Morning.
Now let’s turn to Acts Chapter 2 to begin with—Acts Chapter 2, starting with the first verse.
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.
And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.
And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them.
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.
Now there were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men, from every nation under heaven.
And when this sound occurred, the crowd came together and were bewildered, because each one of them was hearing them speak in his own language.
They were amazed and astonished, saying, “Why, are not all these who are speaking Galileans?
And how is it that we each hear them in our own language to which we were born?”
Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya around Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—we hear them in our own tongues speaking of the mighty deeds of God.
And they all continued in amazement and great perplexity, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”
But others were mocking and saying, “They are full of sweet wine.”
Let’s pray.
Father, I do want to thank You this morning that You have given us not just a covering, Lord; You have given us a new creation in Jesus Christ.
And Lord, I thank You that, despite whether we come thinking that we are unable, or we are unworthy, or we just should not be here, Lord, we are hidden in You. Lord, we are asking this morning that You will fill us with Your Holy Spirit.
I ask, Father, that You would open Your Word to us today and help us to hear what You are saying to us, that we might respond to You. And, responding to You, find out what it is that You have for us in Christ.
Lord, we want to know what it is that is ours in Jesus Christ. We do not want to just know it; we want to have it. We want to have it in our hands. We want to have it in our lives. We do not just want to be those who can talk about it. Lord, we want to be those who demonstrate the life of God in us through Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit.
Lord, how unable I am to take Your Word and say, “This is what it means.” So I ask, Lord, that You would open it up to us by the Holy Spirit. You would breathe on it, Lord. You would speak to us through it, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, this morning we are continuing in Ephesians, and I have to apologize. Two weeks ago, I said I thought I had two messages left, and it has been two messages. So I’m sorry—I’m not done.
With that in mind, I’m only going to cover a few verses today. I’m just going to go on and read them and talk just a little bit about them.
So let’s go ahead in Ephesians Chapter 5. Let’s begin where we left off last time, at Verse 15. We are going to read through Verse 21.
Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil.
So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord;
always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father;
and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.
Now, actually, I read this last time, but I am going over it again this time because I did not touch it. I felt that there was one of the wonderful things in there, and to pass it over and go on to something else, I think, would not be a good thing.
In beginning, this is the last time we see the word walking. So far in Ephesians, since we came to Chapter 4, remember, the first three chapters were kind of showing us what we have in Christ. Then from Chapter 4, we have been saying, “Okay, now that you know that you have these things, what do you do with them?”
This is the fifth walking verse. The first one was in Chapter 4, at the beginning of the chapter, where it said, “Walk worthy of the calling with which you are called.” Then, in Verse 17, he said, “Walk not as the Gentiles walk.” Then last week we talked about the two walks in Chapter 5: walk in love, and walk as children of light.
All of these so far, when they talked about walking, gave us some patterns. They gave us a pattern of what not to do. But today we have something different. My version says, “Therefore, be careful how you walk.”
Now, some of your versions say, “Walk circumspectly.” Actually, the root word we are talking about here comes from the word meaning accurately. Walk accurately.
This seems really weird, doesn’t it—to walk accurately? But actually, it is not a question about the direction you are going. The directions are already set. The thing is walking toward the mark.
It is interesting when I think about this, because it is not talking about a general direction. If we were talking about, for example, pitching baseball, when you got on the mound, if you are a good pitcher, you would not throw it in the general direction of home plate.
Because, in general, the direction of home plate is as wide as the wall is, and so that is not a good deal. But you would try to pitch it in the strike zone. You want to aim. You want to be an accurate pitcher, and an accurate pitcher is a person who can throw strikes all the time.
The same thing is true if you are shooting free throws. You do not throw it in the general direction of the basket. You aim at your target. You have this little hole up there that you want to put it in, and you want to put it in that target. That is what you are going for.
So what you are doing is looking for accuracy. An interesting thing about this word accurately is that the Greek word for sin is hamartia. It is a word actually used for archery, and it has to do with missing the mark—being off target.
As Paul exhorts these brothers and sisters for the last time to walk, he points them toward the mark and says, “Walk toward the mark.” This is where we are going, because to walk from the mark is to miss the mark and somehow to be separated or to fall into sin.
So this is where Paul is coming from this last time. Now the question is: How is this going to be done? How do we walk accurately? Paul gives us a few adjectives here.
He says, “Be wise and not foolish.” Well, what does it mean to be wise? If you are wise, you are aware. You are aware of what needs to be done. You are aware of where you are.
A guy with court sense on the basketball court knows where the basket is at all times. He can have his back to the basket, but then he can turn and pop that jumper right in because he is aware of where he is. From his experience on the court, he has that court sense.
The same is true with a pitcher in baseball. He is aware of where the strike zone is, so he is aware of where he can hit the corners. A good hitter is aware of the strike zone, so he is not swinging at things that are out of the strike zone.
The other thing about a wise person is that he is informed. A wise person is informed. You make a wise decision because you are informed about the subject matter on which you are making the decision.
Hopefully, when you go out to vote, you are making a wise decision. You are making an informed decision. When you come in to take a test, like a multiple-choice test, hopefully you are making an informed decision.
I know, when I give a test, my students will say, “Well, what’s going to be on the test?” I will say, “Well, there will be some multiple-guess questions.” I hope that they do not see it that way, because some of us do. But hopefully you are making an informed decision because you know something.
It talks about later on in these verses about knowing the will of God. Hopefully, you have—or you will draw on—your knowledge of God’s will. As Christians, you should have some knowledge of His will because you read His Word, right?
And he says, “Don’t be foolish.” Well, what is a foolish man? A foolish man is one who lacks judgment.
It is like a person coming to a stop sign, looking at the car coming, and the car is right over here, and saying, “Oh, I’ll just pull out now.” That is lacking judgment, because that car is too close. You are going to get hit, or you are going to cause that person to have an accident trying to swerve and miss you.
So he says, do not lack judgment. Do not lack that sense that helps you in knowing what to do. But then he says, “Understand what the will of the Lord is.” This is what we really want to concentrate on.
Now, what is the will of the Lord? Last time we talked a little bit about how, especially as young people, we think, “What is the will of God for my life? Should I be a doctor? Maybe I should be a housewife. Maybe I should be a teacher. Maybe I should be an athletic star.”
We look at all the possibilities of things we can do in life and say, “Well, Lord, what is Your will for me in that? What is going to be my occupation for life?” But that is not what Paul is talking about here.
Most of the people he is talking to are probably slaves. Paul, in 1 Corinthians, says that if you are a slave, do not spend all your time trying to get out of your situation. If you get free, that is fine, but be who you are.
Well then, what is the will of God that he is talking about? We have heard over and over and over: God wants sons. The will of God for us is that we become sons—sons like His Son, our Lord Jesus. That is what the will of God is for us.
Now it says, “Understand what the will of the Lord is.” What is understanding? He wants us to be sons—is that enough?
Understand means to know the ways and the working of something, and to put it into operation in my life. That is understanding.
You remember last time I talked about putting together Christmas presents. You get those instructions, and if you do not understand them, it could be a tricycle, but it looks like a submarine. You do not understand. You do not know the way it works, and therefore you do not know how to put it into operation.
Some of us run our Christian lives like that. We do not know how it works because we are natural, or carnally minded. We think that we go about doing what God wants us to do by being ourselves and doing the best we can.
So we have to come to a place where our minds are renewed.
I have used this before, and I am going to use it again. In watching Disney films, I remember The Sword in the Stone. I watched it as a little boy, and then I watched it as an adult when I taught summer school and we played films like that.
King Arthur, whom they called Wart, would become like a squirrel. He had trouble until he found out that he was living by the life of the squirrel. Or he would become a bird, and he would try to run away from something chasing him, when all he had to do was fly. But he did not realize that because he had been running so long as a human being that he did not realize he was a bird now.
Well, brothers and sisters, we are new creations. We have to get used to the new life that is in us. It is no longer the old life. That is why Paul says in Chapter 4 that we have to put off the old man and put on the new man.
That goes with the good as well as the bad. We always think of the old man as being something bad, but the old man has a lot of good things in him too. We can be naturally smart. We can be naturally athletic. We can be a natural leader.
But in the kingdom of God, that means nothing, because the kingdom of God is not made up of the natural man. The kingdom of God is made up of the spiritual man, the new creation, the man after Christ. So you have to learn all over again.
I remember in first grade, one of our classmates, Greg Baroni, got in a really bad car accident. I remember it was really bad because our teacher cried, and you do not see teachers crying. Both his legs were broken—really broken—and he had to learn to walk all over again.
Well, brothers and sisters, it is the same for us. We have to learn to walk all over again, because we are not getting the old legs back. We are getting new legs. We are getting a new life. We need to learn to abide by that life and let that life abide in us.
That is a hard thing because it is just not natural for us. We always go back to what is natural for us.
Even if you watch athletes, when they get into bad habits, that is because they are naturally that way. I remember I had a coach. I was a lousy free-throw shooter. I think I shot about 53 percent in high school, so when you got me on the line, you wanted to foul me.
But I had a coach in junior college who made me shoot against the wall. I could not even shoot at a basket. He trained me to turn my wrist out.
The tendency, when you shoot, is to put your wrist straight down. But after a while, you go into a habit, and naturally you go like this. What happens is it throws the spin off the ball, and it rims out. So he had me going like this. I thought that was the stupidest thing in the world.
I turned into an 80 percent free-throw shooter because he just messed with my mechanics a little bit. He said, “You’ve got to learn it. You’ve got to learn a new thing. You’ve got to go by this new life. When you find yourself missing like this, check your follow-through.”
At work, I could not believe it. It is the same with us. The Lord says, “You have to understand how it works. You have to look at it that way.”
How do we understand and know the workings of the will of the Lord? What is the will of the Lord? This kind of sums it up right here: the will of the Lord is for us to become like Christ, for us to become sons.
Then what do we go about doing? This is really the key to it. It sounds like it ends right here: “So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” But there is a continuation: “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit.”
This is the whole key to the new life.
Now, Wycliffe, who was the first one to translate the Bible into English, wrote it this way: “Do not be filled with wine, but be filled with the Spirit.”
We have an idea of being drunk as sinful, which it is, and being filled with the Spirit as something else. But if you look at it in this way—being filled—what is filling you? Really, what it means is: What is controlling you?
Because if you are filled with wine, or if you are drunk, you are no longer in control of yourself, are you? That is why they have you walk that white line. Walk the line. Well, you cannot control yourself.
So to be filled in that way is to be controlled, or to be under the influence of this thing.
Now, we can say, “Well, I don’t drink, so this cannot be talking to me.” Well, what can we replace wine with?
How about the influence, or the sway, of this world system? Do not be under the influence of this world system. Do not be under the influence of the natural man, because that is dissipation.
Now, what in the world is dissipation? Some of your Bibles say “excess.” Some say “dissoluteness.” Mine says “dissipation,” and I think I like the word dissipation.
When I think of excess, that means you are doing all this kind of stuff that you should not be doing. But sometimes you might be walking in the way of the world by the natural man, and you are not doing things to excess. So we count it out: “They are not talking about me. I do not sin like that. I do not walk like that. Why are they talking to me about this?”
But what it means is this: the clouds might dissipate today. What do I mean? They go away or turn to nothing, right?
Brothers and sisters, what dissipation is, is that the way you are following turns to nothing. There is no prize at the end. There is nothing there.
A person who gets drunk is looking for happiness. You might think he is happy, but he wakes up, he is no longer under the influence, and he is miserable. You could say the same thing about drugs. You could say the same thing about sex. You could say the same thing about athletics. If you do not win the championship—or even when you do win the championship—you say, “Now what do I do? My goal is gone.”
They say that Alexander the Great, when he came to the Himalayas, wept because there was nothing else to conquer. Then he got drunk and died. That is true. He got inebriated, caught pneumonia, and died from malaria.
Here is even the great man of the world. Life dissipates if you do not know what the will of God is for your life. Again, I am not talking about, “Am I going to be a doctor? Am I going to be a baseball player? Am I going to be a fire chief?” I am talking about, “Am I going to be a son?”
That is the goal God has for us: to be a son, somebody responsible in His kingdom. That is what He wants for us.
As far as Ephesus goes, who was the number-one god or goddess in Ephesus? Diana—Artemis of the Ephesians. You know who was number two? Bacchus, the god of wine and drink.
What is interesting is that Artemis is a picture of the athlete, the huntress. What about today? What are the gods of today? Go to the Y: “I want to be physically fit.” Or party city—go to West Virginia University. I only say that because I had a former student come and tell me.
Otherwise, I would say Chico State in California was party city. I did not want to say UVA because you probably have guys who went there, so I do not know. But that is it. That is the goal of today.
I think Alexander the Great had a contest. He said, “I want to know who can drink the most,” and he put it among his soldiers. Thirty-two people died. I do not know how they died—whether they threw themselves to death, walked off a cliff because they were so drunk, or had heart attacks—but that was the thing: “Hey, let’s see who can do the most.”
But that is not the will of God. That is dissipation: being under another’s control, allowing another to have sway.
Sometimes, when we think of being filled with the Spirit, there is a fear that we can no longer control ourselves, as though all of a sudden we are being possessed: “Oh, the Spirit’s leading me over here.” It is not that. It is being under the sway, under the influence, of Another.
I was very happy because I fear for my daughters. That is what fathers do. There are a lot of influences out there.
We were talking on the way home one day, and I had to compliment my daughter, Kenya. I said, “You know, you could have done a lot of things, and you have not done them. Your friends do these things, and you do not. I want to tell you that I am impressed.”
What is the influence? The Lord influencing her. That is what I look at as the Lord setting up a guard.
The same with us. What is our influence? Be filled with the Spirit. It is actually the idea of being filled continuously.
What does it mean to be filled with the Spirit? I thought we all had the Holy Spirit once we believed. Why does He not just take control? He is God, isn’t He? Why does He not just take control of us?
Because that is not Him.
Remember, I touched a little bit on this in Seattle with the kids I worked with there, and in Toronto. There is a Scripture in Philippians that talks about the spirit of Christ: “Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”
Though He was equal with God, He did not regard that as something to be grasped at. He humbled Himself. He went lower, and He never took anything. He only took what the Father gave Him.
My brothers and sisters, it is the same way with the Holy Spirit. That is the spirit of Christ. He does not force Himself on you in any way.
I think a wonderful thing about David was that, even when he should have been the rightful king, he never took Saul’s place. Even when he had a chance twice to kill him, and it would have been right for him to kill him, he just did not do it.
He said, “Far be it from me that I should harm the Lord’s anointed.” He waited until he was given that position. That was after Saul died. After Saul died, Israel still did not take him.
Judah did—his brothers and sisters did. They made him king, and he was king for seven years. Finally, after those seven years, the rest of Israel said, “Be our king,” and he said, “I will.”
Brothers and sisters, that is the Holy Spirit. That is just like the Holy Spirit. He will not force Himself upon me. He will not take anything by force. It must be given to Him. It has to be given to Him, because that is who He is.
We think being filled with the Spirit is like, “I am filled with the Spirit. That is my superhero point. Go ahead, shoot me. It will just bounce off. Tongues, fiery darts.”
There is power there in being filled with the Spirit, but that is not what it is. We do not get tights and a cape, right?
Being filled with the Spirit has two characteristics. One I am going to touch on today, and one I am going to touch on next time. Out of those characteristics, you find the power of God in your life to overcome and to stand.
First of all, after it says, “Be filled with the Spirit,” it says:
Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.
One characteristic, which we will talk about next time, is to be subject—to submit yourself. It says, “To one another,” but it says, “In the Lord.” It is to submit yourself to the Lord.
That is one characteristic of being filled with the Spirit. You find yourself in subjection to Another. How do you think we are influenced? It is because we are in subjection.
When we are in rebellion, we are not influenced by the Spirit of God; we are running away from Him. But when we are in submission, when we are submissive, when we are in subjection, we find God able to be God.
That is a big thing. When we are in the place He wants us to be in, we find that He is able to be Who He wants to be, and Who He is, in our lives.
Now, this other thing is: your song changes.
All this thing is about singing—about what comes out of your mouth. The Lord Jesus says, “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.”
I have been listening to myself lately. I cannot tell you how many times I say, “Well, my opinion. Well, I think you should do this. Well, my view is.” That is the killer. That has been my song for a while now.
But your song changes. Since I like music, I will say this: it changes from its base.
Maybe your song is a blues-based song. Everything is wrong. Things are just the way they are. “I will never get ahead, because woe is me.” I do not know—is that your song? Are you a blues-based person?
Maybe you are country-western folk. That is kind of blues with a twang. Once in a while you get some happy stuff in there, but your dog is gone, your gun is gone, your truck is gone, your wife is gone. They say if you play it backward, you get them all back, so I do not know.
I am sorry to digress. Remember they said that with Beatles albums: you play it backward and you hear about Paul being dead. How dumb.
Maybe you are into protesting. “This has to change, and that has to change, and the other thing has to change.” Change, change, change—but change never comes.
Or maybe you are hip-hopping around. You are going through a different culture. But the whole thing is that all those songs have at the center of them: me, I, my. That is it.
If you are filled with the Spirit, your song changes. You are not singing the old songs.
What are you singing? I know this is going to sound dumb: singing Christmas carols.
Now, think about that. Have you ever listened to Christmas carols? I am not talking about “Jingle Bells” and things like that—“It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.” But if you ever read Christmas carols, they are wonderful. They are full of the gospel.
For example, Joy to the World by Isaac Watts was not really a Christmas carol. It was written about the second coming of Christ, yet we sing it as a Christmas carol about the first coming. But what is the center of it?
Joy to the world, the Lord has come.
What a difference.
Or, “Hark! the herald angels sing, glory to the newborn King.” Glory to the King. Where am I in that? I am the one singing it. That is where I am. I am singing it.
Or how about, “O come, let us adore Him.”
If you are filled with the Spirit, your whole focus has changed. There is no longer “I that live”; it is Christ in me. Is that what Paul says? Well, that is it.
We come, and the Lord changes the way we look at things. “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” At the forefront of our mind, we have to be seeing something else. Our minds have to be renewed. We have to be seeing something else.
How can I be filled with the Spirit? A lot of us say, “How can that happen to me?” We are looking for an experience. We are looking for a one-time shot too. We want it to happen once, and we want it to be forever.
Oh man, I cannot tell you how I pray for that. “Lord, one-time shot. I am Yours forever. That is what I want. Give it to me.”
How can I be filled with the Spirit? You ask the Father: “Father, fill me with Your Spirit.”
You have to believe that He will, because it says, “If you ask for a loaf of bread, will He give you a stone? If you ask for an egg, will He give you a scorpion? If you ask for a fish, will He give you a snake? How much more will He give the Holy Spirit to those who ask?”
Again, I am not talking about an experience. I am saying, “Lord, I want You to influence my life. I want You in my life so that You are the One ruling over me. Fill me in that sense.” That is what I am seeking after.
The next thing is to open the doors to Him. Open the doors to your life.
If you look at the Holy Spirit as water, if you open the door to water, does the water just stand there in heaps, like Moses’ time, standing up in heaps? No. You open the door, and it comes flooding in.
Well, brothers and sisters, that is it. That is our part. We ask, and then we open. We open ourselves to Him.
Remember the little book My Heart—Christ’s Home? How he went through each room in his heart, and he opened it. Where he would not open it, the Lord would not go in. But where he did open it, the Lord would go in.
Well, it is the same with us. Some of us want to have a secular life and a religious life. But the Lord tells us that you cannot serve two masters, because you will either love the one and hate the other, and do what the one wants and not do what the other wants.
You have to come to that place, because otherwise you will not come to being filled. You have to come to that place.
The Lord is faithful. Since He bought you with the precious blood of Christ, He will do everything in His power to bring you to the place that you say, “I want You,” even to the point of wrestling with you.
What happened with Jacob? He wrestled with him, even to the point of touching his hip. Even after that hip test, after your name changes, you go back to Jacob—He still comes after you.
There is a verse in James. I am going to read it the way the footnote in my wife’s Bible says—James 4:5:
Do you imagine, then, that there is no meaning to the Scripture that says, “The Spirit that dwells in us longs jealously over us”?
In another version, it says He longs jealously to possess us—to have influence over us, to have control over us. Do you not know that?
We know Him too much as the dove—the dove, so shy, so easily frightened off.
You have got to let the dove in, because when you let the dove in, you find that it becomes fire and wind. It becomes power.
The Holy Spirit is like the shy guy in class. You ever notice there is a shy guy in class and nobody ever knows it? He is almost there, and nobody even knows what he can do.
Then one day the teacher asks him to do something, and it comes out like, “Oh, who knew this guy could do that?” Or the teacher puts him in charge of something, and the way he runs it, all of a sudden no one ever thought of that, and it turns out to be the best.
That is the Holy Spirit. Just like the Holy Spirit, we put Him off in the corner because He does not make a lot of noise—except He convicts us, and that is when we really put Him off in the corner.
But then we see what He does, and we say, “I never knew.” That is what the Lord has for us.
Now, I never have water, but I am doing this on purpose.
Not full anymore, is it? At least I left a little. Now what do I do?
Well, what do I do? Fill it back up.
Okay, brothers and sisters, we get out in the world, and we are leaky vessels. How do we get it back?
You go back into the closet. You have got to be a closet person. You hear a lot about the term “coming out of the closet,” but we have to go back into the closet.
We have to have that ministry where we go to the Lord daily and feed on what He has, have that conversation with Him, and allow the Word to fill us, strengthening us in the inner man. That happens there.
A meeting is not sufficient. You have to have that private time. You have to have that personal relationship.
You will know. If you just go to meetings and you go back in the other ones, you will know, because you are dead inside. You feel like rocks are just covering up the well.
But the wonderful thing about the Holy Spirit—the Lord Jesus says—is that He is like water that bubbles up.
Some people say, “Well, gee, Jim, I do not have a song. I do not have that song.” I read a great little book when I was a young Christian. It was called Prison to Praise, by Merlin Carothers. Have you ever read Prison to Praise by Merlin Carothers?
Oh, complaining all the time. He just said, “You know something? I am just going to praise the Lord.”
Now, I am not saying that this is some positive-confession thing, but I am saying this: sometimes we come here in the morning, and we just feel like we are out of it. We are just lost. We do not even feel like singing. We feel like hypocrites.
Can I tell you, every time they put on “It Is Well,” I can sing the first two verses, and I am not very happy. But when that third verse comes up:
My sin—oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
How can you not begin to praise the Lord?
When you give in to the Spirit saying, “I do not care how you feel. Praise Me for what I have done. It does not have to be what you feel. I have done this. You praise Me for it,” all of a sudden you are letting the water spring up.
Well, rocks start to move.
Now, do you go home and just cover the well up, or do you go home and start living out of that water that is there? What do you do?
I know too often I go back home, and I cover up the well. My brothers and sisters, it is just too hard to live like that. It is too hard to live like that.
The Lord says, “I want you for Myself. You need to understand what I have done for you, and I want you to live in the good of what I have done for you, because I have done it, and it cost Me something great.”
So you praise Him. It is like saying this. There is another song: “Come Thou Fount.” Come Thou Fount—come, come, come, come, come, tune my heart.
How do I get filled? I go back into the closet.
I am going to end with this, because I am not going to get into submitting; that is too much to do right now.
Let’s go back to this verse. I wish I had ended with this verse last time, but I did not. It says, “Making the most of your time,” or some of your versions say, “Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”
Redeeming the time. I like that instead of “making the most of your time,” because if you redeem something, you have to pay. You have to pay for it.
Redeeming time is costly. It is going to cost you something to redeem the time. But another way of looking at this is: seize the opportunity.
This is your opportunity to walk with God. This life is our opportunity now.
We are not waiting for our ship to come in. We are not waiting for something to happen. Today is our opportunity. The rest of our life is the opportunity that God has given us to know Him, to walk with Him, and to be transformed into the sons that He seeks.
This is it, brothers and sisters. Do not be waiting for something else. This is the time. Now is the day of your salvation.
In Hebrews Chapter 4, this is the verse I want to end with. In Verse 1, it says:
Therefore, let us fear if, while a promise remains of entering His rest—
A promise remains. This is the promise that remains.
Then Verse 11 says:
Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest.
The word diligent—where did I put it? It is spoudazō. I am so glad that Alan is teaching Greek. Spoudazō. Sounds really good, huh?
What that means is to hasten to do a thing. If you are diligent, you do not put things off.
When I assigned a summer assignment for school—yes, over summer vacation—I made mine pretty simple. But how many kids waited until that last night to do that thing? You could tell by looking at it that they waited until the last night, could you not? Their grade showed it too.
Hasten to do it. The Lord says, “I set these things before you.” Oh, all right, let’s go.
It is like Christmas morning. You cannot wait. I remember on Christmas mornings, parents would be setting things up, and you could hear them. You could hear the paper rustling and stuff like that, and you could not sleep. You wanted to get at it right then.
Oh, that it was the same with us—that we had that same feeling about entering into what the Lord has for us. “Oh, I want to do it now.” Now, the Lord will say, “Yeah, we will go little by little, but I will start giving you stuff now.”
It also means to exert oneself. Sometimes we think that everything is just going to be given to us: “Hey, saved by grace.”
But brothers and sisters, how do you get your muscles strengthened? How do you learn to walk? You have to exert yourself. You have to exert that same way. You have to exert the spiritual power given to you in Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit.
Today is the day. Today is the day. Let us be filled. Let us be controlled. Let us go to the Father and say, “Lord, I do not care what the past has been. Today I say, fill me. Fill me with Your Holy Spirit, and let me walk by Him.”
You know, we have been talking about, “Do not be drunk with wine.” But Jesus’ first miracle was taking something that was tasteless—water, which could quench your thirst but had no other effect on you—and turning it into wine.
He made it something that had life. It says, “This He did as the beginning of His signs, and manifested His glory.”
How is He going to manifest His glory in us? By our being filled with the Spirit, that we become that new wine that He creates through His work.
Understand what the will of the Lord is. Understand: it is Him working through us. He is working in us both to will and to do His good pleasure. Let’s not put Him off.
Lord, we rejoice in You this morning because You have everything for us, and You will not hold it back. Oh Lord, what a wonderful God You are.
Lord, we know that we just have trouble taking it from You. Sometimes we just want to run our own way, thinking that is the right way. Sometimes we are caught up in this world, and sometimes we just do not even realize things.
Oh Lord, make us aware. Make us aware of what You have for us. Then, Lord, give us the desire, the energy, the desire that says, “I want this.”
Then by the Spirit, Lord, make us diligent to take what You have for us, to hasten to come and change our song. Lord, we do not want to be singing the blues anymore. We want to be singing praise unto You for what You have done in our lives.
We commit ourselves to You. We commit this Word to You through Jesus Christ.