Are We Using Our Time Wisely?

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist, my name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.

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Today we're going to be closing out the book of Colossians with Colossians chapter 4.

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So if you want to open up your Bibles with me, we're going to be looking specifically at Colossians chapter 4 verses 4, excuse me, verses 5 and 6.

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And this is what the passage tells us.

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Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time.

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Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

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This is the end of Colossians and the Apostle Paul is about to begin his customary ending where he will reference several folks who have ministered to him and give commendations to give encouragements and to remind his readers and his hearers about some important final things in the letter.

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And as we come to the end of the letter, right before the final greetings, this is his last imperative statement that we see here in verse 5 that he's giving as part of the letter.

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He says walk in wisdom, but he doesn't just say walk in wisdom in general.

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He says walk in wisdom toward outsiders.

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Now our understanding of outsiders in that sense would certainly be that he's talking about people who are not part of the church.

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He's saying walk in wisdom regarding outsiders or toward outsiders.

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And I think this is an important thing that we need to understand as believers that we have a responsibility for how the outside world sees us and ultimately how the outside world sees the church.

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We know based on the testimony of scripture and our own experience that the world of unbelief does not love the church.

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In fact, the Bible says the world hates the church.

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It hates Christ.

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Jesus said don't be surprised when people hate you because they hated me.

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And we know that Jesus was hated by his contemporaries.

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He was hated by many people, even though some people followed him.

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The vast majority of people did not follow him and especially the Jewish leaders and the people of the upper echelon of society, many of which were the Herodians and different groups, did not follow after Christ.

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They did not want to believe in him.

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And so we know that ultimately the church is not going to ever be impressive to the world.

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And the Bible says that the natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God because they are spiritually discerned.

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And so the natural man sees the things of God as foolishness or folly.

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And so some people may take that to mean, well, then we have no real responsibility to the outside world.

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Just, you know, don't worry about them.

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Just know that we're going to tell them the gospel and we're not going to worry about how they see us.

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We're going to do our thing and they're going to do their thing.

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And that's that.

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But this passage reminds us something.

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It says when we're thinking about how we ought to deal with the outsiders, those who are outside the church, that we ought to walk in wisdom toward them.

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And I think there's a couple things that be considered with that.

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When I think of the word wisdom, I think about the admonition of Christ who says that we ought to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

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And so when we think about first, how do we apply this statement that Paul's making here, walk wisely, walk in wisdom toward outsiders? First of all, I think that means that we ought not to allow ourselves to be taken advantage of by those who are outside the church.

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Mistreated, misused by those who are outside the church, but that we are to walk wisely.

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I think that one of the ways that I would apply that is how today many people in the social justice movement are trying to make headway into the church by trying to claim that Jesus would have been a social justice warrior.

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I heard a preacher the other day who was a very left-leaning preacher, and he said, Jesus would have been marching with the Black Lives Matters, and Jesus would have been marching with Antifa, and Jesus would have been marching in all of these groups.

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And first of all, he's wrong.

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He's completely wrong.

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If you look up the belief systems that undergird those movements, if you look up, they're Marxist, they're ungodly, they are not things that are supported in scripture.

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And what I see happening is guys like that, they're on the fringe, they're on the far left of the spectrum.

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Anybody who would say Jesus would march with Antifa, they just don't understand the scriptures.

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They don't understand Jesus at all.

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In my opinion.

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But what I do see happening is I see the same concepts of belief making their way into the church.

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I see the same concepts of belief of the social justice warriors and the cultural Marxists making their way into the church by way of unwise Christians.

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Christians who do not have a biblical understanding of justice, they have a cultural understanding of justice, they don't have a biblical understanding of wisdom, they have a worldly wisdom.

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And as such, that worldly wisdom is not allowing them to combat this worldly program that's making its way in.

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And so I think when the apostle Paul admonishes us, walk wisely or walk with wisdom toward outsiders, I think one of the things that he's admonishing us to do is not to allow the false wisdom of the world to come into the church.

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There is a godly wisdom and there is an ungodly or demonic wisdom, what the Bible would call worldly wisdom.

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And we need to be on our guard against worldly wisdom.

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So I think that's one of the ways that we can apply this, that we need to be careful to be wise as serpents when we're dealing with the outside and not allow the venom or the poison of the world to make its way into the church.

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And it is.

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It's making its way into so many churches.

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I see it coming out in sermons.

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I see it coming out in social media posts.

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I see it coming out in church advertisements.

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I went by a church the other day, and if I can find the picture, I'll post it.

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There was a church that their sign on the wall was, we're a completely affirming church.

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We affirm all lifestyles and all situations.

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And it was just a list of things, and every one of them was a political statement.

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Every one of them was a way to express that they were politically savvy, and they were socially savvy, and that they were identifying themselves with all of the cultural movements of the world.

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They were showing that they were on the right side of all of the cultural issues right now.

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And so what I did is I decided to go and look into what they actually teach.

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When I see that sign, it makes me wonder, well, what's being taught in this church? And the reality is what's being taught in that church is not the gospel, not the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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They may talk about Jesus Christ.

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They may give lip service to him, but they are not preaching that man is a sinner, who is in desperate need of a savior, and that if he does not repent of his sins and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, he will spend an eternity consigned to an eternal conscious torment in a place called hell.

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They're not preaching that.

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And that is what the Bible says, and that is what we must stand on as believers.

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So again, walking wisdom towards outsiders is not only to be wise, but it's in the sense of knowing our stuff, but it's also knowing the stuff they're doing and trying to bring into the church.

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We have to be on guard not to allow devilish theology into the church and devilish thinking into the church.

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We have to stand guard against that.

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So that's the first thing I think that wisdom would, that this is calling us to walk with wisdom concerning outsiders.

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But I think there's also another way that we can apply this.

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He says, walk in wisdom toward outsiders.

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Making the best use of the time.

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And that's an important thing that we need to think about.

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How are we using our time when we're dealing with outsiders? Are we constantly dealing with the things that they're throwing at us and not redeeming the time and actually speaking the truth of the gospel and wisdom to them? We need to walk wisely concerning the outsiders and not always get tied up in the arguments of the day.

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If you allow yourself to, you will get sucked in to the social media trap that always wants to argue about all kinds of things that are honestly, for the most part, just absolutely time wasting.

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They're useless.

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They're meaningless.

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They have no purpose and nobody cares.

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We're not changing people's minds.

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We're just arguing.

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It's like the picture I saw online of the guy who was on his deathbed and he said, boy, I wish I had a little longer to live so I could argue some more on the internet.

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Nobody says that.

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Nobody does that.

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We waste so much time.

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How do we handle ourselves wisely in regard to time, in regard to outsiders? Well, when it comes to the outsiders, we need to be proclaiming the gospel.

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That's one way of redeeming the time.

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Rather than arguing about foolish controversies that don't matter, we need to be speaking the truth.

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We need to keep ourselves from allowing the world to overtake our time.

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And ultimately, we need to be wise.

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We need to walk in wisdom toward outsiders.

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You know what? When we're going through that social media page, if you're on Facebook and you're reading, sometimes it's best don't engage.

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You don't have to correct everyone.

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It's not your job to be Facebook's police.

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If you see somebody who posts something that you disagree with, scroll on by, walk with wisdom in regard to that person.

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Now, if you want to engage that person with the gospel, that's one thing.

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But if you want to argue over whether or not people should be wearing masks, you know what? Maybe you got better use of your time.

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You can have convictions on that.

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You can have personal convictions on it.

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If you want to share your convictions, that's up to you.

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But remember, we're supposed to walk wisely, walk in wisdom.

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And when it comes to a lot of what I see and the way that people are behaving today, there's not a lot of wisdom.

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It just seems like there's a lot of emotion.

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And I think that's one of the ways that we could see another application in this passage is the opposite of walking in wisdom, is to walk with our emotions always set to go off, to walk around with a chip on our shoulder.

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Notice what he says in verse six.

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He says, let your speech always be gracious.

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Oh, if we would just apply that, even with people we don't agree with, are we gracious in our speech? Doesn't mean we're weak, doesn't mean we don't say the truth, but are we gracious? Notice the next thing he says, seasoned with salt.

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That means there are going to be times we have to speak words that are salty, but not ungracious.

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And salty, remember what salt is.

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Salt is a preservative.

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Salt has a purpose.

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Salt changes things.

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You put salt on food, it makes food taste different.

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You pack meat in salt and it preserves meat.

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Salt has a purpose.

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And in the ancient world, it had a very important purpose before the advent of refrigeration and things like that.

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And so salt had an important meaning in Paul's writing.

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And he says that when we speak, we need to be gracious, seasoned with salt so that you may know how to answer each person.

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What is he talking about? Where do we see this word answer? We see this word in Peter's writings where he talks about giving an answer for the hope that is within us.

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Are we supposed to give an answer for the hope that is within us? Yes, that's part of wisdom is knowing why we believe what we believe and being able to give a wise answer for the hope that is within us.

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Can you do that? Can you give a wise answer to why you believe in Jesus? Why you trust in the Bible? Why you have committed your life to following after the Lord Jesus Christ? Can you give an answer for the hope that is within you? Can you do it graciously? That's an important question.

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And it's an important question that all Christians may answer, must be able to answer.

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So let me say this to you again.

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Hear what the Apostle Paul says to all of us.

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And again, remember, I'm preaching to myself as much as to anyone else that when it comes to outsiders, unbelievers, those who are outside the church, we are to walk in wisdom, walk in wisdom, be gracious with our words, even when we have to use words that are difficult, to be gracious with our words and seek how God might use our time better than we might use it if we go out unwisely and emotionally spreading all kinds of thoughts and spreading all kinds of words that aren't wise and aren't loving and aren't gracious.

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Think about your words.

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Think about how you use your words and think about how you use your time.

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That's my encouragement to today.

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That's my encouragement to you today.

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And again, thank you for watching.

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My name is Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist.

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On behalf of Pastor Foskey, thank you for watching and may God richly bless your day.