Spend Your Time Wisely Ephesians 5:15-20

Pop Quiz: What’s seven times 24 times 60?

It is 10,080

If I were to give you $10,080 every week, and the only rule was that whatever you didn't spend at the end of the week went away but you'd start with a new $10,080.

No carry over. 
No borrowing from next week.

$10,080 a week. Every week.

How would you spend your $10,080 this week?

That is the opportunity we’re given every week, except instead of dollars we're given minutes.

Every week God gives you seven days.

Each day He gives 24 hours.

Each hour He gives 60 minutes.

How do we spend the time?

The wise in Christ spend each of their 10,080 minutes under the influence of the Holy Spirit

Our passage that Brian read for us, we are called to walk wisely.

Of course no one sets out to be a fool…but How do we live wisely? By buying back the time.

To be wise, and not fools, we have to not waste those 10,080 minutes but invest them.

We are to treat our time the same way Jesus treated us. Jesus redeemed us. We redeem our time.

We belonged to the domain of darkness. We were following the evil one. He ruled over us.

And so Jesus bought us back. He REDEEMED us.

So that we no longer would be pawns of Satan but would carry out the Will of God.

That is what we do with our time. We buy it from the hands of the enemy and we carry out the Will of God. We spend our 10,080 minutes each week for the glory of Jesus.

Minutes that would otherwise be wasted watching 24-hour news networks, or doom-scrolling, or worry.

Or worse, minutes given to the evil one and his purposes and plans.

How did you spend your last 10,080 minutes? Are you proud of each of them?

Were you foolish?

None of us sought out to be fools

But how many minutes are filled with stuff that will not matter next week, will not matter in a month, will certainly not matter on the other side of eternity?

Don’t be foolish.

Proverbs says, “the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.”

As Paul puts it, Don’t be a fool. Seek to know what God wants.

When we do that, we begin to answer the question: How do I buy back the time? How do I invest the 10,080 minutes that I have this week? How do I buy them back?

What would Jesus do?

He would spend His 10,080 on what is good.

He would spend them on what is right.

He would fill His time with what is true.

He spent His 33 years buying back one moment at a time, one minute at a time.

What does God want? What does God want?

And we can't forget the purpose Ephesians has already told us God has for us:

In chapter 3 we read:
 to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in[b] God, who created all things, 10 so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. 11 This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, 12 in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.

Speaking of Jesus: Redeeming the time is not burning the candle at both ends.

Jesus did get up early to spend time in prayer.

Other times, Jesus stayed up all night in prayer.

And other times, Jesus took a nap.

Buying back the time is not about mathetmatical efficiency, its about making the best use of every minute. And some minutes the best use is a nap or a snack.

As beloved children of God, let's live wisely by making the best use of the time under the influence of the Holy Spirit.

How?

By being under the influence.

Kristen and alcohol

honeymoon drinking at 10am

Miranda Lambert concert-girl couldn’t make it to Porto potty so she used a bush

Obviously the way of wisdom is Not by getting drunk.

Not by giving yourself to alcohol so that alcohol becomes the one in control.

where you lose yourself and give up control.

But instead, the way of wisdom is to give yourself over to The Holy Spirit. Be intoxicated with Him. Be under His influence.

So that you say things you wouldn’t otherwise say.

You do things you wouldn’t otherwise do.

Except you are under the influence of the Holy Spirit.

Paul is talking about an intoxication of the Holy Spirit.

Just like in Acts 2, when the Holy Spirit came upon the believers at Pentecost, they were accused of being drunk at 9am.

Oh, that we would be a church that is so filled with the Holy Spirit that we do things we would never otherwise do!!

By how? How do we get filled with the Holy Spirit?

I think Scripture offers us 3 ways:

1. Ephesians 3:14-to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

2. Luke 11:13-If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!

We want to be wise. 
Then we make the best use of time. 
Then we must be under the influence of the Holy Spirit
And the Spirit leads us to Singing together

We’ve moved the sermon to before our worship time so that we have the chance to take what we find in Ephesians 5 and to apply it.

1. “Addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.”

Well, here’s one of the principles that we’re finding: When we worship together, we are going to address one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

Corporate worship is not a moment between just you and the Lord, where you forget all about the rest of us. As if your fellow church members are a distraction.

And do you realize what that moment does in your soul?

Maybe you only think about yourself and Jesus while you sing.

But if you do, I’m going to challenge you to stop doing that. I want to challenge you to start looking around the room a little bit.

When we sing "Be Thou My Vision" in a minute, maybe you notice Pauline Wallace in the back. She's probably sang that hymn for almost 90 years.

Or on another Sunday, maybe you notice someone who has had a hard time lately and you watch them sing The Goodness of God.

Or we have a new believer (and its time we have a baptism-I hope you're praying for that) and you hear them sing "I'm so glad, I'm a part of the family of God..."

You see most Sundays, we don't need to ""learn"" something, we need the truths we've known for years to be remembered, reinforced, and live out before our own eyes.

You understand why we have to worship together. 
You understand why we need to be in the same room when it happens.
Why we can’t be a video on a TV screen or on a laptop at home.
You understand what those months in 2020 took away from us.

Understand the responsibility that every member of this church has in its home time Sunday morning to be in this room and to sing those songs.

You understand how important that is.

I’m not saying you never take a vacation. I’m not saying you never take a Sunday morning shift at work.

I am telling you, understand the responsibility that you have

Every Sunday you get to preach a sermon right from your pew. Just by opening up your hymnal or worship guide and singing together.

And every Sunday there are dozens of little sermons all around if you will pay attention

Yes, because the psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs—we’re not exactly sure what all three of those words mean.

We know what psalms are?

Psalms are the 150 different psalms that are found in the book of Psalms.

To not sing them just seems like willful disobedience.

They are the only worship music God Himself’s wrote, so we probably need to be singing more of it.

But what’s the difference in hymns and spiritual songs?

I don’t know.

But its definitely 2 diferent things. And in the church at Ephesus there must have been those who wanted to sing the Old Psalms, some wanted to sing the hymns, and others wanted the spiritual songs.

And Paul called them to sing all 3.

It’s okay that we sing old hymns. It’s okay that we sing new songs. And its okay we sing Pslams.

In fact, let me say it this way: It is good that we sing old hymns. It is good that we sing the newest songs. It is good we sing Psalms.

How do we redeem the 10,080 minutes that we have every week?

You give 150 of them to being at church every Sunday.

You come early. You stay late.

9:15 to 11:45. That’d be 150 minutes.

Out of those 10,080 minutes, you can give 150 of them to be as many Sundays as possible.

That's wise living.

Sing, making melody to the Lord with your heart.

It’s not enough for Pleasant View to sings songs. It is important that you sing,

Listen, based on Ephesians 5, if you say, “I don’t want to sing,” then you're a fool.

In a second, we're going to sing Psalm 100 to a familiar tune, Be Thou My Vision, and When I Look into Your Holiness.

When we do, you can be a fool and waste your time...or you can sing.

But what if you can't sing?

Well whats the text say?

Singing and Making Melody

Some of us sing without making melody. That's ok.

For some, your voice is like an instrument, comes out like a Kenny G saxophone and for some of us it sounds like a 6th grader learning to play the clarinet on a Tuesday night.

But what's wild is that God says, Either way, Fools don't Sing.

Yeah, there will be many Sundays where you are singing, “It Is Well with My Soul,” and you’re saying, “Lord, it ain’t. It’s not well with my soul right now. Help me.”

Maybe you would even be so bold as to bring that darkness out into the light, to pull somebody before there, to ask in prayer, or call them up and ask them, and say—I'm struggling.

Maybe there are some Sundays when we’re singing and the words of the songs don’t match your heart, and you say, “But I—I don’t love that.”

Even though there are Sundays and Seasons like that, the goal is that our worship would be an overflow of a thankful heart.

What the Lord is wanting from us, that it comes from a place of thanksgiving for everything.

How can we thank the Lord for everything?

What if I say, you can’t thank God for every gift.

You can only be thankful that you know, brother, if God is giving you this, if God is in control, He’s letting this happen.

Joseph couldn't thank the Lord that his brothers sold into slavery. He couldn't thank the Lord that he was sent to prison because of false accusations. He can't thank God he was left in prison because of a broken promise.

Then Romans 8:28

But at every turn along the way he can thank the Lord because he knows that the Giver is good and He is working His plan.

And if Joseph knew what God knows then Jospeh knew He would thank God.

Or you can be a fool.

You can refuse to be thankful and waste your week in ingratitude, failing to realize that God is good, He is a giver of good gifts, He is working a good plan for your good and for His glory.

Fools aren't thankful.

Waste your week if you want to,

But I don’t want to waste my week

I want to spend my 10,080 minutes wisely, trading the minutes that He gave me in gratitude to the Giver.

10,080 minutes, you can spend however you want.

I imagine you want to invest those 10,080 minutes wisely, don’t you?

You don’t want to be a fool.

So let the Spirit control you—come to corporate worship and sing, and sing from the heart, and be thankful for everything God has done.