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TIME’S GOD’S GIFT, a stewardship sermon based on Ecclesiastes 3:1-14, prepared by Pastor David Russow, ELS Stewardship Emphasis 2007, “A Time for Every Season Under Heaven”

In the name of the God of Time, our God, brothers and sisters:

Some of us are young, some are old.  Some of us are tall, some are short.  Some of us have a lot of money, some of us don’t and some of us think we don’t.  Some of us own one vehicle, some two, some three, some more; some are cars, some are trucks, some are SUVs or ATVs, some go on water, some on snow.  Some of us don’t own a home, some of us rent from a landlord, some of us are landlords, some of us are paying mortgages and sort of own our own homes, some of us own more than one, here or somewhere else, or even on wheels.  Some of us are good at planning and engineering, some of us aren’t.  Some of us are good at sports, some of us just watch sports, and some of us could care less about sports.  Some of us are married, some are single, some are parents, some are grandparents.  We are so different from each other, so gifted differently from each other.

Yet, there is one thing we all have the same.  We all have the same amount of time every day while we are on this earth.  The length of time on this earth may vary, but each day we are given the same amount of time; 24 hours, 1,440 minutes, 86,400 seconds, every day the same.  And every day that day’s worth of time is a gift of God.  Over the years we’ve heard many times how our time and talents and use of God’s temple are to be used in good stewardship, good management for good purposes: to do God’s will, to give glory and thanks to God, to share the Gospel, and to serve our neighbor.  Time is to be used the same.

Today God’s Word will talk to our hearts about time, God’s gift.  Today, the inspired Word from the wisest man who ever lived, Solomon, counsels us that Time, God’s gift holds 1) seasons on loan to us; 2) is ours to experience the good and wonderful and endure the not so good and not so wonderful; and 3) is to be used to build what will endure.

Time’s God’s Gift – Seasons on Loan to Us

If time were like money, then we’d all be rich.  Let’s say a second equaled $1.  That means that each of us is given $86,400 a day, every day.  But we have to spend that money.  We can’t save it.  We can’t invest some of it for future amounts of time.  We can’t take care of some of the past debts of time with it.  We can only spend it, today, here and now.  Because at the end of the day it’s all gone, all 86,000 .  Time then takes good stewardship, good management.  Like everything God gives us it can’t be wasted.

We might all agree that time has become our most precious commodity, or possession, now-a-days.  Society, and perhaps we with it, has even come to a place in its fast paced living, that we are more ready to part with money, than we are with our time, to pay more if it saves time.  People have become very protective of their time.  You might even hear someone forcefully say: “Here, take my money.  But leave my time alone – that’s mine to spend, and how I spend it is my business.”

Such a dialogue, Christian, may represent well what’s wrong with how people use time:  “…MY time…MINE to spend…how I spend it is MY business…”  “My” and “Mine” are two most successful thieves who rob us of proper stewardship in any category.  When will we learn it’s not our homes, our spouses, our children – nothing?  They all belong to God.  The only reason we can attach the words “my” and “mine” to anything is because God gives them to us on loan.  David, Solomon’s father, wrote in Psalm 24, “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world and all who live in it…”  That includes the gift of time, established when God gave the two great lights, the sun to govern by day and the moon by night, and the evening and the morning were the first day and every day since.  Solomon reminds us, when his time was almost up on this earth, that “There is a time for everything and a season for every activity UNDER HEAVEN…”  “Under heaven” is key.  Time and seasons are God’s and on loan to us.

One of the reasons the ELS Stewardship Board chose to spend the time talking about Christian Stewardship of time was because so many of us are spending our time feeling guilty about how we are spending our time.  We’re driving ourselves crazy with our use of time.  We say we never have enough of it.  And then we feel guilty rushing here and there trying to do so much and so everything well and ending up doing nothing and nothing well.  And then we feel guilty – we should have been there or should have done that; guilt!  Let me use a story about Charles Darwin (Darwin shouldn’t be used for anything but a bad example).  It seems Darwin was on one of his island excursions and ran across a rare beetle, he grabbed it for his collection.  As soon as he did, he spotted another rare beetle, he grabbed that too.  Then, with both hands full, a third and more rare beetle was right in front of him.  He didn’t know what else to do so Darwin stuck one of the beetles in his hand into his mouth and grabbed that third rare beetle.  But the mouth-imprisoned beetle squirted acid down Darwin’s throat so that in a fit of coughing he lost all three beetles.  That’s what we do to ourselves with our time.  Trying to do too much and losing it all.

Do you know why?  Because we forget TIME belongs to God and the seasons of time we call ours are only ours on loan.  When we forget that, we will end up hustling here and there and after this and that and signing our kids up for everything under the sun as if God will not give us enough time to experience everything we need to experience, do everything we need to do while we are on earth.  Every sin in some way or another is a form of unbelief.  WE SINFULLY WON’T BELIEVE GOD WILL GIVE US ENOUGH TIME TO GET AND DO WHAT WE THINK WE NEED TO GET AND DO.  And if we don’t believe we have enough time we will drive ourselves silly trying to fit everything in.  In the we end up losing all our beetles: our children to growing up without us as we seek to get them everything we think we think they need and we think we need in time, and worse yet, not taking time for Jesus.  Our marriages get lost to friction and the awful thought of divorce. Our health gets lost to running after filling every second.  And God stops us and says, “There is a time for every season under heaven…”  Do you understand this sin?  Let me state it again: it’s not believing God will give us the gift of time for everything we need to do in life.  So we take matters into our own hands and jam and jam in some more – “if we won’t do it right now it will never happen.”  So what if it doesn’t happen!  So what if our kids aren’t stars in every basketball, hockey, football and baseball league?  So what if we drive a late model car.  So what if we don’t live in a Better Homes and Garden home?  Try for a third beetle instead of coming back for it tomorrow, and you’ll lose the two you had.

Oh that’s such a hard lesson for us to learn!  But Solomon makes it easier, he says “(God_ has made everything beautiful in its time,” (v. 11).  Franz Delitsch, a Lutheran Theologian, in a commentary  dated 1877, hit the nail on the head saying, “God has made all things beautifully (including time)...The beauty consists in this, that what is done iis not done sooner or later than it ought to be...in His world plan, all things beautiful, falls out at the appointed time...” There is enough time for everything that need to be.  Stop and recognize once again, time and seasons are God’s, His, on loan.  He will give enough time for all we need.  If we don’t have time for it we don’t need it.  And if we need it there’ll be time for it down the road.  God will see to it, because time’s his on loan.

Time’s God’s Gift – To Experience and Endure

As God loans us time to use, some of the experiences we will enjoy, some we’d just as soon not go through.  Look at the contrasts Solomon mentions, some times we just love, other we loathe.  All of us loves times of birth, but oh how hard to go through a time of death.  Springtime’s planting is enjoyable in the sun, the dreary days of ripping out the dead stocks are not so enjoyable.  Healing we’d choose over killing, building up over tearing down.  Does any of us love to weep and mourn, or do we long to laugh and dance?  Some us of have had to go through and live through war, first hand, as well as from homeland, and it’s terrible, we’d rather enjoy times of peace.  And how our hearts long to love not hate, to be loved, not hated.  We experience and the good times go fast.  We endure and the bad times seem to linger.  But one thing is absolutely sure in all of these times of “want to” experience or “have to” endure.  Jesus our Lord promises, “Surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.”

With Jesus all of our enjoyable experiences are sanctified.  St. Paul wrote to Timothy, “For everything God created is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer,” 1 Timothy 4:4-5.  How wonderfully God blesses us and how much more wonderful it is when we experience the joys of our times with Jesus!  And the hard time God allows, thes times we endure because we have to, we endure only because Jesus is with us too.  Then, He carries us as we carry our crosses. Then  He comforts us.  His strength is ours in our weekness.   Isaiah 48:10 states, “I have tested the furnace of affliction…”  The furnaces of those difficult times get hot but we are not burned, we endure.  We have Jesus with us just like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, those three men in the fiery furnace, had their fourth with them, so do we.  As David said, whether enjoyable experiences or hard, “My times are in your hands…deliver me (Lord)…” Psalm 31:15.  And the Lord hears and delivers.

BUT, do notice in this whole lineup of contrasts, the Lord never mentions that He allows a time to sin.  In our sinful weakness, we give ourselves such times.  In a way we expect our young people to slip away for a while after they’ve confirmed their faith maybe to come back when it’s time to get married.  God isn’t a realist like we allow ourselves, He’s a perfectionist expecting the same.  We even allow ourselves after a stressful or pressured time the license to “Raise a little hell,” now and then, spend on a spree because we “need it/deserve it,” over drink, over eat, be lazy, because - well, you know.  God doesn’t want all that.  It’s just because rebel thoughts like that that God created hell as a place of punishment (certainly not for a good time!).

A radio report told of a middle school in Oregon where the girls discovered lipstick.  Not that putting lipstick on is necessarily wrong, but the girls in this middle school would put it on in the restroom and then before leaving they’d all kiss the mirror.  They realized that it caused the janitor all kinds of problems cleaning the mirror but they did it time and again.  Finally, the principal got the girls together in the restroom with the janitor and lectured them not to kiss the mirror and told that it caused so much extra work for the janitor.  They all snickered and said what the principal wanted, “Sure, we’ll stop…”.  But then the principal said, “Now the janitor will clean the mirror and you will not kiss it.”  More snickering until they all watched the janitor take a toilet brush stick it in the toilet and begin cleaning the mirror with the brush.  There wasn’t a kiss mark again.  How filthy it is when we allow ourselves times of sin.

But do note for all the times we have allowed ourselves sin, our Father in heaven refused to accept it when He refused to accept His Son, when He was covered Him with our sin on the cross.  During those six eternal hours, those eternally damning 360 minutes, the Father had no time for His son.  In the darkness of those leadened skies, Jesus cried with the everlasting pains of our hell, “Why have you forsaken me?” and won for us our forgiveness for our sins.  No longer is a time to sin a “given” because Jesus gave us victory over sin.

To Build What Will Endure

One last thing about God’s gift of time.  Solomon writes in the last verse, “I know that everything God does will endure forever…”  What God builds lasts.  What we build or collect or call ours, our houses, our vehicles, our money, our reputations – anything man-made will be thrown into the eternal incinerator on the last day when Jesus returns. The Bible says that this world fractured with our sin and all it contains will “melt in a fervent heat...”  The only things that won’t are people.  And people connected with the promises of the Gospel, with the Lord Jesus will then live in timeless joy in heaven.

So Christian, priorities, with our time.  There are a lot of things our God will put up with, but one thing is NOT second place.  “Seek first the kingdom…”  What does it matter if we have the greatest reputation known the world around and our name and face appear on the cover of TIME magazine, if our name is not written in the Book of Life on the Day that will endure forever?  What God builds with the Gospel of His Son, through Word and Sacrament, a first priority in our lives will last forever.  Jesus’ resurrection from the dead three days after those three hours gained us an eternity of life - to know that, grow in that, glow with that, go with that is the best use of our time till that day when we’ll need no watches!

We all have the same amount of time every day we are on this earth.  And because we have the same Lord, the same faith, the same Baptism, the same God and Father of us all we are called to recognize that our time is God’s gift to us, seasons on loan, to experience and endure with Jesus, and to build what God builds for an eternity.  As you agree with this, then in your hearts say, “Amen”.  Amen.