We read in Ephesians 5:15-17, 15 Be very careful, then, how you live, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.
The year 2019 is before us but will we use our time any differently in 2019 than we did in 2018? I did some calculating recently and discovered that I have already lived over 25,550 days upon this earth. That amounts to 613,200 hours. Time is passing all the time, and either we will be rewarded for our diligent and wise use of time or we will displease our Lord for the way we have squandered it. The great question we must ask is, “Am I using my time in a way which is pleasing to the Lord?” Ultimately, that is all that will matter. I am very aware that I have already lived 70 years, and I don’t know how many more years I have before I must stand before the Lord. Tomorrow is not guaranteed to any of us. The great issue that all of us face is whether we will use our minutes and hours and days to glorify God or whether we will shamefully squander this precious gift of God.
Nearly 300 years ago, Jonathan Edwards preached a magnificent sermon entitled, “The Preciousness of Time.” Edwards stated that something is precious depending on the importance of it or the degree in which it concerns our welfare. Gold and silver are considered precious to us, but they are of no real use to anyone except by enabling us to avoid some evil or obtain some good. The greater the evil or the good, the more precious is the thing which can remove the evil or gain the good. Time is precious, because by it we have the opportunity of escaping everlasting misery and of obtaining everlasting blessedness and glory.
The scarcity of anything causes people to set a higher value upon it, especially if it is necessary and they can’t do without it. It’s the old principle of Supply and Demand. If there is a great demand, and a limited supply, prices go up. James 4:14 says, “Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.” Time is but a blip compared to eternity.
We know time is short, but we don’t know how short. We don’t know how little of it remains, whether several years, or a year, or only a month, or week, or day. Every day we are unsure whether it will be our last, or whether we will even live the whole day. If a man were to go on a journey through the desert on a camel and only had a certain amount of water that he could take on the trip, and he didn’t know how many long it would take for him to cross the desert, how precious would every drop of that water become because he doesn’t know whether the water will last until he finds more water. Even so, how much more should we value our time, since we don’t know how much of it we have left.
Jesus told a parable of a wealthy nobleman who went to a distant country to receive a kingdom for himself and then return. He called 10 of his servants to himself, and gave them each about $20,000 (today’s money) to do business with until he returned. Some of his servants were diligent and used the money to advance the interests of the nobleman. However one servant did nothing with the money except put it in a handkerchief for safe keeping. That parable is about us. We are the servants, and Jesus is the nobleman who went on the journey back to heaven, and will one day return again. While He is away he wants us to diligently use what He has given us to advance His interests. One of the most important things He has given us, is our time! Notice that in the parable, when the nobleman returned, he ordered that the servants be called to him so that he might know what business they had done. They were called to account.
Time is our greatest asset. You can’t buy one second of time. 2019 is a new year with many possibilities to serve the Lord. So let us use our time wisely to advance the kingdom of God.