Prioritizing God's Plan

You all likely know that I appreciate many of the classics from that formative decade of my elementary and middle school years, the 80s. One movie that burst on the scene in the middle years was the Karate Kid. A normal teenage boy named Daniel is getting bullied, so decides to learn karate. Specifically, Daniel asks a Mr. Miyagi to teach him karate. Miyagi gives him chores — wax on, wax off, paint the fence, sand the floor. Daniel thinks he's being used. He can't see that the movements he's practicing are the foundation for everything that follows. The skill isn't invented — it's received through a framework he didn't design. When he finally sees it, he doesn't just have technique; he has formation.

By the way, a fun side note in this story today is that Daniel doesn't end up in the Miyagi-do dojo because he planned it. His mom moved them to a new city chasing a job opportunity. Her decision, her priority, her willingness to uproot everything — that's what put him in the place where the framework could find him. Many of us are here today because of a mother who prioritized something bigger than comfort. That's not an accident. That's the household working.

That's exactly what we’re going to see today. We’ve been looking at the First Principles this year. What are First Principles? The teachings of Jesus and His apostles or the basic fundamentals of the faith, the first things that must be learned, upon which everything else about our faith is built. We build on these principles like ones we’ve seen: the Gospel message, importance of baptism, renewing our mind, living in Christ’s freedom as the way of a disciple. For the past month, we’ve been learning the fundamentals that relate to community life. Christ’s plan is the church; the church is a family. We order our families, and this translates to how we function in the church family. These household codes aren't restrictions — they're the training pattern. Like Daniel Larusso, we often don't see the full picture until we've submitted to the framework.

Today, we try to pull it all together. What is your commitment level to this plan? How are you living within it? What impact does it have on your life? How might you press into more? Of course, all of this is built on the ultimate foundation of Jesus Christ. Because He’s loved sinners like us, we’re able to be drawn away from our selfish tendencies to what He has for us. We trust Him. Today, then, join me as we consider this principle of living wisely by prioritizing Christ’s plan, the church. Read Ephesians 5:15-21 (This is God’s Word; thanks be to God)

15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, 19 addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, 20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

The Principle about community life we learn today is: we live wisely by prioritizing Christ's plan, the church

We return this morning to the book of Ephesians. We’ve been in this book a lot for this series because this book is THE place in the NT where the plan is outlined most clearly. So, our first way of urging you to live wisely by prioritizing the church is to I. Remember God’s Plan in Ephesians.

Our passage, Ephesians 5:15-21, seems very basic, but many of the issues we find in our passage can be easily misunderstood if the context is not carefully considered. What are some of the lessons we have seen in the context of the book? Remember the prayers? In Ephesians 1, Paul prayed “that having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might…” And, when we add the prayer we’ve been memorizing in Ephesians 3, we can see that the aim is really for Christ’s glory to be in the church through Jesus. 

In Ephesians 3, we’ve returned to this plan again and again, but let me remind you one more time. Paul’s role was to pass on the plan to readers like us. And the plan is that through the church, God’s glory shines to rulers and authorities in heavenly places. So, the plan is the church. 

And, finally, this passage immediately precedes one of the family “household texts”— Ephesians 5:22–6:9—that we studied two weeks ago. Centered in Christ, there are roles and responsibilities entrusted to us, so that our families are ordered according to Jesus. 

So, when we come to Ephesians 5:15, we can with confidence say that we are still looking at the context of the centrality of the church. We’re not randomly throwing around a hodgepodge of ideas. We’re being invited into the difficult work of managing priorities.

Secondly, we’re drawn to a very specific kind of work: II. We skillfully live a life full of Christ and His purposes.

If you look at v.15, the passage opens with a call to walk wisely, that is to walk with skill. The passage continues to spell this out that specifically, we are to make the most of our time, since we each are allotted a portion of time to serve the Lord. Outside of Christ’s community of believers, life around us is filled with evil and purposes that are not about Christ’s purposes or even remotely aligned to Him. We will either fill our lives with these worldly pursuits—which is represented in this passage by getting drunk with wine which leads to unrestrained living—or we will be filled with the Spirit.

When our passage speaks of being filled with the Spirit, then, we are being called to allow our lives to be filled with Christ and His purposes. At the heart of this is “speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord….” This phrase pictures community life—both life in our individual families and life in the family of families. We can know this because of the term “one another” in the passage and the fact that a household text immediately follows—Ephesians 5:22–6:9. In a parallel passage—Colossians 3:16—being filled with the Spirit is synonymous with letting the “word of Christ richly dwell within you….” Therefore, to be filled with the things of the Spirit is to plan our lives around Christ and His purposes and saturate ourselves with His word, rather than to be filled with wine and all the pursuits of this world.

We are being invited to skillfully live in a way devoted to Christ and His purposes. Now, for some of us, the allurement of the world and its pursuits are obvious. We know we’re spending our lives on things that don’t matter in the scope of eternity. Others have made the Christian life way more complicated than God ever intended. We jump from thing to thing to thing and are tempted to miss out on Christ and His purposes. What we think is doing all kinds of good things are actually distracting us from centering our lives on Christ and His purposes. So, let’s deploy skill or wisdom and figure out how to make the best use of our time. What could we do to orient our lives to Christ and His purposes more strategically? This gets us into our third point this morning. Notice how…

III. Christ’s purposes reorder our priorities.

Our passage centers on this idea of walking wisely, making the most of our time. This implies setting the priorities of our lives around Christ and His plan. As we’ve reviewed this morning, Christ’s purpose and plan zero in on the church. There’s no other way. It’s His church. We have the household texts providing a framework for ordering our lives around Christ’s plan. And, when we prioritize this our lives begin to change as this gets translated into our actual living. We take this priority of Jesus and make it our priority. Or, to put it another way:

• This means that His purpose must become our purpose (Ephesians 3:8–10).
• His mission must become our mission (Matthew 28:19–20).
• His priorities must become our priorities (Titus 2).

Since we are to walk wisely and make the most of our time, we must plan our days, ensuring we do not just spend them as the world does. When was the last time you organized your life according to God’s priorities? Or, maybe a positive way to put it, would organizing your life around Christ and His priorities make the most sense if we are followers of Jesus. Centering our lives in Him would mean that He is the priority. 

The good news is that God has not left us to figure out what that looks like on our own. So, rather than you sitting down and figuring this out as an individual, how could you figure this out with others? Your faith is not just a you and Jesus thing if the book of Ephesians is true. It’s you, Jesus, and others in the church. That’s the plan. So, speaking to other believers about the way we’re juggling priorities with Christ at the center would be the way we most naturally lean into Jesus and are filled with the Spirit. Christ’s purposes reorder our priorities (not the other way around). He determines what our lives are to be about, and we adjust our lives to that reality as the best way. 

And, fourth, building on what we’ve seen the last two weeks: IV. We walk the path laid for us in the family codes.

In our families and in THE family, we are given the way to walk. As we begin to consider our priorities we know that we have roles and responsibilities as families. And, as we saw in Titus 2 last week, with Titus insisting on these things, that our church family is ordered in a way to make Jesus glorious as we step into sound doctrine through intergenerational formation and sensible missional living. Everything comes together for Jesus.

Francis Schaeffer drew our hearts to application in this way:

“Notice this: you can have individual Christians and no Christian community, but you cannot have a Christian community without having individual Christians. On the other hand, as evangelical, orthodox men and women, we can understand and fight for the need of the individual coming to God and then we can stand individualistically, in a poor sense, rather than in a practicing community. But we must not stand in sheer individualism; once we are Christians, there should be community. As I have used the term before, there is to be an orthodoxy of community as well as an orthodoxy of doctrine.

“There are, of course, many forms of Christian communities—local churches, theological schools, Christian colleges, missions, etc. All of these are, or should be, Christian communities, though differing slightly in form. However, they are not entirely equal because, except for the local church, all the others have come into existence to meet the changing needs of the years. In the New Testament, however, the church form has been commanded by God Himself for the era in which we live—that is, until Christ’s return.”

So, we make Christ’s priority our priority and step into this willingly and wisely. Today, we’ve considered the Principle: we live wisely by prioritizing Christ's plan, the church. Our outline drew us to I. Remember God’s Plan in Ephesians.

II. We skillfully live a life full of Christ and His purposes.

III. Christ’s purposes reorder our priorities.

IV. We walk the path laid for us in the family codes.

Our prioritizing or prizing what Christ prioritizes and prizes can only begin with a change in life. And that comes through our trust in the Gospel message. When we believe that Jesus is who He said He is and all that He accomplished to rescue sinners and bring us into life, we are propelled to a different kind of love, a different kind of affection or life direction. This life change is the foundation that leads us into community.

And, yes, God’s plan is a people. He’s drawn us from an individual life to a life together in His church. We have a new family. We have a code we live by as a family of families. And, today, through God’s Word, we’re being invited to make His priorities ours. We’ll wrestle with some applications in our small groups. Those questions are in your notes…

Questions:

1. Considering Christ's plan for His church, how do you need to reorder your life?

2. What are some ways your household could make the most of your time - starting this week?

We want your life to be wrapped up in Christ’s plan so that we can know Him and make Him known to the world around us. So, let’s prioritize His family and be a people who glorify and enjoy Him forever.