How to Live to be Wise

Well, I saw an interesting email that got forwarded to me this week. I get a lot of things forwarded to me. I don't have time to look at them all or try to do what you're supposed to do, you know, for them to tend other people. The world will crash if you don't. I don't always get the chance to do that. But this one was very intriguing. It was entitled, how to live to be a hundred. I thought that's interesting. So I opened it up and it was an article from some group about how to live to be a hundred. How to age well. And they even had a four or five page survey that you could fill out. A lot of questions about family history and medical and lifestyle issues. And it would actually give you the age to which you can expect to live. I thought, well, that's even more interesting. I kind of like to find out how long I'm going to live. So I filled out the questionnaire, four or five pages. Now I didn't do that here at work. I know you're not paying me to find out how long I'm going to live. So I did that at home and it was quite interesting. I filled out all the survey information, all the forms. And at the final page, it calculates and it comes up with the age to which you live. I'm going to live to be 93. And I'm happy to know that. You know, I started thinking I need to change some insurance information. I need to kind of work on some plans for the future. I'm thinking through all this stuff. Now that I know I'm going to live to be 93. And then all of a sudden it hit me. That's crazy, John. Only God knows how long you're going to live. Okay, so forget all of that. Only God knows. But it was interesting while I was thinking that way about living till age 93. You know, there isn't obsession in our culture with living long, with extending life, with making sure that I get as many years as I possibly can get. And my question is, what about living better? Not living longer. What about living better? And so I decided after I saw that this week and I knew it would kind of tie it in with the passage and the subject matter, we kind of saw that website and email. I thought, well, I'm going to entitle this message, how to live to be wise. Not 100 or 93, but how to live to be wise. Now in Ephesians chapter 5 verses 15 through 17, Paul deals with that very issue. We've talked about the fact that in showing us how to live the new life we have in Christ, Paul draws a number of contrasts. We talked about those before. There's another one in this passage. It's the contrast between wisdom and foolishness, wisdom and folly. Let's read the verses there in Ephesians chapter 5, beginning in verse 15. Be very careful then how you live. Not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. You see the contrast there between wisdom and foolishness, a life of wisdom, a life of folly. That's the contrast that Paul draws to show us again from a different perspective how we ought to be living as believers. Those who have experienced the great salvation that God gives us through Christ, this is how we ought to be living. Now I'm convinced that we oftentimes get this whole thing of wisdom and folly backwards. We get it all twisted around. The world tells us people are wise if they know a lot or if they have a string of degrees behind their name. If they've reached high levels of education, then those are really wise people. Foolish people are people who may have never gone past high school or may not have gone here or there, traveled very much or whatever. And we get that backwards a lot. I read a story about a teenage guy who had a couple of younger siblings, brother and a sister who were much younger than him. And he always liked to try to pick on them to show how smart he was and how dumb they were. And one of his favorite tricks was to call some of his teenage buddies in and he would show his little brother and sister in his hand a nickel and a dime. And ask them to choose whichever one they wanted. They would always choose the nickel. And of course he would laugh real big with these buddies. You know, they chose the nickel because it's bigger. They think it's more important. Now they'd have a big laugh out of that. Well, one of his buddies who had seen that trick about 12 times pulled a little boy and girl aside in one time and said, why do you always choose the nickel? Don't you understand the dime is more valuable even though it's smaller. Their answer was priceless. With a mischievous grin on their face, they said, if we chose the dime, he'd quit giving us all those nickels. Now let me ask you, who is smart and who is dumb? Right? Okay. In the same way, we get foolishness and wisdom crossed up sometimes and backwards. The Bible has a whole different perspective on what's wise and what's foolish than what this world does. In fact, the Bible says that a fool is one who lives apart from God. Either in his or her thinking or behavior. Look at a couple of verses, Psalm 141. The fool says, in his heart, there is no God and then notice the behavior side of it. They are corrupt, their deeds are vile, there is no one who does good. That's how the Bible describes the fool. Romans chapter 1, verses 21 and 22 says, for although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools. But it's possible to think your wise, claim your wise, impress everybody else with the perception that your wise and really be a fool, biblically. Second Timothy chapter 1, or chapter 3, in verse 7 says, always learning, but never able to acknowledge the truth. It is possible to gain much information, many facts, much knowledge, and be a fool, in a biblical sense. So sometimes we get this crossed around. And in the Bible, a wise person, wisdom, is not the accumulation of facts and knowledge. Wisdom is understanding life from a creator's perspective and living according to his truth. That's wisdom, according to the Bible. That's understanding life from God's perspective, the creator's perspective, and living according to his truth. A couple of verses there might help reinforce that. Proverbs chapter 9, and verse 10 says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. In other places in Proverbs, we have this described in more detail for us. One of those is in Proverbs 4, verses 11 through 13, where Solomon says, when you are in the way of wisdom, and lead you along straight paths, when you walk your steps will not be hampered. When you run, you will not stumble. See the behavior side of things here? How you live? Hold on to instruction. Do not let it go. Guard it well for it is your life. So wisdom is understanding life from the creator's perspective, beginning with the fear of the Lord and knowledge of the Holy One. And then living that out in our behavior, running with it so that we don't stumble and living by God's words so that we don't mess up our lives. Well, with that understanding of wisdom and folly behind us, let's delve into what Paul says in Ephesians 5 about how to live to be wise. Paul gives us in these three verses, three marks of wise living. What it means to be wise, what it looks like to live wisely. The first mark is a planned life, it's in verse 15. He says, be very careful then how you live, not as unwise, but as wise. Now in the very first part of that verse, Paul addresses the need for planning. He is talking about a planned life, planning your life. And the need for planning is described in that word careful. He says, be very careful then how you live. That word careful is a very interesting word. It means something which is done very accurately, precisely. You give close attention to it. It suggests purpose and direction. This word suggests steady progress toward a goal, purpose and direction, and making sure you live your life carefully, accurately, steadily progressing toward the purpose and the goal that is set out before you. The opposite of this word for careful, the opposite of this word is to live carelessly without any proper forethought, without any planning of where you're going. The idea of the opposite of this word is just kind of drifting through life with no plan, no goal, no objective, no purpose. Now you wouldn't think of taking a long trip that way. Well some of you might, but most of you would not think of making a long trip without some kind of planning. You would not think of building a house without some kind of plan. You just don't go down to the lows and get a few pieces of lumber and start nailing them together without no forethought at all. There's got to be some kind of plan. Well people who would never take a long trip without some kind of plan or never build a house without some kind of plan, live their lives without any kind of plan. Let me ask you what's more important. The idea here is being very careful, very particular, precisely following a predetermined plan, setting out knowing where you're going and pursuing steadily that goal, that purpose in life. Some people give very little thought to planning their day, planning their week, planning their month or year or life. Now I know it's true what the Bible says that we do not know what's going to happen tomorrow. But the Bible also consistently says you should plan your life. The Bible says go to the ant, you sluggard. That's pretty direct, isn't it? Proverbs chapter 6, read it for yourself, go to the ant. The ant has no overseer, ruler or guide, but it always looks ahead to the future and stores up in the summer what it's going to need for the winter. The Bible says it's good example for us to follow. Think about what's coming, think about what's at plan your life, and then of course submit it to God's sovereignty. But being careful about how we live is according to this word, thinking about where we're headed, what we're going to do with our life, and steadily pursuing that goal. It's not just getting up in the morning and letting life happen, it's following a goal and a purpose and a plan. So a planned life is a wise life. There is a guy who goes around speaks to different businesses, a motivational speaker by the name of Ken Olan, and when he's talking particularly to corporate executives, he will divide them into two groups, and he's trying to impress upon them the importance of strategic planning, of goal setting, and vision casting, and all that. And so he puts them in two groups, and he gives them each a puzzle, same puzzle. One of the groups of executives, he will give the front picture on the board, on the box of the puzzle, so that they can see what they're supposed to be putting together. The other group, he gives them no such help. He just gets the pieces of the puzzle or spread out, and they have no direction, nothing to look at, no purpose, no goal in mind, they're just stuck with all the pieces. And he says, it gets across the lesson to them better than anything I could say. Those who have the picture in front of them of what they're supposed to be doing, maintain a high level of motivation, and get the job done. Those who have no clue what they're supposed to be doing, it's got the pieces out there, and somebody's saying, well, let's look for the corner pieces first. And let's see, get all straight edges next, they lose motivation, and they become discouraged with the task and don't make near the progress, the other group does. That's a very simple way of saying exactly what Paul is saying here, be careful about the way you live. Have a goal in mind, have some purpose, and plan toward your life. For what you're going to do, how you're going to reach what is important in life, a biblical lifestyle. The Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, many years ago, had boarded a train to get to his next destination, and the conductor was coming through taking tickets, and he fumbled around, couldn't find it, and his briefcase, or in his coat pocket, couldn't find his ticket. And the conductor recognized him, he was leaving Washington, and he had been on that train many times, the conductor recognized him and said, sir, don't worry about the ticket, whenever you find it, just mail it in, we trust you. And Mr. Holmes said, my dear man, that is not my problem, I need my ticket to find out where I'm going. Now, I would suggest that there are many of us who are on the train, have no clue where we're going. Just get on the train, let it go, have no clue where we're going. The Bible says to live wisely, is to live a planned life. Now, let me give you some issues to consider in planning. There's several issues to consider. Do you make plans for your time? Do you make plans for your day, your week, your month, your year? Do you have anything in mind as to how your time will be wisely invested? I would suggest that's a great place to start. But go beyond that. Do you have any plans for your relationships with family, with husband, wife, children? Do you have any plans, anything you want to see accomplished in building that relationship? Anything you're striving toward, or do you just get up and let happen what happens? Do you deal with it as the crises come up? Or are you really thinking through some kind of plan you want to accomplish in developing your relationships in your family? Do you plan your work? Do you have any plan for the work you've got that you're doing that enables you to proceed with the right kind of direction and purpose in mind? Do you have any plan for your spiritual life? Do you have any idea of what you want to be spiritually? I mean, have you ever gone through and just figured out what does the Bible teach? I should be like. I mean, there are lists in the Bible that describe this. The be attitudes and the sermon on them out, the fruit of the spirit, qualifications for church leaders in 1 Timothy 3, and many other lists in the Bible that tell us these are the character qualities God wants you to have. I have a list of 42 of them, 42. And I've gone to the trouble to describe them and define them. This is exactly what God expects us to be. Now, the question is, how do I anticipate getting there? How am I going to work on becoming this or that or the other? What plan and I'm going to form in my life to get into God's Word or spend time in prayer or do whatever needs to be done, but we have spiritual disciplines to get there. Do you have any plan for your spiritual life? Have any direction or purpose at all? You see, there are issues to consider this way. And there's a lot more that could be said about that. We don't have the time to do that this morning. I would, and I rarely ever do this, but I would refer you back to a message I preached about a year and a half ago when I was doing a series on stress. And I did a message on time management. It was September 4th of 05. If you're interested in getting into this more, I would encourage you to sign up for that tape. I don't get any commission here. So you can sign up for it. It's fine. And what you'll find is five or six principles about how to plan your time and your life. Let me just give them to you quickly and you can listen to the tape if you want more. List your priorities and goals. List your priorities and goals. Determine what your purpose in life is and what God wants you to be, what you want to do in life. List those out. List those out. Develop a master schedule of how you're going to use your time. Schedule out your week. Divided into periods of 21 time periods morning afternoon evening of each day. How you're going to spend your time. What you're going to use that time for. And then use a personal organizer. It may be a, you know, Palm Pilot or a PDA or maybe just a pad of paper. Something that you can keep track of appointments. Something you can keep track of important things and schedule your time out and have some purpose and direction in life. Then plan out each week. Take that master schedule and plan out your week and have some purpose and direction as to how you're going to spend your time. And then finally submit to God's sovereignty in your plans because God may blow it all apart and change it all and things may happen that you had no way of anticipating. And that's God's prerogative when he does that we submit to that willingly. We should submit to that willing those are just some principles of organizing and planning so that we live as Paul says carefully. Carefully we live with precision, accurateness, close attention with purpose and direction. That's what the word means. There are issues to consider in that. Then let me give you some keys to planning wisely. The Bible says here in verse 15, be very careful then how you live. That's the planning part. But then he says not as unwise but as wise. In other words, when you're planning your life or your day or your month or your family relationships or your spiritual life. When you're setting those goals and purposes and directions in your life, make sure you're doing it wisely, not unwise. Now again, remember what the Bible teaches wisdom is seeing it from a creator's perspective and living according to his principles and his word. So ask yourself some questions. Whether you're planning your spiritual life or you're planning your day, ask yourself questions like this which will determine am I planning wisely or unwisely. Ask yourself, do my plans reflect a submission to God's will? Is this all about me? Is it all about what I want to accomplish in life? Is it all according to worldly principles? You know by age 35 I want to have this much money. Is that what it is? You're not planning wisely. You may be planning unwisely. Make sure your principles and goals and so forth reflect God's principles and his word. Ask yourself this question. Does my planning reflect obedience to the Lord or disobedience to the Lord? You know the Bible tells us there's a foolish way to live. Titus chapter 3 and verse 3. Look at this verse. It says at one time we too were foolish. And here's what that means. Disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy being hated and hating one another. That's a foolish kind of lifestyle. When you're planning ask yourself the question, does what I'm planning do the things I'm working toward really reflect that kind of lifestyle or a biblical kind of lifestyle? Another good question to ask on the wise unwise issue is this, does my planning reflect God's and the Bible's priorities for my life? And what are our biblical priorities? Well obviously God is a priority. Family is a priority. You know some people live by foolish priorities. Look at 1 Timothy chapter 6 and verse 9 where the Bible says people who want to get rich. That means their ambition, their main goal in life is to get rich. And they will do whatever it takes to plan their life in that direction. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and to trap and into many, here's the word, foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. So ask yourself what are my goals looking like? What is the direction of my life, the trajectory of my life? What am I aiming toward? Are they biblical priorities or unbiblical priorities? Some of you are familiar with the man, the name Patrick Morley. Patrick Morley is the writer of the Man in the Mirror series of books. He's a Christian businessman who has made an impact in the business world and also on the church world. Early in his career he was on a fast track towards success. And he had trouble saying no, he was getting all kinds of requests for speaking engagements and businesses and you know seminars and stuff like that. And he was saying yes to everything and he's a believer but his goal and trajectory in life was really, I want to make it like the world defines make it. And he was traveling all the time and he was away from his family all the time and one day he came home to his wife and he said, honey, we have arrived. And she looked at him and said, we've arrived but we've arrived at the wrong place. And that sobered him where he began to ask some important questions. And as they began to talk and decide what was really important in their lives, he came up with this thought. He said to his wife, why not prioritize everything we do on the basis of who's going to be crying at our funeral? Now that is a sobering thought. When you think about everybody you want to impress and please and make it good with, think about those who will be gathered around you in a funeral home someday. Who's going to be there? Who's going to be crying? And the people who are going to be there, the people who ought to mean the most to you. Those others that you may have tried to impress with your life may give passing notice to your passing. That's it. But who are going to be the ones crying at the funeral home? Those are the priority people in your life. And certainly God is the ultimate priority in our life. If you're going to plan wisely and not unwisely, we have to have the right priority system. And God must come first. Our relationship with Him must come first. Some of you will remember the 1996 Olympics and the gymnastics competition. Remember little Kerry Strug and that last vault she did when her ankle was severely injured and taped up and she ran anyway and just did a real gut check and took the pain and ran and did the vault and held her balance on the landing. Her ankle was severely injured and she scored well enough to win the gold medal. And of course she became a national heroine and that meant that important people would call. And sure enough, after that event back in the dressing room, President Clinton called her on the phone to congratulate her. But she was on the phone with some of her friends talking with them. Her coach Bella Coroli came in and said, Kerry, the president is on another line wanting to talk with you. And she just laughed, thought he was joking, went on talking with her friends and Coroli walked out. And he came in about 30 seconds later. She's still on the other phone talking to her friends. And he got in her face and said, Kerry, I'm not joking. President Clinton is on the phone to talk with you. And of course she turned her other phone off and got to the phone that he was on. So she was keeping the president waiting. That's not a good thing to do. I wonder in your life or my life if we're putting God on hold. If we're saying, I got other things to do. I got other plans. I got things I want to accomplish in life. And God is on hold waiting, waiting for you to hear his voice about what he wants you to do. Are you living wisely? Are you living a planned life, a life that is planned around biblical priorities, biblical lifestyle? That's a planned life. But Paul goes on to say, not only is living wisely a planned life, living wisely is a productive life. If you look up the word productive in the dictionary, you'll find something like this, something that yields results or is effective. That's exactly what Paul is talking about in verse 16, something that yields results and is effective, but he relates it to the use of time. How to use time effectively and produce results with the use of time. This is part of living wisely. For some of you, this is not going to sound real spiritual, but how you use your time is a spiritual matter. And that's what verse 16 says. Paul says living as wise, not unwise, and he goes on to say verse 16, making the most of every opportunity because the days are evil. What he's speaking about there is using our time well. Using our time well. He says making the most of every opportunity. The words making the most literally comes from the Greek word redeem. So, agaradosa, redeem to redeem. In every case in the New Testament with this exception and an exception in a parallel passage in Colossians, with only these two exceptions, every time that word is used, it's used of Christ redeeming us from our sins. And it has to do with buying us out of a purposeless slave to sin, kind of existence, and giving us real purpose and meaning in life, for giving us sin, setting us free from the dominion of sin, has to do with that, has to do with buying someone out of something. Now, the idea in the use of time, which is the way Paul uses it here, is to buy up our time, or as the NIV correctly interprets it and translates, making the most of every opportunity, buying up purchasing to use well every opportunity we have. Again, I think maybe explaining the opposite kind of living may help us to understand what he's talking about here. The opposite of using our time well, of buying up or making the most of every opportunity, is a life where time is just frittered away on things that are not important, frittered away with trivia. It's a life that results in a whole string of unfinished, half-done projects because time is just frittered away. It's just spent doing nothing of any value or any importance. This is the kind of person who wastes time and opportunities and has little to show for their investment in their life of time. When Paul says making the most of every opportunity, he's talking about having a sense of urgency about what you're doing, about the importance of the use of your time and using it well. Having said that, a proper view of time does include time for rest and refreshment and so forth. That certainly needs to be included. But the kind of lifestyle that just fritters time away with meaningless trivia, rather than getting down to the business of using time wisely and doing what we're supposed to do, that kind of lifestyle is the opposite of what Paul's talking about. He's saying, buy up those opportunities. Make the most of those opportunities. Seize those opportunities and use them well. Don't waste that time. You know, it's a startling thing sometimes when we realize how our time is used. This is a fascinating subject for me and I read something this week about surveys that tell us how we use our time. The end of your life, if you live the average lifespan, you will have spent 21 years sleeping. You will have spent 14 years working. You will have spent seven years in the bathroom. Now, that's the showers and getting ready and everything. You know. You will have spent six years eating. You will have spent five years waiting. And this is where it starts getting really discouraging. You will have spent five years waiting. You will have spent three years in meetings. Some of you are saying, no, it's more like 20 for me. You will have spent average person three years in meetings. You will have spent two years returning calls. If you live an average lifespan, you will spend one year of your life searching for things. Now, that is depressing. You will spend eight months opening junk mail. You will spend six months of your life at red lights. Can you imagine what a waste of six months of your life. And this survey shows, this study shows, you will spend 12 years in other miscellaneous things. I don't even know what that is. And I'm spending 12 years of my life doing it. Miscellaneous. Now, here's Paul's point. Buy off those opportunities. Make the most of those opportunities. Time that might be considered a waste of time, use it. Find some way to redeem it, to capture it, to seize it. That can be done with a little bit of forethought and planning. Waiting at the red light does not have to be six months of wasted time in your life. You can use that time. If you give some thought to how you will use that time, you're smart enough to figure that out. You can do that. Redeem that time. Buy back that time. That's what Paul's talking about. Make the most of every opportunity. Well, the need for using your time well should be fairly obvious. Paul has said, use your time well. The need for that should be obvious to all of us. And it's the fact that our lives are so busy. Our lives are busy. Probably most, if not everyone in this room, feels like your life is busy. I don't care at what pace you live your life. Your life is chock full of things that need to be done. You're busy. Now, I tell you where this comes home to me most of the time. It's when I'm driving. And from what I hear from talking to others, it's probably the same with you too. You become most of the way of the stress in your life and the fact that you're so busy when you're driving. Because you will do anything to gain three or four seconds of time in driving. To beat that other guy to the red light. Just hesitate when a light turns green for a while and listen to the whole world honking around you. I figured out that there are two traffic signals out here at the Tourist Information Center. The first one was right at the entrance to the information center. The second one was at the Turnpike entrance. And those of us who work out here every day, we travel that stretch of 460 a good bit. And I've noticed, I've learned this is part of my redeeming the time at sitting at red lights. I've learned how those things work. They are timed for the benefit of people coming out of the shopping center. So if you have a green light coming out of the shopping center, the light up at the Turnpike will also be green. But if you are waiting at that first light on 460, by the time you get almost through the intersection at your green light, that other light will turn red. So I began to do some calculating. And I figured, you know, if I'm sitting here and I'm watching that other light, you know, the one that's going to turn yellow and I've got one foot on the brake and one foot right at the gas pedal. I'm ready to peel out. I bet I could make it through that second green light. And you know what? I did. I did. I made it through that second green light. One day this week, man, I left gravel flying and I was zippin' up through it. Nobody was in front of me. And I made it through that second light. And after I got through, I thought, John, you are a dummy. What are you doing? So I wonder, there wasn't a policeman there to pull you over. Because by the time I got that second light, I mean this is 0 to 50 in one second. You know, I mean, was really makin' some time. Isn't that the way we live? If I can just avoid getting one red light, I'll do it. You know, because life is so busy, we want to get to where we're going with the minimum of stops. Now, that shows the need for using time wisely. If you want him to this room is busy. I want you to see the testimony. Listen to the story of a young lady named Paddy. I think you will resonate with this. I think you will identify with this, especially you moms. Let's just watch Paddy's story for about a minute and a half. I'm a soccer mom, a baseball mom. My play is very full. I'm talking church. I'm talking school. I'm talking with my job. Little on the kids' little afterschool activities. The calendar and my day timer were my life. You know, my days started very early. I got up before my family did and I'd made my to-do list. And I wrote out everything that need to be done for that day. All the breakfast dishes, everything would be already out the night before. I would get the kids up, dress them, get them at the table. Feed their breakfast. Of course, get everything put away. We were in the car ready to go. Usually about 8.30. I got them to school. Then went to my job, did whatever errands I had to do for my job. I ran to get my kids at the daycare. Started supper, trying to return my phone calls. While I'm fixing my meals. You know, I probably had a most difficult time saying no to other people. I could say no to my family very well. Come on, guys. I need to do some stuff. I mean, I have all these responsibilities and I need you to adapt my schedule and I am so important and well, you're just going to have to adapt. My anger got away at times with me. Words were said that were not appropriate for me to even say or think or, you know, I hurt my family. I hurt myself. I hurt my relationship with the Lord. I felt, I felt wiped out. I felt emotionally drained, physically drained, spiritually drained. I would think, you know, these people that are asking me, they must think I can do a good job. So I better say, yes, so I can do a good job so they can think, oh, she's a Christian. She's got it all together. I want to be like her. I want to be a Christian. So I better not say no. You identify with that. I'm sure you do, especially young mothers, you know, identify with that kind of pace of life and that kind of lifestyle that just leaves very little time for what's really important. That highlights our busy lives highlight even more the necessity for obeying Paul's command, making the most, buying up, redeeming those opportunities. Now there are three reasons Paul tells us for using our time wisely. Let me give you these two quickly. First of all, our time is numbered. We need to use our time wisely because our time is numbered. You know, God has set a boundary for our times, for our lives. He is sovereign in that. He has set the boundary. Look at this verse in Psalm 139, verse 16, all of the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. God knows exactly how long you have to live and how long I have to live. I don't know if it would be 93 years from here or not. Kind of like to think that might be the case, but I don't know if it will be or not. It may be closer to 53. Although I'm beyond that already, it may be closer to that than it would be 93. Only God knows. He has set the boundary for my days. Our time is limited. It is numbered. Hebrews 927 says, just as man is destined to die once. The word is literally appointed, reserved. There is a reservation that is awaiting you that only God knows. And when that time comes, you will face him in judgment, this verse says. So God knows and orders the times of our lives. Our times are numbered. We only have those opportunities as they go by us. And within those boundaries that God has set is all the time we have. So we've got to use it well. Buy it up. Make the most of every opportunity. Second reason why it is important to use our time well is because time is fleeting. Not only is it numbered, it's fleeting. The word that Paul uses for time here translated in the end of the opportunity. The word he uses is not the normal word for time. Chronos, which means the time measured in seconds, in minutes, in hours, and days, in months, that kind of time, progression of time. It is the word chyros. Chyros means a season of time. It's well translated opportunity. It means a season of time that may quickly fleet. It means an opportunity to engage in something, to take advantage of something, to do something that may pass you by. And so the reason we need to seize those opportunities, make the most of every opportunity is because it can come and go, just like that. A season of life, an opportunity that presents itself, may come and then it's gone. That is exactly what Paul's talking about. William Shakespeare in his monumental work, Julius Caesar, says these lines, there is a tide in the affairs of men which, when taken at the flood, leads to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. That's exactly what Paul is saying. There is a tide in the affairs of men, a tide, an opportunity, a flood stage that comes, and then it leaves. If you take it, when it's there, you can capitalize on it and use it well. If you don't, it's gone. Because time is fleeting. The Bible says we need to buy up every opportunity. Use our time wisely. Don't waste it. Don't let it go by. The French general Napoleon used to say, there is in the midst of every great battle a 10 to 15 minute period that is the crucial point. Take that period and you win the battle. Wait and lose it and you will be defeated. He was a great leader. He recognized those opportunities, those chirost moments, those seasons of opportunity that come and go. And if you miss them, if you're asleep while they happen, if you're wasting your time with trivia, when they come, then you will not make the most of the opportunity that God gives you. Make the most of the opportunity because time is numbered, time is fleeting and thirdly because the times are evil. The times are evil. You see it there in verse 16. Making the most of every opportunity because the days are evil. No doubt Paul had in mind the corrupt lifestyle in the city of Ephesus where this church was. And because evil surrounded them, if they did not invest their time wisely for the Lord, they could lose the opportunity they had to impact their culture. Isn't it interesting that the Apostle John a little later than this said much the same thing to the same church in Ephesus in Revelation chapter 2. He said to the same church, you've left your first love. Now if you don't remember from where you've fallen and repent and do the first works, Paul's way of saying it is, if you don't redeem the opportunity, if you don't seize the moment that you have to turn that around, then John told them in Revelation 2. And the Christ says, I will come and remove your candlestick. I will remove your opportunity to influence your generation. By the middle of the second century, there was no church in Ephesus and there never has been one sense. That was one of the greatest churches of the first century. The Apostle John pastored there, Timothy pastored there, Paul established that church, great church. But it lost its opportunity. It did not use its time wisely to be effective for Christ and its testimony was obliterated. Christ removed its candlestick. The same thing can happen to us. You want to live wisely, then live a productive life. In the sense that you use your time wisely as God demands in His Word, buying up every opportunity, using it well, not frittering away time with wasteless things. But if you're going to live wisely, live a purposeful life as well. Let's just take a moment to look at this in verse 17. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. I want to submit to you that the greatest purpose of all in your life is God's will. The greatest purpose of all is God's will. Now you can live for a lot of other purposes, friends. You can live for a lot of other reasons. You can have as the main purpose in your life. I will get as much pleasure out of life as I can get out of ring as much fun and joy and good times and pleasure and gusto and all that that the world may offer. You can live for that. You can live for possessions. You can live for everything you can obtain financially and possession wise in this world. You can live for that if you want to. Or you can live for possession to be popular when you're in high school to climb the ladder of success when you get into your work life. To be accepted and esteemed and famous and well known by everybody in the life of the party and the... You can live for all that if you want. But there is no greater purpose to live for than the will of God. In fact, all three of those other purposes and all the things that they may look like in life are described in first John 2. Look at these two verses. For everything in the world, cravings of sinful man, that's pleasure. The lust of his eyes, that's possessions. And the boasting of what he has and does, that's position. All three of those things comes not from the Father but from the world. Now look at this. The world and its desires pass away but the man who does, the will of God, lives forever. The will of God will surpass all of those other passions in your life. All of those other purposes in your life, the will of God. Now you say, okay, will of God, what does that mean? What does that mean? I understand the will of God can be very confusing. Very quickly, the Bible uses the word will of God in two ways. Two ways and two ways only. It uses it of God's sovereign will, his purposes in life which he has established and which he will carry out, his sovereign will. The second way the Bible uses the word is of God's moral will or his desire for us that's communicated in his word. Like in 1 Thessalonians 4 where it says, this is God's will for you, even your sanctification, that you learn how to live purely. That's God's will. That's one of the ways the Bible uses the word. The will of God then is those purposes which he has decreed will be done on this earth, in which we're not going to change. But it is also God's moral direction for us given in his word. That's the way the Bible uses the will of God. You say, okay, how do I make decisions about a career or a job or a move or a relationship? Don't I need to find the will of God about that? We just say a word about discovering God's will. There are four principles to discover God's will in your life. And when you're making decisions about career, job, relationship, whatever, these four principles apply. They're not original with me. They're really described well in a wonderful book on decision making in the will of God by Gary Friesen who worked on this topic for his doctoral dissertation at Dallas Seminary and then put it into book form in 1981. I don't think there's a book yet that has challenged this one as far as a biblical concept of the will of God. This is what this is how we discover God's will. Principle number one, in any area specifically addressed by the Bible obey God's command. That's his moral will for you. Any area specifically addressed by the Bible, you obey God's moral will in his word. Principle number two, where there is no command or principle, we have freedom to choose our own course of action. But Principle number three is an important safeguard there. Principle number three is the object of the believer in that case is to make a wise decision based on which course best allows me to live faithfully for Christ. When there's a decision I'm making about should I buy this car, should I not, should I move over to this place or not, and there's no direct command or moral principle from the Bible. I'm free to make whatever decision fits within the moral commands of God. I'm not violating any moral principle or the word of God. But my decision should be based on making the wisest decision possible, which means I will make the decision that will allow me to live for Christ most faithfully in my life. And that's the decision I'm going to make. And then the fourth principle is this, in all decisions, humbly submit to the outworking of God's sovereign will. Because the decisions that we make, God may say no, I'm going to change that. It's not going to work that way. And we need a humbly submit to God's sovereign will. I think that is a biblical principle for understanding what the Lord's will is. Paul says in verse 17, you want to understand what God's will is? That's a summary, quick summary of all the Bible's teaching, all the Bible's teaching on the will of God. You want to live to be wise? Where do you want to live to be 100? You want to live to be wise? If you do, then the Bible says living wisely is living a planned life. Living a productive life and living a purposeful life. It is planning your life in line with what the Bible teaches our ultimate goals and purposes ought to be. It is grasping every opportunity to invest our time wisely toward those goals and purposes that we have before us, that God has allowed us to form. And it is living in the will of God. That is living wisely, according to the Apostle Paul. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for your word again, for the clarity of your word. How when we just let it speak, it is so clear. Applient to our hearts, help us to understand what you mean, what you purpose in our lives by living wisely. And help us, Lord, to live, to plan, to be productive in the use of our time, to be purposeful in living out in your will, help us to live wisely. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.