The Question, Part 2

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ.

Think of the kind of Christian you want to be, the kind of disciple of Christ or follower of Christ you want to be, that I want to be this kind of Christian. Time alone will not produce that. It will not. You see, that's going to require decisions on your part. That's going to require how you spend your time.

You see, that's going to require a lot of you, and it's going to require it now. Just because ten years pass doesn't mean you've grown spiritually one day. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt.

Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. He says you need to be careful how you live. Don't live foolishly.

Live wisely, but you need to make the most of your time. And that term, making the most of, making the most of, is one word in Greek. It's the word ex agorazo. Now you say, well, what's that mean? It means every other time it's in the New Testament, it's translated redeem. In fact, you have been ex agorazoed by the blood of Christ.

You have been redeemed by the blood of Christ. And so you could say here, redeem your time. It would be the same thing. He says make the most of your time. And the word time is not the word chrono, which we get chronograph from. He's not talking about the hours, the days, the months. He's not talking about that.

He's talking about something else. He's talking about the word kairos, and it's your time. Making the most of your time. Making the most of your life. The word kairos means allotted.

It's an interesting word. Your allotted time. You need to make the most out of your allotted time. Now, notice what he means by this. He is not saying to us, oh boy, now I'm going to feel guilty because I'm going to have to be one of these guys.

I'm going to have to keep a day planner and see if I waste any time. I've got to be serving Jesus every moment of every day. That's not what he means. What he means is this. Don't waste your time by making foolish choices.

Don't do that. Make the most of your time by making wise choices with your life, asking yourself the question, what is the wise thing to do? And then he says, notice, making the most of your time because the days are evil. Now, the Ephesians are like, what?

Yeah, the days are evil. Hold your place and go back to chapter two of Ephesians, just for two verses. Chapter two and verses one and two. He says, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins. And then he says this, in which you formerly lived or formerly walked according to the course of this world. He says, according to the prince of the power of the air, he said of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. So he tells the Ephesians, you know what? You know why your world was so evil? Because it's controlled by the evil one. That's why.

He said, and that's the way it is. And it was for them to live in Ephesus. If you would visit the ruins in Ephesus today, there are areas still carved out near the temple sites where they have all kinds of phalic images because it was part of their worship. In fact, if you were going to worship in the temple in Ephesus, the two things that were most important for a worship service was drunkenness and prostitution. That was worship in Ephesus.

That's what these people were doing before they came to Christ. And he says, look, I know that the culture you grew up in has a sort of grip on you. And you fight this temptation of going back to living the way you had, just like you and I.

Nothing's really changed. Years and years ago, I think as a little boy, used to say things like, don't go looking for trouble. I don't think today you have to go looking for it. I don't think you have to go looking for trouble. I think trouble is everywhere.

I think our culture is showing over and over again by all the ways you mark a culture that it's sliding and it's changing. And he says that all the more reason that you be careful how you live, that you be careful to make wise choices and not foolish ones, that you make the most of the opportunity called your life because the days in which you live, he said, are evil. There is no morally neutral climate in which we live. He said almost the same thing to the Romans in Romans 12 when he said, don't let the world squeeze you into its mold. That is so much easier to have happen than you think it is. The world can set our priorities.

It sets so many of our goals and ambitions. So he said, so then do not in verse 17 be foolish. Do not be foolish. And then he says, but understand what the will of the Lord is. Now, that's not funny in English, but it's funny in Greek. The word understand in Greek is an imperative mood.

That's right. He's commanding it. Now, can you command someone to understand? Don't you wish you could? If you could, I would have learned so much more in school. All the teacher would have said, I command you, you understand this?

OK, I'll do it if you command me. You can't understand something by commandment, but that's what it is. It's an imperative mood. He said, you need to understand. What does he mean by that?

Paul is a very bright man, so he can't be thinking I can command people to understand. Now, that's not what he means. He means I want to use what I'm saying right now as a wake up call for you. He's sort of grabbing them by their collar.

You know, that's kind of what he's doing right now. He's saying, look, you need to face up what you know to be true in your heart. You're a Christian. The Spirit of God indwells you. You see, admit to yourself because you know what God would have you to do.

He's just trying to wake them up. By the way, that kind of works sometimes. Have you ever seen someone or talked to someone and said, you know, I think you need to be more careful about what you eat? And the answer, your normal response is, no.

Well, you need to get at least a moderate amount of exercise. No. You think, wow. You know, I think you ought to quit smoking. Maybe you shouldn't drink so much.

No. Then they see a doctor. And then you see them four or five months later and you say, hey, you're looking good. What happened?

Doctor told me that if I kept this up, I'm going to be dead in a year. Wow. Yeah. You see, what happened? Now they're motivated. You see, now they're motivated. Until they face the consequences, they weren't motivated.

It's always no. But Paul is trying to say, look, I want you not to experience all the consequences of the bad choices of your life. I want you to live wisely. You see, I want you to ask that question.

What is the wise thing for me to do in virtually every single situation? As I thought about this, notice he said, if you do that, you understand what the will of the Lord is. That word could mean desire or wish just as easily. And I think that's what he is saying. That's what the Lord wishes for you. That's what the Lord desires for you. He desires that you are careful about the way you live, that you live wisely, not foolishly. You see, that you make the most of your time.

That's what he is saying. Don't be foolish. As I thought about this, I thought about how do we apply that question? What is the wise thing to do? And I believe that there's really sort of three perspectives here. Three perspectives that I think you should think about the next time you're making a choice and doing the wise thing.

Number one is this. In light of your past experiences, what is the wise thing to do? Now, let me explain that. In light of your past experiences, what is the wise thing to do? You see, all of us have our own unique history. I want you to think about your past experiences.

Let me illustrate that. You get in the mail a brand new credit card. It's just been issued to you. Now, just last year, after 15 years of paying off $18,000 in credit card debt, you finally got yourself clear. And now you've got a new card in the mail. You see, now, that doesn't mean a new card's bad for anybody else. But in your situation, considering that you put yourself under a crude, a mountain of debt in your life, what is the wise thing for you to do on the basis of your past experiences?

You see, that's the question you have to ask yourself. I see this all the time. I'm astounded by people who go into one bad relationship after another bad relationship. And it's amazing. As soon as one bad relationship starts, stops, they jump into the next one.

Illustration is sort of like, you know, somebody comes and says, hey, I just got to tell you something, pastor. I just found the lady of my dreams. And we're going to be married. And I say, well, you thought about this a lot.

Oh, yeah. I said, now, you now realize you've been married four times before. And he would say, yeah, yeah, but you know how bad they all were.

But weren't you there in all four of those? And they're always perplexed, like, what? I said, well, how about this then? Let Liz think about it this way on the basis of your past experiences.

So far, based on your past experiences, you're lousy at picking ladies to marry. That'd be the best thing we could say about this. So in light of that, do you think you should be really cautious here? You should take a lot of care here.

You see, that happens. We're vulnerable. As we get older, we're vulnerable. We lose a spouse.

We've never been lonely in our adult life. And so immediately, we want to jump into a relationship as fast as we can. Be careful. You see, be careful.

What is the wise thing for me to do? Secondly, not only in light of our past experiences, but in light of your present circumstances, what is the wise thing to do? And what I mean by that is, what's going on with you today? You know, Jesus taught us in the Sermon on the Mount that each day will have plenty of trouble on its own. And we all face that, and we all understand that to be true. But you cannot allow today's pressures or today's fears or today's circumstances to drive you to make a choice or a decision that tomorrow you'll regret. Think about it this way.

At least this is true for me. Most of the apologies that we have ever made are due to the fact that we overreacted in the moment. Most of the apologies that you've ever made is because you overreacted in the moment.

I remember reading this years ago. When you're really mad, when you're really mad, do nothing. That's solid advice.

By the way, is that hard? Yeah, because, see, right now you're at least, I can't tell who's really mad at each other. You can hide that pretty well in church. But the whole idea of it is in a situation like this, it's pretty benign so you have, yeah, that makes good sense. But then you get in a car and then there's, where are we going to eat afterwards? And then all of a sudden it starts and you'll find out that doing nothing is harder than you think. You see, when you're really mad, I don't want to do nothing.

I want to do something that you end up regretting. We think of a typical marital conflict. The analogy I always use is a typical marital conflict is you basically take sort of two pea shooters and somebody does something and you shoot a pea over because you're upset. And then they shoot one back.

But the one they shot back hit you in the eye. And so consequently then you start saying, well, I'm pulling out the club. And then they pull out a club and you pull out a gun, they pull out a gun, you pull out a cannon, they pull out a cannon. Now you got your nuclear warheads ready to go.

They got their nuclear war. And then words like always and never and anger is flowing everywhere. And in the end, you look across the room at the person you love and you think, boy, I regret this. Why did I do this?

How did this happen? You see, in light of my present circumstances, my emotions, my state of mind, all those things. And so when you're going to ask the question, what is the wise thing to do, you have to look at it in the light of your past experiences, in light of your present circumstances. And lastly, in light of your future hopes and dreams, what is the wise thing to do? In light of your future hopes and dreams. It could be general or it could be extremely detailed. You see, where would you like to be in 10 years?

As you look down, where would you like to be in 10 years? It's kind of astounding stuff. You know, they've done this kind of thing with teenagers a lot. And what they've done is they've asked teenagers to write essays on who is the kind of person they would like to marry and the kind of life they would like to have 10 years down the road, 15 years down the road. And when they write it out, it's amazing how different the perspective of what they want is compared to the people that they're with right now.

It's an astounding thing. You see, and the reason why it's so astounding is, no, that's what I want down the road, but you know, the whole problem of it is the decisions you make today, they come into focus in the future. The future will focus the decisions you make today. For example, if you spend too much money now, it'll be clear to you later. If you drink too much alcohol now, it'll become clear later. If you have too many nights out, it'll be clear later. If you go in and out of too many relationships, it'll become clear later.

If you miss too many classes, it'll become clear later. You see, you end up with a future of regret. That's what happens. You see, you have to stop deceiving yourselves. Again, all these defense mechanisms that we use, I'm not doing anything wrong. People do this all the time. I'm not hurting anyone. There's no law against this.

Nobody's going to find out. Those are all bad ways to self-talk. You see, the reaping and sowing principle is ironclad. So specifically, in light of where you would want to be ten years from now financially, what is the wise thing for me to do today? You see, now I know that isn't easy, you see, because you have eyes.

You see, and you see things in our culture all the time. Zero percent financing. Zero. You know, hun, that's like stealing. You know, I got to have that because that's got zero percent financing. Wait, do you need that? Need it? It's zero percent financing. Or how about this one? Bad credit? No credit? It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter. This Pontiac is for you. Now, I have a whole experience behind me of debt I couldn't get out from under. And now, I can get more debt.

You see, you have to be so careful with that. In light of where you want to be financially ten years from now, what is the wise thing to do? How about this, in light of the kind of Christian you want to be ten years from now? Think of the kind of Christian you want to be. The kind of disciple of Christ or follower of Christ you want to be.

That I want to be this kind of Christian. Time alone will not produce that. It will not. You see, that's going to require decisions on your part. That's going to require how you spend your time. You see, that's going to require a lot of you. And it's going to require it now. Just because ten years pass doesn't mean you've grown spiritually one day. You see, that's the whole point. I have to make choices now.

What is the wise choice now? And it's certainly beneficial. Bill Hybels is the senior pastor of Willow Creek in Chicago. Years ago, I heard him say how much discipline is so important in the Christian life. And he defined discipline in a way that I think applies to almost everything. He said to him, discipline is simply this, delayed gratification. That's what discipline is. You see, you discipline yourself and you don't get the gratification right now. But you get it down the road in every area of your life, including spiritually. So, the question is, what is the wise thing to do?

In light of my past experiences, in light of my present circumstances, and in light of my future hopes and dreams. You see, you and I have something in common. We're very capable of doing really stupid things. God knows it. And so he simply said, before you do the next one, ask yourself the question, what is the wise thing to do? That question can change your life.

Let's pray. Father, this is one of those subjects that when we study it from afar, it seems so self-explanatory, so easy to understand. It seems to be poignant. It seems to be exactly what we need in our life. And yet, Father, when we find ourselves making decisions and choices with relationships and with careers and with finances and all those other kind of areas, then it gets very cloudy. Father, I pray that in the future for each and every one of us who know you through Jesus Christ, that we face our next choice, our next decision, whatever it is, that we take the time and allow your spirit to convict us and to prompt us that we would ask the question, what is the wise thing to do here? Father, if we do that, it would be for your glory, but it would be for our good. You intend for us to have a life that is filled with joy and peace and hope and meaning and purpose. But, Father, we're only going to reap that life if we make wise choices. This we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called oneplace.com. That's oneplace.com, and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.

At that website, you will find not only today's broadcast but also many of our previous audio programs as well. At Fellowship in the Word, we are thankful for those who financially support our ministry and make this broadcast possible. We ask all of our listeners to prayerfully consider how you might help this radio ministry continue its broadcast on this radio station by supporting us monthly or with just a one-time gift. Support for our ministry can be sent to Fellowship in the Word 4600 Clearview Parkway, Metairie, Louisiana 7006. If you would be interested in hearing today's message in its original format, that is as a sermon that Pastor Bill delivered during a Sunday morning service at Fellowship Bible Church, then you should visit our website, fbcnola.org.

That's fbcnola.org. At our website, you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for, or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for, you can listen online, or if you prefer, you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember, you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt, thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word. We'll see you next time.