REVOLUTIONARY SIMPLICITY AND YOUR CALENDAR

REVOLUTIONARY SIMPLICITY AND YOUR CALENDAR Matthew 6:33; Ephesians 5:15-20 July 6, 2008 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introduction Would you please turn to Matthew 6:33 and read it with me. I know many of you can quote this from memory, but humor me and turn to the text in your Bible. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Simply profound! Profoundly simple! I want to invite you to consider the wider dimensions of this powerful little text with me for the next five weeks or so as we consider the idea of Revolutionary Simplicity. We’ll be studying other sections of God’s Word relative to time, money, church, relationships and others, but our focus will be singularly on this poignant principle: seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. More than 80 years ago Henry Luce wanted a name for a weekly news magazine that would, in one single word, capture the essence of the passing events of his day. He chose to name his magazine ‘Time”. This morning’s teaching on Revolutionary Simplicity has to do with “Time”. If you were put into a rocket and be sent into space traveling at 160,000 miles per second with instructions to return to earth in ten years, here’s what would happen (according to Einstein): Each 24 hour period you would mark off a day and each 365 days you would mark off a year. After ten years, you would return. But, because you had been traveling at that speed, even though you would be ten years older you would return to find that we are all twenty years older. Our 20 years would have been squeezed into your 10! But if you had traveled 16% faster on your trip—that is, 186,000 miles per second (or, the speed of light) you would return to find that all of time and history would have been squeezed into what can best be described as the instantaneous NOW. With God, all things happen as if at the speed of light (even faster). The Bible explains it simplistically in this way: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day. (2 Peter 3:18) If you were to ask God how old He is He would simply answer: I am! When the Jews started remarking on Jesus’ age, He said, Before Abraham was born, I am. [webmasters note: John 8:58] God is above time, greater than time and not limited by time. The Nature of Time Time as chronology is a created thing. God is above time, greater than time and not limited by time. You see, the general rule is: if you create it out of nothing, then you’re bigger and stronger than it. God spoke into the darkness on day one and said Y’Heor! “Let there be light!”. Then He separated created light from created darkness. On day four He created the sun and the moon light from energy and reflective light. He also created the stars. And there was evening and there was morning—the fourth day. [webmasters note: Genesis 1:1-19] My puny mind wants to go back to day one and ask how did God create light without creating the sun? Simple—He’s God! He just said, “Y’Heor! Light is!” Then He decided on a later day to invest that light in the stars, the sun and the moon. When He created day and night, He created chronological time, because it says in Genesis 1:14, Let the lights in the expanse of the sky serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years… He created time without any clocks or calendars! In spiritual and biblical terms, the time that we have is a gift from God. I have a friend named Mark who lives with cancer and a number of other physical complications that result from his illness. He tells me about when he first discovered he had cancer, the two surgeries he’s been through and the medication he has to take. When he talks about those things he is always quick to say, “Yep, I should be dead, by all accounts. So I just look at every day as a gift from God.” He’s right. And it’s too bad when it takes a catastrophic development in our lives to get us to see that all-important truth. However you see the years, days and minutes of your life, God sees them as His gift to you. The first thing I think we ought to consider is how precious the gift of time is to us. We always complain that we don’t have enough time, or that time doesn’t move the way we want it to. It seems to slow to a crawl when we’re uncomfortable, and when we are enjoying ourselves it flies by way too fast. This week I know kids will bemoan how bored they are with “nothing to do” and in about seven weeks when school starts again they’ll say “Where did my summer go?” And parents will be thinking, “Finally, the kids are back in school!” When we were younger it felt like we’d never turn 16 and get out driver’s license. These days I turn the calendar to a new month every other day! How do we make sense of it all? I believe it is the Lord’s desire that we learn to appreciate the time we have as a precious gift from Him. To live fully in each moment we have. I’ve been pondering these things in preparation for this series, and I have grown to be more deeply thankful for the little events and experiences. As I’ve meditated on the time I have as a grace gift from God, I’ve found I am more enabled to find beauty in things like flowers and sunshine. Intentionally aware of the privilege of life I have fallen more deeply in love with the laughter of my grandchildren, the sweet smell of the summer rain (lots of it, lately!) I’ve become more grateful for the relationships I’ve been blessed with. I’ve told Charlotte more often how much I love her—and I’ve meant it. Even the challenging experiences have been easier to face. Hitting a deer with my car just months after dropping my collision coverage. Honestly, I might have been very upset by that without this fuller grasp of the grace of God. I just have learned to enjoy and live my life with a greater fullness, simply because I have been better able to appreciate God’s gift of time. I believe that pleases Him. It’s drawn me even closer to Him. I have longed more deeply for the joy that He gives, the peace and the hope He offers me, the fullness of His Spirit. Brothers and sisters, this is the life God has called us to: living life in Him. People say of a good experience: I had the time of my life! That’s a great phrase. We need to focus more thoughtfully on the “time of our lives.” To see it as God’s gift to us. But this gift is not guaranteed for eternity; it is a revocable gift. At least since sin and judgment entered our world, including your life and mine. At that point God made it clear, the soul that sins will die. If God created time as chronological event, then He is in charge of when it starts and when it stops. You see, when you create something, you get to be in charge of it and say when and how and why it will be, and when and how and why it will cease to be. Time is a revocable gift. Chronology is not eternal. There’s an awful lot of talk about alternative energy sources—funny how that comes up when gas hits $4 a gallon! There’s solar power, wind power, coal power, hydro-electric power, there’s hydrogen power, nuclear power—somebody’s trying to get our cars to run on garbage! I say if we could harness the hot air of political rhetoric we could all be driving SUV’s! The Bible says that this created order continues to run on Word power. Jesus, The Son is the is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. (Hebrews 1:3) One day, when God says of this world, “It’s over,” time will be (pardon the pun) out of date. The Father will turn to the Son and say, Okay, time’s up; stop sustaining! My justice has outrun my patience with those that I wish would come to repentance. It’s time to grant them what they want—eternity outside my presence. When that time comes, time will no longer be useful. Time is a revocable gift. But, of course, it is not only the end of the created order that brings an end. For each of us who doesn’t live until the Day of the Lord, our personal end of chronology is death. That’s the moment we slip the surly bonds of this life and enter into the eternal realms—the everlasting NOW of God. That idea may be a little hard for us to grasp, but here is an idea that is easy to understand: if we live an average number of years for a human being, we each get a little over 2 billion seconds of life, measured in real time, or 75 years. That gift may be revocable at any time, subject to the will of the Creator. Psalm 39:4 – Show me, O Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. Ephesians 5:15-20 – Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual sons. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always sing giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Key Principle The central thought that I want you to capture—actually I would like the thought to capture you—is the calling we have to live wisely, making the most of every opportunity. The King James version translates this idea in an appealing way: Redeem the time. That is, trade in your limited supply of minutes and hours for valuable stuff. If I have $50 burning a hole in my pocket and I just can’t wait to spend it I could go and buy loser lottery tickets or I could buy an item I could really use in the future. In either case, I have redeemed the $50, either wisely or unwisely. For God’s sake, for God’s glory, for our own benefit and sense of purpose and fulfillment, we must wisely redeem our time. We have just so many minutes, hours and days available to us from God—a limited supply—and we don’t even know how many we have. The question we all face is how are we redeeming or using those bytes of time? Catch the flow here: we’ve heard from the Psalms about the heartfelt prayer to God to give us a heart of wisdom, to thoughtfully consider our limited number of days and to gain a heart of wisdom about how to use them. Then we encountered the truth that God created time to give to us as a gift. And that is a most personal thing. David wrote in Psalm 139: All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of the came to be. God has invested a number of years and weeks and moments in each of us. That gift of time we each have is revocable. And finally, He is vitally interested in how we redeem our time. Will our minutes, months and moments, be wasted on things of no value, or invested in things of great value? The question we face as we consider God’s gift of time in each of our lives, is What is the best use of my time in light of the fact that I will see Him at the end of my life? What is the wisest use of my time considering He will ask for an accounting of how I have used the time He lent me? Bottom line: what does He want me to do with the brief time I have here on the earth? You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath. Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro: He bustles about, but only in vain; he heaps up wealth, no knowing who will get it. But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you. Save me from all my transgressions; do not make me the scorn of fools. [webmasters note: Psalm 39:5] The heart cry of David, the man after God’s own heart, was that His life would count for something. That it would be meaningful. He knew that if he served His God with the time of his life, he will not have lived in vain. He would not live as a mere phantom. David as the man after God’s own heart was the prophetic precursor to every Christian who by faith takes God at His Word and receives forgiveness and the indwelling Spirit through Jesus the Savior. When they do, they are changed. They have a new name; they have a new calling; they no longer live for themselves, but for the God who made them! I return to the primal idea of this series in Matthew 6:33 to remind you and myself that we are called to seek and serve the kingdom of God and His righteousness, confident that all we need will be added unto us. Listen believer, you are no longer dead in your sins, but alive in Christ! You are a new creation in Him. Old things have died and behold all things are new in Him. Your name is no longer depressed and downhearted, paycheck-to-paycheck, keep up with the Joneses, get all you can and can all you get, callous, corrupt and carnal and getting moreso. You have a new name: children of God, royal priesthood, citizens of heaven, sanctified of God, predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ, you are becomers! By God’s grace you are now called Christians. You no longer live for yourselves; you live for the King! The hours of your life are no longer boring, routine, meaningless, sad and lifeless. You are no longer dead in your sins and trespasses—you have been raised together with Christ, seated in heavenly places. The hours of your life are now chock full of opportunities to serve. You serve your lives away, knowing your reward is in heaven where moth and rust do not corrupt, and where thieves do not break in and steal. You are no longer selfish people but you live for the opportunities to help others come into that saved, sanctified and satisfied place of grace. Your entire calling is tightly focused on inviting unsaved people to God, encouraging other believers to grow and making your own calling and election sure by making every effort to add to your faith, goodness, and to your goodness, knowledge, and to your knowledge, self-control, and to self control, perseverance, and to your perseverance godliness, and to your godliness, brotherly kindness, and to your brotherly kindness, agape love. T. S. Eliot once described the lives of those who lived without godly purpose as the sound of “rat’s feet over broken glass in our dry cellar.” The philosophies of men are a quagmire of uncertainty and carnal drivel, with more question marks than a physics exam. But in Christ our question marks have been yanked into exclamation points. We are not without purpose and we are not without divine help through His Spirit. We have Someone to live for; therefore we have everything to live for! I urge you in the name of Jesus your redeemer, in whom you now live and move and have your being, stop living for yourselves, but for His sake start living like He called you to live. Break out of your shell of indifference and fear and selfishness and start telling others how to find God and grace and glory! Make it your sole ambition to lead someone to faith in Christ next month. Make it your passion to encourage your brothers and sisters in their spiritual growth. But we are a people of purpose, we Christians. We have been called and commissioned to higher things than trudging through life with despair or despondency. We serve the living God not the pretend gods of materialism, narcissism and hedonism. We are called to live for the mission of the God of the universe. We aren’t mindless about how we are alive on this ball of clay, or why we are alive. We’re not confused as to how we have come to be or where we are going. We are citizens of a higher kingdom that will outlive and outlast all on this planet that is destined to burn. Several years ago Joe Miller died in September, and the New York Times gave his obituary 4 columns complete with a 4: X 6” photo. What did Miller accomplish? He had an impressive career. A graduate of Yale he went to work for DuPont and then started his own business, The Pyrolac Corporation. He made his fortune with a protective covering for bathroom fixtures. He made even more money when he developed a metallic paint that allowed the auto industry to make cars in colors other than black. Later he created a heat resistant coating that protected the Apollo spacecraft on trips to the moon. Pretty impressive, right? But none of these accomplishments were the reason for his notoriety. The headline on his obituary read, “JOE MILLER, WHO DID HIS PART FOR BASEBALL, IS DEAD AT 95.” Joe Miller never played in the big leagues. He didn’t develop any life saving equipment used in the game. He didn’t own a team. Joes’ big accomplishment was playing high school baseball and encouraging a friend to play on the team as well. His friend was a big strong kid who excelled in soccer and football, but didn’t really want to play baseball. Only after much encouragement from Joe did the friend agree to play and help the team. His friend learned the game quickly and soon was a better baseball player than Joe. In fact, he went on to have a legendary career with the New York Yankees. Once he broke into their lineup Lou Gehrig played in 2,130 consecutive games—a record that stood until it was broken by Cal Ripken, Jr. in 1995. Joe Miller’s big accomplishment? He introduced Lou Gehrig to baseball. How do you intend to make your mark in the Kingdom of God? Your greatest achievement may be in your willingness to develop others who are around you—to minister to someone else who will be a greater discipler of others than you ever could be.” The ancient writer Horace coined the term “Carpe Diem” which is Latin for “Seize the Day”. Rightly understood, that’s the same thing as Live every moment! We don’t have to guess at who God is—we know Him through Jesus His Son. We need not wallow in the mire of fallen man’s philosophies; we have the wisdom of His Spirit. 1 Corinthians 2:12 assures us that We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. We can know and trust His divine Word and thereby be thoroughly equipped unto every good work. We have by the grace of Jesus Christ been born again into a living hope. The Word of God certifies to us that His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness and that he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them we may participate n the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. Carpe Diem!     [Back to Top]