Stewardship

Stewardship of our Time

Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service, you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already.

– C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Pretty awesome, then, that David said in Psalm 31:14-15: “But I trusted in thee, O Lord: I said, Thou art my God. My times are in thy hand: Deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me.”

Oh, Lord, make us aware of the use of our time!

Moses- Psalm 90:12: “So teach us to number our days, That we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”

Solomon- Ecclesiastes 3:1-8: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; A time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; A time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; A time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; A time of war, and a time of peace.” Ecclesiastes 12:1: “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;”

Paul- Ephesians 5:16: “Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”

James- James 4:14: “Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.”

ILLUSTRATION: “The greatest gift I ever received,” said a young attorney, “was a gift I got one Christmas from my dad.  He gave me a small box with a note inside that said, “Son, this year I will give you 365 hours, one hour every day after dinner.  We’ll talk about what you want to talk about, go where you want to go, play what you want to play.”

The young attorney continued, “My dad not only kept the promise of his gift, but he renewed it every year – and it’s the greatest gift I ever had in my life.  I am the result of his time.”

Time is God’s gift to us; what we do with that time is our gift to God!

The stewardship of time is central to every other aspect of our lives. What about our talent? Our treasure? Our witness? Our bodies? Each of these is controlled in some way by the use of our time.

Time was Created by God

What is time?

JI Packer: “So, what is time? To put it simply, time is duration. Our clocks mark change or, more precisely, our timepieces are benchmarks of change that indicate the passage of time. We could say, then, that time is a necessary precondition for change and change is a sufficient condition to establish the passage of time. In other words, whenever there’s change of any kind we know that time has passed. We see this as we go through life, as we age. And we cannot recover the minutes that have passed by.”

The Bible says in Genesis 1:14-19: “And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.”

Psalm 74:16: “The day is thine, the night also is thine: Thou hast prepared the light and the sun.”

Psalm 104:19: “He appointed the moon for seasons: The sun knoweth his going down.”

Proverbs 8:22-23: “The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, Before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, Or ever the earth was.”

Names of God that Speak about Time

the alpha and omega- Revelation 1:8: “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.”

the ancient of days- Daniel 7:9: “I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire.”

the everlasting father- Isaiah 9:6: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: And the government shall be upon his shoulder: And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”

JI Packer: “The bottom line is this: time began when God created the universe. Before that, God was simply existing. Since there was no matter, and because God does not change, time had no existence and therefore no meaning, no relation to Him.”

Times were Created by God

We need to read from Genesis chapter 1 again to see that there is more to time than just quantity. There is something qualitative about it, too. The Bible says in Genesis 1:14-19: “And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.”

The Greeks understood something about time that has been lost in the modern world. They recognized that there were two aspects of time.

chronos- quantity of time

kairos (ka-hee-ros)- quality of time

Ancient Greeks had a penchant for personifying everything. So, if you could imagine a crotchety old man with a long beard and a bent back, carrying a sickle and an hourglass. Grim Reaper, anyone? Yeah, that’s chronos.

However, Kairos is quite different. He was playful and somewhat mischievous. He was young, handsome, and agile.

In the Bible, the word kairos has the idea of ripeness

KRONOS- I Peter 1:17: “And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man’s work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear:”

KAIROS- Titus 1:3: “But hath in due times manifested his word through preaching, which is committed unto me according to the commandment of God our Saviour;”

It is not just that God gives us a number of days; He also gives us a number of purposes to fulfill. God creates men for kairos.

The Creator in Time

The miracle of Jesus’ birth is that Almighty God stepped into time itself. The eternal God stepped into kronos. Into duration. Into quantity. What can we learn from Him?

Jesus maximized His time by working for the Father

Luke 2:49: “And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?”

Jesus recognized that the Father had a perfect timing for His life, ministry, and His death

purposes are greater than punctuality

The problem with Mary and Martha is that they were thinking kronos while fellowshiping with a kairos God. Their brother had died— and had been dead for four days! However, we notice that Jesus is overcome by the purpose of Lazarus’ death: John 11:4: “When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.”

John 11:15: “And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe; nevertheless let us go unto him.”

b. purposes are greater than popularity-

John 2:3-4: “And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.”

Our salvation came when Jesus’ kairos met with our kronos.

Galatians 4:4-5: “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.”

a Roman world- roads, peace, language

Jewish messianic hopes and aspirations

God’s whole redemptive plan has been historical— taking place in time.

Most lessons on biblical stewardship of time seek to help someone maximize the quantity of days, but Jesus came to give us abundant life. In other words, it must begin with purposes, which lead to principles of time management. As David clearly noted, My times, LORD, are in your hands.