The Wise Use Of Time, Part 1

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. Job is saying the time that has been allocated to you is set by God. He said God sets the limits and you cannot pass that. Oh boy, we live in a day and age, oh yes we can, absolutely we can, we can determine that.

God says no you can't, you really can't determine that aspect of your life, your allocated amount. He says make the most of your time. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. There is an ever present phantom in our life that is our constant companion.

And on days like this one, he taps us on the shoulder to remind us of his presence. Yesterday Velma and I were going to lunch and she said to me, remember Mother's Day last year? And she started with the church service and then described the entire day.

And uncharacteristically, I actually remembered everything that she described. But my most profound thought as I was sitting there was, wow, it's been a year? Do you ever think like that? Something that goes by that fast? You see, it was as though time had given a nudge to me.

And that's kind of what happens every holiday, including Mother's Day. I have felt that nudge before. The smell of a roasting turkey. A nudge.

A Christmas card from distant friends, especially if there's a photo in it. You know, it's included, you get a photo of Jimmy so-and-so from the Whatchamacallit family. And you start out talking and asking questions like, how many kids do they have? And boy, do they look old. Isn't that amazing how your friends from your, how old they get over the miles? Time is constantly reminding us of its presence.

Some of those reminders are almost cruel. This past Friday, I spent the entire day fishing. I had a wonderful time. And then I spent all day Saturday recovering from fishing.

There was a time when I could play football on Friday night and feel fine on Saturday. But time, he's reminding me. And although time seems cruel at a certain level, I'm very happy he's still my companion. You see, you can run out of money and you'll still have time left. You can run out of friends and you'll still have life to spare. But once you run out of time, this life is over. Carl Sandburg said, time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have and only you can determine how it will be spent.

Please be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. Open your Bibles to Ephesians chapter five, a passage we looked at earlier in this series. I'm doing a series of sermons called Living a Foolproof Life, and we're dealing with the subject of wisdom. In the very first week, we talked about the question. The most important question you can ask is you make any choice or decision in your life.

Is this the wise thing to do? And then we added to that by saying, is this the wise thing to do in light of my past experiences and in light of my present circumstances and in light of my future hopes and dreams? And then last time, we dealt with the unwise people of our world. The Bible calls them either naive or fools or scoffers. And each one of them, on the basis of the poor decisions that they make, end up reaping what they sow and never really getting out of life what God's intention was for them. So here in Ephesians five, where we were once before, notice what Paul writes in verse 15. He says, therefore, be careful how you walk. And that's just a metaphor for living. He says, therefore, be careful how you live, not as unwise, but as wise.

He says, look, you don't have to be careful. You're going to end up living your life one way or the other. You're either going to live the way of wisdom or you're going to live the way of the naive, the fool or the scoffer. You're either going to make wise choices with your life or you're going to make unwise choices.

And you need to be careful. And then he addresses this issue, the issue of time. He says, making the most of your time.

I want to stop there for a moment because it's so profound. Making the most of your time. Notice he isn't talking about time in the abstract.

Making the most of time. No, he's talking about making the most of your time. You see, that word time is not the word chronos. It doesn't mean the hours or the days or the weeks.

He's not talking about that. The word that's used here is the word kairos. And kairos means you're allotted. You're allocated. Make the most of your allotted or allocated time. Wow. To make the most of my time.

Hold your place here. We'll come back in a little while. But I want to go to Job chapter 14. Job chapter 14. And he may say something that's disturbing to you.

But it's probably something you need to hear. Job chapter 14. And Job gives a general description of life in verses 1 and 2. He says, men who was born of a woman is short-lived and full of turmoil. Like a flower, he comes forth and he withers. He also flees like a shadow and does not remain.

Here today, gone tomorrow type of thing. But then he says this in verse 5. He says, since his days are determined, the number of his months is with you, God, and his limits you have set so that he cannot pass.

You see that? Job is saying the time that has been allocated to you is set by God. He said God sets the limits and you cannot pass them. Oh boy, we live in a day and age, oh yes we can. Absolutely, we can determine that. God says no, you can't.

You really can't determine that aspect of your life. Your allocated amount. He says make the most of your time. John MacArthur writes this about that verse. He says, God has set boundaries to our lives. An opportunity for service exists only within those boundaries. It is significant that the Bible occasionally speaks of such times when God shortens the boundary.

But virtually never does he ever say that he lengthens the boundary. It's amazing. That's your time. Making the most of your time. See, that should have an effect on you.

Not the making of any time, but your time. Notice how godly men have responded to this. Turn with me to Psalm 90. Just a few pages to your right, Psalm 90. In an unusual Psalm, it's a prayer of Moses.

Moses doesn't usually show up in the Psalms, but this is one of the Psalms attributed to him, and it's a prayer. And Moses says in verse 10 of Psalm 90, he gives a generality of life, and it kind of still holds its place. Moses says, as for the days of our life, they contain 70 years. Or if due to strength, 80 years.

Pretty much the same. It's a general rule, but average lifespan is not a whole lot different than that. You get 70 years, and if you have enough strength, you get 80. And then he says in verse 12. He said, so teach us to number our days.

Why? That we may present to you a heart of wisdom. Now, by the way, he doesn't mean that, you know, you need to have a calendar since the day you're born.

One, two, three, 18,406. He doesn't mean that. He means teach us to have an appreciation for our days. You see, teach that.

The implication is pretty clear. One of the first steps if you're going to be a wise person, especially when it comes to wisdom with time, is you understand that it is limited, and you have an allocated amount of time. See, that's what Moses says. David takes it a little bit further. Go to Psalm 39 with me for a moment. Psalm 39.

David says, Lord, I want to be reminded of this all the time. He says in verse four of Psalm 39. He says, Lord, make me to know my end. Now, I don't think he's saying, Lord, I want to know how I'm going to die.

I don't think that's what he means. He said, Lord, make me to know my end, and what is the extent of my days? He says, let me know how transient I am. He says, behold, you have made my days as hand breaths. He said, in my lifetime as nothing in your sight, surely every man at his best is a mere breath. Wow, David gets it. The hand width is one of the smallest measurements that the Jews would use. You were going to measure something, you'd measure it by the width of hands. He says, you know, compared to you, my life is nothing.

It's just like breath. You see, in light of eternity, even if you live 70, 80, 90 years, in light of eternity, it's nothing. David says, you know what I need to know?

I need to understand that. I need to come to grips with how temporal my life is. And the problem with this is, as a truth, in a group like you is, there are some of you that are so young that your response to it is, who cares?

I've got so much time in front of me, it's just, I can't even imagine how much time I have in front of me. And then there are others I can tell, usually by the tops of your head. And you look at it very differently, don't you? You wake up in the morning and you say, thank you, Jesus, for another day. It's a different thing. You see, it's a very different thing. But those people in the second category will surely tell the people in the first category this. You won't believe how fast your time passes.

Because it does. It's going to pass. And so, the first thing you have to do is come to grips with the idea that you have an allocated amount of time just for you. Now, go back to Ephesians 5 with me. Ephesians 5.

Therefore, be careful how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise. And then he says, making the most of your time. Making the most.

We talked about this in the very first sermon. Making the most is the word ex agorazo. Agorazo means to purchase something, to buy it or redeem it. Agorazo is a word to use for Jesus Christ who redeemed us by his death on the cross.

Ex agorazo is another word that was used to describe Jesus Christ. And this simply ex agorazo means to purchase and then to set free. And so, we can easily use the term for making the most of your time is to redeem your time. But there's one other aspect in that little phrase and I'll be technical for a moment because it's so important.

And that is, that phrase is in the middle voice. And in Greek grammar, if you use the middle voice, it means that only you can make the most of your time. You have to. Making the most of your time. Only you can make the most of your time. This isn't something that someone else can do for you.

This is something that you can only do for yourself. Making the most of your time. It's all over scripture, passages like that.

In Galatians 6, Paul says, so then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people. You see, the idea is, I cannot create more time for me. But I can redeem the time that God has given me. You see, it's a very important thing to understand. It's not that I can find time, it's what do I do with what I have time. Only I can make the most of my time. It's interesting.

Because I don't know about you, but I struggle even understanding that to a degree. Let me explain why. Go with me to James chapter 4. James chapter 4. And James gives us a warning. And at first it doesn't seem merited, but then he describes it in a better way.

In verse 13 of chapter 4 of James, James says, Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow, we will go to such and such a city, and we'll spend a year there, and we'll engage in business, and we'll make a profit, we'll make a lot of money. He said, Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. Now, at first it looks like he's saying we shouldn't plan ahead.

But you'll see in a moment that's not the case. He said, Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. And then he gives a general description of life again. He says, You are just the vapor that appears for a little while and then you vanish away.

That's it. You know, I don't mind the idea that I'm just going to be here for a little while in light of eternity, especially knowing where I'm going. But the idea of vanishing away is a little sobering.

But that's what happens to you. See, if I said to you, How many of you know if you have a parent that died, you still remember your parent, would all say yes. And how many of you had grandparents and how many of you remember your grandparents and a lot of us, if not most of us, would say, Well, yes, a little bit. And now how about your great-grandparents?

Maybe a couple of us might say I know that. And then what about your great-great-grandparents? And then you go to great-great-great and you know what? They're completely forgotten. They vanished. That will happen to you and that will happen to me. You vanish away.

Well, that's kind of a sobering thought, to say the least. But notice what he says about this idea. He says instead you ought to say if the Lord wills, he says we will live and we will do this or that. In other words, James picks up on this idea that the time it's allocated to me, this brief time when I'm a vapor or a mist here, is given to me by God. And if the Lord wills, he'll give it to me.

And here's something I know for sure about that. I don't understand it and I don't think I could possibly ever understand it. But I have to trust God.

Let me illustrate it. How many times has someone died who you loved and knew and the first thought you had in your mind is they died too early? You see, they died too early. They died too soon. I mean, Lord, if you were looking for people to take off this planet, I could give you a list of people that I'm not sure who would miss them.

You see, that's hard for us. When I went to Dallas Seminary, I was in the very first chapel that we had and it was wonderful to hear a thousand men singing and all that. I was sitting on the end of an aisle.

By myself and we were singing along and then I looked across the aisle and there was a guy sitting right on the end of the other aisle. And I sort of nodded. He sort of nodded and we kept singing. And when chapel ended, we started talking.

He said, do you want to go to lunch? And we did. And his name was Jim. And he and I became best friends through seminary. He was the guy that, you know, we shared a lot.

I mean, we both staggered through baby Hebrew together, you know, both of us showing tremendous interest but almost no ability when it came to understanding basic Hebrew grammar. But we made it. And we both felt the same way. We both felt that God had brought us to that school to train us, that we were called by God.

We both should go into church ministry, a pulpit and pastor congregations. We had tremendous, you know, conviction about that. And we were so happy for each other. And so the Lord led Jim to Vermont and he led me to Louisiana. Jim was originally from Missouri and I was in Pennsylvania. And then the Lord gave Jim a few years in Vermont.

And then he got cancer and then he went home to be with Jesus. And I got decades in Louisiana. And I don't know why. You see, I don't see how I would have merited more time than Jim. You see, you never understand that.

It's okay. You see, I can't possibly understand that. God hasn't asked me to do that. What he has asked me to do is to make the most of the allotted time that I have. That's what he's asked you to do.

And he's asked me to do exactly the same thing. The time that I can make the most of is now time. That's what James tells me. You want to make the most of some time, make the most of now time.

Because I'm all I really know I have. You see, that's what James is saying. Ben Franklin said, lost time is never found again. Boy, he's exactly right.

Once you lose it, you've lost it. Now, you might be thinking about this time. Oh, if I'd have known this, this is one of those make me feel guilty kind of sermons. You know, that I've got to, boy, waste so much time and, you know, this is really going to be bad. And you know what I'm going to end up, I'm going to have to get into the Bible more than I've ever done before. And then I'm probably, you know, I'm going to have to go down to the mission more than I did. And I'm going to have to witness to people at work. And I probably have to go on a foreign mission trip sometime. And I know this kind of, I don't have to give up my hobbies.

No more naps. I'm going to have to give all this, I'm going to have to give this all up because I have to make the most of my time. You couldn't be further from the truth. That is not making the most of your time.

Not at all. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called oneplace.com. That's oneplace.com and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.

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