Transcript

Grab your Bibles and let’s go back to Ephesians. I want to finish up this time before our break in the book of Ephesians. There’s not enough time to start something new. I hate to start and take the four weeks off and come back so we’re just going to look at Ephesians, Lord willing, today and next Sunday morning as we’re continuing in chapter 5 and as always, we remind ourselves that everything in this practical application section of the epistle is built on the foundational doctrines of sovereign grace that were unfolded in the earlier chapters of the epistle. The fact that God has saved us through his Son Jesus Christ, the fact that God has wrought that change in us under the preaching of the Gospel, and the application of the merits of Christ to our souls by the Holy Spirit, we are born again. The Bible says we have been made alive. We’ve experienced the new birth. All of these things are foundational or none of the practical side makes any sense. You can’t build the new man on the old man. You can’t reform the old man, he has to be discarded and you have to be birthed into a new creation in Christ Jesus, then these truths begin to make sense to you because they are spiritually appraised and you have the Spirit in you enabling you to give the amen and the affirmation as these truths are taught.

Now Ephesians 5, again we’re in verses 15 through 17. We’ve been talking about making the most of our time, that time is a creation of God and time is given to all of us as a gift of which we are a steward, therefore it’s not ours, it’s God. You say, “Well, I have so much time.” Well, really you don’t have any time, it’s God’s time. He created it, he gave it to us, and we are to use it for him, utilize it to the end of serving him and glorifying him. So Paul says to these Ephesians and, again, we’re to understand that they’re immersed in a very corrupt non-Christian culture, much of what you and I are seeing in our world today where wickedness, promiscuity, sexual immoralities are just wantonly embraced. Who would have ever thought here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, now look, we always knew evil abounded in every people group but we didn’t think a couple three decades ago that evil would be paraded and celebrated in the streets. Well, that’s the way it was in this day so the further on the downgrade our country goes, the more we fit in to exactly what the Apostle Paul was dealing with as he writes to these new churches in the Gentile regions of the world, here the church in the city of Ephesus.

So he says, “Based on where you are, what’s happened to you in the new birth and the culture you’re living in,” Paul says, “let me give you this practical instruction.” Verse 15, Ephesians 5, 15 Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, 16 making the most of your time, because the days are evil. 17 So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

So I’ve entitled this “Be Watchful and Wise Because the Days are Evil.” Be watchful and wise because the days are evil and, you know, a biblical phrase that comes to my mind at this point is, “Do not grow weary in well-doing.” Don’t grow weary in your toil because your toil is not in vain in the Lord. You and I are so immersed in an evil culture. It can be like, “Lord, it’s just so much, so often,” but we have to keep striving, we have to keep girding up our loins in the biblical language, we have to keep reinvigorating our passion to strive for God’s will and God’s holiness and not be led astray by this evil day as the Bible phrase simply here is, when the days are clearly evil.

So, I. Evil temptations abound. That’s what Paul is saying. You are surrounded by evil temptations. You are immersed in a culture full of evil temptations. The word Paul uses here for evil is a word that simply means to be hurtful or bad in effect or in influence. There is so much in the culture, Paul is saying, that is hurtful from God’s perspective, it’s bad from God’s perspective, and it wants to have a hurtful or bad effect on you and an influence on you. We understand that our world has been thoroughly infiltrated by Satan. This present world system, the way mankind works, now I’m leaving the church out of this. Pull the redeemed family of God out of this and take the rest of the world and you have a world that’s been thoroughly overtaken by Satan, so much so, 2 Corinthians 4:4 reminds us that Satan is called “the god of this world.” He’s the head of this whole world system. Where God is left out, man begins to enthrone himself and therefore his own lust and desires as the final authority and the final operation of what he’s to be about and that’s the way most people function. Then of course, as Paul’s writing to a church, this concept is ever-encroaching on the church. Constantly, constantly, constantly the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is being imposed upon with the most seductive clever influences to push it toward accommodating the world, being a little more like the world, being a little more welcoming of the world, and usually they’ll say, “Oh, it’s all to the end that we can win more people to Jesus,” which brings us to a very very important point. You’ve got to understand something, church: our ultimate purpose is not to win more to Jesus. Now that’s a high purpose and it’s part of our passion and it must always be, but our ultimate purpose is not to win more to Jesus, our ultimate purpose is to glorify God. That means we will strive to win more his way, by his power, and for his glory.

So we don’t just win people, we glorify God by winning them his way and for his glory, trusting, of course, in his power, and that’s where churches get it wrong because it is absolutely, in my opinion, abhorrent, I believe in God’s opinion, abhorrent what some congregations do to say, “We’re doing this to win more people.” Well, if your methods and if the means you’re employing greatly contradict the character of a holy God, you’re not winning anybody. Now you may get people to go through some motions but you can’t use unholy means to produce a holy result. You can’t use untrue means to produce a true result. So yes we’re passionate for souls, yes we want to witness to all men everywhere, urging all men to repent and believe, yes we’re after souls, yes that’s a motivation, but that’s not the great motivation. The great motivation is the glory of God.

I don’t want to get too deep into this because this is kind of a side note, but brothers and sisters, if God intended to save everybody, everybody would be saved. If God ordained all will be saved, all would be saved. He is not a puny God. He is not weak. But here’s what God does ordain, he has ordained that for time and eternity he will be glorified. Now thank God he’s chosen to glorify himself by saving wretches like us. Amen? That’s the great blessing of it all.

So anyway, back to our outline. Evil temptations abound. Paul says, “You’re immersed in this world where the dye of evil has thoroughly permeated the fabric of culture.” It’s just everywhere. God made this world. Originally this world was upright and true and in harmony with him, but when man fell in the garden of Eden and sinned against God, evil corruption polluted all that is done, all that is of this created order.

Romans 8:19-21, Paul writes to the church at Rome, “For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” So he’s saying that there is this enslavement of creation itself to the sinfulness and the wickedness that is present in the world. There’s just an enslavement there and one day God’s going to justify, rather glorify all of us and when he does that, he’s going to cleanse creation also and it will be set free from the defilement and the slavery and the evil that is so prominent. So this corrupted world is now filled with evil and therefore it is filled with harmful and hurtful temptations for the child of God.

Now, II., building on that we must stay alert to these ever-present evil temptations. That’s what he’s saying here. Stay alert. Now again, the church at Ephesus was immersed in a culture and very likely a majority, perhaps the large majority of all of those Christians in that church, at least the adults, had been involved in the vile wanton promiscuities of the culture and they had come out of that. So Paul is saying, “Look, you’ve come out of that, now you be very careful that you don’t let this culture tempt you and draw you back into it. That’s not who you are anymore. That’s not what marks you. That is not what should characterize you.”

A few cross-references here to encourage us. 1 Corinthians 16:13, the same idea, “Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.” The same idea as in 1 Thessalonians 5:6, “so then let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober.” Don’t go into the doldrums. Don’t coast along. Be there intentional. Be ready for the temptations. 1 Peter 5:8, “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” This world is absolutely full of manipulative, deceptive, evil influences. They surround us every day. If you are not alert and diligent, you will become entrapped in the stronghold of sin and you will be misusing time, as Paul is telling us here in this context.

Now if I might indulge one more time and talk about the Southern Baptist Convention. I believe and I am concerned that some of our prominent leaders, now we’ve gone from the days of Jerry Vines and Adrian Rogers and Bailey Smith, good men, men that I knew personally and appreciated very much. I talked to Dr. Vines on the phone not long ago and he was just grieving over the direction things were going. Now, I wish those men had done some different things in their churches, I believe they would tell you that, but nevertheless there was no, I mean, tiny swerving from what the Bible says is right and wrong in those men’s message and in their positions and now today we’re beginning to hear at least I believe more than little hints – now listen, church, I want you to listen to what I’m saying – we’re beginning to hear more than little hints that now we live in this evil culture and we have to have a new special consideration, a new unique and compassionate and understanding approach to certain new social and cultural trends.

It’s almost, well it is as if they’re saying, “You’ve got to understand, these segment of sinners need special deference, understanding, compassion. We’ve just got to deal with them more tenderly.” If a group tomorrow held a conference and they said, “Our conference is a liars’ conference. We all just feel from birth we’ve been predisposed to lying.” That looks like you. That looks like me. The Bible says we come forth from the womb speaking lies but we don’t parade in the street and start organizations to promote lying, and then we don’t stomp, demand and cry that everybody have special consideration for us because we have this unique special sin called lying. What if we had started a movement tomorrow and say, “We’re just an organization of adulterers. Now we’re not going to actively do it, but it’s just what we are. We just have this ongoing ever- present desire to commit adultery and we want the culture and especially the church, we want you to have a special consideration, a special kindness, a special compassion for us because our sin is special and unique.” You’d say, “Pastor, that’s ridiculous.” Then why does homosexuality deserve this special treatment? Why does homosexuality and the gay movement need all this special consideration? “Well, that’s just different.” Look, it’s not different. It’s not unique. It’s not special, it’s just another sin. “Well, I need to check that.” If you study the Bible, there is some uniqueness to that sin as Scripture points it out, not in a positive effect but in a negative effect.

But we’re seeing this, I believe this is what we have: we have men who have led congregations, how shall I say this, largely leaning on pragmatism for their success; pragmatically adopting whatever works instead of, “What saith the Scripture?” So for decades now congregations have basically looked the other way, been very tolerant if not in some ways accommodating of fornication, adultery, the next domino is falling, homosexuality. Instead of like the conservative leaders that we formerly had in the Southern Baptist Convention who were firm and clear and unflinching here, now we have some younger guys who are so much wiser, so much more clever, so much more understanding of the present culture and trends. So, “We’re firm. We’re firm on what this is, this is wrong, but we’ve just got to be different in the way we approach this special class of sinners.” Who told you that? What book did you read that out of? Who told you that you make classifications on sin and some sin gets more compassion than other sins? Where did that come from? I’ll tell you what it is, it’s a part of a world full of evil temptation and it’s the evil temptation to begin taking steps in the wrong direction.

I know where this is going. Look, I told you three decades where we were going and I’m not saying I’m all wise but I’ve been proven to be true. Our churches have gone exactly where I said they’d be going. But what point am I making? I’m saying it never ends. As a pastor, it never ends. I read these things and I think them through and I pray over them, and I begin to discern from the Scripture they’re going in the wrong direction on this thing. They think they’re so wise and they think they have this elite special capacity to grasp how to reach these people, and actually what they’re doing is they’re starting to put a crack in the door on saying this is okay. Brother, listen to me, listen to me: you cannot help a sinner if you don’t help them repent. To whatever degree you accommodate, you are complicit in their evil. There must be a clear, there must be a firm, there must be an unflinching conviction about right and wrong, good and bad, evil and righteousness. Stop this notion that certain classifications of sin deserve special treatment. My sins don’t deserve special treatment. Your sin doesn’t deserve special treatment. And anybody else’s does not deserve any special treatment. That’s just another example of how subtle, crafty, clever, manipulative clothes itself as we’re being so kind and thoughtful and caring but in the end it’s wrong.

Be discerning. Be wise. And that’s what Paul is telling the Ephesians here. “You’ve got to realize, the days are evil. This stuff’s all around you. It’s trying to entrap you. It’s trying to get you going down the wrong track in your thinking.” Something that’s been amazing to me raising children through the years is the myth of adolescence. The myth of adolescence. Adolescence basically is this concept that modern psychologists have come up with that says you can continue to be as immature and irresponsible as a child though you’ve reached adult ages. Now you have adult desires and adult lust but you can still have the immorality or the immaturities and the irresponsibility that a little child would have. So we just kind of say, “Well, from early teens through about 25, that’s roughly adolescence and you’ve just got to go and sow your wild oats. It’s just kind of part of what happens.” Well, it does happen and it happens sometimes to good folks and good families but that doesn’t mean we’re supposed to put our stamp of approval on it and say, “That’s just the way it is.” Talk to the moms and dads, talk to the grandmothers and granddaddies who have lost a precious child involved in things that was a part of sowing wild oats. They’ll tell you that’s a lie from hell, is what that is. That’s a satanic deception. That’s an evil from the world.

The Bible teaches you’re a child, then you become an adult. It doesn’t teach you get these ten years to be irresponsible and wanton in your lust. That’s not scriptural. Now sure, a person is maturing in their young adulthood but there should be no license to this kind of inappropriate behavior, this concept that everything you want to do, you get to do because you’re young, after all. Have all the fun you can while you’re young. You can even be disrespectful and rude to your parents, to your elders, to your pastors because, after all, you’re young, you’re just sowing your wild oats. You can be basically irresponsible in most every area of your life. You can sin and rebel. Well, it’s understood, they’re just going through adolescence. You can fornicate, you can drink beer, you can smoke dope, you can do other things. It’s no big deal, it’s just a part of growing up. No, it’s not. Who told you that? That’s a lie from an evil world. Now thank God there are those who go down that path and the grace of God covers them, amen? God covered me and drew me out of it and he can you, but God forbid mature Christian parents fall into the evil culture’s temptation here. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Matthew Henry, the great English commentary writer said, “Parents whose chief concern is that their children should be rich and accomplished whatever becomes of their souls, must not look for God’s blessing.” Now we as Christians, of course, while we do what unregenerate parents do, we want our children to get a good education, unregenerate parents want their children to get a good education, we want them to be healthy and strong, well, unregenerate parents want them to be healthy and strong, but we have something greater that we add to that, the discipline and instruction of the Lord. That makes us different. So it’s more than just bringing them up as good responsible men and women, but we want to train our children as they reach adulthood to fear sinning and we want to excite in them a love for God and a love for the Gospel. So we could go on and on for hours just picking out the ways this evil culture comes with its clever seducing temptations.

So Paul says to the church at Ephesus and God says to Grace Life Church of the Shoals and to all churches today, “Be careful. Be alert. It’s ever-present around you.” Now listen to me again like I talked about our Southern Baptist leaders I’m convinced are drifting in the wrong direction, it seems so right. It seems so creative. It seems so wise. It seems so compassionate. But it’s not. It’s not.

III. Understand God’s will, that is, what he’s saying how good and how right it is. He says here as he continues, verse 15 again, “be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” Now when he says “do not be foolish,” a foolish man has no capacity for sound reason. Did you hear me? A foolish man has no capacity for sound reason. Here’s what God’s saying, God’s saying the Spirit of God has changed your life, the Gospel has transformed you, you’re not who you used to be so listen now, don’t act like you have no capacity for sound reason. Are you listening, child of God? You now have a wonderful God-given capacity to think soundly and not foolishly like the rest of the world so don’t keep living, it’s a continual force on the verb here, don’t keep living like you’re one who has no capacity for sound thinking. God saved you, you now have that capacity. So understand what the will of the Lord is. In other words, you now can gain an appreciation that God’s way is right and God’s way is good, the world’s way is wrong and the world’s way is evil. You now have that grasp that from the heart and then the understanding you did not have before.

One of the things that I like to say when he says here “be understanding” is that when we’re raising our children, we need to be understanding of the unique temptations and pitfalls that are out there for parents and for children and we need to be purposeful and be ready for these things. When my girls were really young, we began teaching them the principles of biblical courtship and not worldly dating. We’re not perfect at it and my rules don’t have to be absolutely your rules, but the biblical principle should guide you here. But we were very intentional. That’s where the purity ring and the seven stone ring that we’ve been talking about for years, that’s where all that came from so that we could be intentional before those ages come when they’re really interested in guys and girls, to teach those principles. We want to understand what the will of the Lord is and act accordingly. You can’t wait until a child is 15, 16, 17. Too late. If that’s where you are, you do the best you can but you need to start when you’re 5, 6, 7 and 8 speaking these principles.

We talked about travel ball last week but we could expand that out to all the extracurricular things. Many of them good but are you wise and proactive that you’ve made a commitment to Christ first and there is a limit to the things you’ll say yes to as you raise your children and they’re involved in various activities. Be proactive. Don’t just let it happen. The world’s evil, it’s coming to entrap you and it will get you there before you know it. That’s why Paul is saying this. Be alert. You no longer need to act foolish like you can’t understand this. You can, he’s saying. Be proactive. Think ahead of time.

I just jotted down some things here. This is going to be a remarkable epiphany, it’s going to be a remarkable profound breakthrough because I’m about to give you God’s will for your life. I know some of you have been wondering about that for ages and I’m just going to clear it all up this morning. Are you ready? You’re about to get God’s will for you. No question about it. I know God’s will for your life. Absolutely. No doubt about it. Are you ready? There are several points. They’ll be on the screen.

1. God’s will is that you be saved. Your salvation. God wants you to be saved. The Bible says in 1 Timothy 2:3-4, “This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” The heart of God. It doesn’t mean God ordains or God wills. If God willed it or ordained it, it would be done, but the heart of God is, “I wish all men would turn to my Christ and embrace him.” That should be our desire. So God’s will is your salvation. You should turn to Christ and trust him. That’s God’s will for you.

2. Sanctification. Is that 2? No, Spirit-filled. I’m sorry, I skipped. Spirit-filled. We go to the next verse, “do not be drunk with wine, that’s dissipation,” that’s verse 18 of Ephesians 5, “but be filled with the Spirit.” It’s the idea of keep on being filled. God’s will for you is that you walk a lifestyle that is Spirit-controlled. The Holy Spirit in you illuminating your heart and your mind, the Holy Spirit within you – listen to me – enabling you to be an active repenter and an active faither in Jesus Christ. He’s not saying that you’re going to reach some perfect level. This is not talking about some certain event in your life. It’s the continual action word, keep on being filled with the Holy Spirit. That’s God’s will for you, to yield to God’s truth and yield to the promptings of the Holy Spirit as you live your life, not to the spirit of the world, but to the Spirit of God.

Now thirdly, serving. Serving. Now your service is centered in the local church. Hebrews 10:24-25 says we’re to be considering ” how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together.” So what’s the idea there? It is absolutely without question God’s will that you serve God faithfully in a local church. You may do other things but like I like to say it, when you were saved, you took a wife, the local church, you took a responsibility, you took a covenant relationship with a people called the local church. It’s God’s will that you be saved. It’s God’s will that you strive to be Spirit-filled. It’s God’s will that you serve him faithfully in a local church.

4. Sanctification. 1 Thessalonians 4:3 reminds us, “For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality.” Now this is exactly what Paul is talking to the Ephesians about. Now that you’ve been changed by Christ, the Spirit of God lives in you – now listen – you don’t just have a new rule-keeping book, you don’t have just a list of commandments that a Christian is. No, something’s changed in you – notice his wording in the text – so that you no longer are to have unsound reasoning in you, you now have sound reasoning by the Spirit’s enablement based on the word of God that you can make good choices and you now understand that living in the wanton, vile immoralities and promiscuities of the Ephesian culture is no longer good. That’s unsound reasoning. You can live set apart from that, that’s what the word “sanctification” means. There are lines you don’t cross. You don’t go back into that anymore. That’s no longer who you are. It’s God’s will that you be set apart from the immoralities of the culture.

Now look, it’s not God’s will for you to see how close you can get to the line without falling over. That’s where some of you are living right now. That’s why you’re not coming back tonight because you want to get here before tonight. You’re not to be on that line just getting as close as you can. That’s another seduction of the world. If he can get you on the line, he’ll get you over. If he can get you on the line, if he can get you living on the line, Satan will get you over it. He tells young people, he doesn’t tell young people to flee just immoralities, he tells young people to flee youthful lust. Don’t get close to the line. Fight at the lust level. Don’t let lust take root in your thought patterns and in your lifestyle. If he can get you there, he’ll get you over.

So it’s God’s will to be saved, it’s God’s will for you to walk Spirit-filled, it’s God’s will for you to be sanctified or serving, and it’s God’s will to be sanctified, and it’s also God’s will for you to be submissive. God’s placed every single one of us under some God- ordained authority whether it’s your parents, whether it’s your husband, whether it’s the church elders, whether it’s the civil magistrates, whether it’s your employer. God’s will is – now listen – now that you have the capacity to have sound reasoning in your thinking system, you know that’s right. You know that’s good and the next time the guys at work get on a tirade to undermine their employer and speak bad of him, something in your heart says, “I don’t need to be going along with that. That’s not who I am. I want to be submissive to my employer. I want to be submissive to the civil authorities. I want to be submissive to my husband or my parents or the church elders.” That’s God’s ordination for all of us. That’s God’s will for you. He says in 1 Peter 2:13, ” Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human institution,” then he goes on in verse 15, “For such is the will of God.”

The next one: suffering. In some capacity, in some way, God’s will for you involves some suffering. Now listen, unlike the others, you don’t go out seeking this, you go out seeking God. This just happens. Now that’s why when you look on our steeple you see two crosses because there’s always and only been two crosses in Christianity. There’s always and only been the Savior’s cross and the saint’s cross. We can’t carry his cross but, boy, did he carry it wonderfully, but now that we are saved by him, he puts us on a path, what’s Paul’s wording here, a path of being wise and not having foolish unsound thinking. He puts us on a new path – now look – that’s going against the grain of this world.

Billy Sunday was a flaming old evangelist, what, almost 100 years ago, I guess. Billy Sunday was a pro baseball player, got converted and started preaching and he was wild. They would criticize Billy Sunday and say, “Billy, you stroke the fur on the cat the wrong way.” He’d say, “The old cat’s headed towards hell. If it would turn around, I’d be stroking it the right way.”

Well, you and I live in a world that’s headed the wrong way and once God enables you to have some wisdom and get over that foolish unsound thinking that characterizes the world, that’s not who you are anymore, then you go against the culture and that’s going to mean, young people, that’s going to mean sometimes at school your friends are going to ridicule you. Guys, they’re going to make fun of you, call you a sissy or everything else but, listen, it takes a man to bow before Jesus Christ.

So you’re going to have some of that. You’re not looking for it, it will find you, and as you get older more and more your teachers and professors will be the ones who are doing it. You’ll have some of that in the office. You’ll have some of that in the factory. You’ll have some of that on the ball teams if you’re a coach when your values don’t quite fit with the values of the guys who are worshiping their children instead of discipling them to love Jesus. And on and on we could go. There is no place where the potential for some cross-bearing and suffering is not there. That’s God’s will.

1 Peter 3:17, we’ll jump down to that one. 1 Peter 3:17, ” For it is better, if God should will it so, that you suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong.” Brother Jono Sims reminded me just this past week or so, he said, “Remember when we were talking years ago and you said, “Brother Jono, if you’re in the pastorate, you’re going to suffer, we might as well suffer for doing what’s right. I mean, people are going to give you a hard time no matter what, we might as well do what the Bible says and suffer for that, amen?” And he and I kind of have a covenant to be like that to this day and it’s been an encouragement and a strengthening. This world has suffering, you might as well suffer for serving Jesus because that’s profitable for time and eternity.

Well, the last one, is this number seven? Be thankful. It’s God’s will that you be thankful. It’s God’s will that you be thankful. You see, that wasn’t hard at all, was it? That’s God’s will for your life. No question about it. No question about it. The Bible tells us 1 Thessalonians 5:18, “in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” Now he didn’t say, now listen, he didn’t say in everything feel like giving thanks, he said to give thanks. There are times when you don’t feel like it and you take authority over your emotions and say, “Emotions, shut up. I’m praising and thanking my God right now for these circumstances. Not for maybe the bad that came out of them but that he ordained everything ultimately for my good and his glory.” Do not let your emotions know that they’re lord of your life. You don’t run by emotions, you run by Jesus Christ and so you choose to know now that you have understanding and wisdom and not the foolish lack of sound reason the world knows, you have true sound thinking and so now you know a sovereign God ordains everything in our lives for our good and his glory and we’ll see it soon enough. So we throw ourselves, throw ourselves, throw ourselves continually into thanksgiving for the things in our lives. Now that’s God’s will. Now if you come to me, you come to staff members. Did y’all get all of that so that next time somebody wants to know God’s will, that’s it? There’s no question about it. That’s clearly God’s will.

Now, well, what about if I want to know do I go into this career or that career? What if I want to know do I marry this girl or that girl? Well, first of all make sure you’re actively striving toward all seven of these and if you’re actively striving in all seven of these, then do whatever you want to do. Are you hearing me? Do what makes you happy. Do what you want to do. It’s just that easy but I find people and they want to know, “What’s God’s will here? And what’s God’s will there?” And I look up their Sunday school attendance. I’ll say, “I can’t tell you and neither will God because you ain’t got the foundation down yet. You’ve got to get your heart right on these things and then God will make the other things clear.”

In conclusion and this is a key principle here. Psalm 37:4 and we’re wrapping this up. Some of you have had enough of the will of God, you need to go somewhere else. I understand that. Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the LORD; And He will give you the desires of your heart.” Now when you’re striving in those seven things and repenting when you’re falling short and try to get back on them again, if you’re striving in those seven things, do you know what you’re doing? You are training your heart to delight in the Lord. You’re helping your heart delight in the Lord. Now listen, because now you have wisdom to know that’s best. Now you’ve graduated out of the unsound thinking, the foolish thinking of the world into sound thinking. So you’ve learned that delighting in him is the key. Now listen, and the more you do those things, listen, the more he becomes your delight. Did you hear that? Am I going to have to run out these doors screaming to get you to hear it? Did you hear what I said? The more you walk in these things, the more he becomes your delight, then from your heart he’s the one you delight in, then you just got the desire of your heart. Do you see how that works?

You think, “Well, I was delighting in this hunting trip. I was delighting in these new clothes. I was delighting in that house.” Nothing wrong with those things if God let’s you have those things, but what happens – now listen to me – all of those things are hollow. They’re a mirage as far as giving you true delight and joy and happiness. They don’t last. God says, “I love you too much to watch you ruin your happiness on that junk. It’s okay to enjoy some of it but you can’t miss me. I want to get you to the one who is the true joy and the true pleasure and the true delight of both time and eternity.”

So as you learn to delight in the Lord, then what you want is the Lord and so what you’re getting is the desire of your heart. Now, a real quick contrast with the world. The world’s right the opposite of this. A couple of verses here. Proverbs 10:21, “fools die for lack of instruction.” All of these according to the Apostle Paul who living in the world, they’re unwise and they’re bound in foolishness, they have not the capacity for sound thinking and so they just keep on looking and searching and looking and searching and investigating and experiencing this pleasure after that pleasure, this extreme after that extreme, this lust after that lust. It just keeps compounding and they just die and destroy themselves because they did not have the understanding of what true wisdom was. They did not have the capacity to know the foolishness of this evil world was the wrong way to go and the capacity to them have sound thinking which is the right way to go.

Then finally, 2 Timothy 3:7, “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Does that not mark this culture? Learning, learning, learning, learning, learning and then when you get down to what they’re saying at the end, it’s just more man-centered, foolish, vain involvement in stuff that doesn’t last. Have the discipline in your life to take the nice and good things God gives you and say, “God, thank you for that. I do enjoy that but thank you that that’s not my chief joy. Thank you that that’s not my final treasure. Thank you that you’re better than that stuff. Thank you that you’re better than those things.” And then you’re beginning to delight in the Lord and you will discover, “I am getting the desire of my heart.”

Man, has God been good to us. Be wise, Paul says. Be careful. Watch how you walk, not as unwise men, that’s what you were before conversion, now you have the capacity to be wise, verse 15. Make the most of your time while you’re in an evil age with unrelenting, creative, manipulative, scheming temptations coming at you to get you thinking wrong and living wrong in every way, shape and fashion. You’ve got the capacity to see through that now. “Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. So then do not be foolish,” that’s what you used to be, but now you have sound thinking or the capacity for it and therefore, “understand what the will of the Lord is,” that is, this is good and right for me. Amen. That’s all I’ve got to say. Would you pray for me that I would walk in this and I want to pray for you that you will walk in this.