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It Is Written

Sabbath School 3rd Quarter: Ephesians

Eric Flickinger

John McVay

09 Living Wisely

10 Husbands and Wives: Together at the Cross

11 Practicing Supreme Loyalty to Christ

12 The Call to Stand

13 Waging Peace

14 Ephesians in the Heart

Welcome to Sabbath School brought to you by It Is Written.

We're glad that you could join us again this week as we continue our journey through the book of Ephesians, Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus.

This week we are looking at Lesson number 9, which is living wisely.

How can we live wisely in this present day?

We want to see what we can learn about that.

And before we delve into this lesson, let's do what we always do, and that's spend a moment in prayer to ask the Lord to bless us.

Father, we ask that you will bless us as we are digging into the book of Ephesians.

Help us to understand the significance of the themes that are found there, and how these themes and teachings apply to us today so that our lives can be improved as a result.

We ask that you'll bless our time together again this week, and we thank you in Jesus' name.

Well, we're happy to have back with us again the author of this quarter's Sabbath School lesson, Dr.

He's the president of Walla Walla University.

Thank you, Eric, for sharing this journey through Ephesians with me.

It's really exciting and we've learned a lot.

We've got 14 total this quarter, which is interesting for a quarter.

Usually we think of a quarter with 13, but we're blessed with an extra lesson this go-round.

But this week we're looking at lesson 9, living wisely.

And we're going to be spending some time in Ephesians chapter 5 this week.

And Ephesians chapter 5 is a rather interesting chapter.

But Ephesians 5, sometimes people read it and they go, what's the point?

This doesn't seem to kind of fit together.

You know, the first part of Ephesians chapter 5 could seem like just a set of jumbled, miscellaneous ideas or commands.

Paul sometimes thinks on a little higher level than we give him credit for.

And some things that I think Peter said, some things he says are a little confusing.

What do we make sense, how do we make sense of this apparently jumbled list of commands?

Now we're in the second half of the letter, right?

And we know now that we're expecting Paul to give us nitty-gritty advice on the Christian life because that's what he tends to do in the second half of his letter.

And this gets pretty nitty-gritty here, doesn't it?

I think maybe what helps us would be 2 things.

We want to know, first of all, what is his perspective?

So what helps me here is verses 15 and 16, to jump down there.

Look carefully then how you walk not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time because the days are evil.

So his perspective here, it seems to me, is of the end time.

That is, he believes Christ is coming very soon, he's encouraging Christian believers to live in the light of Christ's soon return.

He uses a very, very interesting word here, a Greek word that means to snap up the bargains.

So I was once at 1 of these big conventions in the convention hall shopping for books about the Bible.

And I'm poking around the books and I hear the 2 clerks talking to each other.

And 1 says, shall we do it for 1 dollar or 2?

And I knew we were getting to the end of the convention, they didn't want to take those books home, they were going to sell all the books off.

So I chose the books I wanted and when they announced all the books were 1 dollar, I stepped up to the cash register with my big stack of books.

You're probably a book lover too and you can understand.

My wife doesn't appreciate it, but yes I am.

So Paul is saying, as Christians, The perspective of this passage that he's taking is that we're living in the end time and we're using that time to snap up the bargains that are on offer as we look toward Christ's return.

So there's something of value here that Paul is referring to then.

And then there's the tone that I point out.

Paul here is reusing some well-worn themes that I would call battlefield themes.

Stay awake, don't be involved in darkness, and all these kinds of things are things that he's used earlier in his epistles to talk about Christian discipleship under the imagery of battle and being a good soldier.

He's going to come to that in chapter 6 verses 10 through 20, but he's already preparing the way.

His tone is the urgent 1 of the battlefield.

So rather than seeing chapter 5 verses 1 through 20 as just a jumbled set of commands, it's not a random list of exhortations, but it's Paul's end-time, urgent instructions to combatants in the great controversy.

So if I come to this list of commands from that perspective, I'm able to appreciate what Paul is doing here.

So all of those commands then become important, they become practical, they become marching or preparatory commands, as it were, to go into this battle that we're in right now.

He's trying to prepare us with some concrete exhortations, commands, do this, don't do this, do this, and we should accept them as combatants in the cosmic conflict.

These are instructions for us, urgent, end time, battlefield instructions.

So that makes these 20 verses make a whole lot more sense.

Let's kind of go through these 20 verses, maybe not individually each 1, we'll see how it goes.

But what are some of the major themes that we find outlined in Ephesians chapter 5 verses 1 through 20?

Well there is this battlefield motif in Revelation and here.

He starts off in chapter 5 verses 1 and 2 with what might be called an overarching call.

He invites the believers in Ephesus and invites us today to imitate God.

It seems like a rather high bar for us to aspire to.

But then he gives the phrase, as beloved children.

So as children would admire a parent and try to behave like that parent, this is a relational image then.

We're not trying to match God's resources or the scope of the salvation he offers the world or any of that, but we're admiring his character.

In our own sphere, we're wishing to imitate the wondrous grace that we see God granting humankind and to do that in our relationships with others.

Then he says in verse 2, and walk in love.

Walk, of course, is a good Hebrew metaphor for live, so live, but live as a journey.

Walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

So in our relationships with others, We are not to be egotists, we are not to say, it's me, me, me.

We are to be self-sacrificing as Christ was.

Imitate God, follow on, track on, live into the self-sacrifice of Jesus himself.

Before we move on to the 3 major segments of our passage, it's probably good to pause there, Eric, and remember we've been talking about the great theme of Ephesians, right?

God's plan for the fullness of time to unite everything in Christ, to unite everything.

So now he's talking here about the kind of behaviors that will foster disunity, don't do those, and the kind of behaviors that will foster unity, do these instead.

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Series

Sabbath School 3rd Quarter: Ephesians

09 Living Wisely

Parent Series

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Recorded

Other Teachings in Series

09 Living Wisely

28m

10 Husbands and Wives: Together at the Cross

28m

11 Practicing Supreme Loyalty to Christ

28m

12 The Call to Stand

28m

13 Waging Peace

28m

14 Ephesians in the Heart

28m

Sound Doctrine