It’s hard to believe we have entered 2025. It seems just like yesterday, we were wondering what it would be like in the year 2000. Do you remember watching Back to the Future in theaters or on…VHS…long before we knew what DVDs were, where they had flying cars and hoverboards in 2015? 2015 was a decade ago now.
And about 35-40 years from now is when The Jetsons took place–sometime in the 2060s. Now, I don’t want us to feel too old, so I’ll be quiet now.
But what I will say is that, as Steve Miller once wrote, “time keeps on ticking, into the future…” and time flies. As Groucho Marx once said, “Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.”
I’ll give you a minute on that one.
So as we enter a new year, what does The Bible have to say about that? What does The Bible have to say about time?
If you have your Bibles, you can turn with me to two passages this morning–dealing with the same topic. The first is Ephesians 5, and the second is Colossians 4. Paul is addressing a similar topic, but to two different churches, and adds a little bit of different ingredients in those passages, so I thought we’d combine those ingredients into one big stew this morning.
As you’re turning there, I’m reminded of a song called “Time” by Phil Keaggy. If you haven’t heard it, I shared it on our church’s Facebook page yesterday, and I’d recommend listening to it in its entirety. It’s not only musically excellent, but lyrically, it’s rather poignant.
Here’s just a snippet:
When the Lord stops him, that’ll be it; Too late for apologies, Too late to forgive your brother, Too late to get on your knees
When the Lord stops him, that’ll be it; Too late to help the needy, And worst of all it’s too late to turn, You must face eternity
His name is Time and he’s coming to an end; His name is Time, where will you be my friend?
His name is Time and he’s coming to an end; His name is Time, where will you be my friend?
Scripture: Although that’s getting off topic a little bit, it is a good reminder to do as Isaiah says, “seek the Lord while he may be found,” because–paraphrasing Proverbs 27:1 a little bit, “tomorrow is not promised to anyone.”
So what should we do with our time? What Biblical goal should we try to accomplish this coming year?
Let’s take a look.
Ephesians 5:15-20
15 Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. 18 Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, 20 always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Then if we go a few books forward to Colossians 4:1-6, we read:
4 Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.
2 Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. 3 And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. 4 Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. 5 Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. 6 Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.
In case you were wondering, yes, I did include verse 1 on purpose there. I did want to acknowledge that slavery is in the Bible, but one more time, slavery was the word used back then for indentured servitude; and regardless of whether it was right or not, Paul couldn’t do anything about it. It was a product of society back then, and rather than start a revolution, God called Paul to the ministry of reconciliation between God and man. There was simply nothing anyone could do in the Roman Empire to change their rules.
Now, there’s also more to it than that when we go to the Old Testament, and that’s not the subject of our sermon this morning; but–if you want to know more, I did post a link below the “Time” YouTube video if you want to go there. I may repost it today as well.
But how should we spend our time? What does the Bible instruct us to do? It tells us to make the most of every opportunity. Then, Paul goes on to show us practical ways how to do that.
In fact, the very first words we read in Ephesians just simply tell us to be wise.
The Amplified Version says, “Look carefully then how you walk! Live purposefully and worthily and accurately, not as the unwise and witless, but as wise (sensible, intelligent people).”
In other words, “Be careful how you walk” carries the idea of looking around carefully so as not to stumble, which Paul explains equates with walking intelligently and not in ignorance.
It’s almost mind-boggling how unintelligent people are now. I don’t mean that as an insult, but you can see how our culture has shifted from being Biblically wise to humanely wise, and it isn’t working, is it? Our society is just blindly falling off a cliff like sheep.
We looked at this not too long ago, and it’s worth repeating.
Proverbs 26:12 says, “Do you see a person wise in their own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for them.”
And the same apostle, Paul, said to the Corinthian church, “God uses the foolish things to confound the wise.” In other words, God uses what the world deems foolish to show that the so-called wisdom of the world is not all it is cracked up to be.
And so we see more and more the foolishness of the World being taught as good and righteous and wise. But…is drag queen story hour for children good, righteous, and wise? Is fighting to preserve the right for minors to have permanent “gender-affirming surgery?”
I caution Evelyn on getting tattoos because they’re permanent. But they’re nothing compared to a sex change for minors–which is the epitome of unwise. It is enabling young minds who look up to adults for guidance to go ahead and butcher themselves.
So what do we do? How is this, for example, making the most of every opportunity? If we are confronted by anyone regarding our Christian opinion on this or any controversial situation, we need to be, as Jesus told his disciples–as wise as serpents and as gentle as doves. We need to balance truth and grace. We need to lovingly, gently, and boldly say that gender-affirming surgery is a form of enabling, not compassion. And it is slapping God–their creator–in the face. He values people and wants to change them from the inside out, not the other way around.
It reminds me of what Paul says at the end of verse 16 and into verse 17. “The days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.” And what is The Lord’s will?
Verse 18 says, “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery, but be filled with the Holy Spirit.”
The point there isn’t for us to get fixated on wine, the point is the debauchery or dissipation, as some translations put it. Dissipation means an unproductive, wasteful life.
Many of you have heard of Chuck Swindoll–one of the great preachers of our time.
Here’s what he had to say about this:
Many a morning I begin my day by sitting on the side of the bed, saying:
“This is your day, Lord. I want to be at Your disposal. I have no idea what these next twenty-four hours will contain. But before I sip my first cup of coffee, and even before I get dressed, I want You to know that from this moment on throughout this day, I’m Yours, Lord. Help me to lean on You, to draw strength from You, and to have You fill my mind and my thoughts. Take control of my senses so that I am literally filled with Your presence and empowered with Your energy. I want to be Your tool, Your vessel today. I can’t make it happen. And so I’m saying, Lord, fill me with Your Spirit today.”
And by being filled with God’s Holy Spirit rather than our own fleshly spirit, we can do the rest with a demeanor of gratitude and love toward God and our fellow man.
Ephesians 5:19 gives four “markers” of a person controlled by the Spirit.
(1) Joyful (Eph 5:19)
(2) Thankful (Eph 5:20)
(3) Submissive (Eph 5:21-33)
And of course, Paul gives the Galatian church nine attributes of the fruit (not fruits, but single fruit) of the Spirit–that which we yield if we are planted and cultivated and pruned by the Spirit.
Can you name all nine of them without looking them up?
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. I might have had that a little out of order, but there’s no specific order, anyway. Like I said, it’s all one fruit. And that fruit is the will of God that Paul talks about in Galatians, Ephesians, and now–going to the Colossians.
Colossians 5 and 6 say, “5 Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. 6 Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”
Remember when I talked about the tough topic of “gender-affirming surgery for minors?” Even when it comes to an extreme example such as that–whether we are ever confronted with that conversation or not–we need to know how to answer everyone, and we need to do that with boldness and grace, seasoned with salt, demonstrating those nine attributes of The Holy Spirit.
Going back to the Amplified Version again, it says:
“Behave yourselves wisely [living prudently and with discretion] in your relations with those of the outside world (the non-Christians), making the very most of the time and seizing (buying up) the opportunity. Let your speech at all times be gracious (pleasant and winsome), seasoned [as it were] with salt, [so that you may never be at a loss] to know how you ought to answer anyone [who puts a question to you].
And again, there’s that word, “wisdom” again. Paul would have used the word, Sophia here. It is where we get the name from. And I tried to keep this short, but…its meaning, in the Greek, is this: mental excellence in its highest and fullest sense and includes the ability to judge correctly and to follow the best course of action, based on knowledge and understanding. In simple terms Biblical wisdom can be defined as skill for living. Wisdom is being able to take truth from the Word, which the Spirit of God has revealed to your heart and applying this truth in given situations in a practical way.
In the present context, to conduct ourselves with wisdom it means that the unsaved outsiders who are closely, critically scrutinizing our lives, should see or hear nothing in our lives that would jeopardize our testimony of Jesus.
The aspect of wisdom in view is that which buys up every opportunity to lead a lost soul to the Lord. Thus the Colossian’s walk in wisdom is to have in view their Christian witness.
So Paul talks about being wise in the way we act toward outsiders, and then he says, “Make the most of every opportunity.” So we could flip that backward in today’s English and say, “Make the most of every opportunity that we are given, so that those who see our conduct and hear our gentle words might be saved.”
Verse 6 again says, “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”
Precept Austin’s online commentary says:
If we obey God’s command to continually let the word of Christ dwell in us richly (Col 3:16–note), His indwelling words of grace and His indwelling Spirit season our speech and these gracious words will not lack God’s salt (See Vital relation of indwelt by the Word and controlled by the Spirit). Remember that grace in your heart means grace on your lips…
For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. (Mt 12:34)
Christians are to speak heaven’s language which not only involves what we say, but also the way we say it. The spiritually minded Christian doesn’t go around quoting Bible verses all day! But he is careful to speak in a manner that glorifies God.
Now, I chose these two passages because in some Bibles, the word “opportunity” is translated as “time.” In other words, “Make the most of every opportunity” is also translated as “redeem the time.”
Going to Ephesians again, a few chapters back to Ephesians 2:10, it says, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
One of my commentaries says this:
Our goal as believers is to enter into those works that He has already prepared for us, for those are the only eternally lasting and “good” works. The idea of kairos is that God gives each believer opportunities – each new day brings its opened doors, its vast potential. It behooves believers to live in such a way that we are sensitive to when God gives us one of those “kairos” opportunities, because when it passes, it is gone. We can achieve our potential in His service only as we utilize those opportunities He has given us. If this admonition was urgent during Paul’s day, how much more urgent today!
What if we as believers began to see the everyday opportunities that God places in our path as “opportunities of a lifetime”, as opportunities to invest in eternity accompanied by a “divine guarantee” that our “investment” would yield priceless, ceaseless, unfathomably blessed spiritual dividends! I believe we would all begin to invest wisely in the lives of those around us if we kept these secular worldly missed opportunities in mind to motivate us not to miss the divine heavenly opportunities to do eternal good. Open the eyes of our heart Lord to see and seize those “opportunities of a lifetime” for Your glory. Amen.
Instead of killing time, redeem it. Instead of counting the days, make your days count. ETERNITY will be appreciated only in the measure that we have rightly handled TIME!
So I want to ask you today, how will you spend your time this coming year? Time keeps on ticking, as Steve Miller said, and we may not have much of it left. The Lord could come back very soon. In His sovereignty, He could even come back before 2025 if he wanted to.
And again, as Phil Keaggy sang,
Most people think he’ll never stop, He’ll go on perpetually
But old man time is running out, And he’ll cease eventually
When the Lord stops him, that’ll be it
Too late for apologies; Too late to forgive your brother; Too late to get on your knees
When the Lord stops him, that’ll be it
Too late to help the needy; And worst of all it’s too late to turn; You must face eternity
His name is Time and he’s coming to an end; His name is Time where will you be my friend?
His name is Time and he’s coming to an end; His name is Time where will you be my friend?
How will you vow to redeem your time this coming year? How will you make the most of every opportunity? The word ‘opportunity’ going back to the Greek again, is the word ‘kairos’ which means a specific window of time.
On Christmas Day, Evelyn and I were driving home, and she told me about how things were going for her in South Carolina, which has its ups and downs. And then she told me about an opportunity that she found and was wondering if she should take it.
After telling me what it was, I said to her, “This opportunity is grabbing you by both shirt collars, shaking you, and yelling in your face to take it. Why are you even questioning this?”
And then she said, “Yeah, but if I don’t take it now, it’ll come round again, won’t it? Opportunities will come and go.”
And in the words of her horses, and in the words of comedian John Pinette, “I say, nay nay.”
Some opportunities are once in a lifetime. You don’t know if this will ever come around again. This is the next step on the ladder and you better take it while you can.
G. Barlow once said, “Opportunity is the flower of time which blooms for a moment and is gone forever.” God is going to give us opportunities that we need to grab onto because we don’t know if they’ll ever come around again. Even if they do, it’s still an opportunity to show God’s love and compassion to those who are hurting and those who are in need.
I’ve given some written material to some of my regular passengers, I gave a gift to another guy who was alone on Christmas, just to show him that he’s not forgotten.
I’m not saying that to brag, just as an example that these are people I will and have seen again, and the opportunity to hand them something may come up again. But that’s no excuse to put it off to some other time because I don’t know how long I’ll be at this job, or how long they’ll be passengers. I have a certain window of time to encourage them with something. Don’t let regularity or, “I can do it later,” get in the way of a kairos or opportune moment.
Be faithful, kind, loving, and compassionate. And be intentional with your time, talent, and gifts. As in the Parable of the Talents, we are not to bury our talents, but to use them, no matter how great or how small. That opportunity just may be in the gift of giving an encouraging word or a listening ear. It doesn’t have to be a ministry with a capital “M.” Whatever it is, it should be done through the Fruit of the Spirit in 1 Corinthians 13 love, which is, once again, being patient, kind, generous, humble, honoring others, selfless, calm, forgiving, loving what is good, being protective, trustworthy, always hoping, always persevering.
This is how we should live and make the best use of our time for not just the next 365 days, Lord willing, but for all our days.
Featured Image by valentinsimon0 from Pixabay
