Does Anyone Really Know What Time It Is?

* Some points in this sermon have been gleamed from a message by Andy Stanley*

OPEN: - start by collecting special offering - $1 dollar from every person. Have ushers collect it and bring the money up to the pulpit.(Don’t reveal the purpose of the money)

OK so the way we are going to start this morning is I want us all to take off our watches and put them in a place where you can’t see it. And if you think that is scary, I’m going to do the same thing. Watches, cell phones, anything that tells you what time it is. Now my guess is that some place during the message you are probably going to try to check what time it is. – and my point in taking that ability away from you is underlining a basic concept we all need to get a hold of this morning:

There is something more important than knowing what time it is – What’s more important is knowing how you are spending your time. Many times during the day we all check to see what time it is. But very seldom to we actually check to see how we are spending our time. When we check our watches it is the same time for all of us. – but the real issue for all us is not what time it is but; “How are we spending the time that we have?” When we started this series we said that all of issues in our life when we’ve done really stupid things. We’ve all made really bad decisions, we’ve all made really bad choices, we all have moments in our lives which we wish we could redo. Instead of being wise, we’ve been foolish. So we’ve been exploring what it means to walk in wisdom. I don’t think there is any other arena where this is more important than the area of our time. Time is our life. Someone has said, “Time is money.” You can run out of money and life goes on. You can run out of earth stuff, and life goes on. But you can’t run out of time and have life left – when you run of time – that’s it. Our time is our life. If you haven’t said it yet, I guarantee that you will – you will come to a point in your life and you look back and you will say, “What did I do with all that time?” It seems like it always comes as a surprise to us that we didn’t use our time wisely, doesn’t it? There comes these moments when we look back and we say – how could I have been so frivolous? How could I have been so foolish to waste my times like that? What in the world was I thinking? I should have done something with that time! Where did my 20’s go? What happened to my 30’s – Where did my 40’s go? What happened to all that time? And that’s when we discover that the most important question is not what time is it? – but what am I doing with my time?

Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. Using time wisely - he’s talking about opportunity here, by the way, because the word he uses here is not kronis. - The NIV picks up on that. There are two different words for time in Greek. Kronis is a Greek word that means time like a clock, time like a calendar, time like a sequence of minutes and hours. Kronis is the word from which we get chronology, the flow of events in history or chronograph, something that keeps time. But the word here is kairos and it means eras or epics or opportunities. We are to redeem the opportunities, the moments that can be grasped for God and for good and for glory for Him.

This slide is a picture of a statue the Greeks had. The Greeks had a god for everything and the name of this one is opportunity – kairos. In one of the ancient Greek cities this statue stood in the very center of the city. It was carved and chiseled by a man named Lysipus. It had wings on its feet and it had a great lock of hair in the front and it was bald in the back, from the middle back completely bald. And underneath the statue was a great base and carved in Greek on the base was this dialogue: Who made thee? Lysipus made me. What is thy name? My name is Opportunity. Why hast thou wings on thy feet? That I may fly away swiftly. Why hast thou a forelock? That men may seize me when I come. Why art thou bald in back? When I am gone by none can lay hold of me. Opportunity. The believer who walks in wisdom knows to make the most of opportunity. Notice when Lysipus created this statue – he had him holding a set of scales. Why do you think he choose to do that? Because he realized that people who handled opportunities (time) foolishly lived an unbalanced life.