. And after a while, I began to notice that the people I was listening to were also getting into trouble. But when I finally placed my trust in Jesus, I became introduced to new friends … and new examples. I began to learn where to put my feet by watching and learning from wise Christians who were faithfully following Jesus.
You really can’t help but imitate—in some way—the examples you receive from the people you hang around with. In Proverbs 13:20, we’re told;
He who walks with wise men will be wise,
But the companion of fools will be destroyed (Proverbs 13:20).
And the interesting thing is that, once we start making the choice to follow the example of those who are truly ‘wise’ before God, we start to find that the impact of foolish people starts to lose its hold on us. All of us who have sought to put our feet in the paths of God’s wisdom know about this! The apostle Peter wrote about it and said;
For we have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles—when we walked in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. In regard to these, they think it strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you. They will give an account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead (1 Peter 4:3-5).
So; the first thing we see is that we give careful attention to the paths of our feet when we start thinking seriously about whose example we follow. Are we walking as “fools” or as “wise” in the individual decisions and actions of life?
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Another way that Paul tells us to “See then that you walk circumspectly” is by rightly evaluating the time in which we live. In verse 16, he wrote that we’re to be “redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”
The word that Paul uses is a word that means ‘to buy something out’ in order to make it available for use. But in this case, the word is used in an unusual way. It’s used in such a way as to say that we ‘buy something out for ourselves’ in order for us to make the most use of it. And the thing that we are told that we’re ‘to buy out for ourselves’, in order to make the best use of it, is ‘the time’—or, as a better way to put it, ‘the opportunity’ or ‘the occasion’ or ‘the unique situation’.
I think that a great way to understand this is by what Paul says in a very similar passage in Colossians 4:5. That’s where he wrote to the Colossian believers and told them;
Walk in wisdom toward those who are outside, redeeming the time (Colossians 4:5).
In Colossians 4:5, he was telling his believing friends to behave wisely in their relationships and interactions with unbelievers … buying up for themselves the opportunities so they will have the best chance to share the love of Jesus with them. But in Ephesians, he spoke of this in a more general way; urging his readers to buy up all the opportunities they can—and to make the most of those opportunities while they’re able—“because the days are evil”.
In Paul’s day—and in the day of the Christians to whom he was writing—the times were hard. The days were truly evil. It was very difficult to be a follower of Jesus back then. And because of the nature of world events as they were unfolding, the days were about to become harder. Did you know that in less than a decade’s time after he wrote this letter—within only six or seven years—the Roman armies came and completely destroyed the city of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.? What difficult days those were for followers of Jesus! And they were about to become worse; because after Jerusalem’s destruction, several successive periods of official persecution against Christians began to occur throughout the Roman empire—stretching over several periods of particularly harsh intensity—and lasting for almost 250 years. Millions of Christians were called upon to lay down their lives for Jesus—and under the most brutal forms of abuse and torture imaginable. That was why Paul urged his fellow believers to walk in wisdom before the Lord by ‘buying up the opportunities’ while they could!
We’re living in hard times too. What the apostle Peter said to his fellow Christians back then could equally apply to us today. In 1 Peter 4:12-19, he wrote;
Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you; but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy. If you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are you, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. On their part He is blasphemed, but on your part He is glorified. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, an evildoer, or as a busybody in other people’s matters. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in this matter. For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God? Now
“If the righteous one is scarcely saved,
Where will the ungodly and the sinner appear?”Therefore let those who suffer according to the will of God commit their souls to Him in doing good, as to a faithful Creator (1 Peter 4:12-19).
We don’t know what the immediate future may hold for us. But we can know for sure that a true walk of wisdom would mean that we pay attention to the times in which we’re living—redeeming the times while we can, because the days are evil. Are you thinking rightly about the times in which we’re living? Are you serious about them—conducting yourself in them with your eyes wide open? And are you buying up the opportunities while you can?—especially in view of the coming day of Jesus’ return? That’s a part of how we are to walk in wisdom.
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And there’s one more way that Paul calls us to “walk circumspectly”; and that’s by knowing the revealed will of the Lord in His word. As Paul said in verse 17, “Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” We’re not to walk around as unthinking, untutored Christians. True wisdom from God is not hidden from us. It’s available to us; and is given to us in order for us to walk faithfully in it. We can know our Lord’s will. And it’s found written down for us in His word—the Bible.
I love what the apostle Paul has told us in 2 Timothy 3:16-17. I recommend them as words that we should memorize. Paul wrote;
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
To say that the Scriptures are “given by inspiration” basically means that they are given by the breath of God. He spoke them into existence and guided their preservation for us. He is their source. And because He is their source, they are therefore ‘profitable’. And I love what the old Bible teacher Pastor Warren Wiersbe said about this. He said that the Bible is profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness—in other words, for knowing ‘what is right, what is not right, how to get right, and how to stay right’.
We can’t walk in wisdom in this world without being enlightened by God. And we can’t be enlightened in His wisdom without becoming good, faithful, careful students of His holy Scriptures. You don’t have to be a highly educated scholar. All you have to do is read the Bible regularly, interpret it carefully, and do what it says faithfully—trusting in the help of the Holy Spirit.
Are you reading the Bible? That’s the way that we learn to walk in wisdom.
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So; dear brothers and sisters; let’s no longer walk around in the dark like I did on that night in San Francisco—having the directions right there in my hand, but choosing to ignore them. Let’s see to it that we conduct ourselves in our daily life in Christ with true wisdom—walking carefully and circumspectly—not as fools but as wise—buying up the opportunities—understanding what the will of the Lord is.
And let’s do so, especially now! As Paul put it in Romans 13:11-14;
And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts (Romans 13:11-14).
AE
