Thank you, John and Meridy. David prayed, Lord, make me to know my end. And what is the extent of my days? Let me know how transient I am. I want to talk to you today about the most precious thing in the world. Being precious is of great value. And usually only a few people have that which is precious. And yet there is something that everyone has which is truly precious, and that is time. Time is precious. Time is what life is made of.
Time is precious for four reasons that I want to discuss with you this morning. In the first place, time is precious because opportunity is given in its passage. Would you turn with me please to Ephesians chapter 5. And notice something that the apostle Paul exhorts us to. Ephesians 5 beginning in verse 15. He says, Therefore be careful how you walk, that is, how you conduct yourselves, not as unwise men, but as wise, making the most of your time because the days are evil.
So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. I think four of life's saddest words are, If only I had. If only I had sent that letter. If only I had told him how much I loved him. If only I had taken time to go by. If only I had witnessed to that friend. If only I had, when I was a ninth grader, I had a friend whose name was Ron. Now when I was in the ninth grade, I was a part of a booming, bustling high school of 150 people.
And during the noon hour, the customary thing was for people to go to a car sitting on the north side of the building where the cars were all lined up in the parking lot, and to sit in the car and eat lunch perhaps and then listen to music and talk. The only problem was ninth graders couldn't drive cars. It's tough being in the ninth grade, do you know that? Someone called junior highers a pre-human life form. I don't know if that's true, but I do know it's tough being in the ninth grade.
I mean after all, you've got it all together but nobody will believe you. And I needed somebody to be my friend, so Ron took me under his wing. And as an upperclassman, a junior, he invited me to come to his car and sit in his car during the lunch hour. Man, that was neat. And all year we would spend a few minutes during the lunch hour together. Summer came, we went our ways, I didn't see Ron all summer. And I remember well the Sunday evening before school was to start the next Monday.
It was late August. One of my friends at church came into that Sunday evening service and said, Gerhan, did you hear about Ron? I said, no, what happened? She said he was swimming today in a pond north of town. He was out in the boat and he dived into the water thinking the water was deep but it was only about two feet deep. And his head went into the mud and he swallowed and breathed in mud and drowned. Two days later I went to Ron's funeral.
And the four words that went through my mind were, if only I had witnessed to him. I had not taken the opportunity to witness to him. He was an upperclassman, I was a lowly freshman. But if only I had. As far as I know, on that summer day back in 1961, my friend Ron died and went to hell. A junior in high school. My friend, time is precious because opportunity is given in its passage.
The advertising firm of J. Walter Thompson in Chicago placed an ad in the paper which said in big bold letters, you only have 24 hours to live. Then in small print it said, today that is, and then delivered its message. But the point was made, you see we all have 24 hours every day. How can we use time, life, wisely? How can we manage it to make the most of it? Let me give you five quick suggestions. There are whole seminars that are put together around time management.
But just five ideas for you to consider. If you want to make time mean the most to you. If you want to make the most out of every opportunity, the number one, let me encourage you to set your goals for the following day and the night before. Take time before you go to bed at night and say, now here's what I want to accomplish tomorrow and be realistic about it. Don't set your goals so high that you can't possibly achieve them. Secondly, prioritize your goals for the next day.
That is most important. And then second in importance and so on. And then avoid the temptation to make a change in your priorities. Third, eliminate time wasters. We all have those, don't we? Those things take five minutes here or 15 minutes there. So eliminate your time wasters. How do you know what they are? They really differ for all of us. But let me encourage you to map out a day or two or seven. And then to go back after that period of time and to see where you might have conserved time.
What things you might have cut out that really weren't important, that didn't benefit you, that didn't build your life. Eliminate time wasters. Fourthly, use a daily, weekly, and monthly calendar. In that way you remain balanced between close range planning and long range planning. Everything's not just tomorrow. You keep in mind what has to be done in this week as well as tomorrow and also what has to be done this month. There's a certain balance there.
You'll spend most of the time regarding tomorrow's goals. Some less time on this week, so maybe not very much on what you have to do this month, but plan ahead. Number five, work when it's time to work, play when it's time to play, and rest when it's time to rest. That sounds simple, doesn't it? But it's not so simple to carry out because some of us tend to work all the time and never take time to rest. When we do that, along the way we begin to lose efficiency in the use of our time.
On the other hand, there are some who don't know what it is to work and only know what it is to play. So when it's time to work, put everything into it and work. When it's time to play, do it with all of your might. When it's time to rest, relax and rest. You say, well, if we want to make the most of our time, we shouldn't play, should we? Yes. You say, God has made us so we need some time to play, and God has made us so that we need to rest. Balance your life.
Work, play, and rest, and do all three at the right time. May I encourage you to pick up a little booklet that will cost you less than a dollar, probably only 50 cents. It's entitled The Tyranny of the Urgent by Charles Hummel, published by InterVarsity Press. If you haven't read that, you owe it to yourself to read it. The Tyranny of the Urgent. You see, there are two things that battle for our attention, the important and the urgent. And usually the two are not the same.
That little booklet will help you. Make the most of your opportunities. Life passes so quickly, doesn't it? Use that word of thanks that you've been planning to give. Express that love. Do that deed of kindness. Ask for forgiveness. Restore that relationship. Share the gospel. Make the most of your opportunities. Time is precious. Robert G. Lee was a great preacher and is now with the Lord. But he used to tell this little story as an illustration.
If you had a bank that credited your account each morning with $86,400 that carried no balance from day to day, allowed you to keep no cash in your account, and finally every evening canceled whatever part of the amount you had failed to use during the day, what would you do? You would draw out every cent, of course. Well, says Dr. Lee, you do have such a bank, and its name is time. Every morning it credits you with $86,400.
Every night it rules off as lost whatever of this you have failed to invest to good purpose. It carries no balances. It allows no overdrafts. Each day the bank named time opens a new account with you. Each night it burns the records of the day. If you fail to use the day's deposits, the loss is yours. Time is precious, my friend, because opportunity is given in its passage. But there is a second reason as to why time is precious, and that is because example is left in its message.
Turn over to Philippians 3 and look at verse 17. Every life has a message to it, every life, whether it is realized or not, whether it is desired or not. Every life is writing a message. The Apostle said to the Corinthians, You are our epistle, we have written upon you. Here he says that his own life is a message. In verse 17 of Philippians 3 he says, Brethren, join in following my example, and observe those who walk according to the pattern you have in us.
Then in the next chapter, verse 9, he says, The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things. A second reason that time is precious is that example is left in its message. Therefore it is important to leave a message that will help others know God and live wisely. How important this is for those of us who are parents, that we leave a message in our lives that our children will see as being genuine and which they will follow.
Our lives do leave a message for them of some kind. It is not sufficient for us to read them a Bible story or to take them to Sunday school if our lives do not complement what we try to teach them with our words. Sunday school teacher, have you ever considered how important you are in the life of a young person? Have you thought about the example that you leave? You say, I am only with them an hour a week. No, that may be true, but my friend, your example is with them 24 hours a day.
Because you see, you are in a special place of authority to them. That is why you need to study that lesson. That is why you need to be on time in your class. That is why you need to call them on the telephone or visit them because of the example that you are leaving for them. As I look back upon some of the Sunday school teachers I have had, I thank God for them, for the example that they had, that they left me. Have you thought about that?
You who work in the office, have you considered the example that you are leaving for your boss or those who work around you? What about you, neighbor? They are in the neighborhood. What kind of an example are you leaving as time passes? What kind of a message are people reading in the way that you act? What about you, student? In your school, you are leaving a message by the way that you live as time passes day by day.
What kind of an example is there to bring one of your fellow students to Jesus Christ? I talked to a gentleman in another state on one occasion about the Lord Jesus Christ. In the course of our conversation, I mentioned that I was a member of a pastor of such and such a church. I knew that he was aware of our church because he worked with a man who attended our church.
The moment I mentioned the church and the man that we both knew, he said to me, Pastor Call, if he is a Christian, then I don't need it. You see, that mutual friend of ours had left an example in the message of his life as time passed, and it was a negative one. Of course, my witness was through at that point. You say, Pastor Call, the example of my life is not what I wish it were. But my friend, you can change it.
John R. Rice said, no matter what a man's life may have been, his future is spotless. And he's right. The periods of the rest of this day and tomorrow and this year have not been written on yet. You can change the example. You can begin today to change. This has been said so many times, today is the first day of the rest of your life. If your example is not what you wish it were, then make it what you wish it were, what God wants it to be.
Time is precious because you see as you live through time, you are leaving a message in the example of your life. I remember what it says about Abel, he being dead, yet what? Speaketh. By the example that he said of a God-fearing, faithful man. The third reason that time is precious is that destiny is fixed in its stoppage. Turn back to the Gospel of Luke to chapter 16. Time is precious because you see our destiny is fixed when it stops.
I do not have time to read the whole discourse, but Jesus is here speaking particularly to the Pharisees who loved money, according to verse 14. He reminds them that money is not necessarily the sign of God's blessing and of salvation, for he tells about a rich man who died and went to hell. In Luke 16 verse 25, Abraham said to this man, Child, remember that during your life you received your good things and likewise Lazarus' bad things, but now he is being comforted here and you are in agony.
And besides all this, between us and you there is a great chasm fixed, in order that those who wish to come over from here to you may not be able, and that none of us may cross from there to us. You see, destiny is fixed when life ends. I speak to anyone who may be here today without Jesus Christ. Beware unsaved person, because should you die, your eternal destiny is fixed beyond all hope at that point. In this passage we see that hell is a place of fire, torment, of consciousness.
It is a place of separation, a place of regret. Abraham said, Son, remember? Ah yes, those in hell remember. Hell is a place of hopelessness. The greatest poem of the Middle Ages was written in the 14th century by Dante. It was later designated by the title The Divine Comedy. In canto three of the first division of his poem entitled Inferno, Dante and his guide the poet Virgil passed through the door of hell into the inferno.
Above the lintel of the door was this statement, Through me the way is to the city of woe. Through me the way into the eternal pain. Through me the way among the lost below. Righteousness did my Maker on high constrain. Me did divine authority uproar. Me supreme wisdom and primal love sustain. Before I was, no things created were, save the eternal, and I eternal abide. To relinquish all hope, ye who enter here. You see that hell is a hopeless place.
If you are without Jesus Christ today, may I urge you to trust him as your Savior while you have life and breath? Ah, says the scoffer, where is hell anyway? I've never seen it. In answer to the question where is hell, there is a very simple answer. It is at the end of a godless life. That's where hell is. Some time ago there was a man who brought forward his most strong argument against the Bible.
He declared, I am seventy years of age and have never seen such a place as hell after all that's been said about it. His little seven year old grandson, who was listening to him all the while, spoke up and said, but grandpa, have you ever been dead yet? Have you ever been dead yet? I don't believe in hell, says someone. But tell me, what difference does that make? Does that change anything that you don't believe in it?
You may say that you don't believe an airplane will fly either, but that doesn't keep them off the ground. They still fly. It makes no difference what you and I believe. What makes a difference is what God says, the laws of his universe, his moral laws.
God warns about a hell that is to be shunned and can be escaped through faith in Jesus Christ, a hell that is real and is the eternal place of torment, not only for the devil and his angels for whom it was first prepared, but for all those who choose to reject Jesus Christ and the truth they have. A story is told about some soldiers on a troop ship in World War II who cried around their chaplain, and they said, Chaplain, do you believe in hell? He said, I certainly do not.
They said, well then, would you please resign? For if there is no hell, we don't need you, and if there isn't hell, we don't want to be misled. My friend, beware lest your time run out and you be lost. M.F. Rich was an atheist. On his deathbed, having defied God all of his life, he made this significant statement before he passed into eternity, I would rather lie on a stove and boil for a million years than go into eternity with the eternal horrors that hang over my soul.
I have given my immortality for gold, and its weight sinks me into an endless, hopeless, helpless hell. But someone objects, do you really think that God would send a person to hell? Let me ask you a question, do you really think that God would send his only beloved son to die upon the cruel cross of Calvary for sin, and then say to the unrepentant sinner, well, it doesn't really make any difference, come on into heaven? Do you really think God would do that? To do so would be to betray his son.
It would make his cross meaningless. My friend, God will never make that compromise. God is a holy God. And time is precious because destiny is fixed when it stops, and we do not know when it will stop. May I suggest, firstly and finally, that time is precious because reward is determined in its usage. Turn over to 2 Corinthians chapter 5.
Look with me at verse 9 where it says, Therefore also we have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, in other words, whether we are at home with the Lord or absent from the Lord, to be pleasing to him. That's our ambition, that's our aim. Then he says in verse 10, For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body. I speak now to believers in Jesus Christ.
My friend, time is precious to you and me because reward is determined in the way that we use life. You see, life means to us the privilege of knowing and serving Jesus Christ as a steward, and as stewards or servants we are accountable to him. But please understand I am not talking here about salvation that is given by grace, but I am talking about rewards which are earned by faithfulness as stewards. You say, well, gaining rewards is a terrible motive. No, my friend, it's not.
As a matter of fact, it's God's idea in the first place to give rewards. So let's not say that's a terrible motive. You see, the reason that we desire to gain reward is so that when we appear before Jesus Christ and receive from him our reward, we may then lay it at his feet in worship and thanks. Furthermore, our service here as stewards will determine our future level of responsibility in his coming kingdom.
That's why time is precious, the time in the body, in this life as he puts it in this verse. William James said the greatest use of life is to spend it on something that outlasts it. Is that the way you're spending your life? Will what you're doing make any difference a hundred years from now? Stewardships vary, my friend. We have differing responsibilities. God's will for each of us is not the same.
Remember when we stand before the judgment seat of Christ, we will not be examined and compared to each other, but only examined and judged on what we individually have done in light of what God's will for us individually was. Time is precious because my reward in heaven is determined by the way that I use it. The clock of life is round but once and no one has the power to say just when the hands will stop, at late or early hour. Now is the only time we own to do his precious will.
Do not wait until tomorrow, for the clock may then be still. Each moment that we live is a meeting place of two eternities. What are you doing now that's going to affect the eternity that's to come? Let's bow together with our heads bowed and our eyes closed. My friend, what decision, what commitment will you make this morning so that you will stop wasting the most precious thing in the world? Will you today trust Jesus Christ as your Savior?
Will you today determine your destiny by placing your faith in him, be secured in him so that you don't have to think about the possibility of hell? My friend, hell is what we deserve, but God in his grace offers you different. He offers you life in heaven and forgiveness. Will you trust Jesus Christ who died for you and rose again for you? Will you receive him into your heart and life as your Savior today? My Christian friend, what about you? Will you stop wasting the opportunities that come?
What about the example you are living? Will you begin to change today? Are you using your life wisely so that when you stand before the Savior you will hear the word, well done, good and faithful servant? Father, I pray that wherever this message today finds us, that we may each one be able to respond in complete obedience. If there be a friend here today who does not know the Lord Jesus and who is headed surely for hell, oh God, stop that person today in his tracks.
May turn around and flee to the cross and come to Jesus for salvation. May every child of yours, Father, be living in that place of faithfulness and obedience, making the most of the opportunities, setting the right example, earning a faithful steward's reward. And I pray this in Jesus' name, amen.