Harbor Presbyterian Church - Carmel Valley

I want to invite you to turn with me to Ephesians 5:15-21.  This is a short passage – only seven verses – but there are at least three sermons in it.  So we’re going to fly over this passage at about 35,000 feet.  Paul is continuing to show us the practical ways in which grace works in the lives of God’s people, so let’s take a look at the passage in Ephesians 5:15-21:

 

15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, 19 addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, 20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

 

One of the most fascinating in the history of the church is a guy by the name of Saint Augustine.  Augustine was originally from what is now the country of Algeria. He one of the early church fathers from back in the third and fourth centuries and one of the most influential people in shaping the early Christian church.  But let me tell you something about Saint Augustine.  Saint Augustine wasn’t always a saint!  Let’s just say that if he were alive today, he would be spending a lot of time on the strip over in Vegas.  That would have been a comfortable place for him.  But he had a godly mother who prayed, and prayed, and prayed for him.  And through a series of circumstances, he started to become repulsed by the way he was living, and God’s grace became irresistible, and that all led to a profound change in the way he lived his life.

 

Well, as the story goes, one day Augustine is making his way down the street and one of his “female companions” was walking down the other side of the street.  And she calls out to him and says, “Augustine!  Augustine!”  And he’s focused, just making his way down the street.  And she calls out again and says, “Augustine, it is me!”  And he says back to her, “Yes, but it is no longer me.”

 

Folks, I share that story to illustrate that when Christ takes hold of you and his Holy Spirit dwells inside of you, it always leads to a changed life.  Does that make sense?  Justification and sanctification – remember Forest Gump? (“Jenny and me go together like peas and carrots.”) – justification and sanctification go together like peas and carrots.  In other words, we are adopted by God and united to Jesus, by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.  Our obedience has nothing to do with our standing before God.  But because we are adopted and united to him by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, there will always be evidence of that reality fleshing itself out in the way we live our lives.

 

Deitrich Bonhoffer, another famous person in church history, (a Lutheran minister who was executed by the Nazis for subverting their regime) is known for saying that, “When Jesus bids a man come, he bids him come and die.”  It means that you are no longer controlled by your rules and the trends of the culture, but that Christ, and his grace, and his character become the dominating influences in your life.

 

So Paul is spelling out for us some of what that will look like in our lives.  And if you look at your outline, you’ll notice that there are at least two things, broadly speaking, that will become increasingly characterize a person who is driven by the grace of God.

 

The first thing that’s important to notice is that wisdom will become increasingly characteristic of our lives.  God is the author of wisdom and he has actually made his people wise by virtue of their union with Christ.  “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom.” 

 

It’s about learning about what God is like – things like his holiness, and justice, and goodness, and truth - and integrating that into what you think about, what you say, and what you do.  It’s integrating what you know about God into how you live in God’s world. 

 

So one thing that means is that we will live with a sense of carefulness.  You know, in Christianity, there is a doctrine of carefulness.  And actually, that doctrine of carefulness is born out of the doctrine of our depravity.  Is that clear as mud? 

 

Let me illustrate it to you this way.  I grew up in the sprawling metropolis of Fresno, California, where it all happens.  And in the winter time, we would very often get this thing called Tule Fog.  It’s fog that’s more dense than anything you’ve ever seen here in San Diego.  I remember waking up in the morning when I was a kid and I literally could not see the house across the street.  It was that thick.  But it’s patchy fog.  So you could be driving down the road and able to see 600-700 feet ahead, and then all of the sudden you hit the fog and you literally can’t see 20 feet in front of you.  So you can just imagine the amount of traffic accidents that happen as a result.  Every single winter, there is at least one 30, 40, 50 car pile up on Freeway 99 going through the Central Valley because people presume that they are safe when there is some clarity (there was a 108 car pile up last winter).  But they forget that always – and I mean always – there is a patch of dense fog that they’re going to drive through where they’re not going to be able to see a thing.

 

I want to suggest to you that that there is a parallel in our day-to-day lives.  The presumption, and self-confidence, and carelessness that drivers have in the clear patch is the same presumption, self-confidence, and carelessness that so often characterizes our lives, isn’t it?  We can assume that the way we spend our leisure time, and spend our money, and what we do for our hobbies, and things like entertainment – we can assume that all those things are neither here nor there, but we forget about the fog patch.  We forget that Paul calls the days evil. 

 

And evil is so subtle.  The coast can seem clear, but it sneaks up like the fog patch.  It takes a good thing, or a seemingly innocuous thing, but what it does is it causes that thing to dominate our lives.  So we make a tiny capitulation here, and a tiny capitulation there, before we know it, we’ve made so many compromises that we wake up one day and we find ourselves in a deep rut. 

 

And the reason why we do that is because we’re fundamentally broken.  The way we understand things, the way we process information, the way we understand ourselves and the world, the way we give expression to our emotions; it’s all broken.  So that should humble us a bit, don’t you think?  That should cause us to take care with the way we live our lives. 

 

So Paul here is saying one way we do that – one way we live wisely and carefully – is by considering how we use the time.  A friend of mine e-mailed me an article this week about a video game called Final Fantasy 11.  Apparently, it’s this online, role playing video game where you are supposed to take down this boss monster.  So there was this group of people who were playing the game and fought, and fought, and fought to try to beat this guy.  And the game sucked them in so much that they played for 18 hours straight!  And one of the gamers said this, “People were passing out and getting physically ill.  We decided to end it before we risked turning into a horrible news story about how video games ruin people’s lives.”  Can you believe that?

 

But I wonder if there’s a sense in which you can identify with that.  I don’t know about you, but when I waste a lot of time – and it usually involves some form of entertainment – I very often feel a sense of emptiness.  At the end of it all, I think, “Why in the world did I waste my time on that!”  All the entertainment, and the stuff, and even the work, promises you and me a sense of fulfillment and release, but a lot of times I feel empty.  I mean, if you can’t miss a game, if you can’t miss an episode of your favorite show, if you’ve got to watch the Dark Night in the theater a half dozen times, even if you work yourself into an oblivion, you’ve got to ask yourself what it is that you’re trying to get out of all that.  How does the way you spend your time express what you most deeply value?

 

Look, y’all.  So much of what competes for our attention concerns trivial, here today, gone tomorrow things; things that really don’t have a lot of lasting value.  So in the words of the great theologian, Ice Cube, you’ve got to, “check yo’ self before you wreck yo’ self!” Because if your life is far too caught up in trivial things – if it’s all about the Chargers, and shopping, and even your job – you will wreck your life.  You wreck it because you’re building a significant chunk of it on somewhat inconsequential things.

 

Now look.  I’m not saying that entertainment of any kind has no place in our lives, and that there aren’t seasons where work becomes extremely demanding, and that if you enjoy doing your hobbies and so forth that you’re just wasting your time.  Don’t write me e-mails.  I’m not saying that.  All I’m saying is that simply saying “There’s nothing morally wrong with doing this, so why not do it,” is probably not the best approach.

 

Remember how Paul said in 1 Corinthians that “All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful”?  When he says that, he’s reminding us to consider the law of unintended consequences with what we do with our lives.  So it’s wise to begin by deciding what you’re going to do from a posture of worship; from remembering that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom.”  It’s wise to ask things like,

 

“How is the way I am spending my time helping me enjoy God more? 

 

How is this use of time serving the good of my family, my friends, my church, my community better? 

 

Is this going to increase my love for God and my neighbor, or is it going to distract me from loving them?”  People who are developing, and growing in the grace and knowledge of Christ are going to increase in wise stewardship of their time.

 

But not only that.  Maturing Christians are also going to enjoy a Spirit-filled life.  In other words, the Holy Spirit is the increasingly dominant influence of your life.  But there’s a bit of an odd comparison and contrast that Paul spells out for us here.  He says, “Do not get drunk on wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.”  Now there is a sense in which being drunk on wine and being filled with the Spirit are similar.  They’re similar in the sense that whether you are intoxicated with wine, or you are filled with the Spirit, you are being influenced by or controlled by that thing.  Does that make sense?  When someone is drunk, we say that they are what?  “Under the influence.”  Well, the same is true if someone is full of the Holy Spirit.  They are under the influence of the Spirit. 

 

But that’s where the similarity ends.  Folks, there is something to be said about drinking alcohol here, isn’t there?  Why would someone get drunk?  People get drunk so that they will feel better.  There’s some stress, or insecurity, or feeling of powerlessness that makes someone feel out of control, so they drink excessively to feel better.  If drunkenness will help a person fit in, they’ll do it.  They think it will make them feel better and have more control over their lives. 

 

But the reality is that drunkenness prevents the very thing it looks for.  It promises more control and better feelings, but it makes you out of control and feel worse.  You know, how can you tell when a person is drunk?  You can tell when a person becomes reckless.  In fact, that’s what debauchery means.  It means to become reckless, to be out of control.  So when a person is careless with their thoughts, careless with their actions, and careless with their words, there are definitively under the influence of something that is making them out of control.  Are you with me?

 

Folks, intoxication, carelessness, recklessness – those things are slavery.  It’s not freedom.  They rob you of your authenticity.  The only way you become more who you were designed to be is by becoming more like Christ.  And that happens as Holy Spirit, weaves himself into our lives.  He produces characteristics of Jesus; things like joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control.  When did you ever meet a drunk characterized by those things?  Never!  It’s just the opposite.

 

So what does that mean to be filled with the Spirit?   There’s a parallel to this passage in Colossians 3.  And when we read it, we discover that being filled with the Spirit is synonymous with “letting the word of Christ dwell richly” inside of us.  The word dwelling inside of us and the Holy Spirit filling us go hand in hand.  We are active as we hear the word of God preached.  That’s an act of worship.  A lot of people say “I loved the worship (referring to the music).  And the sermon was good too.”  No.  In listening to the reading of the Scripture and the sermon preached, and you’re praying along, you are as active as you are when you sing the hymns.  It’s all worship.  So you’re active in gathered worship.  You’re active in your own personal reading of Scripture.  You’re active in thinking and praying out the implications of that word in your life. 

 

But it’s the Holy Spirit that actually causes that word to conform us to Christ.  As we apply ourselves to the word of God, the Holy Spirit conforms us into believing, speaking, and living in ways that look more and more like Christ.  Are you with me?  So as the filling of the Spirit becomes an ongoing reality in our lives, there are at least three things that will result from that:

 

One is that our worship will take on an increasingly vibrant horizontal and vertical dimension.  In other words, our worship will reach higher, and become more real, and encouraging, and edifying to one another.  One of the ways that happens is through the singing of the psalms (yes, we’re commanded to sing psalms as a regular part of gathered worship), and hymns, and spiritual songs.  Have you ever though about that?  That we are teaching, and encouraging, and edifying one another, as we lift our voices in song?  There’s something different that happens when you sing “Crown Him with Many Crowns” alone in the shower and when you sing it in the congregation!  And as we sing those songs, together, as a whole congregation, we help each other move out of ourselves (although we are personally edified by it) and our tendency to navel-gaze, and move toward the cross, toward Christ, to his sufficiency, to his gospel, to his grace, and to one another.  It’s one of the most mutually-edifying things that happens as we gather together. 

 

But have you ever heard a drunk person sing?  I had the privilege of hearing this on Friday night.  I kid you not.  Friday night at 11:45 pm, I heard someone outside my window singing.  And I’m pretty sure she was three sheets to the wind that night.  Loud.  Obnoxious.  Off key.  No consideration that other people might be sleeping at that time.  That’s how a drunk person sings.  It’s self-centered.

 

Paul here is saying that Spirit-filled singing builds up everybody.  Singing arouses every aspect of your being.  Your mind, your affections, your voice, your lungs; your entire body is involved in it.  And it builds up.

 

Do you know what heaven will be like?  I don’t.  But one thing I do know, based upon what we see in Revelation, is that we will be joining together with the saints who have gone before us, and the angels and archangels who surround the throne of God, and we will all together be lifting our voices to the one who gave up his own life so that we could enjoy him in that way.  Maybe you think, “Wow!  Sounds like a real Carnival Cruise experience.  Let me know how that goes for you.”  But no matter who you are, you know that something is arousing joy in your heart when you can’t help but sing.  You’ve experienced that.  And if Christ can cause people and angels to sing constantly, then the joy must surpass anything we could ever imagine.  It’s the joy we’ve been created for.  When we join in that choir, we will know chills up our spine that we could live a million lifetimes waiting to experience.

 

So as we sing when we gather together to worship, we’re not just bunch of isolated individuals lifting our hearts and voices to God.  We are the body - the body into which you and I have been saved – and we are teaching and encouraging each other in our singing.

 

Christianity is a singing faith for a lot of reasons, but one of those reasons is that we have a lot to be thankful for.  You know, grumbling was one of the besetting sins of Israel.  God liberates them from the hands of the Egyptians, and what do they do?  They’re upset that there’s no Donovan’s Steakhouse out in the desert.  Folks, if you’re anything like me, you think that the grass is greener on the other side.  Complaining.  Lack of contentment.  That is not to be part of our lives, y’all!  Of course there are some lousy and evil things that happen, and people wrong us, and do stupid things, and we suffer from our own stupid decisions, and life gets frustrating.  We need to address those things.  But see, the Christian can have a thankful disposition in the midst of frustrating circumstances because God is still God in the midst of those circumstances.  The drunkard sees his circumstances as out of control, but the Christian understands that everything in life is under Jesus’ care.  I love how the first question of the Heidelberg Catechism gives us reason for thankfulness:  Q 1: What is your only comfort in life and in death?

 

A. That I am not my own, but belong body and soul, in life and in death-to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.  He has (1) fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood and has (2) set me free from the tyranny of the devil.  (3) He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven: (What amazing fatherly care!  Every detail (hair) that has fallen out of my head, he has been in control of.  And that’s a lot of hair!) in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.  Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him. (Because of who he is and what he has done, we are thankful and live for him.) 

 

So as the Holy Spirit wells up in your life with greater fullness, you will become increasingly thankful for God and his blessings in your life.

 

But there is a final thing that becomes an increasing reality when the Scriptures are dwelling richly in our lives and the Spirit is filling us.  And that is that we mutually subject ourselves to one another.  We become others-centered human beings.  Isn’t that amazing; that as we as individuals are filled with the Holy Spirit, that filling is expressed in the context of relationships?  Folks, when we subject ourselves to one another, our relationships not only become orderly, but they become harmonious.  Drunkards don’t care about the other people with whom they’re associated.  They’re out of control and they don’t care if they say or do something to hurt another person.  They are totally consumed with themselves and become so myopic that they are neither willing nor able to live for the good of others. 

 

But Spirit-filled husbands know that in marriage, you literally love your wife with such a tangible, meaningful, deep love, that you give yourself up for her just as Christ gave himself up for his bride, the church.  Spirit-filled wives will live this out by speaking to and serving and helping their husbands in respectful ways that show them honor.  Spirit-filled children will obey their parents, and Spirit-filled parents will in word and in deed, bring their children up in the nurture and instruction of the Lord.  And that’s just what life looks like in the household, to say nothing of what it looks like at work, and in the church, and in your other relationships. 

 

Folks, that’s a gospel principle.  I mentioned this last week, but the gospel principle is that we only find ourselves when we give ourselves away.  Jesus said “whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”  In fact, it was Jesus himself who gave up his life in order that he might gain his people.  And when you set your gaze upon the cross and you see your sin concentrated right there in Jesus Christ, but you also see that his love for you is so deep that he gave his own life for you, it will change the way you relate to other people.

 

One last thing, and then we’ll be done.  This past Thursday afternoon, I was talking to a friend of mine on the phone and I said, “There is no way I can preach this sermon this Sunday!  I am like the chief of sinners when it comes to every single aspect of this passage!  Drunkenness isn’t really my thing, but man, do I ever waste time, and I can’t believe how many unwise things I say.  I mean, I can be singing in church and I’m thinking, ‘this might be the single lamest song I’ve ever heard,’ and I get critical, and I’m way too cotton pickin’ selfish.”  And he said, “Well, you need to tell them that.”  So there you go.

 

You know, Jesus said “if you love me, you will obey my commandments.”  Paul said in chapter two that “we have been created in Christ Jesus for good works.”  James said that “faith without works is dead.”  Peter said that we are to “no longer live for human passions, but for the will of God.”  John said that “if we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.”  My failure warns me, because if a diligent, striving toward obedience is not characteristic of your life or my life, then we either do not know the gospel at all, or we do not know it as we ought.  Because when you understand grace, it increasingly arouses your affections for Christ, and it propels you to live differently.  To live in ways that express gratitude for the deep, deep love of Jesus that is yours in the gospel.  And if a life that doesn’t look different and doesn’t express gratitude through my actions – if that’s not a reality in our lives – then it’s questionable as to whether grace is really alive in our lives.  Because grace always leads to obedience.

 

But I need to say this too.  If I am looking to my time management, to my wisdom, to how I encourage and serve others, to my thankfulness, or to any other area of obedience to commend myself to God – and if you are looking to any of those things – then we also do not know the gospel at all, or we do not know it as we ought.  My works can never be the thing that commends me to God.  And that encourages me, because I can never do these things well enough.  The Father never receives us by grace, through faith, in Christ plus my obedience.  That’s legalism and that totally nullifies the grace of God in Jesus Christ, because the gospel says that it’s not my works, but Christ’s work that allows me to stand before God.  “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.”

 

When I was in seminary, my classmates and I would often say, “You know, I feel like I know less about God now, then I did when I started!”  What we meant was that now that we have learned more about God, we have also discovered that we know much less about him than we ever thought.

 

The same is true with obedience.  The more and more your Christ blazes at the center of your life and you begin to conform to him more, the more and more you realize just how self-absorbed and callous you are to him.  And what happens is that the cross becomes bigger to you.  You understand with greater clarity your need for his grace, and you see with greater clarity that you have received that grace in the gospel, and as you see that his love for you is deeper, and wider, and longer, and higher than you ever knew, and your love for him – expressed in what you say, and think, and do – becomes increasingly apparent in your lives.

 

Folks, my prayer is that we would strive for these things.  That we would see the Christian life as the race and fight that it is, and that in faith, we would press on through all the distractions, all the trivialities, all the things that allure is to the left and to the right, and that we would set our gaze upon Christ and press on toward him. 

 

So may God grant that his grace would be so front and center to us that we would be compelled to honor him in the way we live our lives, and that God may fill us with joy as we seek to glorify him. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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