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June 25, 2006
Believing on Time
Psalm 84 / Esther 4: 1-14
John 4: 46-53
Children’s Sermon on Ecclesiasts 12: 1-7
(paraphrased immediately below)
June 25th, 2006
[1 Remember your Creator while you are young, before you grow old and no longer enjoy living.
2 It will be too late then to remember him, when the light of the sun and moon and stars is dim to your old eyes, and there is no silver lining left among the clouds.
3 Your arms will tremble with age, and your strong legs will grow weak. Your teeth will be too few to chew your food. Even strong glasses won’t help you see.
4 And when your teeth are gone, keep your lips tightly closed when you eat so food doesn’t spill on your clothes! The chirping of birds used to wake you up in the morning. But you will become deaf. And then you won’t be able to sing, or if you can a little, with a quavering voice.
5 You will be afraid of heights and of falling, white-haired and withered, dragging along. Your family and friends will know you’re about to die. And as you near the end they will watch sadly and cry.
6 Yes, remember your Creator now while you are young, before the silver cord of life snaps and the golden bowl is broken. Don't wait until the water jar is smashed at the spring and the pulley is broken at the well.
7 For then the dust will return to the earth, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.]
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Time matters. We just listened to the story of a moment in the history of the Jewish people narrowed down to a moment in the lives of two people, Mordecai and his niece Esther. If she went in to see the king of Persia uninvited, even though she was his queen, if he was in a bad mood, he could have her executed on the spot. If she did not risk going in at this moment a dreadful plan would hatch. Her people, the Jews, would be massacred throughout the land. Mordecai told her, “Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Time matters. She dare not let this moment pass.
As Christians we talk about “eternal life,” but time matters, even with regard to eternal life. Time flies. We use such terms as “Strike while the iron is hot.” We’re aware that opportunities come and go.
Among these opportunities are those moments when we consider what really matters in life. Among these moments are those when it seems the things of God suddenly matter very much, but then those moments pass and for some reason the things of God fade into the background of our thoughts.
But time moves on, and we draw near the end of life so soon I feel 32 but I’m twice 32. In my trade I am often with people as they near life’s end. And I’ve seen some look back and a far off look comes into their eyes. “If only I had” are very sad words to think.
The Apostle Paul reflected on time when he wrote “in the fullness of time God sent forth His Son.” God didn’t begin with Abraham dubbing a new gene into the human race that would cure the problem of sin, misery, and death. Instead God set in place a promise that would work out over many years. And it was important how and when people in this long heritage used their free will—a reflection of God’s image to respond to God’s nudge that would draw them into the momentum of this promise. Because the promises of God always come with a condition. We have to respond. And our responses come at particular moments in time.
Shakespeare remarked wisely in his play, “Julius Caesar,” “There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune, omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.”
How many people look back with sadness in their shallows, realizing they did not respond when life was at high tide. This morning I want to remind you that it matters how and when we respond to the deep matters of life that God puts before us.
I have the feeling that an unfortunate residue of our Presbyterian confidence in the Providence of God is that God will make things happen very nearly without our input. Many of us don’t like “fanaticism,” which may mean simply the inclination to do something specifically for Jesus’ sake.
Calvin thought he was honoring God to report that God was sovereignly in control of literally everything, from the rise and fall of nations to the trembling of a blade of grass in the wind. Thus though it seems we make decisions, and are responsible for them, we simply work out the divine decrees.
I’m not sure the Bible teaches this, nor is it necessary to believe this if we believe that God is sovereign in the world He made. The Bible points us otherwise. Indeed, our experience points us otherwise. It matters how and when we choose to respond in life to God.
We read this morning of a moment in time that John freezes for us to see in his Gospel. It is a moment when a Roman official from Capernaum realized that his nearly dead son was suddenly healthy. He asked his servants when his son became well. They told him at 1 PM yesterday, precisely.
They remembered the time because that very sick little boy suddenly sat up on his bed, swung his legs over the side, and ran into the kitchen hungry. After all he hadn’t eaten for days. His little body gradually grew emaciated. They had all been hovering around him, bathing his forehead, holding his listless hands. And suddenly it was a different little fellow in the room, no longer on death’s door, but completely well. So they answered the father, “It was at the seventh hour,” or as we would say, 1:00 o’clock PM. The father remembered that was when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.”
Why did he ask his servants when his son became well? Maybe he was trying to decide if it was just coincidence that his son took a turn for the better. If his son started gradually to become well before 1 PM, then it was coincidental.
But it was AT 1 PM, exactly when he said to Jesus, “Sir, come to my house because my son is dying.” At that moment Jesus replied “Your son will live.” That was exactly when his servants saw him get up from his bed and act like a normal, hungry little boy. This timing was not coincidental.
Furthermore, the timing mattered when this desperate father left home to travel throughout the night and morning to find Jesus when he heard Jesus was nearby. He did not procrastinate, saying to his wife, “Honey, let’s wait to see if Jesus might come this way.” He said, “Now I must go ask this Jesus to come heal our son.”
He acted on his trust in Jesus at that moment. And his trust in Jesus meant that instead of a funeral for his son, he could have a party for him.
Often in matters of health or physical well-being we have a sense of urgency, but in matters of the heart it’s different. I wonder as I drive by the full soccer fields on Sunday after church if there are any parents there who hope their children will have focus in life beyond the moment of thrill at winning a soccer game. I wonder how many of those parents would say, “We are Christians.” And yet they could not spare one morning in the week to have them specifically “remember now their Creator in the days of their youth.” And if one morning cannot be spared, what is the gist of the rest of the week?
I reminded the children this morning of the wise remark of Solomon at the end of the Book of Ecclesiastes. “Remember your creator when you are young, before your body falls apart.”
How many have a very different view of being young. Youth is the time to sow wild oats, to party, have a good time. When college days are past and we get married, and we’re still young, it’s other things. I’ve got important things to do—family stuff, work stuff, leisure stuff. Getting ahead requires all my attention. God can wait. And God does wait.
The moments pass and we discover in retirement, particularly if we are prosperous, that we can still spend our lives in self-indulgence. So even these later years of wisdom are spent on ourselves. At the time we have the time to give to spend and be spent for the cause of Christ, we say, “I’ll wait till this time passes.” And these moments do pass. And very old age sets in. And then we realize the tide was not taken at the flood, leading on to a fortune that mattered.
What an interesting term “getting ahead” is. It pertains to everything we will leave behind one day.
What is it about eternal things that makes it so reasonable to procrastinate in taking them seriously?
I’m reminded of a series of stories of missed opportunities in the Book of Acts. It begins with the Apostle Paul standing before Felix, the Roman procurator. The High Priest, Ananias accused Paul of stirring up sedition, and sent him on to Felix. Paul stood there and Felix told him to tell his side of things.
So Paul spoke. And Felix listened intently. He heard nothing seditious in what Paul said. Indeed, he was intrigued. He wanted to hear more. So after a few days he and his wife Drusilla called Paul back and heard him speak about faith in Jesus Christ. Felix became alarmed and sent him away.
What was it that Paul said that stirred him? Paul undoubtedly told him about Jesus’ crucifixion and rising again. And they heard Paul stick it to them. They realized Jesus was not just a rabble rouser who had been given a slave’s execution. “To follow Jesus you’ve got to deny yourself and take up the cross that is the result of starting to follow Jesus”—if you are a Roman official.
Felix called Paul back several times to hear him, but he never decided, never made a choice. Two years passed and Felix was replaced by Porcius Festus. His opportunity passed.
Then we read of a like encounter between Paul and King Herod Agrippa, who was half-Jewish. He listened intently. But when the moment came to decide he put it off. He said, “In a short time would you persuade me to be a Christian?”
And thus in the Book of Acts we read not only of people like the three thousand at Pentecost, and a Philippian jailor, and like the Apostle Paul who learned of Jesus Christ and found new life in Him, but also of people who learned of Jesus, were intrigued, and remained as they were. And their moments passed.
When I was six years old we were living in Winona Lake in days when Billy Graham was beginning his ministry. I was sitting in the Billy Sunday Tabernacle with its sawdust floor one evening as Billy Graham spoke to the crowd in that amphitheater which was then plenty big. We were home on furlough from India and my dad was studying at a seminary in Winona Lake. I had the sense that somehow it was important to go forward that night. And so I did, though I soon forgot everything except the strong sense of urgency at that moment. Because I remember actually giving my heart and life to God thirteen years later towards the end of my first year of college.
The thought has never left me that there are seasons of life when God may move on us, and those season come and go. And if we do not respond to God when we sense His pull on us, we are not wise. In fact, a culture of Christian indifference may take us over—as is so easy in a time of prosperity.
My father told of a railroad crossing guard in India whose one duty was to respond to the signal of an approaching train and go out and lower the gates. One night he heard the signal and told himself it was a dream. Being tired, he ignored the signal. The train came through and a family in a bullock cart was in its path. And you know what happened. In the years that followed he was often heard to say, “If only I had.”
Time matters.
The future of our children depends on how we have responded to Jesus as parents. The future of the Church depends on whether this generation will take serious regard to Jesus’ summons, or whether we will continue a drift of passive disregard of Jesus’ summons, while saying we believe.
One of you sent me an article this week about the enormous changes overtaking the Western world as a result of the migration of Muslims into the formerly Christian West. I intend no denigration of Muslims in what I say.
Muslims are mostly much more serious about the practice of their religion than Christians. Some are serious to the radical point that is causing such calamity in Iraq and Palestine, in East Timor, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and in many other places. Meanwhile we Christians maintain our placid, comfortable indifference to the way of life we say we believe is right. Indeed, we have watched our denomination bless and adopt the ideas and behavior of our culture, forsaking the ways well taught in days past.
The time has come for you and me to follow Jesus if we believe Him. And following means doing something and not merely saying, “I believe,” now leave me alone. It is time. It is time to awake all who sleep.
Let us pray: O Lord God, thank you for the new life promised us in Jesus Christ. Grant that we may accept this life and live it. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at June 25, 2006 09:30 AM