I. "The days are evil." They are felt to be so (1) on this account, for one thing: that they are subject to so many things which are out of men's power, independent of their will and control. They are liable to have so many untoward things happening to them, which no one can prevent or even foresee. (2) Another point of experience to the same effect is that the days are darkened by spectacles of evil, especially to persons of much moral and religious sensibility. (3) Men as individuals are forced to feel that their days are affected by the general evils of the times; and there is to each one more or less the share of the evils of mortal life: the bodily disorders and pains; the cares; the disappointments; the afflictive deprivations. (4) The uncertainty of our days may be regarded as in some respects an evil circumstance. (5) All the days partake of death.
II. "Redeeming the time." The evils incident to the days render it a very difficult thing effectually to redeem the time; they form a grand conspiracy to waste and devastate it, to seize and plunder it from us. But this all enforces so much the more the benefit, the obligation, the necessity, to redeem it. (1) To this end, it is of the highest importance that time should be a reality in our perception and estimate; that we should verify it as an actual something, like a substance to which we can attach a positive value, and see it as wasting or as improved as palpably as the contents of a granary or as one of the precious metals. (2) Another main thing towards redeeming the time is this: to keep in mind certain important purposes or objects that absolutely must be attained. Nothing short of the redemption of the soul is the true and effectual redemption of time, and this object gives the supreme rule for the redeeming of time. Let us apply this rule, and implore the Divine Spirit to make its authority irresistible upon us.
J. Foster, Lectures,vol. ii., p. 93.
References: Ephesians 5:16 W. Baird, The Hallowing of our Common Life,p. 6; H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, The Life of Duty,p. 45; Homilist,vol. vi., p. 55; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ix.,p. 153; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 126; M. Nicholson, Redeeming the Time,p. 1.