Robert Jeffress - Soaring With Eagles While Surrounded By Turkeys
Hi, I'm Robert Jeffress, and welcome again to "Pathway to Victory". Living wisely in today's world can often feel like an uphill battle. It's not easy to emulate God's character when we're surrounded by opposing influences. Today, we're turning to Ephesians chapter 5 to discover God's blueprint for success. These biblical principles will help us walk in wisdom and live out God's plan for our lives. My message is titled "Soaring With Eagles While Surrounded by Turkeys" on today's edition of "Pathway to Victory".
Success is something that everyone craves but few know how to experience. Art Williams, the founder of primerica financial services, has his own formula for success. He said, "You beat 50% of the people in America by working hard. You beat another 40% by being a person of honesty and integrity, standing for something. And the last 10% is a dog fight in the free enterprise system". That's one way of looking at it. If you want to be a success, you choose to be successful. You choose to work hard, to maintain your integrity, to keep pursuing your dreams, no matter how hard it is. The apostle Paul had another formula for success we're going to discover today. It's found in Ephesians chapter 5.
If you have your Bibles, turn there as we discover how to soar with the eagles when surrounded by turkeys. Have you ever felt that way before? Well, even Paul did. He's in the section now of Ephesians that deals with our walk with God. He's talked about our spiritual wealth from God chapters 1 to 3. Now chapters 4 to 6, our walk with God. He talks about four areas in the church: with other Christians, in our personal lives, in terms of our family that we'll begin looking at next time, and in spiritual warfare. But we're in this section talkin' about how we conduct ourselves personally. And when we get to chapter 5, remember, Paul said, "Be imitators of God". That's it in a nutshell. If you wanna walk with purity in your personal life, be like God. Imitate, mimetai, mimic God. I was thinkin' about that before I came in the service today.
You notice some Sundays I wear this pocket square, and it used to be back in the '80s I would wear them every Sunday with a different tie, a different pocket square. The downside of the pocket square was it has a way of slipping down into your coat pocket where it's not visible. One Sunday 40 years ago, I was here as youth minister, and we met in the minister's room before the service with Dr. Chriswell, and he looked over at me and said, "I see your pocket square has fallen". And I said, "Well, yeah, I guess it has". He said, "Do you mind if I show you somethin'"? I said, "No".
And so he grabs the square out of my pocket, takes a piece of Kleenex, tears it off, puts it inside the pocket as a barrier, then folds up my pocket square, puts it back in, pats it, and he said to me, "Now, if you're going to be my son, you've gotta look like it". I've thought about that through the years. You know, God says the same thing to us. If we're goin' to be his children, we need to look like his children. We need to imitate God. And beginning in chapter 5, verse 2, Paul is gonna tell us three ways we mimic God in our behavior.
First of all, by walking in love, verse 2. Especially forgiveness. We're to be tenderhearted, forgiving one another just as God has forgiven us. We're never more like God than when we forgive others. Then, beginning in verse 8, he says, "Walk in light". That is, get rid of that behavior that is associated with darkness. And now when we come to verse 15, he's goin' to talk about the third way we imitate God: walking in light, walking in love, and walking in wisdom. Look at verse 15 of chapter 5. "Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise". What does that mean? Well, the contrast here is the contrast between walking as unwise people walk compared to how wise people walk.
How do the unwise walk? Remember Psalm 14:1? "The fool has said in his heart," what? "There is no God". That's how unwise people walk. And that word "Fool" in Hebrew is a word that literally means moron. "The moron has said in his heart, 'there is no God'". The moron has concluded after he looks around the universe, "Oh, this just happened by chance". You have to be a moron to believe that. Only the fool believes that. That's where we get the word "Atheist". A, the alpha privative in Greek that means no. Theist God, no God. The fool says, "No God! No God. No God".
Now, we pat ourselves on the back, "Thank God we're not like that". Well, don't be so sure. I doubt we have very many theological atheists in the crowd today, but we have lots of practical atheists. Think about it. How many times do we make our plans, we live our lives, without ever consulting God? Without ever wondering first, "What does God think about what we're doing"? How long do we go without really thinkin' about God? Hours, days, perhaps weeks, or even longer. We are not theological atheists. We are practical atheists. We live our life as if there is no God. That is a foolish way to live of. He said, "Instead, be careful how you walk". That word "Be careful", translated, "Be careful" means to do something with exactness and accuracy.
I think the King James says, "Be circumspect. Walk carefully". I saw a good illustration of that a couple of weeks ago, I was re-watching a documentary from 2008 called "Man on wire". It's the true story of the French tightrope walker Philippe Petit. Do you remember Philippe Petit? On August 7, 1974, residents of downtown New York were on their ways to their businesses when they looked up in the sky and saw the most unusual sight. A tight rope had been stretched between the two towers of the twin towers of the world trade center, and Philippe Petit was on that tightrope, walking between the twin towers 1300 feet in the air. And people watched him.
How did he walk across that tightrope? He didn't run. He did for a few feet, but then good sense prevailed. He walked very carefully across that wire. Then the winds began to howl that threatened to knock him over. The crowd started shouting at him below to encourage him. The police were sticking their heads out of the windows of the world trade center, ordering him to cease and desist. He had all kind of distractions, but he concentrated on making it safely to the other side. That's how we're to live our lives. We're to walk very carefully in this world. Do you know why? Because as C. S. Lewis said, "This world is enemy-occupied territory".
Think about a soldier. If he goes through an area that he knows there are mines buried underneath the soil, he's gonna be very careful how he walks. That's how we're to walk. Walk our lives circumspectly, being careful. Well, how do you do that? How do you walk wisely? Well, Paul is gonna share with us the three components of walking wisely. That's the heart of this section. Let me, though, first paraphrase how J.B. Phillipps translates this passage. I love this in the Phillips. "Live life, then, with a due sense of responsibility, not as men who don't know the meaning of life but as those who do. Make the best use of your time, despite all the evils of these days. Don't be vague but grasp firmly what you know to be the will of the Lord".
What does it mean to walk wisely? First of all, write this down, it means to maximize God's provision. To maximize God's provision. You know the greatest provision any of us has received from God? It's time. That's why Paul says, "Make the most of your time". Some translations say, "Redeem the time". Three insights about time were found in scripture. First of all, time is valuable. I heard one management consultant say one time, "What distinguishes successful people from unsuccessful people is their tender loving care of their time". Remember Benjamin Franklin's words? He said, "Dost thou lovest life? Then do not squander time, because time is the stuff life is made of". That's a biblical view as well. Time is valuable.
Secondly, time is limited. At least in this world. We have a finite number of days, hours, minutes in which to live. The Psalmist understood that in Psalm 139, verse 16. David wrote, "In your book were written all the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them". Did you know the day of your birth and the day of your death are both written in God's book? And there's not one thing you're gonna do to change it. You can't shorten, you can't lengthen the allotted time that God has for you. And that's why David prayed in Psalm 39:4, "Lord, make me to know my end and what is the extent of my days: let me know how transient I am".
If you wanna know how transient you are, just take a stroll through the cemetery. You know that's a healthy thing to do? We used to go up and see my grandfather in van Alstyne, Texas, and stand at our cemetery plot. That's a sobering experience, to stand there and realize there you will be one day. There's wisdom that can come from that. Moses understood the wisdom of that in Psalm 90:12 when he prayed, "So teach us to number our days and to recognize how few they are, that we may present to you a heart of wisdom". Time is valuable. Time is limited.
Mark Buchanan has written a book entitled "Unseen things" or "Things unseen," and he opens the book with these words: "I'm dying. Sometimes I forget that. Now don't misunderstand, I'm not at present suffering from a terminal illness or a mortal wound. I have no virus breeding in my bloodstream or genetic disease swimming in my flesh. I am not, to my knowledge, dying soon, but I am, as the apostle Paul puts it, outwardly wasting away. That's what I sometimes forget: my mortality, my frailty, my life's remedy. 'i will be the exception,' I think, but that's laughable. I'm dying, you're dying, and that's that".
That's a profound truth. As the old soap opera says, as sand in the hourglass, so are the days of our life. It's goin' away just like that [snaps], those allotted times. James said it this way. He said, "Your life is but a vapor, a mist that appears and then, poof, passes away". The Bible tells us time is valuable, it's limited, and thirdly, time is uncertain. Verses 13 and 14 of James 4 say, "Come, now you say, 'today or tomorrow we'll go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit'. Yet you don't know what your life will be like tomorrow". And then he writes, "You're just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes".
Now, James isn't condemning making plans. We ought to all have plans. But we ought to realize how conditional our plans are. We can think about tomorrow, but we have no guarantee of tomorrow. All we have is today. Do you know what the greatest enemy is to the wise use of time? That gift, that provision God has given us. The greatest enemy of time is procrastination. You know what procrastination is. The procrastinator is the one whose life motto is, "Never do today what can be put off until tomorrow".
That's procrastination, and it's foolishness. I read this week of a scholar who was trying to discover the most important words in the Bible, the happiest word in the Bible, the saddest word in the Bible, the most fearful word in the Bible, and he came to the most dangerous word in the Bible. He said, "It's easy, 'tomorrow'". One writer says it this way: "The word 'tomorrow' is a thief that robs dreamers of their dreams and the talented of their greatest achievements. It keeps men and women from coming to Christ and discovering the kind of life God longs for them to have".
The prince of preachers, Charles Spurgeon, agreed. He said, "Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. Alas, tomorrow never comes. It is on no calendar except the almanac of fools". How do we walk wisely? We maximize God's provision of time, we understand God's plan, and thirdly, we access God's power. Notice the command in verse 18, the mandate to be spirit-filled. He says, "And do not get drunk with wine, for this is dissipation, but be filled with the spirit". Now, it'd be easy to go off on a detour here and talk about the pros and cons of drinking and talk about what the Bible teaches about drinking. We all know there's no verse in the Bible that says, "You can never allow alcohol to pass your lips or you're going to hell".
We know the Bible doesn't teach that. But we also know the Bible has many warnings about alcohol and the dangers of alcohol. And what is dangerous about it is allowing it to control your life. That's what the word means. "Don't be drunk with wine," don't let wine control your life, "But instead be filled with the spirit". That word translated "Filled," pleroo, means to control. It was a Greek word that was used to describe the wind filling the sail of a ship and giving it direction. The wind directed where that ship went. And that's the command here. Be controlled by the Holy Spirit of God.
And it's interesting, when the wind fills the sail, the sail doesn't have all of the wind, but the wind has all of the sail. It completely controls what direction that ship is going. It's interesting to me that there is never any command to be baptized with the Holy Spirit. There's no command that we have to go out and baptize ourselves with the spirit. That's what God does. The moment you're saved as a Christian, God's Holy Spirit comes into your life. And you don't just receive a little bitty part of the Spirit of God. You receive all of the Spirit of God. All of him is in your life, but your job and my job is to surrender ourselves to the control of the Holy Spirit, as we give over different areas of our life and say, "Not my will, but your will be done".
We're not commanded to be baptized, but we are commanded to be filled with the Holy Spirit of God, surrendering to every part of our life to him. And by the way, that's why we do things like this spring training program. This is a way for us to meditate on God's word, memorize God's word, so that we know what it means to surrender to God in our marriage, in our work, in our finances, and every other area of our life. We have a mandate to be spirit-controlled. And then there's the measure of being spirit-filled. "Well, how do I know if God's really controlling my life"?
I think this is interesting. He says the measure of being filled, or controlled, with the spirit is not speaking some ecstatic utterance that nobody can understand. Notice what he says. It is speaking, but it's speaking, verse 19, "To one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord". Remember we saw last time Mark 12 says, "It's out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks". What comes out of our mouth reveals what is in our heart. If we have vile, anger, bitterness, wrath coming out of our mouth, that's evidence we're not being controlled with the spirit. But if we are being controlled by the spirit, we will express it in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
My friend David Jeremiah points out in his book "My Heart's Desire" that there is a link, that music is the link between God and his people. It's always been that way. There are more than 575 references in the Bible to music, to singing, to praising God. There are more references to praising God than prayer to God in the Bible. Did you know that? It's always the way God connects with his people. Think about it in the New Testament. When Mary got the message from the angel that she was gonna be the mother of the Messiah, what did she do? She sang that beautiful magnificat. The early church sang when they gathered together.
When Paul and Silas were stuck in that Philippian jail, what were they doing at midnight? They were singing where everybody heard. Did you know there's no record in the Bible that the pharisees ever got together for a sing along? It never happened. It was God's people who were the ones who praised God through song. And notice what it says here: we're to sing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. It doesn't say "Psalms or hymns or spiritual songs". We're to sing all of them. What were the Psalms? Well, they would have been the traditional music of the day. Going back to the Old Testament, they sang Psalms. They also sang spiritual songs. Those were the songs being written in Paul's day. Did you know some of the sections of scripture we read were actually songs to begin with?
Philippians 2, verses 5-8, "Have this attitude in yourselves that was in Christ Jesus, although he existed in the form of God, didn't regard his equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself," and so forth. It's the passage we call that kenosis, the emptyin' out. But it was a song, first of all. There was a song in 1 Timothy. "He who was beheld by the angels, revealed in the flesh," and so forth, that was a song that the early church, so Paul says, "Sing the old songs, sing the new songs, the hymns, and then spiritual songs". What were those? Sometimes, during a Sunday evening worship service, the time they were gathered together for the Eucharist, people would just pop up and compose a song right there on the spot. What if we tried doing that one time? Can you imagine what it would be like?
Just let everybody sing as God moves them to. Again, it's not one or the other. It's all of these. We're to be music made to the Lord. What is Paul saying? He's saying if you want to walk wisely, maximize your provision. That is, time. Understand God's plan, access God's power, or to put it in an even more practical way, those who want to be true successes in this life will live their life with a longer horizon than the present. They have a longer horizon than the present. They have a greater purpose than their self-gratification. And they will rely on a greater power than their own human strength. That's what it means to walk wisely.