It
is Friday. Praise the Lord. Sunday is coming. Early this
morning I was watching the worship service at the iconic Duke Chapel at
Duke University. The hymns played on the grand pipe organ
of the chapel were powerful and majestic. Praise the Lord for the way the
church of Jesus Christ gathers faithfully and joyfully every Lord's day in
chapels, in cathedrals, in abbeys, in villages, in
city churches, even underground, in refugee centers, and
in prisons. In such diverse locations the faithful gather to
worship the Lord of the church who was crucified, buried, and is Risen
victorious. Every time we gather in the Church to worship the Lord
we declare that He is Risen and He is alive." We will gather for
worship this coming Sunday at 11.00AM" I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that
ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which
is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the
renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and
acceptable, and perfect, will of God." Romans 12:1-2 .
I have been reflecting on (Ephesians 5:16), “Making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil”. The King James Version uses the word “redeem,” as in “redeeming the time.” To us redeem is a salvation word, but originally it comes from the marketplace and means to “buy back” or to “purchase” something. You “redeem” something when you buy it for your own use.
“These are desperate times!” The NIV uses the word “opportunity” instead of time. The Greek language has two basic words for time. One word refers to the passage of time in the sense that we talk about hours, minutes and seconds. The other Greek word refers not to the strict passage of time but to the moment of opportunity that requires action. Paul says there is a particular reason we must “redeem the time” and grasp “the fierce urgency of now” (verse 16), “Because the days are evil.” Here’s another translation: “These are desperate times!” (The Message)
Paul
wrote these words while chained to the guards in a Roman jail. The
emperor was a man by the name of Nero, a perverted excuse for a king.
Before long he would set fire to Rome and blame Christians. Later
he would order Paul beheaded. Ephesus (the recipient of Paul's
letter) was a city wholly given over to heathenism. In Paul’s day it
was the most important city in the Roman province of Asia. Located near
the coast, Ephesus served as a center for international commerce. It was
a prosperous, bustling, booming city. Located there was the famous Temple
of Artemis, the glory of ancient
Ephesus. The goddess
Artemis was called Diana by the Romans. Artemis was the goddess of sex.
Her temple was considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient
world. People worked themselves up into a religious frenzy and then
followed their lustful desires. One ancient writer said of the Ephesians,
“Their morals were lower than animals.” Astrology, black magic, and sorcery
joined with sexual perversion to produce a degraded form of idolatry that held
ancient Ephesus in its grip.
As
the gospel spread, it encountered opposition in the form of entrenched
interests that saw Jesus and his followers as a threat. Romans
12:1-2 Persecution of Christians was becoming very real. The
crosscurrents of heresy threatened to undermine the purity of the gospel.
That’s what Paul meant when he said, “These are desperate times!” G
Campbell Morgan aptly noted, “Days of moral corruption offer special
opportunities for the prosecution of great enterprises for the kingdom of God”
Evil
days tempt us to despair, encourage us to give up, to say, “We can’t do it”
because the day is dark, the hearts of men have grown cold, and it seems that
there is nothing to be done. We are those who have been redeemed by the
Lord Jesus are called to reject that mindset.. Sometimes we give up too
soon. “
However, the good news
is that the things that make it
difficult for us for live as Christians are the things that make us shine. Hard times are blessings in disguise.
Days of moral
compromise offer incredible opportunities for the gospel.
When
the world around us seems to be going haywire, we have an incredible
opportunity to display the life-changing power of Jesus Christ. The
darker the night, the brighter the light shines. “The LORD is my
strength and my song; he has become my salvation” (Exodus 15:2). “Be
strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for
the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you”
(Deuteronomy 31:6). “There is no rock like our God” (1 Samuel 2:2).
“Those who are with us are more than those who are with them” (2 Kings
6:16).
In Christ the
Lion of Judah,
Brown
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