Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Time

by Dave Wilkinson

Romans 13:8-14

August 27, 2000

When Gulliver was washed ashore in the land of the Lilliput -- a world where he was a towering giant in a realm of teeny, tiny, itsy bitsy human beings -- the king of Lilliput sent investigators to search Gulliver's pockets.

The investigators found three items of particular interest. They described one as a great carpet, large enough to cover the floor of the royal hall. They had discovered Gulliver's handkerchief.

They described the second as a mighty beam with poles distended from it the size of the palisades before the king's court. They found Gulliver's comb.

The third was the most baffling. They reported a great engine that made a noise like a waterfall and had an invisible partition which kept them from examining the monstrous figures on its face. It was Gulliver's watch. But in writing to the king, the investigators said that they believed it to be Gulliver's god -- because he looked to it for guidance so often.

Missionaries say that some primitive peoples call Americans "the people with their god on their wrists." In their naive way, they believe that whatever we consult the most often in life must be our god. Think about that when you start checking your watch during worship. "Hey God, are we done yet?"

Today we're talking about time.

Time is a mystery to us. It changes according to our perception. Albert Einstein commented on his general theory of relativity by saying: "When a young man sits on a hot stove, a minute seems like an hour. When a beautiful young lady sits on the same young man's lap, an hour seems like a minute."

But regardless of our perception of time, whether we're in the hot place or the good place, our conception of time is usually negative. Time tends to be unpopular. It exercise tyranny over our lives. From early childhood the clock controls us. "It's time to go to bed, it's time to get up, it's time to take a bath, it's time to do your homework." As we move through life it becomes "time to go to work, time to pay the bills, time to retire."

This perceived time crunch why we have thing like mid-life crises. We've heard the message of the old beer commercials "you only go around once in life so grab for all the gusto you can" and we start to worry that our gusto level is below par. We feel that we're playng beat the clock even though we know we're not --because we believe in eternity.

Well, now it's time to get into our text for this morning -- Romans 13:8-14. Our focus is on verse 11.

Romans 13:8-14

Charles Swindoll, in a sermon on Romans 13:11, told of four men who enjoyed playing poker together. They would gather at a different man's house each week. One evening they played at the home of a man who had a large grandfather clock in the hall. One man had to go home early. He didn't have a watch so he decided to listen for the chimes of the clock while he played. He did not know the clock was broken. The clock began to strike -- bong! bong! until it struck thirteen times. He jumped from his seat and announced in great agitation: "I have to go!' One of the others asked "What's the hurry?" He said as he was rushing out the door: "It's later than its ever been !"

That is the point the Apostle Paul makes in Romans 13:11 that it's later than its ever been. The clock is striking 13. His application is that the time has come to begin a new style of living -- a style of living that is centered around showing the love of God in our lives.

In the Revised Standard Version, verse eleven is translated: "Besides this, you know what hour it is, how it is full time for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed."

That translation is unfortunate because it does not present the fact that Paul's thoughts in verse 11 are bonded to his instructions about love in the preceding three verses. Paul is not talking about something we need to do besides love as the Revised Standard Version would seem to imply. He is talking about the urgency we need to show in our love. Verse eleven is connected to verse eight so that we could follow the thought: "Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another and do this knowing the time."

The word for 'time' that is used here is the is the Greek word kairos. That's a very special word. Kairos does not refer to the normal passage of time -- the endless tick tock of the clock -- but to a moment in time that is of special significance.

The other word in the Greek language for time is hronos from which we get our word chronology. Chronos signifies time as an interval -- as time goes by. Kairos is different. It's not just the moment but the meaning of the moment. Chronos is abstract dimension. Kairos is concrete circumstances.

For example, Chronos is a date: Wednesday August 30, 2000. Kairos is the meaning of the date -- back to school. It's like that ad for Staples where the father is shopping for school supplies. He is sailing through the aisles with a spring is his step. The kids are glum but he's dancing while the soundtrack plays, "It's the most Wonderful Time of the Year." That song's about kairos time that means something -- or, n the case of back to school, different things to different people.

Now it is not hard to see which view of time prevails in our culture. We are a people obsessed with chronos, how to get more of it, how to control it, how to manage it. We strive for efficiency in all that we do because time is money.

But great time management for the wrong purposes is worse than useless. A few years ago a young man named Mark Mabry was arrested for the murder of his mother. A search of his room turned up a list headed "Things to do: (1) buy shells, (2) shoot father, (3) shoot mother." That's good time management but it has nothing to do with the new life Paul is talking about here.

Paul's point is altogether different from managing our schedules. It is aligning our Day Timers to God's call on our lives. For God desires us to use the time He gives us for good in the lives of others.

In 1 Corinthians 7:29 Paul writes: "The time is short." He is telling the Corinthians that if they are going to serve Jesus Christ, they had better get started because they weren't going to have forever. In Romans, Paul develops this same idea by saying, "The hour has come for you to wake from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed."

What Paul says here is true in two senses. Each sense can be applied both to believers and to unbelievers.

First, Paul reminds the Romans and us that the return of Jesus Christ is imminent. Imminent is not a calendar term -- a chronos term. We aren't saying that Jesus' return is going to take place tomorrow or, at the latest, the day after that or the day after that. Imminent does not mean immediate. It just means it could be at any moment -- nothing stands in its way.

Paul's use of the word salvation in verse 11 -- "for salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed" -- is with the idea of the ultimate salvation that will cone to the believer at the fulfillment of human history. This salvation is just over the next hill, Paul explains, so be prepared.

The point is that since Jesus could return to wrap up this age and usher in the final judgment at any moment, it is urgent that you be ready to meet Him, whoever you are and whenever He may come. If you are a Christian, you must be ready to render account for what you have done with the talents and opportunities He has given you. If you are not a Christian, you will be judged.

Paul says that anyone who understands this about the times will turn from sin to Jesus and then live for Him and serve him with all the strength He provides. We will quit playing around with the "sin game" so well portrayed in the drama this morning.

Paul calls us to live in awareness of eternity. This call to awareness was also the point of several of Jesus' parables. Several times Jesus reminds us to keep ready "because we do not now the day or the hour."

We also need to keep ready because regardless of the time when Jesus returns to bring history to a close, the fact is that for each of our own personal end to history is very close.

A few years ago I got a survey from our denominational headquarters that asked the questions: "How many people in your congregation are getting older?" I wrote back, "Very last one of them." Not a one of them was going the other way. That's true today too. At the best you will probably die in seventy or eighty years You may die tomorrow, or today. We don't know. And that requires us to be aware of the time and keep short accounts with God.

In the movie Casualties of War, Michael J. Fox plays Private Erikson, a soldier in Viet Nam who is part of a squad that abducts and rapes a young Vietnamese girl. He didn't participate in the crime. And afterward, as he struggles with what has happened, he says to the other men in his squad, "Just because each of us might at any second be blown away, we're acting like we can do anything we want, as though it doesn't matter what we do. I'm thinking it's just the opposite. Because we might be dead in the next split-second, maybe we gotta be extra careful what we do. Because maybe it matters more. Maybe it matters more than we ever know."

Fox's character is saying what Paul is saying. Death, for all of us, is a breath away. And the nearer death is, the closer we are to answering to God for all we have said and done. Paul says, "Look, we are growing older. We are older now than we were when we first believed, and we are approaching the ends of our lives. Therefore the urgency to obedience becomes all the greater as we grow more mature and closer to our personal day of judgement.

In this passage, God calls us to a sense of urgency. And this means that we cannot listen to the world's lies--lies like "there is always time, later, to serve God."

The child is playing, he hasn't time right now -- later on. The school boy has his homework to do. He hasn't time -- later on. The young couple are married to their new house; they have to fix it up. They haven't time -- later on. The middle-age couple have their careers. They haven't time -- later on. Later on they are dying. They have no more time. There is never time for God -- unless we choose to make the time in response to His love and mercy to us.

As a South American pastor named Juan Carlos Ortiz writes in a book, Disciple, "We have to make time for loving. A student in our congregation always seemed to be so busy. Every time we approached him about something he'd say, 'O excuse me, but I have no time. I'm studying and I'm also working eight hours a day. So you can imagine how I can't do anything more than that. I can make worship once a week but the rest of the time I'm occupied.'

"Then one day," Ortiz writes, "he fell in love. Suddenly he found time to visit his girlfriend three or four times a week. How did he do it?" Ortiz asks. "I don't know. Love did it."

Love is what shapes our time. What we really love will determine how we spend our hours. How is love leading you to spend your time? What do your priorities say about what and who you really love?

Please know that God's word is not saying that we ought to start running in a spiritual squirrel cage. That is not making the most of time. That is letting time make the most of us.

We see enough of this in secular life where, as Charles Swindoll points out, "we are beginning to crank out more work alcoholics, more high-achieving neurotics, more nervous, anxiety-prone people than ever before. Many a child watches with bewilderment as mom and dad ricochet from room to room in the house, speed to one meeting after another, cramming down Big Macs on the way through. In the words of one humorist, we feel that "if you haven't got an ulcer, you're not carrying your share of the load."

God does not call us to frantic busyness. Again and again He tells us that there is more life than increasing its speed. I hope you were able to take some time for the re-creation of recreation this summer. I love vacations and am back from a great one. I plan to inflict a slide show on you very soon.

God doesn't say, "No vacations." But He does call us to allot our energy and our time according to His will, for ourselves, our families and our world. God gives us all the time we need for all important purposes -- including rest and personal renewal. What He doesn't give us is time to waste or to devote to that which does not feed us and those about us.

Let me close with a quote from Tilliard de Chardain about how we view our lives -- and how we need to view them. I hope you take his with you and chew on it.

De Chardain observes that when we come to worship, we tend to think of ourselves as human beings who are having a temporary spiritual experience. But, he points out, the reality is very different. We aren't here as human beings who are having a temporary spiritual experience. We are actually spiritual beings who, here in this world, are having a temporary earthly experience.

Chew on that. Brood on it. We are destined for eternity. We are spiritual beings who, here in this world, are having a temporary earthly experience. One way or another -- one place or another -- we will live forever.

That one great fact, that great awareness that we live under the eyes of heaven, should be the thing that shapes our lives how we live and how we love.