Campbell Chapel. Bob Bradley, Pastor

Transcription

1 Campbell Chapel Bob Bradley, Pastor

2 Redeeming the Time Sunday, April 22, 2012 Bob Bradley Ephesians 5 15 See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, 16 Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. I do want to talk about tonight, the Lord being our helper, I think some things that we have not learned, some things that we need to work on, and some things we need to be doing now. As I was sitting thinking this morning, as people were singing and testifying; the thought came to me It is Time and I m not going to add the rest of it to that because we will talk about the rest of what was on my mind then a little bit later. However, as I thought about time today, time is something that is very valuable to you and me. It is probably the most valuable thing we have, as far as, things on this earth is time. We know the Word of God is valuable. I m not saying anything is more valuable than that. However, for us to live and sustain for the years and so forth here on planet earth; time is something that is very valuable to you and me. It matters how we use our time. It matters very drastically. Also, it varies drastically how that we use our time. Sometimes we think that it is very valuable. Sometimes we think it is something that we care a lot about. There are times that we really use our time wisely. There are also times that we don t really give much thought to time. That is what I want to talk about tonight; some things that we need to work on now. While we have time and while we have opportunity there are things in every one of our lives here and everybody that is listening to me tonight; there are things that you need to work on now because you may not have time tomorrow to work on some of these things. Time, the Bible tells us, is swiftly passing by. Life, the Bible says, is as a vapor that appeareth for a short time and then it vanishes away. You young people need to get that. You young people need to get a grip on that because life is quickly passing by. Quickly, life is passing by. Time is quickly passing by. Paul says this to the church at Ephesus. Ephesians 5 15 See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, 16 Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. That is what I want to talk about tonight, the Lord being our helper, just for a few moments. Redeeming the Time

3 Our life here on planet earth is compared to a walk many times in scriptures. Our life is compared to a man or someone that is walking along here on planet earth. In life things happen and we look at things differently. We think about things differently. Some days we get up, some of us get up of the morning and we plan our day out. We know what we are going to do. We know what we need to do. Then other days and other times, other people get up I m just going to wing it today. Whatever happens-- happens. We are just going to let it happen. Listen. We don t need to take that course in our life. Paul here is teaching us that. Paul is telling us something here that we need to look at. 15 See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, He has been talking about many different things in this chapter. I want you to think about something. Circumspectly comes from two Latin words which mean to look around. When Paul says, you need to walk circumspectly; he talking to Christian people. He is talking to people that should be, their path of life; they need to be looking around to see what is going on. Not only that, but when you look at the Greek word, it brings out the idea of being precise. It brings out the idea of being accurate, or accuracy. It brings out the idea of being exact. Do you know what that means? That means that we need to have a plan in life. That means that when we get up every morning, every day; we need to look around and walk as we ought to walk. We need to walk as God would expect us to walk. If we will do that our lives would be different. He has been talking about people sleeping, and people just going through life being asleep. I think sometimes in life, you and I get up every day and we are just sleepwalking. We go through life every day and don t think about what is going on. We don t look around. Our walk is not exact. Our walk is not accurate. Our walk is not precise. We are just going along in life. When you look at some things, it brings out the idea of an individual that is going to take a trip on a boat. A captain that has some wisdom about him is going to plot a course. Also, he is going to set sail toward the course he has plotted. Do you know why? It is because he knows that he needs to get there. Do you know what a fool will do? A fool will get up and say Let s get in the boat and let s see where the wind is going to take us to. As Christian people, we don t need to live like that. We need to have direction in our life. We need to have a walk in our life that is precise, that is exact. It is a walk that we know where we are going. If you don t know that tonight, you are not walking circumspectly. Amen! Have you ever walked in your sleep? My brother used to walk in his sleep. Seriously! He would get up of the night and walk around in his sleep. He would play baseball in his sleep. I can remember times in the middle of the night, he would scream to the top of his lungs. I can remember dad running upstairs one night and grabbing hold of him and said, What s wrong with you? He answered, The rats are getting me! The rats are getting me! He used to play ball. One night he walked down stairs. We used

4 to have a big pot belly stove in the winter time. He walked down stairs and some way or another he had walked into the stove. He woke up that night real quick. You and I are just like that sometimes. We are just walking along. We are asleep while we are walking along. There is no direction in our life. As I was reading today, I thought that if we are going to build a house that is going to be something that we can live in, a house that we can be proud of; we are going to get some plans together. We are going to have some idea of what we are going to build, how big it is going to be, how many rooms it is going have, and how many bathrooms are there. Do you know what we don t do? We don t just go to Lowes and get a load of lumber and come back and start nailing it all together. I m afraid sometimes, in our Christian lives, that is what our lives look like. We have not taken any forethought. We went and got a load of lumber and started nailing it all together. Our lives are a mess. It is a wreck. It will never stand that storms that are coming. We are building things that look as though kids have been playing. Our lives are sometimes the same way. When people look at our lives, it looks like we are just the kids, playing. Someone is walking in their sleep. Someone doesn t have any direction or purpose, aim or goal at all. They are just waking up every day and saying, It will be what it will be. Don t take that trip folks. If you take that trip you are going to get in way over your head. 15 See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, As I said earlier, a fool will not take any thought what he is doing or what is going to happen. If you and I, as Christian people, if we will walk circumspectly, if we will look around and see what is going on around us do you know what we will do? We will be able to see some danger that is out there. Do you know what the fool will do? He won t look around. He won t pay any attention. He won t look ahead. He won t make any plans whatsoever. He just jumps on the boat. He just starts building the house. He just takes off every morning, every day and does not consider what could happen that day. Do you know what happens to him? His life becomes a wreck. His life becomes a mess. There is one problem after the other. One problem comes right after the other. Do you know why? He is not walking the way that he should walk. If you and I are going to be pleasing to God, there is a way that we must walk. 15 See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, Look around where you are going. Look around and walk precisely. Walk exactly. Walk accurately. Walk with some integrity. That is what circumspectly means. This is what I want to talk about tonight just for a few moments. 16 Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.

5 I cannot redeem the time. What that actually means is "buying time." I cannot buy time and you cannot either. You cannot go to a store and buy time. You can go to the store and buy socks, bologna, meat, bread or a lot of different things; but you cannot buy time with money. Amen! Paul must have had something else on his mind here when he said that. He did have something else on his mind when he said that. Time is something that is very precious. Time is something here that we need to use. Time is something that we just don t need to burn. Time is something that we don t need to slip through our hands. Time is something that we need use for the glory of Almighty God. Time is something that we are not always going to have. Time is something that you and I are not always going to have. We are not always going to have time. There is coming a time that time is going to stop for you and me here on planet earth. 16 Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. The word redeem is a good word. It means or brings out the idea literally of buying up opportunities, using the opportunities that time gives us. We either have time or we don t have time. Okay! We are either have time or we are dead. We have time or we don t have time. There is no middle ground here. Either I have time to do some of these things or I don t have time. In this time that I have I might make choices not to do some of these things but today I have time to do a lot of things. Tomorrow I may be dead. Tomorrow I may be in the grave and if that is the case then I won t have time tomorrow, but we have time today. If you are alive and you are listening to me tonight, you have time now/today. Redeeming the time means to take advantage of, or to take advantage of the time and opportunity that we have now. I m not talking about tomorrow, next week, or next month; but to take advantage of the time that we have right this very day. Time may escape us tomorrow. Death may come and take time away from us tonight. Is everybody with me here? Do you know where we are going here? Time is something that is very valuable. The Greek word and Latin words here speaks about buying up opportunities. Buying, using or taking advantage of the opportunities that we have now and taking advantage of the time that we have now. The word opportunity means toward the port. It brings out the idea of going towards a certain place or port. It suggests a ship taking advantage of the wind and of the current that he has to be able to sail towards the port that he wants to go towards. Think about that just for minute and that will make sense to you. If you were a captain of a ship and were sailing somewhere and you have the weather report and the weather report revealed that the winds were going to be favorable for you to sail towards where you wanted to sail toward; you were going to have tailwinds behind you that was going to push you and also the tide was going to be just

6 right then the wise captain would take advantage of that opportunity. He would take advantage of that opportunity to get everybody on the ship, to set sail towards the port that he was looking forward to. Do you know why? He knew the opportunity to sail towards that port was not always going to be that way. The winds may not be favorable. The tides may not be right. It brings out the idea of taking advantage of the opportunity to sail towards the port that he needs to go. You and I have opportunities today that we need to take advantage of. There are some things that we need to take advantage of today because things may be contrary tomorrow. The winds may not be blowing the right direction tomorrow. The tides may be down tomorrow. There are some things that we can accomplish today that we may not be able to accomplish tomorrow. Opportunity is taking advantage of the situations that we have and the time that we have now. The wind is blowing the right direction. The tide is the right direction. The current is the right direction. Everything is working to our advantage and we need to do some things now. We have time now. We have opportunity now. The wind is not always going to blow that direction. The tide is not always going to be flowing in that direction. Amen! Things change. There are opportunities that we have today that we need to work on today. I wrote down a bunch of them today as I thought and rolled around in my mind. I even wrote down some of them here tonight of things that the time we have today, we need to be working on. Do you know what the first one is for some of us? The first thing that we need to be working on for some of us is that we need to be born again. We have time today to be born again. We have opportunity today to be born again. Jesus Christ has come, suffered, bled and died and we have the opportunity today to receive Him as our Savior today. We have that opportunity today. We may not have that opportunity tomorrow because your time may stop on planet earth tonight. If that happens, you will not have the opportunity tomorrow to be born again. Does everybody have that? You that are unsaved that are listening to me tonight; you need to buy up that opportunity or take advantage of this opportunity to receive Jesus Christ as your Savior tonight. There are some things that we need to take advantage of the opportunity and the time to work on and to fix or to try to fix in some of our lives because the opportunity will not always be there. Amen! The next thing is this. Families need to take advantage of the opportunities they have today to try to work out the differences that they have. I don t know how many times over the last 30 some years that I have been in ministry that we have gone to homes and set down and talked to people where families are having problems. Children, mommies and daddies are not getting along. Brothers and sisters are not getting along. You try to sit down and counsel people and talk to people. You go because they invite you to come. You talk to them. Do you know what happens? Sometimes they take advantage of the opportunity to correct their differences and to make things right with each other. I ve seen people hug one another and ask for forgiveness. I ve seen reconciliation made and that s great. However, it is time that families who are having differences to get them worked out. The differences that you have may not be able to be fixed tomorrow.

7 I ve seen other families at the funeral, or at the hospital; not very long ago. There was an individual laying here about ready to die. Here were family members around. There were brothers that had not spoken to one another for many years. There were family members on the other side that hated one another. Yet here they are standing around their loved one here that is about ready to pass. It was too late to reconcile then. It was too late to say I m sorry. It was too late to say I ve messed up. It was too late to say please forgive me to him because he was already gone. Can God forgive? Sure! God does forgive. What I m saying is this. It is time for families that have differences to get on their faces before Almighty God and say God, help us to settle our differences. Some families don t have any idea why they are mad at the other one. They don t have any idea why they won t speak to one another. They don t have any idea what happened 20 or 30 years ago. They just know they are mad. I was talking to someone the other day. They said they had went to church for 30 years at this certain place and for the last 4 to 6 years they gave us a number of years that they went in there and sat down in the pew and nobody around them says a word to them or speaks to them. No one will shake hands with them. It is time that people like that work out their differences. There is something bad wrong when we sit on the same pews at church and won t speak to one another. It is time we work out those differences now. Tomorrow may be too late. Tomorrow I may be gone. Tomorrow you may be gone. Time is swiftly passing by. It is time that you got your differences settled. Not only that but it is time for Christian people to settle their differences. If you have an ought against your brother; you need to get it fixed today. If you have an issue with somebody, you need to get it fixed today. You might say, Preacher, I would never forgive that person. Listen. If you cannot forgive that person, then you are not going to heaven. You have bigger problems than forgiving them. If you won t forgive then you are not going. That is a hard statement. Isn t it? It s truth! If we will not forgive then we absolutely are not going to heaven. It is time that people who say they are Christian people, people who have been born again; if you have issues with someone else that is born again then it is time to get it fixed up today. I ve seen people get mad over stupid stuff that does not matter. Many times people imagine things. A lot of times they let the enemy take their mind and plant all kinds of garbage in their minds and they suppose all kinds of things. A lot of it is not even true. You go talk to people and say, What s the problem? They say, You saw me somewhere and I waved at you and you did not wave back. They did not tell me they were going 60 mph this way and I was going 60 mph that way and I can only see about this far in front of my face. They could have waved at me they could have been out on the hood waving at me and I wouldn t have seen them. Here is the thing. We choose many times to get angry and upset with people because that makes us feel better. That gives us justification for just being an idiot. It really does. Do you know what? If you are in that category tonight, while you have time; it is time for you to get that problem worked out. You don t have to tell me. I don t need to know anything about it. If it is dealing with me, if I am part of the problem or part of the solution then I need to know it. However, if I am not part of the problem or part

8 of the solution then I don t want to know it. I don t need to know it. It is time you get those problems worked out. It is time that husbands and wives get some issues worked out. If you have a problem, you husbands and wives; it is time you get them worked out now. If you don t get them worked out now; not only may you be dead tomorrow but here is what happens. When husbands and wives have issues and they don t want to talk about them or deal with them they blow up. Sometimes anything that happens in a 25 mile radius of our house, our wives and sometimes our husbands want to blame the other one. We may not have anything to do with it. If it rains outside we get blamed. That is how immature some husbands and wives are. Amen! It is cloudy today! It is your fault. I wanted to sunbathe; it is your fault. I wanted to go fishing; it is your fault it rained. If we have issues like that, we need to get them worked out. When husbands and wives will not work on their issues that they have; they wake up one morning and one is gone this way and the other is gone that way. This one has a boyfriend. This one has a girlfriend. The kids are lost in the middle. If you have problems with your husband or wife let s get them fixed tonight. Get them fixed now before things get to the point that they cannot be fixed. You have time now. You have the opportunity now. Fix it now while you have the opportunity. There is coming a time when families are not going to be able to settle family differences. There is coming a time when husbands and wives are not going to be able to settle their differences. There is coming a time when Christian or say they are Christian that are mad at one another there is coming a time when they are not going to be able to settle those differences. That time is going to be gone. You have opportunity tonight to fix that. You had better work on it while you have time because time is swiftly passing by. It is time for us to work on our lives and live a godly life. It is time for us put away some worldly stuff out of our lives and to live as God wants us to live, to live a righteous, holy, dedicated life to God. It is time that we do that. It is time that we start working on that. It is time to get rid of some of the garbage out of our lives so that we can live a holy, consecrated, dedicated, godly life before the God of heaven. It is time for that. You may not have that time tomorrow. The opportunity that you have today to straighten up some things in your relationship with God may not be available tomorrow. That opportunity and you may be gone. It is time; we have an opportunity to help those who are in need. In our own community people are hungry, people are hurting, and people are lonely. We have an opportunity today to help people. You have an opportunity today, in your own life to be able to make a difference in somebody s life somebody that is lonely, somebody that is destitute, somebody that may need a pair of shoes, somebody that may need a meal, or somebody that needs someone to listen to them talk. You can make a difference in their life. You have an opportunity today to do that. The opportunity for that individual, for that particular opportunity may not be here tomorrow. You have the time today to use that opportunity today to make a change and a difference in somebody s life.

9 I get sick of this. When you ask about helping people, and doing things for people; do you know what the first thing is that they want to say? That is the church s job. That is the preacher s job. It is not. It is your job. It is your responsibility. If you see somebody in need, you don t need to call me. If you have the ability to help someone then let s help them. Let s don t be stingy. Let s don t be a tightwad. Let s don t horde up our money and want the church to do everything when we have the ability to help people. Amen! That gets close to home. Doesn t it? You have heard the old saying, What is mine, is mine and I m going to keep it. What is yours is yours, but if you have that attitude you may not get to keep it. Amen! You may get to keep it but it may not mean one thing to you. Think about that one for a minute. That could happen very easily. If I am lying flat of my back, every car I have doesn t mean a thing to mean. If I can t move my hands, if I have to have somebody to wipe the snot off of my nose, everything I own doesn t mean a thing to me. Amen! That is what I am getting at. That is a different message, but we will move on with that. The hungry, the hurting, the destitute, and the lonely; we have an opportunity today to help these folks. I may not have any money for them. There may not be things I can do for them, but there may be. I promise you something; if we would take advantage of the opportunities when God opens the door for us to help someone God is not going to open the door for us to help someone and to bless if I don t have the ability to help them. God is not going to do that. That would be just wasting time. God doesn t do that. When God opens doors for you, for me, or for us to help people, then God will give us the ability to help people. Can we take every dollar we have and give it away? No. Everyone we see beside the road holding a sign saying I m hungry. Give me food. Are they hungry? No. Some of them have better cars than what you and I have. Some of the live in houses better than you and I live in. Someone told me the other day that they were somewhere and someone was holding up a sign, I m hungry. I need food. They stopped and said, I m not going to give you any money but I ll take you over here and buy you something to eat. They replied, Oh no! I don t want anything to eat. I m not hungry at all. I just want your money. That is not what I m talking about. I m talking about people who have needs. I m talking about people who honestly have needs. I m not talking about people who are going to take my money and go buy drugs with it, or alcohol, or cigarettes. I m not talking about that. I m talking about people who actually have needs. We can make a difference in their life. I thank God that we are making differences in people s lives. Amen! When we can load up thousands of dollars worth of stuff and take it and give it to people who don t have anything, not even a pillow or a blanket to cover up with at night I thank God for the privilege that He has afforded us to be a blessing to people. That is just one opportunity that this church has bought up. An opportunity that we have taken advantage of because that opportunity won t always be there, and when it was there we took advantage of it and God has blessed it tremendously. That is what I m getting at. We have an opportunity today to do that. Not only that but also it is time that we take advantage of the time that we have to read our Bibles. Some of us here there was a time that we were reading our Bibles every day. There was a time

10 whether you were reading along with the Bible reading that we have or whether you have your own personal reading; but there was a time that you were reading your Bible every day. There was a time that you would have never thought about not reading your Bible every day. Do you know what happened? Something else came along that you thought was more important and it stole that opportunity or time that you had there where you no longer do that anymore. It is time that you get back using that time and take advantage of that opportunity to read your Bible. You might say, Preacher, I don t have time. You have time and you have the opportunity every day to read your Bible. It is whether you want to do that or not. Praying is another thing. You used to pray a lot more than you pray now. This church used to pray more than we are praying now. Amen! Amen or Ouch! That s truth! We have opportunities today to do that. We have opportunities today to get alone with God. We need to work on that. We need to take advantage of the opportunities because tomorrow we may not have the opportunity to read our Bible because the government may come along and say, I want you re Bible. If the government came along tomorrow and said you can t pray. If you pray, you will be put in jail. You might say that is not going to happen in America. Don t kid yourself. Not only that but also, tomorrow things may change to the point that we can t read. Tomorrow things may change and come to a place that we cannot pray. You might say Preacher, that doesn t happen. Listen. I ve been in places before that I absolutely could not put two words together. You might say that will never happen. Don t say that because I ve prayed and I ve tried to pray and at times in my life and I wish that I could have died with what was going with the pain and suffering and all that. There are times that you can t pray so you had better take advantage of the opportunity that you have today to pray because tomorrow you may not be able to pray. Amen! That is truth! Also, giving some of us used to be very generous in giving but we have other things we want to do now with our money and with our tithes and offerings. I know we have to raise kids and I know we have to pay bills. I know we have to have homes and cars and pay utilities. I know all of that. I understand that. However, what belongs to God belongs to God. You had better not be stealing it. I ll leave that message right there. I ll say this too while I m there. It s a good thought. I ve heard people say, I can t afford to give to the church. Listen. You can t afford not to give God what belongs to God. Some of us here have an opportunity that is afforded to us, at least 3 or 4 times a week to come to church. We don t take advantage of that. That is something we need to work on. That opportunity that we have today to come to God s house and to come to worship Him every week in and week out may not be here in a week or two. That may change to the point that we cannot be here for all kinds of different reasons. There are people who sat in these pews in the last 13 years who love to be here tonight. However, some of them don t even know where they are at. Things change. We need to come to church every opportunity that we have. The enemy will always tell us that the preacher is going to talk about the same thing. I ve been down there 13 years; he has told me everything he knows 12 times. That is true probably. That does not change the fact that you need to come to church. Amen! It is important! Reading your Bibles is important. Praying is important. Giving is important. We have those opportunities today to do that.

11 Loving people I thought about what Shannon said earlier. We have an opportunity today to love people. God has given us the opportunity to love people. It is an opportunity; it is a privilege to love people. We need to work on that. You might say preacher you don t know what this person did to me. You don t know what he said to me. You don t know what happened. Well I may not and I don t need to know. Here is the thing. There are some very, cruel, mean, vile, and wicked people in this world; there is. I m not going invite them up to play with my children or eat dinner with them at the house. I m not going to be doing that. However, I can look past their sin. I can look past all their vileness and all the sin they may be committing; I can look past that and see that they have a soul down in here, deep down inside that is on its way to a lake a fire. I can love them enough that I can ask God to save them. I know that if God saves them that they won t be crooks anymore. They won t be vile people anymore. They won t be wicked anymore. We have an opportunity to love people; the hurting and those who have different beliefs than we and those who look at things differently than we. I have learned something over the years and this is going to shock some of you. I really don t know it all. I have learned that over the years. I don t know it all. Just because I hold a view on something and someone else holds a view differently that does not mean that I m right and they are wrong. Amen! We can love people. We have an opportunity to love people. That is up to us. Love them unconditionally. Jesus when He died on Calvary; He died for all; for the Hitler s responsible for killing 6 billion or so people, for the Stalin (s) and for the Dahmer (s)and for all the vile, wicked people in this world and also the self-righteous people in the world Jesus died to save them all. When Jesus died there weren t any good people. There were no righteous people. Before God instituted righteousness you couldn t be righteous. Before we believed God we couldn t be righteous. No. Righteousness comes by believing God. We know in the Old Testament a lot of people were righteous because they believed God and we understand that. What I am saying is this. He died for us all. It is time. You know the areas in your own life that you need to work on. You know the areas that you may have planted some new shrubs around. You might have scattered some new mulch around it. You may have put some pretty white rocks around it but you know the areas in your life that you are trying to hide from everybody else that needs work. You know that. I don t need to know that. However, I m telling you folks it is time to work on these things. Time is swiftly and quickly passing by. The opportunities that we have today, and the opportunities that you have today to fix the issues and problems that you need to work on; you have that opportunity today. You may not have that opportunity tomorrow.