Sermon Tone Analysis

Good morning and welcome to Dishman Baptist Church.

Please take your Bibles and turn with me to Ephesians 5, Ephesians 5.

If you don’t have a Bible and would like to follow along please raise your hand and someone will bring you a Bible.

We have been progressing through this book studying what Paul has written both to the original audience in the context of the world they lived in but also seeking to understand what Paul has to say to us today.

There are many parallels between the world of first century Ephesus and the day that we find ourselves living in.

And in many cases the perils that faced the church in Ephesus are staring us straight in the eye today - both within the church and without.

We would do well to remember that Paul in actuality sent several letters to the church in Ephesus.

Only one was meant for the general consumption of the body which is the letter that we hold here and that we have been studying through.

There were two more letters dispatched from Paul to the city of Ephesus but these were meant for his young protege Timothy as he had been sent to Ephesus to lead and direct the church there.

Ephesus had a litany of very prestigious leadership during the church’s existence.

The Bible tells us that not only were Paul and Timothy there but also Apollos was there for a time (Acts 18:24-27).

Church history also teaches us that the apostle John spent time in Ephesus and very likely could have been exiled from there to the island of Patmos.

In those letters that we have as 1 and 2 Timothy Paul issues several warnings to his young lieutenant regarding the dangers that will impress themselves upon the church.

Much of the letter of 2 Timothy is written with two main themes in the forefront - guard the Gospel and be willing to suffer for it.

The interesting thing is that throughout the book of 2 Timothy the threats that Paul identifies with respect to the church are all internal.

In 2 Timothy 2:16 Paul tells Timothy to avoid irreverent and empty speech, since those who engage in it will produce even more godlessness, and their teaching will spread like gangrene.

Then in chapter 3 and 4 he gives several extended litanies of the characteristics of those who will seek to hijack the purposes and truth of the church.

Why is that important for our sermon today?

As we have been examined and said explicitly last week over the last several verses - from the middle of chapter 4 until these verses that we will begin looking at today - Paul has been exhorting the Ephesians to a life of holiness.

A life marked by the distinct differences which they were to be recognized by in comparison to their neighbors there to those who remained outside the church.

And it seems that in many cases and situations they were successful at giving at least the appearance of this.

But it seems that at some point they lost sight of this charge and wavered under the weight of those who were causing division and strife.

You see there is another letter written to the church of Ephesus that also bears weight and bears looking at in light of what we are going to look at today.

In Revelation 2 [turn with me to Revelation 2] Jesus addresses this church and says in Revelation 2:1-7 ““Write to the angel of the church in Ephesus: Thus says the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand and who walks among the seven golden lampstands: I know your works, your labor, and your endurance, and that you cannot tolerate evil people.

You have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and you have found them to be liars.

I know that you have persevered and endured hardships for the sake of my name, and you have not grown weary.

But I have this against you: You have abandoned the love you had at first.

Remember then how far you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first.

Otherwise, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.

Yet you do have this: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.

“Let anyone who has ears to hear listen to what the Spirit says to the churches.

To the one who conquers, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.”

Now we turn our eyes to what Paul is writing to the Ephesians and to us this morning - Ephesians 5:15-17.

How deeply does this small section of Scripture impact all that was subsequently written to the leadership of this church and also specifically to this church?

How deeply should this small section of Scripture impact how we live out our Christian lives and our pursuit of holiness today?

Let’s examine this passage and see what it has to say for us today.

Many of you know that one of my favorite past times and leisure activities is hiking and backpacking - and some of you right now are wondering how in the world carrying between 25 and 40 pounds of gear around the mountains for a few days and lots of miles could ever be referred to as a leisure activity, well there’s a first time for everything.

And one of the things I love about this passage is that it lends itself very well to a plethora of backpacking or hiking references.

Paul starts off by cautioning his Ephesian audience and us that they should pay careful attention.

Now we mustn’t skip over something and that is the then that comes after pay careful attention in our translation.

The NASB translates this word as therefore - and the original language actually says Pay then careful attention.

What Paul is saying is that in light of the admonition that I have just given you to wake up, rise from the dead and Christ will shine in you that you should then be very careful about how you walk.

The Greek word is Akribos and it has the basic meaning of accurate and exact (as in Acts 18 where it is used to say that Apollos taught accurately about Jesus) and the associated idea of looking or examining something with great care.

It also carries the sense of doing something circumspectly or with great care.

The admonition here is to be aware of the gravity of the walk on which you are embarking.

Not for the purpose of determining the value of the walk - because there is no walk that can be more valuable of significant in life - but rather embarking on the walk with eyes open to the associated perils that will accompany the journey.

Jesus, seeking to instruct his disciples on the cost of following Him, says this in Luke 14:25-30 “Now great crowds were traveling with him.

So he turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, and even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.

Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

“For which of you, wanting to build a tower, doesn’t first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it?

Otherwise, after he has laid the foundation and cannot finish it, all the onlookers will begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This man started to build and wasn’t able to finish.’”

Paul here is expressing the same sentiment - be circumspect, examine the walk that you are going to have to make - not just at the beginning of the walk but also through out, daily we should not only be careful to examine the walk that we are making but also to commit to continuing to seeing through the walk that we’ve begun.

Throughout the great allegorical tale for the Christian life “The Pilgrims Progress” Christian is repeatedly led off the path to the Celestial City both by his own doing and his unwary following of those who seem to be on the path but in reality are leading him astray.

One such time is when Christian and Hopeful have been laboring along the path and the rocky ground has been very hard on their feet.

They come upon a meadow called “By-path Meadow” and Christian seeking an easier path crosses the fence into the meadow and finds the path much easier there.

He prevails upon Hopeful and they both cross over and begin to walk along the path.

For a while the path parallels the route they had been taking but then it veers away and the companions follow the veering path.

They end up falling asleep in a copse of trees and wake to find themselves imprisoned in the Giant Despair’s Doubting Castle.

All because they did not remain diligent in how they walked.

It is also important to remember that the walk of the Christian life is an incremental journey.

Every year there are about 2500 people that attempt a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail that runs from Georgia to Maine.

Of the 2500 that started in 2016 around 25% completed the journey.

In 2017, despite the fact that more people attempted it, that number dropped from 25 to 20%.

Why did these people fail - some was injury and illness or in some extreme cases death.

The journey was just too hard for them and they started out ill prepared to complete it.

I will promise one thing about those who began the journey though.

None of them woke up one day jumped into their Subaru wagon and drove down to REI walked in and said “hello Jim, I want to hike the Appalachian Trail today, would you be so kind as to give me all the gear that I need to accomplish that.”

Jim would have handed them a business card for a local therapist because that person was crazy.

No - they build up their stamina and their abilities before embarking on this journey.

Now the parallel to the Christian life breaks down a little bit here - but indulge me for a moment.

No one, well not many people, tries to tackle the 2,200 mile journey of the Appalachian Trail without first finding someone to embark on the journey with and second without practicing and taking hundreds of shorter hikes to build up their abilities to ensure that they will be successful.

Why would we not take the same diligence and care with our Christian walk as these hikers do with this trek?

Many of us try and get through the Christian life completely on our own - and men are particularly guilty of this with the idea that I am able to get through this alone.

A couple of us were up at Camp Cocolalla this weekend for our men’s retreat and the topic of study was being a courageous man of God.

One of the things that was patently brought out is that being a courageous man of God isn’t done in a vacuum or in an isolation tank.

It requires being a part of a community of men that gather together, support one another and seek to foster maturity in each man.

There is no man, or woman, who can accomplish the Christian walk that Paul is calling us to here completely on their own.

We need others around us - on an individual level and a group level that help carry us along when we are weak and help us maintain our focus when we are wavering.

We must count the cost and be prepared for our journey.

While we may not get “practice hikes” on the way to Heaven, we must be maturing and growing our spiritual capabilities to ensure that we remain on the path.

Paul will now give us three qualifications to what it looks like to pay careful attention to how we walk.

The first is not as unwise but as wise.

The Bible is replete with comparisons of the wise and the foolish.

The book of Proverbs is nearly entirely devoted to contrasting the wise with the unwise.

Proverbs 1:7 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and discipline.”

Jesus gives us a great contrast between the wise and the unwise at the end of the sermon on the Mount saying Matthew 7:24-27 ““Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.

The rain fell, the rivers rose, and the winds blew and pounded that house.

Yet it didn’t collapse, because its foundation was on the rock.

But everyone who hears these words of mine and doesn’t act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.

The rain fell, the rivers rose, the winds blew and pounded that house, and it collapsed.

It collapsed with a great crash.””

What better example could we have of the truth of what Jesus is expressing here than the videos coming out of Rodanthe, North Carolina over the last week.

A house built on stilts and standing on sand was washed away by pounding surf this week.

Those who base their lives on the wisdom of the world will find themselves cast adrift in their lives with nothing to stand on.

Do we need any other example of the foolishness of the world than to simply look at our social media feeds?

It is consistently brought to light for us just how foolish not only the world is but also those within the church.

What a tragedy that those who have the very source of all wisdom refuse to look to it.

It is important for us to recognize that the wisdom that Paul is speaking of here is in the sense of a person who is capable of determining what is pleasing to the Lord” this in some ways will go hand in hand with what Paul is going to assert in a few moments regarding understanding what the will of the Lord is.

But first - in the context of our own walk - we must make sure that what we are doing within ourselves is pleasing to the Lord.

There are many who appear to be pleasing the Lord with their actions whose life is far from pleasing to the Lord.