Your Time Is Not Your Own - Ephesians 5:15-16
I want to start this message off today by reading and praying from a psalm that Moses wrote long ago. This is Psalm 90:1-4 and 10-12.
Pray
A lot of things have changed since Moses wrote that psalm around 3,500 years ago. But a lot has stayed the same. While multiple generations have come and gone, cultures have changed, nations have risen and fallen, technology has changed, so much has changed and yet…God is still on His throne. And every person within each generation of people has a sovereignly allotted number of heartbeats, but God will never cease.
And we are stewards of the time that God has entrusted to us in this life. We don’t know how many days it’ll be before we pass away or Christ returns, but the days we do have, we are called to make the most of them, using them wisely as good stewards of the gift of life that God has given us.
Let me share something with you for a moment. I planned this message about a week ago. Since then, there has been a tragedy in our church and community as a young man passed away at a very young age. We also lost another congregant overnight last night after a long battle with illness. And I really contemplated calling an audible and doing something completely different today in light of those losses. But I think I need to stick with this message today. I think it was orchestrated by God is His wisdom for us to talk about using our time on this earth wisely.
Back in the 90’s there was a slogan that you saw on bumper stickers, shirts, billboards and other places and it was from the Latin words, carpe diem, meaning….seize the day. And I think there were two conflicting views on what that meant. Many viewed carpe diem as meaning, seize the day in the sense of making the best use of your days. Being wise stewards. While others viewed it as doing whatever you want to do today if you think it will make you happy.
But as Christians, what does it mean to make the most of our time, using it wisely for the glory of God?
The primary text I want us to study this morning is Eph 5:15-16.
Verse 15:
1.What does it mean to walk in wisdom?
“therefore:” this is actually the third therefore in this chapter. 1, 7, and 15. Verse 1: Therefore, be imitators of God, as beloved children.
Then, in verses 3-13 Paul wrote about things that we should not be about as Christians….about things that we are to avoid and reject….of things that we should not imitate as Christ-followers. And after writing about those things, he starts verse 15 with, “therefore, be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise.
The word that is used for “be careful” is a word that actually means to gaze intently upon. The idea is that the Christian should fix his gaze, fix his attention, be watchful as to how he walks in life so that he will walk, not as an unwise man, but as a wise man.
--You know, I don’t like heights. I have always been a little uneasy of heights. But, if I’m honest, it isn’t so much heights that I’m afraid of. I can fly in an airplane, look out the window, and not be afraid. I can stand on top of a really tall building, but as long as there is a guardrail, as long as I have stability, I’m not afraid. I guess better stated, I’m afraid of heights when it is up to me to not fall!
--I don’t trust my own balance and coordination, I guess. So, when we hike, for ex, and come to a cliff edge, I look down and carefully place my feet in certain areas. I am guarded. I am intentional in the way that I walk….why? Because I look down from that cliff edge and I know that there is a lot is at stake!
--I know that walking unwisely and flippantly on that cliff edge could be devastating.
That is the idea here! Be careful how you walk in life. Be intentional in the way we live our lives and in the way we conduct ourselves in this temporal world. A lot is at stake!
--And in a similar way, it requires focus to walk in wisdom and to continue to walk in wisdom, as the lures of unwise things are all around us in this fallen world.
--But here is the beauty in this for the Christian. The call to walk in wisdom isn’t a call that is hidden for only the smartest, most educated to find….wisdom’s call does not just beckon to some special class of more deeply enlightened Christians.
Wisdom is available to all who know Christ as Lord and Savior. James 1:5 (If of you lack wisdom). Colossians 2:3 tells us that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. In other words, anyone who seeks the treasure of Christ will begin to grow in wisdom. As we know and seek Jesus, we seek wisdom. As we seek Christ through His Word, wisdom is there. As we seek Christ in prayer, wisdom is there. As we seek Christ by walking with wise Christians, wisdom is there.
So, there is a clear call here for us as Christians to be people who walk in wisdom. Who use the days we have walking in wisdom. Seeking God. Obeying God. Submitting to wisdom’s call. Rejecting folly and choosing wisdom. And verse 16 gives us a little more insight into what it means to walk in wisdom.
Look at verse 16. Read 15-16
2.What does it mean to make the most of your time?
--I want to mention a couple words in this verse because they really help us to understand the meaning of this verse better.
--First, it says that we are to make the most of our time. The word used for making the most…. is a word that means to buy, redeem, or to invest. Make sure that what we are buying….make sure that we are investing our time wisely into things that matter. What we invest our time in is important! Just like what we invest our earthly money into matters. We can invest in things that don’t matter and won’t last or we can wisely invest in things that do matter and will last long after we are gone.
--The second word I want to mention here is the word for time. The NT uses a couple of words for time. Chronos, which is measured or measurable time, lined out time, seconds, minutes, hours, days, and so forth. And then there is the word Kairos, which is the idea of a season of opportunity of time. And that is the word that is used here Eph 5:16. So, here is what Paul was writing. Christians must be intentional to wisely invest each season of opportunity that God gives us in our lives.
--The wise Christian will invest their time well as they walk through life.
We have so many opportunities throughout the course of our lives to invest our time into things that really matter. Opportunities to reject evil and choose good. Opportunities to choose light and reject darkness. Opportunities to do good to others. Here is a great example of this. Galatians 6:9-10: Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary. 10 So then, [b]while we have opportunity (Kairos), let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith.
--Every opportunity we have with people throughout the various seasons of our lives is an opportunity to do good to others.
Opportunities to invest our time in people over things. Opportunities to invest our time wisely in our marriages, our children, in our church, and so forth. Opportunities to invest our time pursuing God and not stuff.
--Are we looking for ways to align the various seasons of our lives with God’s will and God’s purposes? The wise Christian will do just that.
And this requires a humble recognition that we simply don’t know how many more seasons of opportunity we will have, we don’t know how many more days we will have, so let’s make the most of our time now. There is an urgency in this. A great reminder of this is found in I Peter 1:17.
--I Peter 1:17: conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth;
--Stay on earth….meaning that our earthly life is temporary. This is not all there is. And we, in our finite humanness, simply do not know the boundaries of the Kairos, the seasons, that God has ordained for each of us.
But this we do know….life is truly brief. With each passing year in my life, I feel that more and more. You’re told as a young person by older people that life goes by fast. And you don’t believe them. Because you are young. And then as you age, you realize…..life goes by fast.
I look at my own life and I see how quickly time has moved. How the days can be long, but the years seem so short.
And part of walking in wisdom is realizing the brevity of life. Like Moses wrote in the Psalm I mentioned earlier, Psalm 90, help us to number our days so that we might present to you a heart of wisdom. Part of pursuing wisdom is numbering our days, recognizing the limited number of our days, in order that we will live with urgency in how we invest our days.
3.In fact, in James 4 there is a great reminder of the brevity of life. No need for you to turn there. I’ll read these verses.
But in the book of James, James was writing primarily Jewish Christians who had been scattered abroad, James 1:1 tells us.
And in chapter 4 he was reminding them of some very important things related to God’s will and to the brief nature of their lives.
James 4:13-15
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” 14 [g]Yet you do not know [h]what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. 15 [i]Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.”
Verse 13:
In this verse James talks about the folly of flippantly making plans without considering God and without considering that tomorrow is not promised or guaranteed.
You’re making all these plans as if tomorrow is solid….you’re making all the plans without consulting God…..Yet, verse 14, you do not know [h]what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.
James writes, there in verse 14, that in the grand scheme of eternity, our lives on earth are brief….here one minute and gone the next. Just like a warm breath on a cold day is there for just a couple of seconds and then gone. So are our earthly lives when compared to eternity.
And we all have a certain number of days that God has entrusted to us. It is more for some and few for others. I’ve done a lot of funerals over the last 24 years that I’ve been in ministry. All different ages. All different stages in life. All different circumstances. I’ve done funerals for babies, just a few days old. And I’ve done funerals for some pushing 100. And I don’t know why some live a long time and others don’t. God knows. He knows the beginning from the end. We don’t know how many days we will live or others will live, but God knows and He has eternally known.
--Psalm 139:16: And in Your book were all written; the days that were ordained for me,
when as yet there was not one of them.
And here is the reality. There is nothing in this temporary world that will endure and last. God is eternal. God’s Word is eternal. And the souls of men will live on into eternity. But everything that is attached to this temporal world will perish. Our bodies and our physical appearances are changing and will continue to change the more time passes. Physical strength will eventually turn into weakness. If a person has immense wealth, someday they will die and it will be given to another. Every day that we live is one day closer to the end of our earthly lives. Positive and encouraging….
Here is why I say all of those things….it isn’t for us to leave here today depressed. On the contrary, it is to remind us as Christians that we should not fix our hope on the fleeting and passing things of this world! It is to remind us of what our hope is in as Christians, even in loss and pain.
--As the hymn writer reminded us, my hope must be built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. On Christ, the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand!
Life is a vapor! And the seasons of the Christian’s life must be invested well. Invested in things of eternity.
--So, back to Eph 5….the challenge of verse 16 is to walk in wisdom by making the most of the opportunities we have by doing God’s will and not wasting our time on trivial and transient things. Not getting sidetracked by the trinkets of this world. We have a holy stewardship given to us by God. And to know how we are to invest our time, we must search out the scriptures. We must walk with God. We must pursue wisdom by pursuing God and His ways.
Now, this doesn’t mean that the Christian never does fun things. Go play golf. Go fish. Go out to eat with friends. Go do things you enjoy, so long as they are not morally wrong. But even when we do things of recreation, let us have an eye on things of eternity. Let us be intentional to try to leverage even the things of recreation as ways to minister to and to invest our time in others.
Now, maybe you are here today and you have wasted a lot of time in your life pursuing things that were not God’s will. If so, redeem the time by using the time that you have left on things that do matter. Making the most of the time God has ordained for you moving forward. It’s not too late to begin to make the most of the opportunities before you. Don’t wallow in guilt from the past. Forge ahead in fulfilling God’s will from this day forward. Commit to that today.
Or, maybe you are here today and you feel like the best years of your life have already concluded. Maybe you are stuck in reverse, so to speak, living in the yesteryears, longing to have those days back. But as good as those days might have been, the Christian must live our lives today.
--You can’t drive a car forward if your gaze is fixed on the rearview mirror. No, as Christians we look ahead in a spirit of hope. We hope in Christ. We recognize the good future that is ahead for those who know Christ. And we are to live out our days for the glory of God and for the good of others making the most of this season of life.
There is an amazing, beautiful, profound urgency in all of this.
--Let me share with you an illustration that I’ve shared before, but it is a good one I think.
In the late 1800’s there was a British man named CT Studd. He was a world renown cricket player, which was one of the most popular sports in his part of the world at the time. Studd was also from a very wealthy, influential Christian family. His father had come to know Christ during a Dwight L Moody revival meeting.
And since he was raised in the church, CT Studd soon became a follower of Jesus himself. Learning about the needs of the world from a famous missionary named Hudson Taylor, CT was confronted with the lostness and desperate state of people around the world. So, at the height of his cricket career, he gave it up and began to do missionary work around the world. He lived in China, India, and Africa. Giving his life to serve and minister to the poor and hurting around the world.
At some point in his contemplations, Studd wrote a poem that many people might recognize. My grandparents had part of this poem on a cross stitch in their home hanging on their wall. I didn’t know who wrote it until recently. Knowing now who wrote this and what he gave up to serve the hurting and poor around the world in the name of Jesus makes this all the more powerful.
Two little lines I heard one day, Traveling along life's busy way;
Bringing conviction to my heart, And from my mind would not depart;
Only one life, 'twill soon be past, Only what's done for Christ will last.
Only one life, yes only one, Soon will its fleeting hours be done;
Then, in 'that day' my Lord to meet, And stand before His Judgement seat;
Only one life, 'twill soon be past, Only what's done for Christ will last.
Only one life, yes only one, Now let me say, "Thy will be done";
And when at last I'll hear the call, I know I'll say "twas worth it all";
Only one life, 'twill soon be past, Only what's done for Christ will last.
What great perspective from a man who lived out the gospel and made the most of his time. He knew he could spend his time pursuing all sorts of things….but he chose to invest his time in things that last.
Our time is not our own. It’s His. We are not in control of how many days and seasons we have. We are stewards of the time we’ve been granted. Let us walk in wisdom.
1.Am I using the season of opportunity that has been placed before me to wisely invest my time into things that matter?
2.Am I stuck in the past, longing for what was rather than moving forward to honor God with my time now?
3.How can I better honor God and bless people by using my time more wisely? What do I need to change in my life to accomplish this?
4.I mentioned earlier that wisdom comes from pursuing Jesus. Is Jesus the Lord of your life?
The good news is that our hope is not found in perfectly using every moment of our lives. If that were the required then every one of us would stand before God condemned. We have all wasted time. We have all pursued things that don’t matter. But Jesus never wasted a moment. He always used His time on earth perfectly. He fulfilled the Father's will, lived the life we could not live, and died the death we deserved. And through faith in Him we are forgiven, made right with God, and empowered by the Holy Spirit to live wisely for His glory.
Do you know Him?
