Anytime we're faced with choices, it's tempting to go with whatever is easiest or effective or reasonable.
But that's not always the wisest decision. Today on Truth for Life, we'll find out why. Here's Alistair Begg with Part 2 of a message titled, Walking in Wisdom. We're in Ephesians chapter 5. She's focused on God's Word. And she is making decisions in the now in relationship to the then. One of the unwise ways to go through life, or one of the indications of the fact that I am not wise, is where I am constantly focused on the now. It's all about now. And this is a great mantra of our age. You watch golf tournaments, they always say the same thing, well, I'm just concentrating on the now. It's just this moment, and that's it.
Well, that makes perfect sense—only insofar as it is within the framework of those four or five hours. But the now of existentialism, if you like, has to be set within the framework of eternity—that God has set eternity in the hearts of a man, so that a man inside knows there is more than this, so then it is foolishness to say, All that matters is now. And consequences forget them. There is no consequences.
It doesn't matter. No, you see, the Bible introduces the then to us so that we can make sense of the now. And without the then, there is actually no particular sense in the now. Jesus did the same thing. The man says… He tells the story of the man who had a very good business going.
Highly successful. And as a result of that, he had resources. He said to himself, With my resources, I think I can do a little bit more work.
Nothing wrong with that at all. There's no condemnation that in the parable, where does the issue lie? Jesus said, And God said to him—check the text—God said to him, Full! Tonight your soul will be required of you.
And who will then get all that you have acquired for yourself? In other words, he's saying, when you take the now and you set it in the context of then, it changes your mentality. And the wise person recognizes that. Some time ago, somebody sent me a book written by a lady—I've forgotten who it was—but it was essentially helping one to navigate through life.
And the suggestion was… I think it was called 10-10-10. And she said in the book, When you're about to make a decision, ask yourself, What will the implications be in ten minutes, ten months, and ten years? The fool says, Who cares? I don't care what's gonna happen in ten seconds. All I care about is right now.
Look carefully how you walk. Not as unwise but as wise. The people who have made the greatest impact in the world are the people who have lived there now in relationship to the then. Take, for example, Murray McShane. He dies at twenty-nine as a Presbyterian minister in Edinburgh. What was it that marked McShane out? It was the fact that eternity impinged upon him to such a degree that it radically affected the way in which he spent his time and preached his sermons and everything else.
And so it's no surprise that he's the one who wrote the poem which became the hymn, When this passing world is done, When has sunk yon glaring sun, When we stand with Christ in glory, Looking o'er life's finished story, Then, Lord, shall I fully know, Not till then how much I owe. So this wisdom, you see, is not merely knowledge. It's not a possession of facts.
It's not SATs. It's not postgraduate qualifications. It is possible to have all of that and not be wise. It's a wonderful thing if you have that and you are wise. But if you had to choose, you'd go for simplified wisdom rather than complicated absence of wisdom. No, the wisdom is the ability to process knowledge in light of the truth of God's Word and then to be able to apply that knowledge to the practicalities of life. So it is a God-given wisdom. Because by nature we look at things upside-down, inside-out. It's only when the light shines in that we see we're dark.
It's only when the light shines on the Word that we say, Oh, well, that does make sense. Until then, we walk in darkness. Now, he goes on then to say, one of the ways in which this then will be revealed is in the matter of time. Look carefully how you walk, and then, making the best use of time.
How will we know that somebody is a wise person? Well, the use of time will be one of the indications. Now, time, of course, in itself is a challenge, isn't it? Philosophers and scientists have been wrestling with a question of time for all of time. And that sort of high-level contemplation eventually filters down to the man on the street like me, and usually in contemporary music. And so, for example, if you're familiar with a song by James Taylor called The Secret of Life, it begins, The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.
Any fool can do it, there ain't nothing to it. Nobody knows how we got to the top of the hill, but since we're on our way down, we might as well enjoy the ride. Now, the thing about time is that time isn't really real. It's just your point of view. How does it feel for you?
Einstein said he could never understand it at all. Planets spinning through space, the smile on your face, welcome to the human race. Some kind of lovely ride. I'll be sliding down. I'll be gliding down. Try not to try too hard.
It's just a lovely ride, sliding down, gliding down. What are you gonna do with that? Does that lift your spirits, fuel your zeal, say, I want to seize every opportunity that is mine?
No. You see, that's man's kind of assessment of things. And it just takes the Word of God to assess things as they really are. And the making of the use of our time is in the context of days that are evil.
Days that are evil. There's another one. Louis Armstrong says it's a wonderful world. And it is, in many ways. But what a mess! What a mess!
How can you say this place is wonderful? How long are we supposed to keep working at this and get it so unbelievably wrong? We can't live with one another.
Husbands can't live with wives, parents with children, races with one another, countries, states. What's going on? Well, of course, it's to do with this and with that, and of course with the next thing. We have a problem with the next thing.
Well, how about the idea that the days in which we live are evil? How about the fact that Ross Douthat in the New York Times actually was brave enough to say it? I know nothing about Ross, but I was intrigued to see that, after all the hoopla about the death of Mr. So-and-so from the Playboy Mansion, he had the guts to write a piece in the New York Times entitled An Honest Obituary for a Wicked American.
All right? An Honest Obituary for a Wicked American. I can't believe that he managed to get the adjective in. Where did he come up with that? On what basis is he wicked? Only on the basis of there being a moral standard of rectitude. Where is the basis of the moral standard? In God. How has God made it known? In his Word. Summarized in the Ten Commandments, worked out throughout the whole of life. Thereby able to say, This is good and this is bad. The days, he says to the Ephesians, are evil days. That's why he's going to go on in chapter 6 and point out that the real issue that is involved is not against physical things, but it's against spiritual wickedness in the heavenly places. Just last night, as I was thinking about going to sleep, I was reading the London Times for today, because by that time it was already today in London.
And I shouldn't have done it, because it just got me more ticked off before I went to sleep than it's harder to sleep. But particularly when I went to the Scotland section—and there in the Scotland section some well-meaning politician was explaining why Scotland is at the forefront, basically, of upturning everything that the Bible has to say about marriage, about family, about child rearing, and so on. And in the course of the article, the fellow says, And of course we have wonderful precedent for this, because fifty-two other countries in the world have already done this, and we are happy to join them, and indeed to lead the way. I said, Can it be? Can it be that the land of John Knox is producing this kind of stuff?
Can it be that Scotland, that has been known as the land of the book, can have people now declaring these things with such forcefulness? How does this happen? Well, the answer is in Genesis chapter 3, where we have the protoangelion. He will bruise your heel, and he will crush his head. In other words, the great dilemma of the world is because of the darkness that exists into which the light comes, and the darkness cannot ultimately extinguish it. But whether you're in Ephesus or whether you're in Cleveland, Paul is saying, You're gonna have to make the most of your time in a context that is dark and is evil. Well, what does it mean to make the most of your time, given that the heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked?
What does it mean? What does it mean to redeem the time? How do you buy back time? Time may be money, but money can't buy time. Time is our greatest commodity, not money.
We can't add… We can't stretch it in any way. That's what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. He says to his disciples, Why are you anxious about these things? He said, Which of you could actually add a single hour to your span of life? The answer is nobody.
Nobody could. So how in the world are we to do what he says? To make the best use of the time. How do you make the best use of the time?
What is the price that needs to be paid in order to do that? The answer is self-discipline. Self-discipline. To glorify God, deciding that everything I am and everything I have is ultimately to be sent in that direction, so that all of my time—not like Sunday time, religious time, and then secular time—but all of time—and time is the creation of God, don't forget—has been given to us in order that we might glorify God.
Do you remember this article? I mean, this advertisement in an old, old newspaper under the Lost and Found column said, Lost yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes, no reward offered, for they are gone forever. Wisdom will be displayed in our understanding of time, set again within the context of eternity, and in the way in which we take the opportunities which time affords to live to the glory of God. So he comes back, almost full circle, in verse 17—back to the negative again. Therefore, do not be foolish. Do not be foolish. Why do you have to say, Do not be foolish?
You've written to these people, they're believers in Jesus, they're following Jesus. Because we're foolish! We are absolutely foolish! The warnings are not there as sort of some external concept. They're there to say, You know, you've got a great potential to be stupid, to act like a simpleton in this one. You're not thinking.
You're not thinking. He's already said, back in verse 10, Try to discern what it is that pleases the Lord. He doesn't say you'll find what pleases the Lord by just, like, sitting and having a moment. He says, You're going to have to try and discern it. How do you discern it? By thinking. By thinking what? By thinking universal principles to be applied to individual questions in such a way that the principles then drive the thinking and, ultimately, the decision. Simpletons don't think.
Simpletons do stuff, and they are still unprepared to acknowledge that there are consequences to them. Christian and Hopeful did the very thing in that moment. This looks like a reasonable way to go. It's easy. It's attractive.
Let's go. Well, you need to understand, we need to understand, that when the Bible talks about that making an understanding of what the will of the Lord is, it's really very straightforward. Because ultimately, God's will for his children is to make us like Jesus. If you'd want to stand way back from the picture and say, What is God doing with us? What is he doing with us that is true of every single one of us?
Whether you work in a bank, whether you work as a carpenter, whether you're a mom, whether you're a student, whether you're a scientist, an artist, a poet, a musician, whatever it is—what is God doing? What is the will of God to make you like Jesus? If you doubt that, read Romans 8. Those he predestined, he called to be conformed to the image of his Son. So we know that all day, every day, he is committed to making us like his Son. That's why in Ephesians 1 he's already said that God has come in eternity into time in order to make you holy. In 1 Thessalonians 4, the same thing, and this is the will of God for you, even your sanctification. And John looks to the day when we will see him and we will be like him. Now, that is the big picture, and that is the ultimate destination.
Paul is not suggesting here that we can, as it were, finally categorically figure out all the peculiarities of our personal discoveries of the will of God. So, for example, should I get married to him? Should I get a new job? Should I retire? Should I retire on November the 25th, or should I retire on the 10th of December?
Should we move to Maine? All of those questions, I guarantee you, you cannot find the answer in the Bible. It's not in there. You heard it from me.
Those particular things are not in the Bible. Now, you say, well, what are we supposed to do? Well, we're supposed to do this.
We are supposed to think. That's the first thing. Don't be foolish.
Don't be daft. Understand what the will of the Lord is. And so then I bring my personal decision-making under my careful thinking about the principles of God's Word, which then constrain me in relationship to these other decisions. That's the importance, incidentally, of knowing the Bible. That's the importance of actually paying attention to the Bible. That's the importance of Christian fellowship. That's the importance of wise counsel.
Because all of these things have been given to us in order to help us with those questions, because we do care about whether we're getting married or not. We do care about whether we're retiring or not, and so on. But we can't go and find the actual verse in there that says, Alistair begged, retire in November. Okay? Incidentally, I'm not planning on retiring in November.
But maybe in December. So… No, and eventually what we're going to say is, nevertheless, not my will but then be done. Here's the thing that—let's just finish in this way. The will of God is perfect. The will of God is perfect. Understand the will of God. All of the dark shadows, all of the deep paths, all of the difficulties, all of the great challenges in the dungeon experiences of our life, still the will of God is perfect.
As for God, his way is perfect. At the end of the journey, we will be able to look back and understand what now we cannot really fathom. And when I was thinking along these lines, it took me back again to my student days and to one of the girls who was a friend of us all—a Welsh girl, a good singer who graduated the year before us. She went to Rhodesia, as it was then.
She went to work in Pentecostal Mission School, called Emmanuel Mission School. And I won't forget the day when I took Newsweek magazine, and I looked in it, and I realized that the description of the terrorist attack over the border from Mozambique into Rhodesia had been a terrorist attack on the school in which Mary was teaching. The article read along these lines, Twelve individuals were killed in the school on the afternoon of the twenty-third. Eight of them were adults, four of them were children, the youngest was only three months old.
They were bayoneted to death and left to lie outside. The article said, One girl managed, after this brutality, to drag herself away from this. Unfortunately, seven days later, she also died. That was Mary.
Twenty-eight years old. When they gathered up her belongings and sent them back to her mom and dad, cassette tapes were there of her singing. Singing, because she was a children's person.
She was teaching the children. They were teaching her Shona, and she was teaching them Jesus. And as they played the material back, there her voice was singing in Shona, To me to live is Christ, to die is gain, To hold his hand, to walk his narrow way. There is no peace, no joy, no thrill, Like walking in his will, To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. And Jesus said, I am the light of the world. He that follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. Perhaps you are here today, and you have never stepped out in obedience and in faith and trusting in Jesus to walk the path that he has set out for us. The promise of God's Word is that whoever comes to him, he will never turn away. We come to him as sinners in need of a Savior, as children in need of the wisdom that he alone provides. And so, if you hear God's voice, do not harden your heart. And may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God our Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit rest upon and remain with each one who believes, today and forevermore.
Amen. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg encouraging us to glorify God by making the best use of our time. And Alistair closed today's message with an invitation to trust Jesus.
He warned us not to harden our hearts. If you'd like to hear more about this invitation and this warning, we encourage you to visit our website and watch a helpful video presentation titled The Story. It explains how Jesus made it possible for sinners like us to be reconciled to a holy God. It's a gift of God's grace for those who believe in Christ.
Find out more when you visit truthforlife.org slash the story. Now we trust you're finding this series from the book of Ephesians to be helpful. We have just a few more messages in this short series, but you can own Alistair's teaching through the entire book of Ephesians.
83 messages on a convenient USB drive titled Grace and Peace and it's just five dollars. Find it on the mobile app or online at truthforlife.org slash store. We're also in the final days of offering the book Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life. This is a book that will guide you in the wise use of your time to help you grow spiritually.
If you haven't already requested your copy, do so today. It's yours when you donate to support the teaching you hear on Truth for Life. Just visit truthforlife.org slash donate or call 888-588-7884. And if you're not listening through the Truth for Life mobile app today and you've yet to download it to your smartphone or your tablet, you can find it free in your app store. The app is a convenient way for you to hear this daily program, read the daily devotional, read blog articles, keep up with newly released teaching whenever you want, wherever you are. Again you can download the app from your app store or visit truthforlife.org slash app.
I'm Bob Lapeen. Hope you have a great weekend and are able to worship with friends and family at your local church. Be sure to join us again Monday when we'll find out how Christians are able to live wisely in every circumstance. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-06-16 15:28:13 / 2023-06-16 15:36:53 / 9