Healing Rays of Righteousness

This weekend we will perform the annual Autumn ritual of turning our clocks back one hour.  When “Daylight Savings Time” went into effect in 1967, a lot of people refused to change the time on their clocks, saying that the government had no business messing with God’s time.  Whether or not you agree with that sentiment, it is correct to link time with God.

God Created Time                                                                                                                                                    The first chapter of Genesis tells us that God created a framework of days and seasons into which he placed his created works. Then he created man and placed him in time as a subject of time to live in time, caring for and enjoying all of God’s creations.

Soon thereafter, Satan entered time, tempted mankind to disobey God and sin entered time.  God immediately began working within time to mold and shape for himself a people who would experience his intended purposes of time.

The Old Testament closes with time narrowly focused on the family of David and the promise of a redeemer coming in that lineage who would perfectly accomplish God’s work of reconciling and restoring mankind’s relationship with himself.

God Prepared Time For His Son                                                                                                                        Between the testaments God was silent but not inactive.  The Greek people came to prominence and took over that part of the world known today as the Holy Land.  They developed a language that by the time Jesus Christ was born was as close to a universal language as mankind had known since the early times of Genesis.

Then the Romans came to power and they developed a road system that enabled the Apostle Paul to travel over the world sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ and planting churches wherever he went.  God was actively working in time, molding time, shaping time for his Son’s redeeming work.   

“But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.” (Galatians 4:4-5).

And this Son, Jesus, “went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.  ‘The time has come,’ he said.  ‘The kingdom of God has come near.  Repent and believe the good news!’” (Mark 1:15).

During his time on earth, Jesus ministered to many people – healing without medicine, teaching by the wayside, saying repeatedly to his followers, “My time has not yet come.”  The authorities would attack him severely, and he would say to his disciples, “Don’t worry, my time has not yet come.  They can’t take me until my time comes.” 

When his time did come, he prays, “Father, the time has come.  Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.”  In that set time, his enemies nailed him to a cross, stretched out in time above the darkened earth, so that his redeeming purpose of providing redemption for all mankind might be accomplished.

And so, all of us, should focus backwards to a very narrow frame of time on a small hill called Golgotha where a man named Jesus, the Son of God, fulfills his time and accomplishes his work in making salvation time available for all of us.

What Are We Doing With Time?                                                                                                                 God created time and gives it to us as a gift.  What we do with that gift greatly and directly shapes our eternal destiny of DAY or NIGHT.  The Scriptures urgently invite us to seriously consider how we our living in God’s time:  “I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.” (2 Corinthians 6:2).

The Greeks had two slogans posted over the temple at Delphi.  One is very familiar to us.  It said, “Know Thyself.”  The other is much more significant for us, living as we do in a narcissistic culture.  It said, “Know Thy Moment.”  It is also more biblical.

Jesus chided the Pharisees for their blindness to the “signs of the times.” (Matthew 16:1-3).  Jesus wept over Jerusalem “because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”  (Luke 19:41-44).  To know what time it is and to be appropriately obedient to God within the context of that knowledge assures us a future in God’s Kingdom of eternal love.

God Will Someday End Time                                                                                                                       God who created time and worked in time and sent his Son in the fullness of time is going to someday say, “Time’s up, that’s it, there is no more time.”

We can throw away our watches, datebooks, calendars, and time-clocks.  There won’t be any such thing as time in heaven.  We won’t need to worry about being on time, saving time, keeping time, changing time, or wasting time.  What follows is our timely prior choice of eternal destiny as DAY or NIGHT.

“Healing Rays of Righteousness” – October 31, 2018