SERMON: "Walking in Wisdom" (Eph. 5:15–17)
Walking in Wisdom (Eph. 5:15–17)
Series: Ephesians: Building the Church Text: Ephesians 5:15–17
By: Shaun Marksbury Date: May
14, 2023
Venue: Living Water Baptist Church Occasion: PM Service
I.
Introduction
There was an interaction I had recently with
an unbeliever. He said that Christians
are brainwashed and indoctrinated. I interjected
that we all receive indoctrination from various sources, but not everyone knows
it. The reason Christians go to church to
learn doctrine is because we have come to know a trustworthy source of truth. Because we have studied the claims of the
faith and found them to be true, we want to know more of the truth. Unfortunately, this individual waved this off
as pride, but hopefully, he will think more about it.
As someone once said, “I think we are all
brainwashed to a degree. The important thing is that we Christians choose what
we want to wash our brains with.”[1] We can choose to walk according to the wisdom
of the world or of our own understanding, none of which is wisdom at all, or we
can choose to walk after the truth of Christ.
And in our passage this evening, we find a call to walk in true wisdom.
At the start of the practical section of
Ephesians, Paul said, “I … implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the
calling with which you have been called” (4:1).
He then gives three more commands to walk (4:17; 5:2, 8), leading to
this one. He gives them in terms of gospel
transformation, love, purity, and now wisdom, explaining them with a series of
contrasts — juxtapositions between the old man and the new (4:17–32), self-sacrificial
love and self-indulgence (5:1–6), light and darkness (vv. 7–14), and now,
wisdom and foolishness.
I think we can all say, without much help,
that we don’t want to be foolish, but true wisdom isn’t something we gain on
our own; we need the Holy Spirit. As
such, through 6:9, Paul asks us to consider how a Spirit-filled, wise walk will
affect our relationships. First, he’ll
show us what this walk looks like within local-church relationships (through v.
21). Later, in vv. 22–33, he’ll present Spirit-filled
husband-and-wife relationships, followed by children-and-parent relationships
(6:1–4) and slave-and-master relationships (6:5–9) — all areas where wisdom is
necessary because foolishness destroys.
It is only through the Holy Spirit that we will have the wisdom to walk all
these relationships, exercising proper submission to the Lord and His Word.
So, these ideas, from the last chapter
through the next one, are all interconnected.
And right in the middle of this comes vv. 15–21. This section, as one commentary notes, is a “summary
climax” of these three practical chapters.[2] We’re commanded to walk with wisdom (vv.
15–16), to understand what the will of the Lord is (v. 17), and to be filled with
the Holy Spirit (v. 18–21). This section
summarizes the Christian walk.
So, we’re taking a few weeks in this
section. We’re going to consider today
what it means to walk in wisdom (vv. 15–17).
Then, we’re going to take a moment to tackle the question of alcohol. Finally, we’ll consider what it means to be
filled with the Holy Spirit. Hopefully,
at the end of this section, we will have what we need to walk with
Spirit-filled wisdom.
So, for today, we will discuss what it means
to have a wise walk. This wisdom comes from
understanding the way of the Lord (vv. 15–16) and in understanding the will of
the Lord (v. 17). Let’s consider the
first of these.
II.
First, a Wise Walk Understands the Way of the
Lord (v. 15–16)
Therefore
be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your
time, because the days are evil.
One of the first lessons we learn after
taking our first steps is to be careful with our newfound mobility. The spiritual walk likewise requires
care. Another way of rendering this verse
comes from the KJV, which says, “Therefore look that you walk carefully.” We must walk with precision as believers, with
wisdom.
We must recognize that there is a way to
walk without wisdom. There is a path
of the wicked that the wise avoid (Ps. 1:1).
This path is described here as an “unwise” or foolish one. Don’t be confused: The term “fool” doesn’t
refer to someone with intellectual deficiency (the simple).
We read in Scripture that the fool is someone
with a spiritual deficiency, a wicked individual. We read that the “fool has said in his heart,
‘There is no God’ ” which he then uses as an excuse for corruption and
abominable deeds (Ps 14:1). The fool
rejects the truth of God, having a darkening of the heart, so that any professed
wisdom there becomes foolish (Rm 1:21–22).
Foolishness is antithetical to Christian living.
Why is the fool this way? Because he lacks the fear of God and despises
wisdom and instruction (Pv 1:7). Of
course, it’s not practical knowledge and wisdom that he spurns — he may have
mentally accumulated much trivia in this world.
Again, a fool is not necessarily someone who lacks intelligence but
someone who despises the ways of God.
Unfortunately, we’re not just talking about
a malady for unbelievers. The text tells
us (believers) not to walk as the unwise. This means that Christians can act foolishly,
such as when we neglect the gospel and the truth in Christ (Gal 3:1–3). A Christian who gives no thought to his steps
plays the fool, whereas the wise avoids the path of the wicked (Ps. 1:1).
If you wonder whether you are able to
walk with wisdom, know that all believers have wisdom from God. For instance, just as Jesus became to us righteousness,
sanctification, and redemption, He also “became to us wisdom from God” (1 Cor
1:30). In Christ “are hidden all the
treasures of wisdom” (Col 2:3). It’s the
sacred writings about Him “which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to
salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tm 3:15). He changed us through His gospel; as another
passage explains, “we also once were foolish ourselves.… But…” (Ti 3:3f).
We have the wisdom we need to walk in this
world. Of course, knowing this isn’t
enough, and we still must grow in this wisdom.
A seed has all the genetic information a future fruit tree needs, but
the tree still needs to grow and mature first.
Even our Lord, born as God in flesh, “kept increasing in wisdom” (Lk
2:52). Where we seem to lack wisdom,
we can ask of God (Js 1:5), for our prayerful consideration of the Word will
help us grow in the wisdom we need to walk.
With this wisdom, we can do what we sometimes
think we can’t in our walk. It’s now
possible to make “the most of your time,” to live like twenty-four hours in the
day is a blessing from the Lord, for His glory. Whereas we were once rudderless in this
world, we now can buy up or redeem the time.
We must be thoughtful about our time because
the Lord allots us only so many days, a certain “stay on earth” (1 Pt
1:17). Just as the psalmist prays that he’ll
know his transience (Ps 39:4–5), we must remember that we’re but a vapor (Js
4:14). As such, we should evaluate all
our pursuits with biblical wisdom.
Moreover, the Lord has allotted this current
world only so much time. As Jesus warned
in John 9:4, “We must work the works of Him who sent Me as long as it is day;
night is coming when no one can work.”
We must conduct ourselves “with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most
of the opportunity” (Col 4:5).
Now, redeeming the time doesn’t require our non-stop
work. We can pursue work unwisely, and
some may find the Lord saying, “You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?” (Lk 12:20). It’s not wrong for believers to rest,
vacation, retire, or have down-time in general. We need rest, and the Puritans even taught the
need for vacation in a good work ethic.
The question is whether such times are only diversions, times of refreshing,
or whether we become overly indulgent in our down time.
Probably, our fault as a culture tends
toward time wasting. We must make the
most of the time “because the days are evil.”
This world is under the control of the devil, and we find his claws all
around us. Of course, the believer need
not fear his mortal wounds, for Jesus “gave Himself for our sins so that He
might rescue us from this present evil age” (Gal 1:4). Until Christ’s return, though, the Lord instructs
us in this letter to “take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able
to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm” (Eph
6:13). As we saw in Revelation 2:3, the
Lord later commended the Ephesians for their faithfulness even under
persecution, as He does with other churches.
With the evil around us, we must walk with
care. We also must seek the wisdom we
already have access to in order to know the way of the Lord in this life. Linked to that is the question of what the
Lord wants us to actually do. That brings
us to the next point:
III.
Second, a Wise Walk Understands the Will of the
Lord (v. 17)
So
then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
Because of what Paul has already said,
because we need to redeem the evil days, he says, “Stop becoming foolish.”[3] We’ve seen that we have the wisdom of the Lord
at our disposal, but does that help us “understand what the will of the Lord is”? Paul already said that we’re “trying to learn
what is pleasing to the Lord” (v. 10), but isn’t His will secret and
inscrutable?
Why does this discovery seem so
confusing? One of the problems we’ve run
into in the past couple of decades is the whole “purpose-driven” craze. The thinking goes like this: If I can
discover and follow God’s personalized will, His reason for creating the
individual known as me, then all will go well with me. Otherwise, my life will end up in shambles,
and I may even be guilty of thwarting some radical work God was planning in
this world through me.
That kind of thinking shackles believers in
foolishness. They become desperate in
discovering their purpose rather than simply obeying and serving. They begin reading their Bible to see if
something jumps out of the page at them.
They begin “feeling” situations around them, trying to be “sensitive” to
the leading of the Spirit (which means they wait for any sensation and hope
it’s a sign from God). They may even seek
out those they believe have a prophetic gift.
That is what Christians think the next verse means when it commands us
to be Spirit-filled.
Learning God’s will seems confusing only
when we search for it outside of Spirit-inspired Scripture. One study explains, “Discerning the will of
the Lord is not a matter of feeling or emotion, but of mental understanding,
applying our minds to Scripture.”[4] Another says,
Too many Christians have the idea that
discovering God’s will is a mystical experience that rules out clear thinking. But this idea is wrong—and dangerous. We discover the will of God as He transforms
the mind (Rom. 12:1–2); and this transformation is the result of the Word of
God, prayer, meditation, and worship. If
God gave you a mind, then He expects you to use it. This means that learning His will involves
gathering facts, examining them, weighing them, and praying for His wisdom
(James 1:5). God does not want us simply
to know His will; He wants us to understand His will.[5]
If we come to Scripture to discover the will
of God, we find something interesting about the questions we’ve been
asking. It tells us that we already
know the will of God — in this letter, we read, “He made known to us the mystery of His will”
(Eph 1:8–9). In other words, Christians can
understand what we need to know.
First, Scripture says it’s God’s will you
get saved. In His Word, we learn that
“God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent” (Acts
17:30). He “desires all men to be saved”
(cf. 1 Tm 2:3–4).
Second, Scripture
says it’s God’s will you get sanctified.
Just as the Lord provides salvation, He provides the sanctification we
are to apply to our lives. We read, for instance, “For this is
the will of God, your sanctification”
(cf. 1 The 4:3–6). Perhaps
neither of these points come as a surprise.
However, none of this is what people mean
when they ask what the will of God is for them.
They mean, “What is God’s personal plan for me; what does He desire to
do with my life?” However, even though
there is plenty on God’s will for our salvation and sanctification, there’s no
verse on how to learn the hidden will of God, nor is there one commanding us to
discover it. The closest we come is
Deuteronomy 29:29, which says, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God,
but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may
observe all the words of this law.”
We are simply to follow His Word. This means God isn’t dropping you private clues
as to which car to drive, which job to take, or which person would make your
perfect spouse. He’s not in heaven,
waiting to see if you decode the message; there is no message. And there’s freedom in realizing that, in
knowing that obeying what Scripture commands naturally leads us in God’s will.
IV.
Conclusion
Wisdom is not in trying to follow some
still, small voice into a greater destiny.
Wisdom is instead in following the voice of God in Scripture with a
slow, steady, careful pace. This wisdom
will lead us to Jesus and to follow Him all our days.
That’s what it means to walk wisely in the
will of the Lord. We’re imitating what
He’s revealed in His Word, not in the private impressions of our sinful
hearts. Indeed, we trust in what
the Lord has given us in His Word, seeking Him to understand it more as often
as we read it. If we lean on anything
else, we fall into walking as the unwise.
As we continue to consider what God has
given us in the Word, and we prayerfully apply it to our lives, we are
fulfilling the will of God. As Romans
12:2 says, “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.” That’s wisely seeking Him.
[1]
Michael P. Green, 1500 Illustrations
for Biblical Preaching, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000),
396.
[2] Peter Thomas O’Brien, The
Letter to the Ephesians, The
Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing
Co., 1999), 379.
[3] A.T. Robertson, Word
Pictures in the New Testament
(Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1933), Eph 5:17.
[4] Earl D. Radmacher, Ronald Barclay Allen, and H. Wayne
House, The
Nelson Study Bible: New King James Version (Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers, 1997), Eph 5:17.
[5] Warren W. Wiersbe, The
Bible Exposition Commentary, vol.
2 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 47.