How the Wise Walk - Ephesians 5:15-21

And Gideon mentioned it during his prayer, I pulled my back this week. Um, and so I've got a lidocaine patch on the bottom of my back right now to uh, kind of help get me through the next 40 minutes or so. So if I seize up a little bit, you'll know what it is. It's my back pain. All the muscles are just kind of tensed right now. I think I pinched a nerve in my lower back. So I won't be as animated or moving as much as I normally am, or maybe I will, and it'll just, my muscles will remind me that I can't do that. Also, another thing, today is my wife's birthday. So it's not very often that your wife's birthday falls on a Sunday and that you're preaching on that same Sunday. And so I have to take the opportunity to share that. I think she's working in the kids' ministry this morning. But if you see her, give her a happy birthday. And then last thing before we get into our text is that the Leslie's had their baby this week. Uh, little Paisley, Leslie, so their 4th child, uh, Carol Lee is doing well, they're at home this morning. Unfortunately, Xander is not feeling well. And then, of course, taking care of little baby Paisley. So they'll be joining us probably next week. I think Dalton will be back in the pulpit. All things considered if things go well. He'll be back to preaching next week. All right, so let's go into our passage this morning. But before we do, about 20 years ago, my pastor, my college pastor, was preaching a sermon, and I was thinking about this week. I don't remember the book. I don't remember the text. I don't remember any of the points he shared, but every year, I think about what he said during that sermon. I can't forget it. He shared something that I've never forgotten, and one thing that he said that morning is he told us that everybody in his family was musically gifted. And he had a large family, I think he had 7 kids. And so he said, everyone in my family is musically talented. They either sing or they play an instrument. And he said, except for me. So, and he was sitting in church, each morning, we would sing together, and he said, he would listen to his sons, his daughters, they were teenagers and grown kids and his wife, and he would say, it sounds like they were singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to one another, and they're making melody to the Lord with their hearts. And then he said, but I relate more to Psalm 100. Which is just making a joyful noise to the Lord. And so he was saying when he listens to them, they're beautiful, but when he hears himself, it's like, there's not much beauty there. It wasn't a melody. It wasn't beautiful. But he said it was joyful, and it certainly he could make noise. And so I've never forgotten him saying that. And I thought to myself, I'm not a good singer either. I'm the guy who kind of sings along, but tries not to sing too loud so that no one around me is disturbed by my voice. I really appreciate vocalists that are gifted. I've played multiple instruments throughout my life, but my voice has just never been one of those instruments. And so I just hope that whoever was standing next to me on Sunday mornings couldn't hear me. But I know how important it is to use my voice in other ways the Lord has gifted me, not as a vocalist, but as hopefully a preacher. But here's what I thought about ever since I heard my pastors say that. As a college student I thought, man, he's not performing. He's not showing up each Sunday to sound beautiful. He's overflowing with something. He's not having to perform. There's something in him that's coming out of him. And what came out of him wasn't a performance. It was actually evidence. It's evidence of something greater that's within him. And so this morning, Paul is going to tell us to watch how we walk. And he's used this word walk several times throughout Ephesians. He say, watch how you walk. But he doesn't fix our walk by telling us to try harder, to sing better. He tells us to fix it by filling ourselves with something. that overflows into something. And then he tells us what fills you is going to spill out of you. And so that's where we're headed this morning. So I want to tell us 3 phrases about how the wise walk, and this is kind of how we break down our passage this morning, how we walk, what fills us, and then what spills out of us. That's where Paul's going this morning, how we walk. What fills us, and then what spills out of us. That's the flow of our passage. So I want us to pray once more and then we'll jump into the specifics of Ephesians 5 verses 15 through 21. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that you've gathered us here this morning to this time and place. to worship you. to be reminded of who you are and what you've called us to be. And Lord, we thank you that you've redeemed us, you've sanctified us, you've sealed us by your spirit. And that we sit here this morning as a blessed people. Not just materially or physically, but spiritually, above all things, that you've blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places because of what Christ has done. And so whether we feel that this morning, Lord, whether we feel weak and dependent, whether we feel like in the valley, low, or in the mountain high, I pray that you would speak to us this morning through your word, give us hearts that are open to hear from you. Give us minds to understand and that are receptive. And we pray all these things in Christ's name. Amen. Well, we've been in the book of Ephesians for about 4 months now, and last week we were in the passage right before this. It was verses 6 through 14, and we had 4 words. You remember those? It was the caution, the change, the challenge and the charge. And so Paul laid it out for us in those verses last week. And so that's what we walked through. And then it leads us into this. And so last week, we were in, here's the brief overview. We were darkness. We weren't in darkness, we were darkness, darkness, and then Jesus turned on the light and he said, wake up. And he said, now you are light. You're not in the light, you are light. So that was last week's passage. And so now Paul says, okay, now that you're awake. Now, watch how you walk. And he uses that term, walk. That word walk is not a small word in this letter. It's actually showed up several times before. So I want us to see all the times that Paul has used this word walk. Let's go ahead to the next slide, and we can see how many times Paul has said this. It started in chapter two. You once walked. Paul uses the word walk 7 times. The 1st time is to describe how you once walked and then 6 times to say, now, how are you to walk in Christ? So you once walked following the course of this world. We looked at that passage a lot. Then verse 10, which God prepared before, and these are good works that God has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. And then chapter 4, he says, walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called, which is the gospel, walk in a manner that your life reflects the good news of the gospel. That when people see your life, it wouldn't be contrary to the gospel, but it would make sense. It would be balanced with the gospel. And then verse 17. You must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, that's to say, in this darkness in the old way, but you're putting on the new self and walking in love. That was verse 2 of this chapter. And then in verse 8, walk as children of light, not as children of the dark. Not as children of wrath, not as sons and daughters of disobedience. And then today, last week, verse 15, look carefully how you walk. Or actually, that's our verse our 1st verse this week. So he's used this terms several times. One walk to describe how we once were before Christ, and then 6 that describe where we are with Christ. And notice that Paul doesn't use the word sprint. He doesn't say sprint. He doesn't say climb. He chose walk. Because the Christian life, I think, is mostly ordinary steps in the same direction. And some of us are waiting for like the next big moment, the next big camp high, the next big weekend, the next big sermon that's just gonna kind of propel you into this amazing spiritual breakthrough, the spiritual high that we talk about, right? Maybe you have a middle school camp or a high school camp or a college camp that you went to. And when you tell that story, you say, I was on a spiritual high, like, as if God is some drug that you get on, right? And we use that language. Like it's a roller coaster that just took you high. And some of us wait till the next big high, and we're just waiting for it. Those moments are real. And God uses them, but they aren't the walk. The walk is Monday morning. The walk is just Wednesday night. The walk is just Friday night when you're tempted or Saturday night when you're tempted to go do something that you know the Lord doesn't approve of. It's the ordinary moments of our lives. That's the walk. And so let's take our 1st point here. How do we walk? Look at verse 15. He says, look carefully then, how you walk. Not as unwise, but as wise. So that word carefully, it's a precision word. It means, uh, watch accurately, attentively with your eyes open. It's not a word of anxiety. Paul's not saying, hey, he's not telling us to walk around anxiously. He's telling us to stop walking on autopilot. Don't just settle into the mundane of everyday life, walk carefully, walk attentively. So think about crossing your own living room in the middle of the day. You cross your living room without even thinking about it. But then think about crossing your living room at 2 a.m. Especially of your little kids, right? All the lights are out, all the windows, the blinds are closed, and you're like, I hope I don't step on a Lego. I hope I don't step on a toy and stub my toe. I hope I don't step in the dark. It's the same room. From the morning and the night. It's the same steps. completely different walk. That's what Paul is after. He says, careful, doesn't mean walking scared, careful means walking awake, and aware of your surroundings. And then he elaborates on how to walk. He says, not as unwise, but as wise. What does that mean? How do you walk? Wisely. How do you walk with wisdom? Well, wisdom isn't the same thing as intelligence, biblically, wisdom isn't that. A person can be brilliant. They could have a high IQ, and really unwise. And vice versa, a person can be simple-minded. Maybe they don't have many credentials to their name, maybe they didn't go far in education, and they can live a deeply wise life. So it's not about, Paul's not saying here. It's not about how much I know. It's more about how well do I live. How well do I live? Now, knowledge is immensely important to God. He's not saying, hey, forget about knowledge. Don't fill your mind with facts. He's not saying that. But knowledge for knowledge sake doesn't honor God. He wants us to live a life that pleases him, which requires wisdom. That knowledge would come in and it would translate through our hearts to live out through our hands, and that as we go through this life, we would make decisions that please God, because the facts that fill our lives, the scripture that we know about, takes its root into our hearts, and we live a life that pleases him. That's what he's talking about. And then Paul tells us one of the things that a wise walk does, a wise person. What do they do? Look at verse 16. He says, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. That phrase making the best use of the time, this is a, uh, like a marketplace word. It means buying something up, redeeming something. It means a purchasing or taking hold of that thing. And so the word then for time, don't think of time as like clock time, there are 2 types of time in scripture, and this is more of the opportunity time. It's the moment in front of you. So Paul is telling us to not to add another event to the calendar. He's saying, hey, be faithful with the time that's already been given to you. Be faithful with that time. Take hold of it. Redeem the time. So that when God sets an opportunity in front of you, he says, hey, I want you to take it. I want you to walk in faithfulness. That waiter, that waitress, how can you pray for them? How can you take the opportunity to do that right before your meal comes out? Don't let it walk past you. Seize the moment. Now here's how I think our culture reads this verse. Make the best use of your time. Our culture would say, hey, be efficient. Optimize your life. Get more done. See, this is the verse that supports my alpha mentality. I just have to be so good at everything. I have to hack my life. That's not what he's saying. I was actually just reading a book this week. It was a great book. And the author at one point said something that I totally disagree with. Other than that, it was great, but he said, find the most productive person you know, get time with them, take them out to a meal, ask them a bunch of questions. How do you order your life? How do you make decisions? And then just do what they do. And I was reading that going, No! Don't do that. Don't find the most productive person you know. Find the most faithful person you know. Take them to lunch, ask how they order their life. The person that loves Jesus and lives Jesus out and all that they say, do, and think, get time with that person. Find out what they do with their life. Get to know them. Because look at what Galatians 5 tells us. We'll have it up on the screen. Galatians 5 says that the spirit produces these things. The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control against such things. There is no law. Now tell me where productivity shows up. It doesn't. It's not up there. Look at that list and tell me, where does productivity fit? It doesn't. Productivity is not a fruit of the spirit, it's a product of the culture. And our culture just says, be efficient, get more done, hack your life, optimize your calendar. Read more, watch more, listen more, do more. Sleep less. Now, God isn't anti-productivity. But he's way more pro faithfulness. And sometimes the most faithful thing that you can do is to stop being productive. Sometimes one of the most faithful things that you can do is to take a nap. Go to bed early. Wake up late, sleep. Sometimes one of the most faithful things that you can do is to pray and to wait on the Lord, to stop trying to do everything, to get things done. But if we're honest, most of us probably fall into one of 2 ditches. And let's say we're walking on this road called faithfulness. Let's go to the next slide where we have this visual. We're on this road called faithfulness. We want the fruit of the spirit to come out of us. We want to walk in this newness of life that Jesus purchased for us. We want the fruit of the Spirit to come out of us. And so this road towards Jesus marked faithfulness. And this is kind of a diagnostic tool for each of us. There are 2 ditches on either side of this road. Some of us might be more lazy. That's our ditch. Others of us might tend towards workaholism. So confession. My tendency is workaholism. I tend towards that ditch. Left alone to myself, I would work myself to death. I would sleep three, maybe 4 hours a night. for the rest of my life. That's my tendency. I would just run myself dry. So I need to be reminded that it doesn't all depend on me. That God holds all things together so that Tyler doesn't have to. Some of us need that reminder every week. You are not God. And most nights when I go to bed, I say, thank you, Lord. I think to myself, thank you, Lord, that I can sleep because I know you're active at all times. I'm not holding all things together, you are. I don't have to be in control of all things. I don't have to be all things to all people. Christ is all things to all people. The spirit can be there for all people. And a reminder for me is Psalm 127. It says, in vain, the psalmist writes, it is in vain that you rise up early and go to bed late, eating the bread of anxious toil. For God gives to his beloved sleep. But for some of us, others of us, we might lean in the other direction. And for us, the Bible is just as loving and just as direct. In Proverbs, Solomon says to go look at the ant. Nobody's micromanaging the ant. The ant doesn't have all these supervisors or all these bosses, and yet it works in season to get things done. The ant isn't a slugger. The ant isn't lazy. It gets things done, and we can't really apply verse 16 of Ephesians 5 until we know which ditch is ours. What's your tendency? Some of us our tendency is laziness, and we got to get some things in order. Get a calendar, get a to do list. Find the priorities of God and add them to your lives. For others of us, we need to back off. We like to red line. We like to hit the gas, and we need to learn to slow down. So what does making the best use of the time look like this week? When Paul says that, well, I think it's faithfully following Christ in all that we say, do, and think. That's faithfulness. Following Jesus and all that we say, do, and think. It's taking the initiative for the glory of God and the good of people around us. And then look at why Paul says to do this. He says, because the days are evil. Now this is a prison epistle, which just means that Paul is writing this from a prison cell. And prison back then would have been kind of a hole in the ground. Don't think of modern prisons. It's just a big hole, they drop you into, and they put a lid on top. And so he doesn't say the days might get evil. He says they are evil. And he already told us way back in chapter 2, that the world, the course of this world is death, it follows the prince of the power of the air. It's at work in the sons of disobedience. So this isn't about the news being bad this year. The news is bad in every generation. It's bad from generation to generation. What Paul is telling us is that we must faithfully follow Christ, no matter how bad this world may get. He's not saying just follow Christ when the world gets good enough. When the news isn't crazy. When the world stabilizes. He says, you must faithfully follow him, no matter how bad this world make it. The days are evil. Then verse 17, he says, therefore, do not be foolish. But understand what the will of the Lord is. Now when most of us hear this, the will of the Lord, our mind goes straight to decisions, like, who am I going to marry? What city am I going to live in? Which house should I purchase? What college should I go to? Should I get another degree, all those things? We treat God like he's got this treasure map, that our life is just this map. And if we get off at the wrong turn, Oh no, I'm not living in accordance to the will of God. But Paul already told us God's will. That was chapter one. Four times in chapter one. Uh, let's put them on the screen. I've got 4 of them for you. Verse one. Paul as an apostle, by the will of God. Verse five. He says, according to the purpose of his will. Verse nine, he revealed the mystery of his will to those who are in Christ. Verse 11, he says, all things work according to the council of his will. And so we don't have time to unpack all of those this morning, but go back and listen to that sermon. It's online. You can discern from Ephesians one, what is the will of God? And every one of those is about his purpose, not our plans. It's not about where you're going to live or who you're going to marry or what school you're going to go to. It's not our plans, it's his purpose. In Christ. So God's will is less like a treasure map and more like a compass. With a bearing on it. And that bearing is Christ. It always points to him, saying, you're not going to make a mistake as you get off this treasure map where somewhere an X marks the spot. And if you don't somehow get there at the right time and the right way, you've blown up the will of God. He says, your life is like a compass. The word of God is like a compass, and it's pointing to Christ, and so just follow him wherever he goes. Wherever he takes you. Our 2nd point this morning, what fills us? What goes into us? Look at verse 18. He says, and do not get drunk with wine. For that is debauchery, but be filled, what is that? With the spirit. Now, Paul's main contrast here is about control. Not filled with lowercase spirits, but filled with the spirit, uppercase, right? There are those 2 things that are competing to control us, to run us. But let's not rush past this just because it may sound like a figure of speech. That word debauchery carries this sense of wastefulness. That there's nothing saved. There's nothing kept, there's nothing redeemed. There's nothing being used. And remember what Paul had just told us 2 verses go, make the best use of the time. And now he says, hey, don't waste yourself. You've got one life. Don't lose yourself to substances. Don't be filled with spirits, be filled with the spirit. Don't let other things control you. Imagine like walking into a hospital with a broken leg and spending the whole hospital visit, just trying to hide it from all the nurses and the doctors. Like, no one does that. You go to a hospital because you've got a broken leg, and there are people here that can help you. They can fix it. They can care for you. They can bring things to you. The hospital is the one place we're being broken is kind of the point. That's the church. So I want to be clear that there's no shame in this room this morning. This isn't where we hide brokenness. This is where we finally tell somebody so that healing can start. So that the Lord can mend our broken bodies, our wounds. And our, if I can plug real quick, our life groups are a great way to do that, they start back up this week. We're going to hear more from Shannon about life groups later. But honestly, that's probably the best place in your life, in the life of the church, to say the hard things out loud. A row of chairs on Sunday is a hard place to confess, but a living room with people who know your name is a much better place. And notice what Paul does not say. He doesn't say, hey, just stop getting drunk, y'all. Just stop it. He never does that. He says, do not. And then immediately he says, but be filled. So there's a negative, and then there's a positive, right? Paul gives us both. He's really consistent with this. Because here's the reality. Trying to quit something never works on its own. When we take a thing out of our life, we leave a vacancy that we're gonna fill it with, a vacancy where something used to be. And that vacancy doesn't stay empty for long. It gets filled with the next thing that we reach for, the next substance, the next addiction, the next subscription, the next app, whatever it is. We trade one habit for another. But what Paul does here is to refuse to leave us in that cycle. He tells us what goes in the empty place is actually the spirit of God. He tells us that what goes in there, the answer to an addiction is never just a stronger will, like, hey, you got rid of this and just try harder. And finally, hopefully you'll get it if you just have a strong will, he doesn't say that. He says, the answer is a better filling. To find something better and more beautiful. So look closely at that command. He says, be filled with the spirit. Paul doesn't say, fill yourself. He says, be filled. That's passive language. Somebody else does the filling. It's the same move that he made back in chapter 4, verse 23 that we talked about about a month ago. Be renewed by the spirit, in the spirit of your minds. It's this passive state that you place yourself into a context into an environment where the spirit fills you. And Paul keeps giving us commands that we could never perform. Because God performs them in us. It's God who does the work. And it's interesting in Greek, it's plural, and it's ongoing. So it's the sense of like us together as a church, being filled, placing ourselves in the right context, in the right environments, behind the word of God, in prayer, in life groups. All these places where the spirit is at work in our lives, filling us. It's all of us together being filled again and again. We're all like a cell phone that slowly throughout the day and throughout the week, running out of energy. And that shouldn't surprise us, right? Like at the end of the day, when you look at your cell phone, you're like, what? 10%. What's wrong with my phone? No, you don't do that. You go, let me plug my phone in. It needs to be renewed. It needs more energy. It's designed to run out. But plug it in. Get more filled. And so if the Sunday message doesn't fill us all week until we come back next Sunday, that's not failure, that's normal. Because the sermon was never supposed to fill us for an entire week. The spirit is supposed to fill us day by day, week to week. Time and life group helps. Time in the Word helps. Time and prayer helps, time together on a Wednesday night, this fall will help, but none of those is the filling. Scripture says the spirit is the one who fills us. The spirit of God fills us. And I've heard it many times over the years. Somebody leaves a church and they say, well, the sermon wasn't deep enough. The preaching wasn't deep enough. It wasn't feeding me. And sometimes there's a fair critique, I think, of a preacher, there's a fair place to bring that. But one meal a week doesn't sustain your body. And one sermon a week won't sustain your soul. We're not meant to live off of one sermon a week. It's walking with wisdom, filled with the spirit that sustains us. Our 3rd point this morning. What spills out of us? Verses 19 through 21. He says, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything, to God, the Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another, out of reverence for him, for Christ. Now, here's something you may not catch because sometimes when we translate things to our language in English, not everything is super clear, but in the original language versus 19, 20, and 21 aren't new, isolated commands. They're actually for what are called participles, right? Going back to English class, there are 4 participles that are hanging off the phrase to be filled. In verse 18. So they're not separate new commands for new ones. They're participles that are hanging off the original command. And those four participles I've circled for you on the screen, they're addressing, singing, giving thanks, submitting. So think of it like this cup. This morning. It's full of some kind of liquid. You guys don't know what it is. But if I bump it, and you don't get to choose what's in the cup, right? I've chosen what's in the cup. I've filled it up. You don't get to choose what comes out of it. You just find out what comes out of it, what, when it gets bumped. And there's a little water in there. And I've got a wash clot to kind of dry it up. So what Paul is saying is that he doesn't, he tells us to go produce these 4 things. He tell he doesn't tell us to go produce these 4 things. He tells us what to be full of. And then these 4 things are what spills out of that filling. We're full of the spirit, and then 4 things that are tied to that filling that are spilling out of us. Okay? So if we want to know whether a church is full of the spirit. We look for a room that sings to each other. We look for people who thank God in the hard seasons. We look for people who put each other first. So real quick, let's take each of these four participles just one at a time. First, he says, we address one another. Look at verse 19 again. Addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Did you catch that? We sing to one another. Not only up to God, but across the room. Which means Sunday on a Sunday morning, we're not performing, we're not auditioning, we're not spectating, we're not looking around the room. We're singing to the people standing next to us. And maybe somebody near you is having the worst week of their life. And it's really hard for them to come here this morning. Much less sing. And your voice ought to be an encouragement to them. Our collective voice is meant to build one another up. That's what Paul is saying. Second, we sing to the Lord. Look at the rest of verse 19, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart. So we sing across the room to each other, and then we also sing to the Lord. And with your heart, means not just that your mouth is moving. Your heart is moving too. I'm so grateful that singing on a Sunday is not an audition, because I would never get the part. Paul never says to sing well. And Paul isn't just talking about the music team. Right? They lead us in one of the ways that we worship. But every team is the worship team on a Sunday morning. It's always kind of bugged me the last few years, and it's fine. I don't think it's like a sinful thing or anything, but when we call the worship, the music team, the worship team, because I'm like, as if like they have the corner on worship. I come in on Sunday morning and I'm like, the tech team is the worship team. They're running sound and slides so that you can engage better in worship. The hospitality team is the worship team. They get here early to set up coffee, to open the doors, to put everything up on the table, to make sure the presentation is nice, to make sure you have snacks and coffee. They're worshiping the Lord. The kids' ministry is the worship team. They're teaching kids about God's word. They're praying together. They're leading those kids. They're the worship team. The set up and tear down crew. They're getting up early to go get the trailer at like 7.15. They're hooking it up and pulling it here and unloading even when the weather is terrible, right? They're loading everything in here and unpacking it all. They're the worship team. So we don't have a worship team. We have worship teams. We have a music team that just so happens to play music. And that's a form of worship. They're not the only worship team. Every team is the worship team. Our 3rd thing is that we give thanks. Look at verse 20. Giving thanks always and for everyone, to God the Father, in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ. He says always and for everything. That may be one of the hardest phrases to actually live with. Because some of us, We buried someone this year. Some of us got a call with a diagnosis. Some of us are in a marriage that hasn't felt like a marriage in a long time. And Paul says, always, and for everything. And that doesn't mean that we call evil good. That doesn't mean that we just have to be eternal optimists with everything that life throws our way. I mean, it means that we believe in him. He works all things according to the counsel of his will. He's in control. And so I can give thanks for everything, always, and for everything. That was Ephesians 111. Paul's consistent with this. He says in other places like 1st Thessalonians 5. Give thanks in all circumstances. For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. And then look at this phrase at the very end in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We don't give thanks because it's just good for us. We don't give thanks because all the studies say it will lower your blood pressure and drop your heart rate. We don't give thanks just because it's a fad. The secular calls it meditation, but we call it prayer. We give thanks because it's the will of God in Christ Jesus. We give thanks because it's in him who loves us. That's why we give thanks. And this last participle. We submit, verse 21. Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Now, we don't like this word as a culture to submit. We don't want to be told to submit. We don't want to be told to lower ourselves, to put ourselves under anyone. I'm the captain of my fate. I control my destiny. But this is every time in scriptures, this word submit is a voluntary word. It means to place yourself under, not to be forced, but to place yourself. Nobody does this to us. We willingly, humbly place ourselves underneath other people. And then in this instance, it's mutual. This example is inside the church. It means giving deference to one another. It means laying down our preferences. It means putting the needs of others above our own. It means that when conflict comes your way, and it will, that you don't try to win an argument. You try to love a person. And I think for many of us, myself included, most of us walk into a disagreement, into conflict, and I'm thinking, how do I win this? I'm like, I've got this internal lawyer trying to build my case, and I'm not even listening to the other person. I'm just building my own case. So as soon as they finish, I can just jump in. Paul says, that's not conflict. That's not how we're to approach things. Paul's question is, how do we live in peace with one another? How do we submit to one another? How do you love one another? You're not trying to win an argument. You're trying to love a person. And honestly, out of the 4 things. This is the least glamorous thing on Paul's list. Nobody's going to notice this from the outside. But it may be one of the clearest tests of whether a church is actually full of the spirit. How we love one another. how we submit to one another, how we put each other first, we lay down our preferences. We serve. And notice the motive out of reverence for Christ. It not because the other person earned it. It's not because they've built enough credibility or trust. It's because of what Christ has done. So you don't have to look to the other person. You can look to him. Now, next week, Dalton picks up verse 22, and here's something kind of worth knowing a sneak peek in Greek, verse 22, doesn't have a verb on its own. We're gonna get into submission next week. It actually borrows the verb from verse 21, which means that everything that Paul says about the home next week is standing on top of verse 21. It takes submit from verse 21 and it's going to apply it to the home. It's just a little sneak peek for next week. So let me give us 4 questions to sit with this week as we close our time together. Here are the questions for us. Where in my life? Where in my life am I walking on autopilot instead of walking awake? Where in my life, am I tempted to walk on autopilot instead of walking awake? Which ditch do I lean toward? Do I lean towards laziness or workaholism? What am I reaching for instead of the spirit? And who could I tell this week? In what relationship am I trying to win instead of trying to love? How can I get better at that? And what relationship am I trying to win instead of trying to love? Now, Paul told us to walk as wise. He never told us to manufacture wisdom on our own. First Corinthians one, says Jesus, became to us wisdom from God. Colossians 2 says that in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom. So wisdom isn't a skill you acquire, it's a person you follow. And the wisest man in human history walked towards a cross. And the world calls that foolishness. The Bible calls it the wisdom of God. See, God made us to know him and to walk with him from the very beginning in the garden. And the scripture says, but we walked away. We turned our backs on him. Chapter 2 said we once walked, following the course of this world. We lacked all wisdom, and we filled ourselves with every kind of substance and every kind of spirit that we could get our hands on. But God didn't send. 10 helpful tips and tricks to get your life back on order. He didn't send money. He didn't stop with a book. He didn't stop with his prophets. He sent his one and only son. And that son walked straight to a cross. Verse 18 told us to be filled. Philippians 2 says that Jesus emptied himself so that we could be filled. Verse 21 told us to submit. Jesus submitted his will to the Father's will. The one who was above all humbled himself. And on the cross, he gave up his life. And then 3 days later, God raised him from the dead, and now the offer goes out to everyone in this world that we turn from our sin, and we turn towards Jesus. The author and perfecter of our faith. And the moment we do, his spirit moves in, he fills us up to walk in light. And we don't get a coping mechanism or substance, we get the spirit of the living God. Jesus said it this way, we'll have it on the screen. The good person, out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person, out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Jesus said, what you, whatever fills you is what comes out of you. You don't have to try to be a good tree. The spirit that fills you is good. And if you walk with him, he will produce fruit in your life. That's why Paul tell, he doesn't hand us a list of solutions. He tells us of the spirit that dwells in us. And then he describes what comes out of the spirit. So church. Let's walk through this life with wisdom. Not carefully like people who are afraid, but carefully like people who know God, because the one who is wisdom gives us his spirit, who fills us up. Let's pray together. Lord, we thank you that you've taught from your word this morning, that you've spoken to each and every one of us. Your spirit has spoken, he has revealed things to us. He's convicted us. He's encouraged us. And he's given us some things to think about to where we can look more like Jesus this week, that we can walk with the Spirit, that we can be filled by him. And so I thank you, God, that you've spoken to us through your word. I pray that as we leave here this morning, as we sing, as we fellowship together in our closing time, as we leave and go about our daily lives, that we would walk with you, that we wouldn't look for the next spiritual high. We wouldn't hope that a sermon carries us through the week, but that we'd be filled by your spirit, walking with wisdom, because our days are evil. And we thank you, Lord, that you are redeeming all things. You're making all things new. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Ephesians 5:15–21