Preached December 8, 1991, evening service First Baptist Church, Garrett, Indiana
Have you ever thought about the meaning of time? Philosophers refer to chronological time. That is time as measured by the ticking of a clock. It is calendar time. It is time as measured by the earth rotating on its axis, time as measured by the earth's journey around the sun. But what if the earth were destroyed. What if the sun was no more. Would time cease to exist?
Philosophers also talk about subjective time. To a child waiting for Christmas, time moves so slowly. To his parents, Christmas may come all too quickly. To his grandparents, Christmas, 1949, may seem like just yesterday. Subjective time is relative.
As one scientist put it, if you sit on a hot stove, a minute seems like an hour. If a pretty girl sits on your lap, an hour seems like a minute.
Chronological time--subjective time. The Bible introduces another kind of time which it refers to as "Kairos"--God's time.
St. Thomas Aquinas tried to explain God's time like this: In the beginning when God first created heaven & earth, God also created time. Because God created time, he stands outside of time. He is timeless. He is eternal. Artists sometimes portray God as an old man. How false that portrait is. God is ageless. God has no clock to which he must conform. There is no yesterday or tomorrow in eternity. There is only now. Because God stands outside of time according to Aquinas, He can see all of time at one glance. The past is there before Him--"I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob..." But also the future. We ask, Can God know the future? Aquinas would answer, "Most certainly. The future stands before God in exactly the same way as does the past."
That is more than most of us can comprehend. And yet it is important for us to see that the celebration of Christmas --indeed, the celebration of the entire Christ even--is the celebration of Kairos--God's time. When John the Baptist proclaimed out in the wilderness that the Kingdom of God is at hand, he was saying something about the timelessness of God. Let's consider the meaning of time for a few minutes this morning.
Let's begin with this simple assertion. Time is important to us. I believe all of us would give assent to this proposition. Time is important.
I heard recently about a man who prided himself on being exceedingly punctual. He followed a very precise routine every morning. His alarm went off at 6:30 a.m. He rose briskly, shaved, showered, ate his breakfast, brushed his teeth, picked up his briefcase, got into his car, drove to a nearby ferry landing, parked his car, rode the ferry across the downtown business area, got off the ferry, walked smartly down the street to his building, marched into the elevator, rode to the 17th floor, hung up his coat, opened his briefcase, spread his papers out on his desk, & sat down in his chair at precisely 8:00 a.m. Not 8:01, not even 7:59. Always at 8:00 a.m. He followed this same routine without variation for 8 years.
Until one morning his alarm did not go off & he slept 15 minutes late. When he did awake, he was panic stricken. He rushed thru his shower, nicked himself when he shaved, gulped down his breakfast, only half-way brushed his teeth, grabbed up his briefcase, jumped into his car, sped to the ferry landing, jumped out of the car & looked for the ferry. There it was out in the water approximately 15 feet from the shore. "I think I can make it," he said to himself running toward the dock at full speed.
Reaching the edge of the water, he gave an enormous leap out into the water & miraculously landed with a loud thud on the deck of the ferry. The captain rushed down to make sure he was all right. "Son, that was a tremendous leap," the captain said, "but if you would have waited just another minute we would have been to the shore."
Yes time is important to us. Scripture says that God allows us 70 years & some beyond. The first 15 years are spent in childhood & early adolescence. 20 years are spent in bed; & in the last 5, physical limitations start to curtail our activities. That gives us about 30 years in which to live as adults. We take time out for eating, & figuring our taxes, & we are down to perhaps 15 years. Now suppose we spend 7 of those years watching TV. That cuts us down to 7 or 8 years. Our time is short! The time we can invest for God, in creative things, in reaching our fellow men for Christ, is short!
Time is important. And time is in short supply. Dwight L. Moody preached on Zaccheus with great fire & conviction. The whole story of Zaccheus just came to life right there on the platform. But he called him," Zaccheus." And on the way home from church his children would chide him. "Pa," they'd say, "it isn't Zaccheus. It's Zaccheus. Zaccheus." "I don't have time to say Zaccheus," Moody would bellow, "there's too much work to be done!"
And later on in his life, his heart began to play tricks on him while he was in England. He had a checkup there, and the doctor told him to take it easy. So an upcoming campaign in Chicago was promptly cancelled & he headed for home. On the way, the ship developed engine trouble & wound up drifting helplessly out of the main traffic lanes. As the days passed, the chances of the ship's being spotted grew dimmer.
One of those dark days Moody was standing by the ship rail, & thinking about time & how much of it he had left, or possibly, how little. And he vowed to God that if his life could be spared & he could be given a little more time, he would devote it to preaching the gospel. The ship was promptly sighted & rescued, & the rest of the story is on record. Moody's campaign in Chicago was so huge & so blessed of God that the World's Fair being held there had to be closed down on Sundays--they had no customers. Time had suddenly become very precious to Moody & he did not want to waste any of it. There was still work to be done.
Many of us can feel the pressure of time right now as Christmas comes ever closer. John the Baptist had that same urgency. Jesus had that same urgency. The early church had that same sense of urgency. Time is important. Time is in short supply.
And yet the important things in life are timeless. The Bible is timeless. It is a living document. It is not simply a dead record of a dead people. It is the record of a living God who is at work in his creation. The God of Abraham, Isaac, & Jacob--the God of Elijah, Samuel, & David--the God of Jeremiah, Isaiah, & Amos--is my God. He is your God. The Bible is timeless.
Phillips Brooks once said: "The Bible is like a telescope. If a man looks THRU his telescope, he sees worlds beyond, but if he looks at his telescope, he does not see anything but that. The Bible is a thing to be looked thru to see that which is beyond, but most people only look at it, & so they see only dead letters.
The Bible is our telescope into the past, into the present, & into the future. It is a living book.
The ordinance of the Lord's Supper is timeless. That first supper took place 2,000 years ago. Yet Christ taught us that every time we eat the bread & drink from the cup He is present. He is there.
But more than that, he told us to celebrate that ordinance until the day we celebrate it anew in the Kingdom of God. The Lord's Supper is the celebration of what God has done, what He is doing, what He is yet to do. It is timeless. It is eternal. It is yesterday, today, tomorrow all wrapped up in one.
Christmas is timeless as well. Was it really that long ago when Mary & Joseph wound thru the streets of Bethlehem looking for a place to spend the night--a place for their child to be borne? It seems like it was only yesterday. That is because each time we celebrate Christmas, it comes alive for us anew. But Christmas is more than celebration of Jesus' birth.
It is the celebration of the whole Christmas event--His life, His teachings, His death on the cross.
It is the celebration of the empty tomb, the celebration of His presence with us today & the anticipation of that day every knee shall bow & every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Christmas is timeless. The most important things in life always are. That is because God is timeless. He will never fail us. His love will never end.
Time is important. Time is in short supply. Yet the most important things in life are timeless. Love is timeless. Hope is timeless. Joy is timeless.
What are we to say to all of this? The conclusion we must draw is this: This moment is God's moment. This time is God's time. We are living right now in Kairos. All of creation groans in expectation of what is yet to be. The victory is already ours--if we will but accept it.
The story is told about a fellow who loved to read mystery stories but he didn't like to be kept in suspense. He would read the last chapter first. That way he could read the book in the assurance that in the end good would triumph over evil. To the villain he would silently announce, "Don't get too sure of yourself. I already know the ending of the story. You'll get yours later."
The Christmas story allows us to see the last chapter first. The babe in the manger is God's announcement to our universe that He is at work reconciling the world unto Himself. The angels could sing about "Peace on earth, good will to men"
not because it had been realized in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago or even in our city today. In the mind of God, however, it is this moment already a present reality. The future belongs to Him. This moment is God's moment. He is alive. He is here now. Time is important. Time is in short supply. Yet his love & His nurture are timeless.
My friend, have you wasted most of the precious time he has given you? This is a perfect time of the year to evaluate your life--to see if you have invested it in that which will crumble & decay with time or if you have invested it in that which is eternal. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Is it a present reality in your life? It can be. That is God's moment. This is the Kairos--His time. Why not let him give you a gift this Christmas that transcends time--the gift of His love.
