Walking in Wisdom

Ephesians 5:15-17

Lemmings are small, furry rodents who inhabit cold, snowy regions like Norway and Siberia. Though you may never have seen one before, it’s possible you’ve heard of them thanks to their famous reputation. Many believe that lemmings have the unusual habit of committing mass suicide by mindlessly jumping off cliffs into the sea.

About this belief, though, it’s we who are mindless, not the lemmings. They do no such thing. In fact, we can thank our good friend Disney for popularizing this myth, who in 1958 produced an Academy-Award-winning documentary called White Wilderness. It featured a 3-min. scene that shows a large group of lemmings tumbling down hills, plunging over a cliff into the sea, and eventually drowning.

You may be surprised (and glad) to know that this sequence of events does not portray reality. To record this scene, the filmmakers staged it. They imported a few dozen lemmings from their native habitat, ran them around some turntables to look like a frenzied migration, then herded them off a cliff into the sea. They captured all this drama, of course, with carefully selected camera angles and edited footage. Are you surprised?

If lemmings actually did this – jumping off cliffs with a herd mentality – they’d give us an easy illustration of what the world is like today, wouldn’t they? Nonbelievers are walking around in darkness and rushing headlong to a certain death and to an eternal and horrible separation from God. Yet how are we any different?

As believers, we have the opportunity of a lifetime. Thanks to Christ and the gift of God’s Word, we can live with our eyes wide open and the lights turned on brightly. In a dark and foolish world, we can walk in the light as God’s children and point nonbelievers to the light of Christ as well. In Eph 5:15-17, Paul gives us helpful guidance for how to do this. To walk in wisdom, we must:

Let’s make daily choices carefully

Paul says, “See then” (Eph 5:15). Can you “see” (pun intended!) his play on words here? Because we are “in the light,” we should be able to see our lives and the pathway before us clearly. And because we can see our lives clearly, we should go through our lives “circumspectly” (Eph 5:15).

As you know, Paul uses the word walk frequently in this letter to the Ephesians. He tells believers to “walk worthy” (Eph 4:1), “walk in the light” (Eph 5:8), and “walk circumspectly” (Eph 4:15). What does this word circumspectly mean?

• First, let’s consider the “circum” part of the word. The word circumference is the distance around a circle, the word circumvent means to go around a problem instead of through it, and the word circumstance refers to the situation that’s around you.
• Second, let’s consider the “spect” part of the word. Spectator means someone who watches an event, spectacular means something that is incredible to watch, and spectacles means a pair of glasses that you look through with your eyes.

So, the word circumspect means something like “to look all around you.” If you’re a parent whose kids play with Legos, it’s how you walk through your house at night because you don’t want to step on a stray Lego. If you’re a soldier, it’s how you walk through an active minefield. And if you’re a farmer, it’s how you walk through a cow pasture – watching where you step and trying your best not to step in any piles of brown stuff with flies.

As believers who can see our lives in the light of God’s truth, we have a duty to walk carefully and accurately through life. As we go through our daily lives, we make all sorts of choices and decisions, and these decisions should be based upon what we know about God and what we know from his Word. We should make all our decisions from a Christ-centered perspective, with God’s values in mind and an eternal perspective in view.

As believers, we must make every decision carefully, not just big ones. By “big ones” I mean major life choices, like: (1) what car to buy, (2) what career to take, (3) what college to attend, (4) who to marry, (5) what job to accept, (6) how many children to have, (7) what house to buy or rent, (8) where and how to retire, and so on. Sadly, we often make even these decisions carelessly. But to “walk circumspectly” requires us to pay attention to the smaller, daily decisions of our everyday lives as well, but do we? We should:

Let’s make skillful, godly decisions.

Paul says that walking this way means we should walk “not as fools but as wise,” which may also be translated as, “not as foolish people but as wise people” (Eph 5:15). The word foolish here literally means “unwise,” or “the opposite of wise” and Paul repeats this concept with a second piece of instruction, “do not be unwise,” using a word that means “ignorant, stupid, and unenlightened” (Eph 5:17).

Wise, then, means to be skillful, to be “clever, learned, intelligent, and divinely instructed.”¹ Think about the way a neurosurgeon removes a tumor from a living person’s brain. Think about the way a Major League baseball player spins a perfect game. Think about how a world-class world class engineer designs a 100-story skyscraper, or how the Blue Angels fly aerobatic stunts in perfect formation.

Friends, this is how we’re supposed to live as “children of light” – like wise and skillful people, not lemmings (at least, not the way Disney led us to think about lemmings). Yet how much of our lives this past week have been guided by the skillful wisdom of God, the truth of Christ, and the teachings of God’s Word – for real?

We often take our cues and form our views from whatever the news media tells us, or whatever social issues are trending at the time, or whatever our body and emotions want to do at the moment. Consider, for instance, what happened in the city of Ephesus not long before Paul wrote this letter to the church in that city.

According to Acts 19:23-41, there had been a large current of civil unrest. This unrest was caused by the growing belief that Christians were having a bad effect on the city’s economy and religious practices. Due to widespread propaganda, the city was filled with anger and confusion, which led to a massive protest and riot in the city’s amphitheater. Thankfully, the city’s leading official ended this disturbance before it became violent.

This dramatic event helps us understand the way that unsaved people behaved in the city of Ephesus, who were walking in darkness. On this particular occasion, they were whipped up into a frenzy through the propaganda of a few, and when they all came together to support the cause, most didn’t know what they were supporting (Acts 19:32).

Friends, this was the spiritual state and general mindset of the unsaved people of Ephesus, and it’s the spiritual state and general mindset of our world today. Our nation, city, and society is governed by all the ungodly desires and values Paul’s mentioned in Eph 4-5: immorality, violence, covetousness, vulgarity, and self-centeredness.

What’s more, the leading voices are ignorant about the truth of God and in many cases, strongly oppose him. Less than two weeks ago, a lead commentator for a major news network said, “You don’t need help from above” (referring to God). Then another lead commentator said this, “Jesus Christ… if that’s who you believe in, Jesus Christ, admittedly was not perfect when he was here on this earth.” What?

Friends, this is not news and this is not truth. This is the darkness that Paul so clearly warns against and it’s the mindset and agenda that permeates our age. Let’s be wise and turn our attention away from such influences which encourage more and more foolishness, not godly wisdom.

Psa 14:1 reminds us, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none who does good.” Are these kinds of people a good source of knowledge to guide our lives by and form our opinions from? I mean, use your head. Stop and think a little – and we’re fooling ourselves to assume that they know how to set these ungodly, ignorant beliefs aside to report the facts of the news.

If we’re going to walk in wisdom, we need to saturate our minds with the truth of God’s Word, not the talk of ungodly people. As King David tells us, “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and in His law he meditates day and night” (Psa 1:1-2).

If ever there was a time that we needed this instruction, it is today when we drink in the counsel of the ungodly more than we realize and saturate ourselves with so little of God’s Word. No wonder we struggle to turn people to Christ and build the church of God. We’re far more influenced by the counsel of the ungodly than we care to acknowledge. Our lives are governed more by the views of an ungodly culture than the enlightening truth of God.

As believers and children of God, let’s put our minds and hearts in the right place. Let’s tune in to Scripture and tune out the world. Let’s make careful choices that are thoughtfully and skillfully based upon the truth of God’s Word rather than the propaganda and agendas being pushed by our ungodly age. And let’s do something else.

Let’s make the most of our time.

Paul says, “Redeeming the time, because the days are evil” (Eph 5:16). This is how we “walk in wisdom.” If you want to live in a skillful and divinely instructed way, then do this.

Redeem is an economic word. Sometimes it refers to buying real estate, like land or a house (or both). It also refers to the uncomfortable concept of slavery, but in a positive way. It refers to how an honorable person with financial resources would purchase an enslaved person for a special purpose – to set him free. So, it refers to a way that we can transform a negative situation into a positive one, and the situation has to do with time.

The Greek New Testament (NT) uses two words for time. One is chronos and refers to small, incremental measurements of time, like seconds, minutes, hours, days, and so on. Another word – the one used here – is kairos, and it refers to something like a “season” or “period” of time. So, what Paul is saying here has less to do with our minute-to-minute management of time and more to do with what we do with our days and lives in general.

Why do we need to “redeem the time?” Paul says it’s because “the days are evil” (Eph 5:16). What does this mean? It’s a kind of “dual concept” that includes (1) the bad, immoral character of this age in which we live as well as (2) the way this age is deteriorating and falling apart as a result of sin.

So here’s the idea. As believers, we know things are bad and the world is getting worse by the day. That was true in the 1^st century and it’s true today. Now that we know Christ as our Savior, we see this quite clearly, don’t we? Yet how should we respond to this sad reality? Should we retreat to our houses, withdraw from church, and avoid all contact with nonbelievers? Definitely not – in fact, just the opposite is the case.

As believers who live wisely, we must learn how to snatch opportunity from the jaws of defeat and life from the shadow of the grave. Things are bad out there, really bad – that’s why we should redeem the time, not give it up as a lost cause. We should find ways to turn our evil days to a gospel advantage, making a difference for the kingdom of God.

Jesus encouraged this perspective and approach when he told the parable of the hidden treasure. He said, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Luke 13:44). This man saw an abandoned, eroding, deteriorating, weed-infested piece of land. When everyone else passed by and thought the land was useless, he saw differently. He knew that buried under the surface was some hidden treasure. So what did he do? Since the asking price was high, he couldn’t buy it outright. To make the purchase, he took a big risk – he sold everything he owned believing that if he could purchase this blighted piece of ground, he would unearth some treasure that would be worth far more than what he had sold to get it.

Jesus taught a similar perspective when he said, “Whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt 16:25). Friends, we live in evil days, for sure. So, let’s definitely make sure we don’t fall into step with the mindless, foolish, pseudo-spiritual, ungodly agendas that pull at our hearts. Let’s also make sure that we don’t throw up our hands in despair as though it’s a lost cause. Let’s take a third approach. Let’s redeem the time at hand. Let’s seize the challenges before us for Christ.

We should have no illusions of making this present world a truly better place – that’s just not going to happen. But we live for the ultimate and eternal kingdom of God and we want to pull others into that kingdom with us. Trust me when I say that there are people who want something different. They’re walking in darkness and don’t know where to turn. If we’ll live as light and live wisely God has called us to do, we’ll be able to point these people to Jesus and so build up the church and the kingdom of God.

Let’s not make foolish choices.

Once again, Paul reminds us not to be foolish, ignorant, and stupid. Why does he say this twice in rapid succession? Maybe because as Christians living in a secular age, having been saved out of an ungodly culture (as the church in Ephesus had been), we tend to behave in a foolish way – to give in to the prevailing spirit of our age. How does a fool behave in his daily life?

• Prov 10:23 says, “To do evil is like sport to a fool.” In other words, a foolish person thinks sin is a joking matter.
• Prov 24:30-34 tells us that a foolish person is lazy, and because he is lazy, his property goes to waste, he gets nothing done, and he ends with less than when he began.
• Prov 18:6 reveals that a foolish person says things that starts fights.
• Prov 29:20 says that a foolish person says things before he thinks about it.
• Prov 6:12 tells us that a foolish person tells lies.
• Prov 10:18 tells us that a foolish person slanders the reputations of other people.
• Prov 14:29 says that a foolish person has a violent temper.
• Prov 13:16 points out that a foolish person is proud and arrogant.
• Prov 1:22 says that a foolish person hates true knowledge.
• Prov 12:1, 15 reminds us that a foolish person doesn’t value advice or correction.
• Prov 14:16 tells us that a foolish person is careless and reckless.

It’s worth pointing out that though I have drawn these points from the Old Testament (OT), Paul speaks about similar problems in Eph 4:25-5:14, so this is a timeless perspective.

Friends, it’s easy to look at the world and find foolish people who talk and act in these ways. That’s normal and expected because they’re “children of wrath” who are “dead in their sins.” What’s *not* normal is when we as children of light talk and act in the same ways – in the same darkness. If you’re a true believer in Christ, but still detect the tendencies of a foolish person in your life and still take seriously the counsel and guidance of foolish people, then please take Paul’s warning to heart. Don’t be foolish, “but understand what the will of the Lord is” (Eph 5:17).

Let’s do what the Lord wants us to do.

This is all that matters, really, and the sooner we accept this fact, the better we’ll be as individuals and a church. You see, Paul understood this from the start of his Christian life, from the moment of his conversion. When he turned to and trusted in Christ as God and Savior, he didn’t just ask God to forgive his sins. He said, “Lord, what do you want me to do?” (Acts 9:6). So you see, here he is teaching the Ephesian Christians to do the same.

Paul understood that embracing Christ as God and Savior was more than just depending on him as Savior, it was submitting to him as Lord. For that reason, he didn’t ask, “What’s in it for me?” or, “What do I want to do with my life now that I’m a Christian?” We need to set aside this self-serving attitude that creeps into our Christian lives from a self-centered world, this idea that the Christian life is about me, because it’s not. You know, it’s possible that some of us are still just asking this question, “What’s in it for me?” and, “How can I turn my experience in following Christ into the best possible experience for me?”

Christ lived and died for us, so it stands to reason that we should live and even die for him, if need be. Are we okay with that? Are we concerned with preserving our lives or advancing God’s kingdom? Are we devoted to pursuing our personal dreams and passions, or the purpose and passion of Christ who died on the cross for our sins?

Yes, Jim Elliot had it right when he said, “He is no fool to give what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” He would go on to die as a martyr at 29 yrs. of age in 1956 in his attempts to bring the love of God and the message of Christ to the Auca people of Ecuador. Are we prepared to do the same? I don’t mean that it’s the Lord’s will for us all to die as martyrs. But I do mean that we may be far more self-protective and self-centered than we realize. Do we have what it takes to understand and do the will of the Lord?

Today we need to make hard choices about what to do with our lives, our money, our talents, and our time. Yet how much of these things have we truly submitted to the will of the Lord? Did you do the will of the Lord last week? If so, when? What did you do? And how do you know it was what your Master in heaven wanted you to do?

In Psa 40:8, King David wrote, “I delight to do your will, O my God, and your law is within my heart.” David found true pleasure in doing what the LORD wanted him to do, which is especially remarkable because David was a king. He was a man who told everyone else what to do and would have been most tempted to submit to no other. Yet he didn’t just submit himself to the Lord, he did so gladly.

How did he do that? He said God’s law was “within his heart.” He had so internalized, treasured, and saturated himself with the revealed, written Word of God that he was able to look at difficult situations in a godless world and make sense of them. He was able to make the right choices, even when such choices were hard, painful, and unpopular, because the Word of God was the filter of his heart. Paul took a similar approach.

Most importantly, we find a similar mindset in the Lord Jesus Christ when he, too, lived in this world. This shows that not even he, the Lord himself to whom we must submit the choices of our daily lives, lived differently than what he’s required of us.

• “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to finish his work.” (John 4:34)
• “I do not seek my own will but the will of the Father who sent me.” (John 5:30)
• “This is the will of the Father who sent me, that of all he has given me I should lose nothing but should raise it up at the last day.” (John 6:39)

Most dramatically, we hear how he prayed to the Father in the olive grove the night before his crucifixion. He “prayed, saying, ‘O my Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matt 26:39). Then again, “O my Father, if this cup cannot pass away from me unless I drink it, your will be done” (Matt 26:41).

Friends, the will of the Lord is not always pleasant, easy, or even safe to do. According to some measures and reports, even going to the store right now to buy basic necessities of life can risk our health. But if we believe it’s essential to buy such things which we do by nature and not by command (where does God command us to buy groceries?), then should it not also be considered essential to gather for worship and service as the body of Christ for whom Christ died?

Hebrews 10:24-25 takes on new meaning these days, does it not? “Let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.” Indeed, these believers were encouraged to gather for worship even though their lives were at risk of being persecuted for doing so.

I believe that gathering together to worship God, including in song, is one of the important and essential ways that we “walk in wisdom” and “redeem the time” and fulfill “the will of the Lord.” Next Sunday, Lord willing, I will demonstrate how Eph 4:18-21 makes this clear.

For now, let me refer us back to what life was like for the believers in the church at Ephesus. As I’ve already noted, Ephesus was a pagan city, easily stirred up into a frenzy by a godless agenda. Knowing the challenges they faced as a young church in this pagan city, when Paul departed from Ephesus for the last time in his ministry, he said this to the pastors that were there: “I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves” (Acts 20:29-30).

We catch glimpses of similar things in Paul’s letters to Timothy, who later served in a pastoral way at Ephesus, too. According to church history, we know that the church went on to suffer difficult trials. Many of them were thrown to lions to be devoured alive before crowds at the Colosseum. Others were burned alive in public, some being covered in tar, dropped onto poles, and lit up as lanterns. Others were tortured and killed in other ways.

We shudder in horror at these terrible ordeals and pray they don’t happen to us, but we need to fear even more that we have the courage to do the will of the Lord no matter what, even when the challenges may be more subtle, psychological, and less overt.

Some years later, the Apostle John had this to say to the church at Ephesus on behalf of the Lord himself (Rev 2:2-5): “I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not and have found them liars; and you have persevered and have patience and have labored for My name’s sake and have not become weary. Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent.”

Sadly, under the weight of such intense persecution, the “lampstand” of the church at Ephesus “was removed from its place” as the Lord had warned. The church disappeared sometime in the second century. They had left their first love and capitulated to the darkening world around them. They had failed to walk worthy, to walk in love, to walk in the light, and to walk in wisdom.

Today, we need to ask ourselves the question, are we doing what the Lord wants us to do? Are we walking in wisdom and making the best use of this time of life for the Lord? Or are we living like Disney’s version of lemmings, allowing this world to waste our lives as we endeavor to preserve them?

What is the will of the Lord for us today? Here’s an overview of what we need to know, and this overview is based upon the places in the NT that say “it is the will of God” or “it is the will of the Lord”:

• It is his will that you are saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Tim 2:3-4)
• It is his will that we are sanctified – and that especially includes staying far away from sexual immorality. (1 Thess 4:3)
• It is his will that we submit to human government, except when human government contradicts our duty to God. (1 Pet 2:13-15; Acts 5:29)
• It is his will that we suffer as a result of doing good. (1 Pet 3:17)
• It is his will that we give thanks in every situation. (1 Thess 5:18)

So, it is God’s will that we are saved, sanctified, submissive, suffer (sometimes), and thankful. Does that describe the way you conducted your life last week? Did your thoughts, words, choices, and actions reflect these priorities and values, or were they consumed with the prevailing thoughts, values, and actions of the sin-darkened, foolish, godless world around you?

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Thomas Overmiller serves as pastor for Faith Baptist Church in Corona, NY and blogs at Shepherd Thoughts. This article first appeared at Shepherd Thoughts, used here with permission.

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Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

1. William D. Mounce, Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old & New Testament Words (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 1272. [↩]