Well, I do want to say thank you for the committee who put all of these matters together this weekend to allow you to be able to simply come and to enjoy whenever that happens, whenever things are well run, and you're able just to be there and to participate and enjoy. It's a great blessing, but always remember that a lot of work has gone into that. I'm thankful for the session that I set in on here with the ladies panel. When you meet my wife and you understand, she usually writes most of my material and I just give it. So, but again, thank you for your hospitality. Appreciate the men. I don't know if any of them will hear this, but they did a really good job over there and with their cooking and everything else. So thank you for your attention to the word. We're going to come here in this hour to try to bring some of this home in a very, a practical way, and one of the things that happens when you live in light of eternity and live with the knowledge that life will one day be over, that all of us are, as it were, on the clock, that there is an expiration date, that there is coming a time either that we will die or the Lord Jesus will return. It makes the time we have on this earth precious. That's one of the things that makes it precious is that it's limited. And what I wanna consider today is a text taken here out of Ephesians chapter five, a well-known text, but I think at times a misunderstood text. And I'm gonna begin at verse 15 and read just 15 and 16. See then that you walk circumspectly. That is that you have your eyes open to your life, that you consider your life not as fools, That is not as those without the revelation of God, but as wise, those who have the word and are indwelt by the spirit. And then these well-known words, redeeming the time because the days are evil. Let's pray again. Father, we do thank you for your word and pray that you would use it to help us and fit us, Lord, for life in this world and to be ready for that world which is to come. We pray, Lord, your help and your blessing in this time that we spend now. In your son's name, we pray. Amen. In ancient Greece, there was a rather unusual statue, and that was the statue of a man, and the man was bald on the back of his head, but on the front of his head, He had what they call a forelock, a long braid on the front of his head. And on his heels, he had wings. Now, beneath that statue were several questions and answers. And the first question was, what is your name? And the answer was, my name is Opportunity. And the question was, why do you have wings on your feet? And the answer was, because I fly so swiftly by. And the question then was, why do you have a forelock upon your head but are bald on the back? And the answer was, people must lay hold of me as I approach, for once I am gone, they can lay hold of me no more. My name is Opportunity. And what I want to address in this time together in our final session, now, if you want to tune in tomorrow or listen tomorrow night, I'm going to have a bonus episode of this that we're going to look at as well, again, which I think is some of this practical application of how we live in the light of eternity. But what we find here is that there is an exhortation, redeem the time. There is an explanation because the days are evil. And then there are a host of applications of which we will cover but a few. So I want to begin by looking at this well-known, but I think at times misunderstood, exhortation. The exhortation given quite clearly here is to redeem the time. Now, this is part of the apostle's exhortation to walk circumspectly. And again, to walk circumspectly is to have a sense of control over your life. is to have a thought given to your life, is to have some understanding about how you're supposed to live. Now, I don't know if it's this way so much among women as it is among young men. I was talking to one of our young men the other day, and I was reminding him that in Titus chapter two, that when older women and older women are exhorted to be a certain way, and older women are to help younger women to be a certain way. I think there are six exhortations that older women are to help younger women to do and to be, and if you've not had that for a women's conference, I might encourage that. That might be an encouraging topic in the years ahead. But then it talks to young men, and it only says one thing. It's just one thing, and it's be sober-minded. to think, the number one question dad asked their sons, what were you thinking? And their number one answer was, I don't know. Or, I wasn't. But throughout life sometimes somebody could say to us, what were you thinking? Why did you make that choice? Why did you say that? Why did you make that decision? Why do you think the way that you do? Why do you enjoy the things that you enjoy? Why do you make the decisions you do? Why do you spend time and finances on certain things rather than other things? Why do you focus on certain things and neglect other things? And sometimes the answer is, I don't know. I never really thought about it. or my mother did, or my family did, or that's the way that we were raised, or I heard a sermon on it maybe, or I read a book about it, or I saw it on Pinterest, or I saw it online, and I read a mommy blog post, and after that, I started doing things a certain way. my conviction, so he says walk circumspectly, and the idea of this, look around you, know where you are, how did I get here, why am I here, where am I going, and the application of that, the prime application has to do with what he calls redeeming the time. Now if I were to do a survey here and say to you, all right, interpret this verse for me, or ask you how have you applied this verse? And I'm going to give you what I think is the fairly typical Christian understanding and application of this verse. Make the most of every minute of the day. Be busy. Don't sit down. Don't tune out. You've got to redeem the time. You've only got 24 hours in a day, and you've got a certain amount of time you have to sleep. And so you've got to go, you've got to go, you've got to go. And if you're sitting down, don't just sit down. Don't just sit down and watch a show. Have laundry in front of you that you can iron and you can fold. have something that you can be working on. If you're gonna be sitting down on an airplane, have memory verses, and read a book, and don't just sit there, and don't just listen to music, and don't just tune out, and don't just rest for crying out loud, be busy, because you gotta redeem the time. Well, we might argue that there's some good counsel, but I'm gonna tell you that's not what this verse says. It doesn't have anything to do with what Paul's talking about. There are, in the Greek, two words for time. And so you're going to get a little Greek here, OK? One of them is the word chronos. And you say, oh, I might have been able to figure that out. Chronos, chronology. In the old days, some people called watches chronometers, right? You'd have to be an excessive nerd to do that today, of course. Let me check my chronometer. It measures time, right? Chronometer. And when we say time, chronos speaks of time in terms of seconds, minutes, hours, days. The chronology. Chronos. But there is another word, and it is the word kairos. Now, if you listen to my opening illustration, you probably already know how to interpret this word. It's a word that means seasons. opportunities. It's the reality that there are phases of our life, that there are things that we go in and out of. And again, with the advantage of older age, And you look back on your life, and again, some of you here, ladies, and I, from my older perspective now, again, I did preach this 30 years ago, but I have a different, in some ways, you get a different perspective on things. I think I understood what it was saying. I have experienced it more now. And if I said, you tell me the story of your life, And you go through, well, I had my little girl, my baby phase, I had my little girl phase, I had my adolescent phase, I had my teenage phase, I had my education phase, I had my early marriage phase, I had my mommy phase, and for some of you, you say, well, you know, a lot of that is gone. that I'm in my grandma phase or I'm in a different physical phase, I'm in a different mental phase or season that I was once in. And part of what this text is calling us to do is to understand that life is made up not just of the linear unfolding of seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, but that life is made up of opportunities and seasons that are before us at one phase of life and that leave us. And there's the reality that some of us have of looking back on certain periods of our life, not with joy, but regret. and we think to ourself, if I could go back in time, if I could talk to my younger self, well, you're not gonna be able to do that, but you can talk to yourself now, and in light of the overarching exhortation to walk circumspectly, he says, of these seasons or opportunities, the exhortation is to redeem them. Now, what is redemption? In this context, it is the payment of a price, sometimes a ransom price. We are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. Jesus paid a ransom price to buy us, to redeem us, to have us. And the idea is here, not that we shed blood, but that in terms of thinking of our life, praying about our life, thinking through the season of life that I am now in, I want to buy it up, I want to own it, I want to possess it, I want to be God helping me as best I can by the grace of God and in prayer in control of it rather than it controlling me. Does that make sense? Now the exhortation that he gives is followed up with an explanation. And that explanation is because he says the days are evil. So what the apostle is exhorting here is as you open your eyes to your daily life, As you think through the various activities, as you strive to be a wise person, or as opposed to a fool, laying hold of, purchasing, and possessing the various opportunities that God has put before you in this season of life, recognize that the days are evil. Now part of that, I think there are at least two understandings that we need to bring. The word evil can certainly mean the moral evil, that which is morally reprehensible and that to some degree all of us are gonna swim against the tide of the day and age in which we live and so that we say part of this is the understanding that there's gonna be pushback and that this isn't necessarily going to be easy. And for you to thoughtfully consider where am I in life right now? I'm not a little girl anymore. I'm not in the days of diapers and infants. And let me just pause here to say that one of the struggles we often have with the seasons of life is we never like the season we're in. We're always looking forward to another season where somehow it's all gonna be easier. It's gonna be so much easier when I don't have to change any more diapers. It's gonna be so much easier when they can pick out their own clothes, always an adventure. It's gonna be easier when they can brush their own teeth. It's gonna be so much easier when they can already read rather than I gotta teach them how to read. So much easier when this. It's gonna be so much easier so much better when if this happens or when that happens. The last time I referenced this text or dealt with it back home was during in the early stages of COVID. And I was trying to help us to understand like this is actually a divinely appointed season for us. But you know what? We all just wanted it to be over. That's all we wanted. We didn't want to live in it. We wanted to live after it, as though there was nothing for us to learn, no way to serve God, no opportunity for the church to demonstrate something wonderful to the world. We just wanted to get it over with. Right? I can't wait till I'm done with college. I can't wait till I don't have to work anymore. I can't wait till I'm married. I can't wait till I'm not single anymore. I can't wait for this. I can't wait for that. I can't wait for the kids to get older. I wish the kids were back in the home. Whatever it is, and the exhortation is, listen, You need to pay attention and embrace the season of light because, hey, it's going to be over soon. And you're going to move on to another phase. And sometimes that new phase is going to have different opportunities. And there are going to be others that are left behind. So as you determine to do this, and you say, all right, I see that in the Bible, I think he, hopefully, I explained that accurately, and if you do the Greek study, you say, all right, I think he got it right. I think that is the right understanding of the text. Well, the days are evil, and there's gonna be pushback, and there's gonna be difficulty. Years ago, I used an illustration about trying to teach, imagining a foreign exchange student came, and they said, what's this football that some people talk about? Let me show you, okay, there's a field, and you get this ball, this oblong shape, or whatever shape that is, ball, and you have to run it down the field, and you try to cross over that line, and you get into what's called the end zone. And they say, well, that sounds easy. Oh, I forgot to mention, there's 11 guys on the other side trying to stop you. and they're gonna hit you and throw you to the ground, and I forgot to mention that part. And so you say, all right, I just gotta buy up the opportunity, but the days are evil, but there's also a sense here in which there is the understanding that the days are difficult and short. It's not just moral opposition. It's just, again, simply the reality that life has hardship with it and associated with it, that the pushback, yes, of the enemy, but just the reality of humanity. If the devil were dead, you'd still be human. And if the world were Christianized, you'd still be human, and you'd still have the struggles of getting up and having strength and having wisdom and forethought and relationships to do the things that we are called to do. Now, what I'm gonna do is spend a longer time than I normally would in a sermon And just trying to hash some of this out with you as you practically live in light of the fact that if you live in light of eternity, part of living in light of eternity is that life is short and life is made up of seasons. And that one day all this is going to be over. And there are things we do in this life that will meet us in the life to come. and that we are in many ways preparing to live in light of the eternal, and part of that is going to be fleshed out in view of these things. And so consider, for instance, the various duties and demands of the Christian life in the present time. As you think about, and I've been going through some of your questions, and I think these are, Maybe some of this will be helpful as you try to work this out. What has God called you to do? How do you live in light of eternity in the here and now? How do you seize and possess and be in control of? How do you make the most of this opportunity? All right, so for some of you younger ladies, are you a student right now? It's a season of life. I'm so happy it's over. When I see, we have students in our church, and whether they're elementary school students or high school students or college students or graduate students, and they recently went through, the Boyce Bible College kids and seminary kids just went through their midterms, and they all had the haggard look of youth, Oh, life's so hard. And I think to myself, you know what? I don't have to do that anymore. What I have to do is actually a lot harder than what they have to do. And I don't tell them, you know what? That was the easiest, most enjoyable time of my life. Don't complain about it. But as I look back, one of the things that I look back on with regret, one of the things I did not lay hold of was to maximize my effort in that area to the glory of God. So I'm going to say something that will perhaps sound proud. I was able to do work well enough with minimal effort. And that is, with minimal study, I could sometimes still get an A and generally a B, maybe a B minus. And other people would knock their brains out with hours and hours of study. And I might spend half an hour, an hour. And they got an A plus. And I got an A minus or a B plus. And I was like, meh. But I realized I was not doing what my hands found to do with all my might. I was not studying for the glory of God. I was not anticipating and thinking, what is God calling me to do in excellence as a student? And again, the idea was, I just wanted to get it over with. I just wanted that season of life to be over. It was a hoop I had to jump through so I could start my life. If you're gonna start your life, gotta do school. And I had to go to college. And then if I wanted to be a pastor, I had to go to seminary. And there got to be those parts where it was like, come on, come on, come on. And if I could have been given a magical remote control of my life, I would have hit fast forward. Rather than saying, what are the opportunities that God has given me relationally? or in the improvement of my mind, and even to some degree, and trust me, if you're a student and you're thinking, this is the hardest time of my life, no, it's not. Maybe so far, but you're gonna look back on it and think, oh, how I loved those easy days. But you know, some of that is there are seasons of refreshment and ease so that we can run harder later in life. But is this the time of your life? It's going to be over. In a few years, it's going to be over. There are a few people who are perpetual students I know. But for most of you, in a short period of time, your life as a student in that way is going to be over. Buy it up. Make full use of that opportunity. Don't look back on your life with regret. I wish I had. Study. Labor. To his honor and glory, take advantage of the opportunities before you. in relationships, particularly if you're at a Christian college where there are other believers around you that will help you and pray with you. You'll never have another time in life that's like that, free from the pressures of work and the new realities, the delightful realities of marriage and home. My son, My youngest child is 23 years old. He got married when he got done with school, but both he and his wife had met together at a Christian school. They both had an excellent life there at school, many good friends, and it was hard for them in some ways. They loved each other and were thankful for the establishment. of their home, but now it meant new jobs and new schedules and all of the rest and the friendships that they had that they're trying to maintain. It's just the reality. It's gonna be different from now on. But make the most of it while you're there. This is a season of storing your mind with knowledge that you can utilize later so that you can pursue excellence in the kingdom of God and the kingdom of men. All right, is this a season of singleness? Are there those of you here who are single who, oh, you want this to be over? Life's really gonna start when Mr. Wonderful comes into your life. I told you yesterday, Mr. Right's already been married off. Maybe Mr. Wonderful's out there somewhere. But the problem with singleness sometimes, I think particularly among Christian women, is the thought that I'm not made for this. I'm made to be wife and mother. That's God's purpose for me. That's why I was designed, even physically, the way that I am. And as I read my Bible, a lot of my Bible addressed to women, when it's addressed specifically to women, it sometimes talks to them about marriage and the home. In fact, Paul even uses a phrase, again, that can be very misunderstood, but he talks about women being saved through childbirth. Does he believe justification through? No, he doesn't believe in that. And Paul even encourages, in many ways, the joys of singleness and the opportunities available in singleness. But what he means is that most of the circumstances of the life of many women is going to be caught up in the home and your children and your husband. And he uses one example, I think they call it a syndicate, grammatically of one being spoken of in reference to the whole of life. And that's the realm of your salvation and your sanctification is largely going to be worked out. in the home, that's the way it is for many, particularly many Christian women. And you think to yourself, well, I can't really get on with life, I can't really serve the way that I should because I'm gonna be hindered because I don't have a husband, and because I have a job, because I have to work, and all of the rest. And my exhortation and encouragement is, buy it up, live out this, it may be, this is gonna be a lifelong condition. My oldest daughter's 33 years old. Man, I think she's a beauty, cute as a button, great, sweet, godly, serves in the church. But Prince Charming went to a different address. He knocked on my other daughter's door and my other daughter's door, but he didn't come along and knock on hers. And thankfully, by God's grace, she is very content. And at this point in life, probably thinking this is probably what God has for her. She loves being an aunt to her nieces and her nephew, and if that's what the Lord has for her, she's gonna look for opportunities to love and to serve others. And my encouragement is do not live in a kind of spiritual, emotional, or relational suspended animation waiting for Prince Charming to come along and kiss you and wake you up so you can experience life. I think, I'm gonna make this statement, you can push back on this. You may never have more time in your life than you have right now. There are things you can do in this season of life that you may never be able to do again. There are service, certainly, Paul argues in 1 Corinthians 7 that a single woman and a single man are concerned about the things of the kingdom. but a Christian wife is concerned about the things of this world, how she may please her husband. That's not a negative, it's a good thing. And a Christian husband is thinking about how he can please his wife. What can I do for her? What can I do to make her life better and things that if she were not there and he didn't have that responsibility, he might be able to do other things. Opportunities to serve your brothers and sisters. Opportunities to serve the community. opportunities to serve in the church, storing up knowledge in your soul and reading and study and a host of other things that you will then draw on as reserves during seasons of life when, as a mother, and particularly the way some Reformed Baptists have kids, like my fellow elder, they just had their fourth child, their oldest child is four. Now, my wife and I, we spaced out our kids. We weren't trying to, but we wound up spacing out our kids more. It's just the way that God gave them to us. So they came along every three years. But some of you know, hey, your reading life, your devotional life, your relational life takes a dive when those kids come along. Do you know the Wesley's mother, Charles and John, her name was Susanna, some of you will know this, that her children had a signal from their mother when she needed a timeout. She'd put her apron over her head. She had 17 kids. They lived in a shoe or something like that, I think, but that's a different lady. But 17 kids. Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom. And I can't hear myself think. I can't pray. I can't read my Bible. I can't sit down and read anything. Throw the apron over the head. Let mom be. Some of you may be fine. But hey, you don't even get to go to the bathroom. Men, at least, get to go to the bathroom. Women, mom! Mom! If you're going to be married, if you're single and you're going to be married, you're going to need some reserves. You're going to need to be able to draw. You can memorize some scriptures now that you can draw on. Meditate on when life is very busy. Store them up in your soul. Walking in the fear of God with the word of God to guide you and prayerful communion with God. Have your eyes open to what he would have you do at this time in life. It may be over. It may be over for some of you. You never know, maybe a year from now it's gonna be over. Two years from now it's gonna be over. And don't look back and think, oh, how I wish. This may be an opportunity for labor. There are job opportunities. Not everybody here is going to be able to have simply the domestic life. If I were speaking to men, I might state some of this more forcefully. But there is a period of life, 40 years, 50 years, whatever it is, in which you are given to give your strength to the labor of your hands. Colossians 3, 23 and 24, and whatever you do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not as to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. That's living in light of eternity. And how do you live in light of eternity? By working hard now. And you get to the end of this life, and you labor that way because God calls you to do, and maybe they give you a gold watch or a plaque, or maybe, blessedly, maybe you get some kind of a retirement plan, but you know what you get in the world to come? You get the praise of Jesus Christ. And is this opportunity going by? Is this a season of marriage? All marriages are temporary. In women, you will not be a forever wife. And that's why your ultimate identity cannot be tied to your husband. Your husband may not always be there. You may lose your husband. You may lose the affection of your husband. Your husband may lose his life, and generally, we die before you do. And some women live, you know, Anna in the scriptures lived however many decades as a widow, married for a time, but the vast majority of her life was her widowhood. But that being said, Is this the season of marriage? Maybe, again, maybe it's 50 years of your life. Some of you, maybe you're gonna get it 60 years. Maybe a little bit more. How do you seize that opportunity? Well, husbands, look, I say to husbands, look, you have this brief window of time to love and serve a woman. There's a time in your life she wasn't in your life, she's in there now, God may take her away. This is the only time, this is the only opportunity. How do you seize it? How long will you be with her? How long will you have to love her? Don't let it fly by and think, well, I'll grow to love her. I'll grow, and maybe again, when the kids are up, when we don't have all these kids, and we don't have the busy schedule, and we're not running off to this thing and that event, ballet one day, theater the next, and baseball, volleyball, basketball, whatever it is, and the kids are eating up all of our time and all of our relational time, and the only time we ever really have to sit down and talk is about the kids and their schedules. I realized that when our son left the home, we do have, again, my oldest does still live there, but she's more in the renter phase of life, you know. I don't really feel, I'm not like, I am hands-on parenting that 33-year-old and involved in the minutia of our life as I did when she was three. And I thought to myself, I'm gonna have to get to know my wife over again. And we had a little bit of time, a couple of years into our marriage before our daughter was born. We got married in 89, first child came in 91. We loved that time. That time was such a blast. And we always, you know, we were fun and spontaneous and all of that. And then kids came along. And then for 30 some years, it was all about, it was the maintaining of the home and raising the kids together. But now, that's done. And it's kind of like, well, I'm old, and she's not, but I was. And how do we relate to each other again? Well, it's just grandparent now. But we had to learn to communicate again and enjoy each other again. without the kids around, fall in love in a sense again. She's a different person, I'm a different person. Have you heard the statement, somebody said one time, my wife has been married to five different men, all of them me. My wife married a single guy. And then all of a sudden he's a married guy, that changes you. Then I went from being a student to being a pastor, that changes. We went from no kids to having kids, and then we had a child that died, and that changes you. And hardship in the church changes you. I had a heart attack, and that changes you. Life changes. And you gotta say to yourself, well, look, if I keep waiting for it to get better, for life to become easier, for things to be less hectic, for us to enjoy each other, Don't lament wasted opportunities. To invest in this relationship. And again, when I've preached this in the past, I had a little bit more to say to husbands. But I'll say this, so this is in my, it's just a season of being a wife. How long will you have and what will you do with the time that God has given to you? The Bible describes some women who build up their home and there are other women, the Bible says they tear down their home with their hands. You know, none of you were married to perfect men. You all know that? If your husband's here, I hope the shock was worn off, right? You knew that, hopefully, before you got married. If you didn't, you knew it shortly thereafter. And you say to yourself, well, I know God's called me to support him and encourage him and love him and all of that, but boy, he drives me nuts sometimes. Well, listen, the day's gonna come he's not gonna be there anymore. And maybe part of this, because apparently, I have been told I sometimes snore. And I had read years ago back in the Dear Abby, is Dear Abby still out there? Ann Landers and Dear Abby? Advice column people should write to in the news, I think called the newspaper. So lots of stuff younger people we have to explain to you. But one woman had written to her and said something like, my husband's snoring is driving me mad. And a woman a few days later said in reference to that woman, I wish I could hear him snore. He died five years ago. I'd give anything to hear him snore. Do you understand that? She didn't actually enjoy that. But what it meant is that he was there. I remember when our baby died, I thought afterward, I'm never going to complain about a crying child. And I didn't mind getting up when the next baby woke up at three in the morning to nudge my wife and tell her to get up. I would get up too. I just wasn't able to always do everything that my wife could do. But you know, I just thought to myself, I'm not gonna complain about that. That cry is a sign of life. You only have a little bit of time. Is this the season of child rearing? Statistics say that 80% of the time that you will spend with your children, the whole of your life, will take place in the first 18 years of their life. 80%, for some it's 90%, for some it's even more. The 18, 19, 20 years or so that you have vital daily contact with your sons and daughters, buy it up. I know sometimes it's hard. Sometimes you're thinking, what's it gonna be like when, some people really like the empty nest. They're able to do things and enjoy things and have time. I'm going to take that class now. I'm going to learn to paint. I'm going to learn the zither or something like that because I can do that now. But this opportunity is before you for a very short amount of time, ultimately. The time is coming very quickly when they will be out of their home and they will be on their own. And again, we part with things, legitimate things that we may have done as singles or as a couple for the sake of our children. And life's different, vacations are different when they're little kids. And my exhortation is don't moan and groan over it, embrace it. And recognize part of the preciousness of it is that it will one day be over. Now's the time they're in your home. Now's the time to teach them, to pray over them, to love them, to build bridges with them that you hope will last for a lifetime. Now's the time to plead with them. You may never get to open the Bible with them again after they're gone. Redeem the time. Proverbs 19, 18, chasing your son while there's hope. You know, this is the time of hope. It's just a season of being a churchman. Buy up the opportunity for the spread and advancement of the kingdom where you are. And being a churchman I know and I recognize is hard. There are times I have wanted to resign as a pastor and simply be in the church to demonstrate with my life that I don't do what I do in the church simply because I'm a pastor. I do it because I'm a Christian who loves the church. Well, of course, you go to prayer meeting. You're the pastor. You get paid. Well, I went to prayer meeting for 15 years before I was a pastor, every week. Do you know what I'm saying? There are opportunities that you have to serve and love God's people. Will I join in with the people of God or remain on the fringe? What's the best way to make use of the opportunities which are before me? One of the texts I had thought about opening up in this hour, because again, it's about how do you live in light of eternity, is Hebrews chapter 10, where it says that we are to encourage one another, spur one another on, stir each other up to love and good works. And he says, and all much the more as you see the day approaching. And that's the reality. Look, one day, yes, one day we will be part of a perfect church. This church isn't perfect, your pastor isn't perfect, my church isn't, far from it. Nobody here, Toledo's not, no church in Essex isn't, no church is. And sometimes that makes life hard. And any church you leave to go to, it's going to have trouble and problems with it as well. But as long as you're here, and while you have the strength that you have, there are certain people that as they get older, they're not able to serve the way that they once did. Infirmities come. Somebody spoke about blindness coming on. And if the Lord took away my ability to see or my ability to hear, I probably wouldn't show nearly as much hospitality, you know, as we're able to do now. We have the strength. We have the size home. We have the financial ability now. We may not a year from now, but we have it now. And it would be a sad thing if those things are taken away to a downturn in the economy or something like that. And to think, you know, all of those weeks you could have had somebody over. people we could have invested in, somebody in the church who goes to be with the Lord, and you thought, I never really got to know them. I heard a pastor say in a sermon, a little clip of it was posted online, he was a Zambian pastor, and he said something like, he said, talking about the church, talking to his own church, he said, these are the people God is calling you to love and to serve right now. He said, some of them might not be here a year from now. But right now, God's calling you to know and to love and to serve them. Buy up the season, it's passing away. Our churches all change, right? Your church directory from 10 years ago looks different than it does today. And I keep a list of, because I am in our constitution, the elders will keep a list of current members and those who have left. The list of those who have left is longer now than the list of our over 34 years. And I look at that sometimes, and it almost paralyzes me with a sense of grief and sadness over things where I feel like I failed. And I think, well, what if I'd done better? What if I had done this more? What if I had done that more? And just let's look for those in our congregation who may feel isolated, those who may be on the fringe. And think to yourself, well, what if I could have a part in tethering them to our life, and not that it's mine to do, and not somebody else's to do? And what if 10 others did the same thing, and we tethered the hearts of the Lord's people to each other? Just like in marriage, and just like in all other relationships, this is a temporary arrangement. Your pastors are gonna die, your deacons are gonna die, your church members are gonna go, even if they don't go somewhere else, they're not gonna live forever, and you have a limited window of opportunity. Even though when I say limited, it might be 10 decades, 10 decades, sorry. Use your math right, son. It might be five decades, or in my case, three and a half decades now. But are these the opportunities? But then also, is this the opportunity of hearing the gospel? Is this the opportunity for some? You know, there may be somebody here, maybe, I don't know, maybe not in this arrangement, but certainly on the Lord's Day, sometimes, there are somebody who's there who has to be there, and they think, I can't wait till I'm old enough to no longer be here. And they'll walk away, and they will never ever see another man of God stand before them and plead. They'll never go to another prayer meeting in which their friends cry out to God for their salvation. They'll leave the home where they were given the gospel opportunity. And what a sad reality it would be to end up in hell, having had a boatload of opportunities and gospel invitation. The invitation to hear the gospel is not a burden. It is one of the greatest blessings. There are people in the world who perish without ever hearing the name of Jesus. And you know so much about him and to lay hold of him, again, knowing that the day is drawing near. And so this text does call us to live in light of eternity. So teach us to number our days. Moses said in Psalm 90 and verse 12, that is how we gain a heart of wisdom. Life's passing, life's changing. The opportunities of our life are here and they are there. And there's a day coming where I'm going to stand before the Lord and I'm going to give an account for my life. And in many ways, it will be made up, I think, of these kinds of the opportunities. that were before us. Again, David prayed, and we looked at this earlier today, Psalm 39, 4 and 5, Lord, make me to know my end. And what is the measure of my days that I may know how frail I am? You've made my days as hand breaths, and that is So sometimes you measure, you ever measure something with your hand or with your elbow to your, you know, you're trying to think, how big was that? And it's like this and this, and then you're walking away and trying to measure it on something else. But, you know, when you're measuring something with a hand breadth, it's pretty small. You don't measure like this. Hey, could you go out and measure the side of the building? Just use your hand, it'll be fine. Can you measure the parking lot? Just use your hand. You know, I don't want to do that. But our lives are so short, we can use our hands. Somebody has said that, you know, you see this on a gravestone, the date of birth and the date of death, and there's a dash in between. Someone said, that's your life. That dash is your life. That's the whole of your life. You've made my days as hand breath, my ages as nothing, even at my best date, I'm but a vapor. It's passing by quickly, and the days, the days, the evil days are drawing to an end, and either I will stand before the Lord, at the end of my days, or he will come and pierce the sky, and he will call us home. And so now is the time. Make the most of the fleeting nature of your life. Eternity's coming, but we have a stewardship of life that's passing by. May we lay hold of it. May we redeem the time, because the days are evil. Well, let's pray and let's ask God's blessing on these things. Father, thank you for these moments together and pray that you would utilize and use these encouragements and exhortations as an encouragement, Lord, not to beat ourselves up, but Lord, to lay hold of these things to be good stewards of what you lay before us in this life. We ask these mercies and blessings in Jesus' name.