Proverbs 10.8-9
“The wise of heart will receive commandments, but a babbling fool will come to ruin. Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but he who makes his ways crooked will be found out.”
The wise person has a heart that listens and responds to the teaching of Proverbs and receives God’s commands. The wise heart is humble and recognizes that God speaks truth. The fool, on the other hand, is too busy babbling and talking about what he thinks is true. He is consumed with his personal preference and with whatever opinion is most popular in the culture.
The wise heart understands that neither personal preference nor popular opinion are the reference point for how to live. The wise heart acknowledges that God establishes the reference point for what is right (tsedek). The wise heart submits to the process of disciplined training (musar) in order to learn how to live wisely and skillfully (hokma).
Psalm 90.12 reflects the wisdom of a heart that is humble before God: “Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” We are finite; God is infinite. In order to maximize our impact during our limited time on earth, we must seek insight and teaching from the perspective of the infinite-personal Creator. He sees from the vantage point of eternity; we see from the limited vantage point of our lifetime.
Psalm 39.4 is another prayer for a humble and wise perspective: “O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am.”
The point is not to minimize or marginalize the importance of your life; quite the opposite. The point is to see your life in perspective. To see your life strategically. To motivate you to make the most of the time that you do have. God has placed you in this time and place in human history … so make the most of it!!
This is precisely Paul’s message in Ephesians 5.15-16: “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.”
The word that he uses for “make the best use” is exagorazo, which is a marketplace term that means “to purchase or buy up. To redeem.” It is the same word that Paul uses in Galatians for Christ redeeming us from the curse of the Law.
Every day we make decisions about how to invest our time. We can give our time to the things of the world, or we can give our time to the things of the kingdom of God. We can spend our time guided by the impulses and desires of the old nature, or we can invest our time with intention and purpose guided by our new nature in Christ.
In order to invest time wisely we must first “look carefully” and then we must “redeem the time.” The easy thing is to follow our impulses and squander our time in the popular activities and habits of our culture. Paul is saying, “Don’t spend your time like everyone else. Stop and think before you give your time to something. Look at your time from a kingdom perspective. Redeem the time. Buy it back from the sin nature and from the world, and then re-invest it in things that really matter.”
This is enormously practical advice. Time is a critical resource. Unless time is managed well, very little else will be managed well. How we invest our time determines our effectiveness. Time is also a fixed resource. Once it is spent we can’t recover it. Nor can we store it up for future use. Each of us already has all the time we will have.
Our effectiveness is determined not by how much time we have, but by what we do with the time we have. We must be wise and effective stewards of the time that God has given us. Today is a gift from God; you will not get a second chance at it.
Trust God, be wise, and redeem the time.
