An Eternal Perspective On Time 2 Peter 3:8;Psalm 90:4 Sermon 1 January 15th, 2012   How many time saving tools do you use? A cell phone. A smart phone. A laptop? Anyone not own a microwave? A daily planner and alarm system? A spamblocker? Internet banking? Quicken? Automatic car starter? Keyless entry? Computerized thermostat? Automatic coffee maker? Tivo? Really think about it – how many time saving tools do you own?   So let me ask one more question: WHY? What are you doing with all of your saved time? What are you using that extra time for that has real significance?   In the barren Mojave dessert of California you’ll find a monument to futility. A single man, “Burro” Schmidt, spent over 40 years digging a tunnel more than 2,000 feet long through solid granite, using only hand tools.   “Burro” Schmidt was a gold prospector who settled on the north side of Copper Mountain. Gold had been discovered on the south side. Thinking that he might strike it rich and that he would need a route for sending his ore to the other side, he began his tunnel. In 1910, with his tunnel half finished, the Southern Pacific Railroad completed a line through the area which rendered Schmidt’s tunnel useless. But by then the tunnel had become his obsession and he kept digging for another 28 years until he broke through into daylight. He operated the tunnel as a tourist attraction until his death in 1954. Over 40 years to build a useless tunnel through a barren, out-of-the-way desert mountain—what a waste!   But who’s to say that Schmidt’s tunnel was a waste of his life? A person might conquer the world, only to die in his thirties, like Alexander the Great. So what? A person might become a famous doctor, discovering the cure for cancer. So he helps people survive a few more years, only to die of something else. He, too, will soon go to his grave. So what?   Do you find that sometimes you’re overwhelmed with the feeling that life is futile? You can amass a fortune, only to be cut down in the prime of life. You can’t take it with you. You can work all your life looking forward to retirement, only to die and never enjoy it. Almost anything you choose to put your hopes and your efforts in can suddenly be brought to nothing through that great common leveler: Death. As George Bernard Shaw wryly observed, “The statistics on death are quite impressive: One out of one people die.”   We avoid thinking about death in our culture. We’re uncomfortable talking about it. We’d rather just brush it aside with a nervous laugh and change the subject. But we can’t brush it aside for too long, because we and everyone we know will die. As you think about death, whether it’s the death of others or your own death, you have to wrestle with these questions: How can my fleeting life have purpose or value? What makes life significant and worthwhile? “How can I use my time in a way that really matters?   There are only two possible answers. One is the philosophy of the hedonist, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” Obviously, that view is flawed if there’s a resurrection of the dead. The other view, which takes this fact into account, is the view of the Bible, that we must be linked vitally to the eternal God if we want our fleeting lives to have significance.   Our culture is obsessed with time, particularly with time efficiency. Today I want to challenge you with An Eternal Perspective on Time or God’s perspective on time.   Americans are obsessed with efficiency. We’re continually looking for things like that faster computer and quicker Internet connection. I’ve got to have it! I don’t want to wait! We have instant everything in our society to help us perform tasks more quickly. What a contrast between America and much of the world. For example, in Wisconsin we’re known for farming. Visit most of the world and you’ll find men tilling the soil with hand plows behind a horse and with laborers reaping crops by hand. In America, farming is a computer-driven science. Everything is done by mechanical means.   We’re efficient about business, since time means money. Management courses teach us how to squeeze the most from every day and hour. We’re even efficient about our recreation. We listen to books on our Smart Phones while we jog on a treadmill that tracks our heart rate and how many calories we’re burning. We want efficiency, even from our down time!   Let me share a perspective on time though that may jar you. It jarred me when I first started thinking along these lines. God’s view of time is very, very different from our American view of time. Peter tells us that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day (2 Pet. 3:8). Moses exclaims that a thousand years in God’s sight are like yesterday when it passes by, or as a watch in the night (Ps. 90:4). To us, a millennium is a very long time; to God, it’s just another day in paradise! And the radical thought that hits me is that God is terribly inefficient…at least by American standards. Now I say that reverently, of course, yet, as I read the Bible, it strikes me how God could have administered His eternal plan much more efficiently than He did.   Why take at least four millennia from the fall of man until He sent the Savior? Why bottle up the process with one disobedient nation and then, for the past two millennia with the often disobedient church? The angels could have had the job done in a few weeks or months! Yet here we are, living on a planet where perhaps two billion people have never even heard about Jesus Christ! God created time so obviously He knows more about it and what is truly efficient that we do. As we work through a life app of time and seek An Eternal Perspective on Time, let me suggest then… 1. God made people with less efficiency than Americans would have. Take for example child development. We push our kids toward achievement. As soon as they’re old enough, we sign them up for classes to nurture their latent talents in sports and music. But have you ever asked, “Why did God design the maturing process to take so long?” Animals mature and reproduce before human beings are even out of kindergarten. God could have gotten a lot more use out of people if He’d made them like that. Parents could get through the child rearing years in a fraction of the time and get on with other productive things. Kids would be fully functioning adults, making it on their own in five years or less!   As I think about my own life, I can’t remember much from the first ten years. From the next ten, I remember a lot of silly and sinful things I did that I’d rather forget! During my twenties, I thought that I knew a lot of things that my thirties showed me I really didn’t know! Life is not very efficient!   Consider sleep and rest. I feel like I could go 24-7 and still not get everything done. Life is short enough as it is. But then my body demands that I spend nearly one-third of my life sleeping! I’ve tried to get by on less sleep. I’ve even prayed about it. If I could function on three or four hours a night, I’d gain nearly 30 hours per week, but my body won’t cooperate! What a waste of time!   Then, there’s that weekly day of rest that the Lord ordained and the contemporary church ignores. Take off one day a week from my normal work to worship and rest? You’ve got to be kidding! I’m behind enough already as it is! How could I get through my week if I didn’t do my normal chores on Sunday?   Just think how we Americans would have designed people if God had given us the opportunity! We’d have them fully mature at younger and younger ages until it was down to around age one. We’d eliminate sickness and sleep. Retirement and old age would get pushed higher and higher. We’d make people so much more productive. Think how the economy would thrive if we could just redesign people! God just didn’t make them sufficiently efficient!   2. God uses people with less efficiency than Americans would. Again in this area, God’s ways are not our ways! Enoch was the godliest man alive in his day, but God took him from the earth after 365 years, less than half the life span of the next shortest life recorded in that time. Why not leave him around for 900 years like everyone else?   Noah was almost 500 years old before God told him to build the ark. He spent 120 years working on that enormous ship. It would have been more efficient for God to judge the earth by sending a plague, rather than waste 120 years of Noah’s life with that ark. Noah lived 950 years, but all that we remember is that he built the ark and later planted a vineyard. Think what we could accomplish if we had 950 healthy years to do it!   Abraham was 75 before God even began to work with him. That’s better than 500, but still, not too efficient. The Lord could have started with him at 25. When Abraham was 75 God promised him a son, but he was a centenarian before the promise was a reality. That was a quarter of a century during which people were dying without the promise of the Savior through Abraham’s descendant. God’s missionary program needed to get going! Why waste 25 years?   And then what did Abraham achieve during those years? Was he setting goals and planning how to become the father of a great nation? Did he have his smart phone brimming over with key appointments?   Maybe Joseph is our kind of man. He must have been an efficiency expert to administrate Pharaoh’s famine relief program. God must not have wasted any time with him. Sharp, honest, trustworthy, high moral standards—this young man had what it takes for leadership. After a brief apprenticeship with Potiphar, he’d be ready for a top management position in some ministry organization, but instead God put him in an Egyptian dungeon on a trumped up charge for the better part of his twenties. At one point he had a good chance to get out. He interpreted the dream of his fellow prisoner, Pharaoh’s cupbearer. This man was reinstated to his position, just as Joseph had predicted. Joseph’s parting words as the cupbearer walked out of the dungeon were, “Remember me.” But, the cupbearer forgot! Couldn’t the Lord remind him?   In Genesis 41 we read of Pharaoh’s dream, which led to Joseph’s release from prison and sudden rise to power. We read in verse 1, “Now it happened at the end of two full years…” It was two full years from the time of the cupbearer’s release until Pharaoh had his dream. You can read that verse in a fraction of a second, but it was a long two years of Joseph’s life, two more years in a stinking Egyptian dungeon! Why didn’t God give Pharaoh his dream after two weeks?   We can multiply example after example. God left His chosen nation in bondage in Egypt for 400 long years! God called Moses when he was 40 (why not 20?), but Moses blew it and had to spend 40 more years in the Back Side of the Desert Seminary before he led the people out of Egypt. Then, he had to spend 40 years wandering around in the wilderness with a bunch of whiners, even though it was only an eleven-day walk from Mount Horeb into the Promised Land (Deut. 1:2). Not exactly efficient!   David, the young man after God’s own heart, was anointed king as a teenager, but then spent his twenties fleeing from crazy King Saul. After David, God allowed some of the worst kings to reign for decades, but He took out some of the godly kings in their primes. At the end of the Old Testament, God waited another 400 years after the last prophet before He sent the forerunner and then the Savior. Think of how long 400 years is—it would take us back to the Renaissance! People were dying without the Savior! From our perspective, 400 years is not an efficient use of time. Yet from God’s perspective, “when the fulness of time came” He sent forth His Son (Gal. 4:4). God’s program was right on schedule!   Think about God’s inefficient use of the messenger who opened the way for the Messiah. Jesus referred to John the Baptist as the greatest man born of women (Matt. 11:11). Think of what such a great man could have done with 30 or 40 years of ministry! But God only used John for about six months before wicked King Herod put him in prison. Then, one night Herod was partying, got wasted, lusted after a dancing girl, and promised her almost anything she wanted. She asked for John’s head on a platter. Couldn’t God have used the life of this great man much more efficiently than this?   Once the church program got going, God chose Paul to launch the whole thing in the Gentile world. If there was ever a key man in God’s program, it was Paul. Surely God would put Paul out there into service right away. After a somewhat late conversion (probably in his early 30’s), Paul spent several years alone with God in Arabia. He went back home to Tarsus for a few more years before his ministry began to be noticed. Remember, as a trained rabbi, Paul knew the Hebrew Scriptures well from the start of his conversion. Surely he was qualified to teach. But God waited years before sending him out.   Then, Paul encountered numerous problems and frequent opposition. Couldn’t the Lord provide enough support so that His apostle to the Gentiles didn’t have to waste time making tents? Couldn’t He take away that thorn in the flesh so that Paul could serve in full bodily strength? Couldn’t God get rid of those pesky Judaizers, who kept dogging Paul’s steps and undoing everything that Paul had established? Add to this the beatings, jail time, shipwrecks, and other wastes of precious time.   As Paul dreamed of taking the gospel to Rome, Spain, and points beyond, God saw fit to put him in custody in Caesarea. Yes, it was God’s way of getting His man to Rome, all expenses paid. But in Acts 24:27, we read something that shouldn’t surprise us by now: “But after two years had passed, Felix was succeeded by Porcius Festus; and wishing to do the Jews a favor, Felix left Paul imprisoned.” Two inefficient years of twiddling his thumbs, sitting in jail in Caesarea! Here was God’s main apostle in custody for two years while the Gentile world was dying without the gospel!   Wasn’t the church praying for his release? Couldn’t God overcome the political maneuvers of a petty governor in Judea to free His man? And Paul wasn’t getting any younger! We Americans could teach the Lord a few things about managing His servants more efficiently!   Think about the only perfect man who has ever lived, and marvel at the inefficiency of God! If I had been Jesus’ parent, I would have had the boy out preaching by the time He was twelve! He could refute the scholars by that age. By the time He was 20, at the latest, He could have drawn crowds of thousands. Why have the Son of God waste 30 years in Nazareth as a carpenter when He could be out reaching the masses? Why give Him only three years to minister before His death? And yet, although we would have had a much different (and more efficient!) use of Jesus’ time, He accomplished everything that the Father had given Him to do (John 17:4).   Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting that we waste time! Wasting time is a sin, just like wasting money is a sin. It’s poor stewardship before the Lord. I still set goals and seek to use my time efficiently. I am suggesting though that, God’s concept of time and our American concept are not identical, and we need to get God’s view. His ways are not our ways; His thoughts are not our thoughts (Isa. 55:8-9).   Some of the things that we think are a waste of time may not be, and some of the things that we think are efficient are really a waste of time from God’s perspective. Maybe you’re not as efficiency conscious as I am. I tend to be a tad OCD about time use. I go nuts if I’m stuck somewhere that I have to wait and I don’t have a book with me. I hate it when I spend my time on unproductive things. I despise meetings where there’s no seeming point or agenda. I like getting things done. I like efficiency. So it really jarred me when I realized how seemingly inefficient God is.   Conclusion: I’m a little too time conscious and efficiency focused to say “amen” at this point and let you go home and wrestle with the implications of this message. So please allow me to leave you with Four Action Points:   * Take time to walk with God. It is instructive that the Bible often refers to the Christian life as a walk, seldom as a run, and never as a mad dash! Walking isn’t the quickest way to get from one point to another, but we are instructed to walk with God. Enoch walked with God (Gen. 5:22, 24). That implies spending time alone with Him. If you always do your quiet time on the run, or not at all, you’re not walking with God. You need to take time to read and meditate on His Word, to assimilate it into your life. You need to set aside time to pray and to worship God. Worship, by the way, is a terribly inefficient activity. Remember when Mary broke the alabaster bottle of perfume and poured out the contents on Jesus’ feet, the disciples all remarked, “Why this waste?” (Matt. 26:8). They were concerned with efficiency, but Jesus was concerned with devotion. He commended Mary. You and I need to take the time to join her at Jesus’ feet.   As you read God’s Word, use it to evaluate your own life and our culture from His perspective. That’s the basis of this message. As you read the book of Genesis, from our perspective, it doesn’t look like the patriarchs accomplished very much for living so long. And yet they are held up to us as models because they walked with God and were obedient to His Word. As you read the Word, constantly pray that God would enable you to live in a manner pleasing to Him. That should be our main goal.   If you’ve never done it, why not read through the Bible this year? Or, if you have an overall grasp of Scripture, commit yourself to study one book in more depth. Devote more time to reading some good Christian books that will help you grow in the Lord.   * Take time to be with your family. Not many people live to be 65 and say, “I wish I had spent more time at work.” But many say, “I wish I’d spent more time with my spouse and my children.”   All the efficiency-minded folks say that you must spend quality time with your kids. I never bought into that. Your kids don’t say, “Thanks for those quality ten minutes!” They only appreciate quantity time. Take time to have a family vacation, especially when your children are young. You don’t have to spend a pile of money. Maybe buy some camping gear and go have fun! In these economic days, you might need to have an in-home vacation. Just turn off all of the computers, phones, I-pods, etc.   Gary Smalley interviewed more than 30 couples whom he picked because they seemed to have close relationships and their children, many of them teenagers, seemed to be happy and close to their parents. He asked them, “What is the main reason you’re all so close and happy as a family?” Without exception, he always got the same answer, “We do a lot of things together.” It’s interesting that all the families had one activity in particular that they all did: Camping! So Gary Smalley tried it and said that he discovered the reason why camping draws families together: Any family that faces sure death together and survives will be closer!   It’s January. Get it on the calendar now and please plan a family vacation. Before you go though, remember this simple family vacation rule: No family should leave on a long trip if the number of children is greater than the number of car windows!   * Take time to be with God’s family. The same principles apply to the church as to the family. We will have the greatest impact for Christ on those we spend the most time with. Those who are older in the faith need to take under their wing those who are younger (2 Tim. 2:2; Titus 2:3, 4). Get involved with fellow believers in a closer way than just seeing them occasionally on Sunday. We’re family, and when God’s family gets together, we should want to be there.   * Take time to reach out to lost people. Jesus was known as “the friend of sinners.” Our Lord spent a large portion of His short time on this earth in social situations with lost people and He wants us to do the same. Ask God to use you to reach out to those without Christ.   These four action points are essentially God’s two Great Commandments and the Great Commission, broken down into subcategories. First, love the Lord your God with your total being. Be devoted to Him. Second, love others as much as you already love yourself: love your family, love other believers, and love those without Christ enough to reach out to them with the good news.   Probably many of you are thinking, “When could I ever find time to do what you’re saying? Spend time with God, with my family, with other believers, and with those outside the church! I’m already too busy! What should I do?”   I have a real time saving idea for you. Limit the number of hours per week that you spend watching TV (even if it’s news or sports), playing with your computer or your cell phone. We all need some down time, but you’ve got to put a limit on it. Build your life around loving God and loving people. Cut out of your life things that don’t contribute to those priorities.   Another suggestion is for those of you who, like me, tend to be efficiency-minded: Relax, let God run the universe, and take the time to enjoy Him, His creation, and the people He has put around you. You can rack up a list of accomplishments that are humanly impressive, but they will be wood, hay, and stubble at the judgment. Or, you can know God and walk with Him so that the things that He accomplishes through you are gold, silver, and precious stones on that day. A relatively short life where you walk with God and have His blessing is far more effective in God’s economy than a long life full of human accomplishments that lack His blessing.   However many more years God gives us, let’s pray what Moses prayed. As he considered the eternal God and the shortness of our lives, he prayed, “So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom.” And, he added, “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us; and do confirm for us the work of our hands; yes, confirm the work of our hands” (Ps. 90:12, 17). It’s far too easy to waste our lives on what the world tells us important and never even know it…until it’s too late. Let me close with a familiar song and a powerful back story.   Many of you remember the name Harry Chapin, the famous singer/song writer. In 1974 Harry Chapin sang a powerful folk rock song. "Cat's in the Cradle." It topped the Billboard Hot 100 in December 1974 and was Chapin's only #1 hit song. The song was based upon a poem written by Harry's wife, Sandy. The poem itself was inspired by the awkward relationship between her first husband, James Cashmore, and his father, a New York City politician.   Harry also confessed that the song was about his father-son relationship with his son, Josh, saying that "Frankly, this song scares me to death.” Here’s the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un2EfjEJAOA     Those words always bring a tear to my eye because I am a father, and more times than I want to remember I’ve felt that my “Daddy Permit” should be pulled. The great tragedy is that the melodrama of this song was played out in Harry Chapin’s own life almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. His wife, Sandy, who wrote the words of the song, asked him one day when he was going to slow down the torrid pace of his life and give some time to their children. Harry Chapin’s answer was, “At the end of this busy summer, I’ll take some time to be with them.”   On Thursday, July 16, 1981, just after Noon, Harry was driving in the left lane on the Long Island Expressway at about 65 mph on the way to perform at a free concert scheduled for later that evening at Eisenhower Park in East Meadow, New York. Near exit 40 in Jericho he put on his emergency flashers, presumably because of either a mechanical or medical problem (possibly a heart attack). He then slowed to about 15 miles per hour and veered into the center lane, nearly colliding with another car. He swerved left, then to the right again, ending up directly in the path of a semi. The semi couldn’t brake in time and rammed the rear of Chapin's blue 1975 Volkswagen Rabbit, rupturing the fuel tank and causing it to burst into flames. Somehow the driver of the semi and a passerby were able to get Harry out of the burning car before it was engulfed in flames. He was taken by police helicopter to a hospital, where ten doctors tried for 30 minutes to revive him. A spokesman for the Nassau County Medical Center said Chapin had suffered a heart attack and "died of cardiac arrest", but there was no way of knowing whether it occurred before or after the accident. In an interview some years after his death, Harry Chapin's daughter, Jen, said “My dad didn't really sleep, and he ate badly and had a totally insane schedule.”   It’s not possible to read that postscript of Chapin’s death and miss the larger point—that something was known, believed, and even “preached,” but never lived. For what really mattered, his was an inefficient life.   When you and I chase manmade crowns and sacrifice the treasured relationships for which God has made us, life loses its meaning and purpose. Unquestionably, the story elicits our sympathy, but a gnawing feeling within us says that love was squandered as the spirit lost its battle to the flesh.   My friend, choose to spend less time on what’s urgent and more time on what truly matters. Think about your epitaph. Will they praise your great ability to handle e-mail or your genius with finances? Or, will they honor the time you spent as a husband and father or how you accomplished great things for the kingdom of God? Eliminate the distractions and focus on real priorities. Focus on the big picture priorities in your life and ministry.   Too many of us, too many Christians are wasting their lives. The solution is not to be a better time manager. The solution is to have God’s perspective, An Eternal Perspective on Time.