Redeeming the Time, Part 3

Father, we thank you for today. Thank you for a chance to cool off in the heat of the day and to spend time in your word, learning more about who you are, and pray, Father, that you'd open our eyes to behold the beauty of our God. We ask in Jesus' name, amen.

William Penn was a Quaker and founder of the state of Pennsylvania, or the province of Pennsylvania, and he said these words. He says, time is what we want the most, but what we use the worst. Time is what we want the most, but what we use the worst.

So incredibly true. That four-letter word, time, as fascinating as it is, is extremely frustrating. We all have the same amount of time, whether you're rich or poor, young or old, employed or jobless, whether you work for a small company or a big company, whether you're a president or a teacher, it makes no difference.

We all have the same amount of time. And we forget how often we use the word. For instance, we ask questions such as, what time does church start? Or, what time does church end? Or, it's time to go hurry up.

What time are you getting up? What time are you going to bed? How much time does it take to get to where we're going? I don't have time to do this or that anymore. We call time out in a ball game. We ask in track, what was their time? We say phrases like, time flies when you're having fun.

Or, I wish I had made time to be with them. We use that four-letter word so often, and yet we forget that each of us has the same amount of time each and every day. That's one of the things that all of us have in common.

86,400 seconds every 24 hours, 1,440 minutes. It never changes. God gave us the gift of time.

Someone has said that your life is like a coin. You can spend it any way you wish, but you can only spend it once. So very true.

It was philosopher William James who said, the great use of one's life is to spend it on something that will outlast it. The best way to use your time, the best way to spend your life is to spend it on something that will certainly outlast it. One man has said, the value of life is not determined by its duration, but by its donation.

Not how long you live, but how well you live, which is a good question to ask, how well do you live? How long you live truly is not important. How well you live certainly is important. Time is a priceless and precious commodity.

So much so that Paul would say that he wanted us to walk wisely. To do that, we need to redeem the time, maximize each moment for the sake of the master, to make sure that we buy back every opportunity for the glory of God. Why? Because the days are evil, and certainly they are.

The psalmist said these words in Psalm 71, verse number 5, for you are my hope, O Lord God, you are my confidence from my youth. By you I have been sustained from my birth. You are he who took me from my mother's womb.

My praise is continually of you. I have become a marvel to many, for you are my strong refuge. My mouth is filled with your praise and with your glory all day long.

The psalmist knew how to redeem the time. His mouth was filled with praise and glory all day long. It was something that continually came from his mouth.

Not sporadically, but continually. Because he wanted to make sure that the use of his time was used properly. The psalmist said in Psalm 34:1, bless the Lord at all times.

How do you do that? Bless the Lord at all times? At every time? At every situation? That's why Moses said, teach us to number our days that we might apply our hearts unto wisdom. Over in 1 Chronicles 12, verse number 32, the sons of Issachar, it says, understood the times to know what Israel should do.

They understood the times. They understood the days. They understood the situations in those days so that Israel would know what to do. Every day that you live is marked by decision making.

Every second you live, you're making a decision. Whether you know it or not, you are constantly in decision making mode. Do I turn left? Do I turn right? Do I walk? Do I run? Do I stop? Or do I press on the gas pedal and go through the orange light? Because it's not even red yet.

What do I do here? Or what do I do there? Do I buy this fruit? Or do I buy that fruit? Do I go to this doctor or to that doctor? There are so many decisions that we make and we're making them constantly all throughout the day. And very, very, very few times do we ever think, and to consider that during those decision-making times are very determinative concerning my future. You say, well, how does picking fruit determine my future? How does turning left or turning right determine my future? It's all designed into the providence of God anyway.

Yes, it is true. But human responsibility and divine sovereignty work hand in hand together. And how they come together this side of eternity we'll never know, but we are still in the process of making decisions each and every moment of each and every day.

And so Paul would say these words to those at the church of Philippi. To those in Ephesus he said, walk wisely, redeem the time, buy it back for the days are evil. To the church of Philippi he said this, for to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.

That's how he would tell the church at Philippi to redeem the time. He told them to live for Christ and to die would always be gain. And where does he say that from? Prison.

He says, no matter what your situation, no matter what your location, no matter what circumstances you find your life, live for Christ. In that moment, in that time, during that day, live for Christ. That's Paul's way of telling those at Philippi, redeem the time, buy it back for the sake of eternity.

And then to the church of Colossae he says it this way. Colossians chapter 3. He says, therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on the earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

In other words, he says, throughout each day you need to keep seeking those things that are above. Throughout each moment of the day you need to set your affections on things above, not on things below. It's a constant theme of living consciously of God in every moment of the day.

We tend not to do that. We tend to live as practical atheists. We make decisions as if God doesn't exist.

We live each day as if God's not even involved in our lives, but he is. He's actively involved in everything. He is always present with us.

He's the Lord who is there, not the Lord who's far off. And we need to learn to redeem each moment for the sake of the God we serve, the God who died for us, for we live for him. Paul would say it this way to the church at Corinth.

He would say, for the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died, and he died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and rose again on their behalf. Same thing. Now that you understand that Christ died for you, no longer do you spend your seconds and minutes and hours of each day living for yourself.

No, you live for the one who died for you. Our whole life is about being consumed with the Christ. Those who redeem the time, those who maximize each moment for the sake of the master, not only just consider the Christ, that they are consumed with the Christ each and every day.

And so our whole purpose behind this little mini-series, which is really a monumental series, is to get you to be consumed with the Christ, to be thinking upon him all the time. So when you make decisions, you make decisions that honor and glorify his name. And so we've been going through a very simple outline with you, 13 simple points, principles that will help you learn how to redeem the time, how to maximize each moment for the sake of the master.

And number one you have in your notes is that you need to commit your life to Christ. That's where it all begins. You can't redeem the time if you're not a born-again believer.

You're not gonna buy it back for Christ's sake unless you know Christ, therefore you must commit your life to Christ. Number two, you must commune with God and study in prayer. That is you're gonna spend time with him constantly in the word, in prayer.

We are to pray without ceasing. We are to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly. All that is talking about communing with the Lord, not just one hour a day, but as you go through the day.

And then number three, you confess your sins. Why? Because if I conceal my transgression, then I cannot prosper. It's only when I confess it and forsake it am I able to find the mercy and compassion from my God.

And so I spend my day confessing my sin. I recognize that when I do sin, I confess it. I know that there's a time that I do sin, I didn't buy that moment back for the sake of eternity, so I'm gonna confess my sins so I can buy the next moment back for the sake of eternity because my God's a forgiving God and I confess my sin to him.

Number four, you cultivate the spiritual disciplines of scripture. We gave you a list of those last week that will help you spend each and every day cultivating what it means to live a life of surrender, a life of self-denial, a life of scripture, a life of supplication, a life of servanthood, right? Living a life of servanthood, can you imagine that if you lived a life of servanthood, how consumed your life would be to honoring the Christ? That you wanna serve the Lord and you wanna serve others? And so you're consumed with those moments being used for the glory of God so that others are able to benefit for Christ's sake. But all those spiritual disciplines, the ones that we gave you last week, all add up to the fact that I spend each day in practice of disciplining myself unto godliness.

That's a constant requirement of each and every day. And if I spend my day exercising and practicing the spiritual disciplines, I find myself redeeming back moments and using them for the glory and honor of God and not wasting them doing things that are frivolous and meaningless because we do so much of that already. And then number five, clothe yourself with the armor of God.

We talked about that last week. Do you realize that when you wake up, you're going to war? Every day's a battle and you need to be prepared for war. So what do you do? You clothe yourself in the armor of God with the helmet of salvation and the breastplate of righteousness and the sword of the spirit and the belt of truth.

And you recognize that as you go through the day, you're involved in spiritual warfare and therefore you're armed and you're ready for battle. Now you come to number six. And this is in the proper order because if the first five are not happening, number six is not going to happen.

If the first five aren't in operation, then you can't do number six. And number six is simply this, confront, rebuke, and restore those who sin. Confront, rebuke, and restore those who engage in sinful behavior.

This becomes a monumental way to redeem the time. This becomes a way in which you are concerned about the purity and the holiness of another person. You're consumed with the purity and holiness of the church of Jesus Christ.

Remember Matthew chapter 16, when Christ said, I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. That's the first time he mentions the word church in his ministry. And then on the heels of that, Matthew 18, he talks about the purity of the church and gives instruction on how to confront sin in the assembly, in the church.

Even though the church has yet to be born, that doesn't happen until Acts two, he's giving instruction in advance because he wants you to know that purity in the church is the priority of the church to make sure that people live pure and holy lives. You see, if you're confessing your sin, you've already removed the being that is in your own eyes so that you can go and deal with the speck in your brother's eye. That's Matthew chapter 7.

As we continue our study in the Sermon on the Mount in a couple of weeks, we'll get there down the road in Matthew chapter 7. But people like to use that verse in Matthew 7:1-2 is that you can't judge others. Well, you can't judge others hypocritically, but you can judge others biblically and scripturally.

So when you deal with sin in your own life, the being that's in your own eye, it frees you up to see the sin in someone else's life and deal with it humbly, gently, and as the Bible portrays it. But this, listen carefully, becomes the highest form of love demonstrated in the church. You want a loving church? A church that loves one another? The church that loves one another confronts sin, deals with sin.

The church that doesn't love one another refuses to confront and deal with sin. But the church that's committed to loving one another, well, if they see a brother or a sister in sin, they are so concerned about that person's soul and so concerned about the purity of the church that they will go to that person, confront them, rebuke them if necessary in order to restore them back to fellowship. Let me read it to you this way.

Book of Leviticus, the 19th chapter. Leviticus chapter 19. The verse is number 17.

It reads this way. You shall not hate your fellow countrymen. You shall not hate your neighbor.

You shall not hate your brother. And all of us would admit we don't wanna hate our brother, right? The Bible condemns that. We're to love one another, not hate one another.

So God says, you shall not hate your fellow countrymen in your heart, you may surely reprove your neighbor. In other words, because you don't wanna hate your brother, if there is sin, you're gonna reprove your neighbor. You're gonna rebuke your neighbor.

You're not gonna allow him to remain in sinful disobedience to God. You're gonna go to him. Because you don't hate him.

If you do not go to him, you have proven your hate for him, not your love for him. We are masters about talking about other people's sinful behavior. But are we willing to go and deal with someone's sinful behavior? That's the one who loves his brother.

The one who doesn't hates his brother. Because he doesn't care about his spiritual soul, his spiritual condition. He doesn't care about the spiritual condition of the church.

But if you do, then you don't want your brother or your sister to live in disobedience to God. Now notice what he says. He says, you shall not hate your fellow countrymen in your heart, you may surely reprove your neighbor.

But shall not incur sin because of him. You don't wanna incur sin because of him. How would you do that? You would incur sin because you have proven that you hate your brother and that you don't love your brother.

And that would be sin in God's eyes because you're to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself. But you will incur sin on your behalf if you do not go to your brother knowing that he is living or she is living in sinful disobedience to the Lord and go to him and say, hey look, something's wrong here. How can I help you? Something's wrong with your life.

You're doing things that are contrary to the word of God. I wanna help you through this process. This can't continue.

And so you go to them. And if they're living in sin, you wanna rebuke them and then restore them back to spiritual health. And yet, if we don't rebuke him, you've disrespected him as if he doesn't or she doesn't mean that much to you because you don't care enough about them.

And some will say, well, you know, I don't wanna risk losing a friendship. Well, that just tells you that that's sin too because you just valued your relationship over the truth. And whenever you do that, you've always incurred sin upon yourself because you have demeaned the word of God, you've devalued the word of God, and you have disrespected your brother, see? And so the Bible's very clear about our response to one another.

That's why Paul says in the book of Galatians, Galatians chapter 6, verse number 1, brethren, if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of gentleness. Each one looking to yourself said you too will not be tempted. Bear one of his burdens and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.

This is as for anyone thinks he is something and when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But each one must examine his own work. And then he will have a reason for boasting in regard to himself alone and not in regard to one another, for each one will bear his own load.

But if you see a brother overtaken at a fault, you who are walking with the Lord, you are spiritual, restore that one in the spirit of gentleness and meekness. This is the hallmark of the church. This is the priority of the church, to be able to help another brother who is overtaken in his sin through that sin, coming to understand his relationship with the living God, how God forgives him, how God wants to restore him and how you are willing to help him or her through that process.

This is so important. We forget about this. It's not about someone necessarily offending you.

We can get into a mode where everybody's offending me or hurting me and I gotta go to him and confront them because they hurt me. You gotta be careful about that. Listen to what Solomon says in the book of Proverbs, the 18th chapter, the 2nd verse.

A fool does not delight in understanding, but in only in revealing his own heart or his own emotions. The fool is one who wants you to know how they feel. That's the fool.

They don't delight in understanding, but what they do delight in is revealing their emotions, expressing their feelings. You did this to me. You did that to me.

That's what a fool does, not a righteous person. And on top of that, down in verse number 17, it says, the first to plead his case seems right until another comes and examines him. The reason that verse is important is because you'll hear something about someone in sin or supposedly in sin and you hear it, but is it really true? And so you go and you examine it by getting both sides of the story so that you get a clear picture of what really took place so that as a spiritual person, restoring someone overtaken in a fault, you really exactly know what to do and how to do it.

You see, this is so important. Why? Because what better way to buy back a moment than to restore someone who's overtaken in a fault? What better way to redeem the time than to be used in the life of someone who's engaged in sinful behavior and you can help them through that? That's really buying back each moment for the sake of Christ and his glory. That's the kind of church that God wants as he understands and has designed this body of believers all throughout the world, people who are consumed and concerned about the church's testimony in the community, the church's testimony outside their walls, that people are really deeply concerned about someone's spiritual condition.

Think about it this way. Think about it within your own family. Forget about the church family.

Drive it home to your personal family. Do you hate your son or daughter or do you love your son or daughter? Well, if you know that your son or daughter is doing something sinful, you can choose to ignore it, not do anything about it, not confront them, just let it go. Pray it goes away, pray they get better, or you love them enough to go to them and say, you cannot do this any longer because it violates God's standards.

It's wrong. That would be the loving parent. Right? I mean, as parents, you need to be up in your kid's business.

You need to be up in their grill. You need to know what's happening in their lives. So many times as parents, we just put our head in the sand and hope it all goes away.

Hopefully when we wake up tomorrow, the sun is shining and everything's better. The attitudes are better. Their actions are God honoring.

But we gotta do the hard thing. That's why God entrusted them to you as a parent, right? That you are engaged in helping grow them, helping them come to a place of maturity, helping them to understand Christ and how to walk with Christ. But I've been involved in ministry for 40 years.

And one of the things that I've heard over and over again for 40 years is that parents who are unwilling to address issues with their children, not just at home, but even once they've left their home, they'll never address issues of sin. I'm like, how can you do that? When Leviticus 19:17 says, you shall not hate your countrymen in your heart, but you shall rebuke your neighbor so that you don't incur his sin. That is just so clear.

And as Christian parents, we should be overly concerned about our children's attitudes our children's behavior, our children's actions, because our children reflect the character and condition of your home. And so therefore you wanna always make sure that the condition and character of your home screams Christ-likeness, screams honoring the Lord, screams seeking to magnify his name.

It doesn't mean that your children will be perfect. It doesn't mean that they won't sin. No, it's not about having sinless children. It's about when your children do sin, you as mom or dad deal with the issues at hand.

That's all. It's not that the church itself is perfect and nobody in the church sins. No, does the church deal with the people who sin in a God honoring kind of way? Because no church has sinless people.

Like no family has sinless people. The question is, what do we do to show we are concerned about the spiritual condition of their soul? We're concerned about their walk with the Lord. We're concerned about their testimony for Christ, that they don't defame the name of Christ, that they glorify his name.

And once you have committed your life to Christ and once you commune with God in Bible study and prayer, once you confess your sins and once you clothe yourself with the armor of God, well, as you practice and cultivate spiritual disciplines, now you're ready to be used by God in the most sensitive issues in the church. Because those sensitive issues are extremely important to the Lord, which leads us to our next point. And that's point, if you're following the outline, that would be point number seven.

Point number seven is this, consecrate your life to Christ. Consecrate your life to Christ. Again, this is about redeeming the time.

This is about buying back the moments because you are consecrating your life in each and every moment. Remember in the Old Testament, it talks about a Nazarite vow. It's delineated in Numbers chapter 6.

The word Nazarite just means to consecrate or to separate yourself. And when someone would take a Nazarite vow and there were two men in the Old Testament who took one for life, Samuel and Samson, and one person in the New Testament took one for life, that's John the Baptist, right? And they would take this Nazarite vow for life. And it was about their lives being completely and totally consecrated to God, separate unto God, holy unto God.

If you were with us years ago, we did a study on Samson. He was the world's weakest strong man. And he was one who had taken a Nazarite vow.

But his consecration was limited. He was unwilling to stay away from women. And women mesmerized him and caused him to fall deeper and deeper into sin and away from the Lord.

That's because he wasn't redeeming the moments of the day, buying them back for the sake and honor of the kingdom, living a life of complete and total consecration. The Bible says we are to be holy as God himself is holy. Think about that.

Let's say you went to the restaurant tonight after dinner. I mean, the restaurant after church, sorry. This is like a spiritual dinner because we're feeding you spiritually.

So let's look at it that way. But you're going to go to the dinner after church tonight. And you get there and you sit down and the family's gathered around, you all get a menu, right? And as you begin to read the menu, the menu says this.

For $6, you can buy rotten strawberry pie. For $3, you can drink sour milk. For $20, you can buy rancid beef tenderloin.

For $5, you can eat moldy muffins. None of you would buy that stuff. None of you would stay in the restaurant.

You would leave. Why? Because all of it's impure. None of it's healthy.

It's all a deterrent to your physicality. Why would you do that? Why would you spend your money on rotten food? Moldy muffins? You wouldn't. Well, think about your spiritual life.

It needs to be clean and pure and holy. And so when we talk about holiness, what are we talking about? When we talk about consecration, what are we talking about? The Bible speaks that God is a holy, holy, holy God. And you always need to think of it in terms of this, that God is completely and totally separate.

Because consecration just means separation. Sanctification means set apart unto God for his purposes. Right? And so a person who is committed to sanctification, committed to consecration, wants to be set apart as God himself is set apart.

And the question comes, how is God set apart? God is set apart in two ways. He's set apart from all corruption, and he's set apart from his creation. So when God says, I want you to be as holy as I am holy, he says, I want you to be as set apart from corruption as I am.

And then I want you to be as set apart from creation as I am. The question comes, are we willing to set ourselves apart from all corruption? Because Christ is sinless. He is pure light.

He is holy, holy, holy. And so he says, I want you to be as holy as I am holy. I want you to be so far from corruption as I have no corruption in me.

That's called a practical sanctification. But he also wants you to be set apart from creation. He is not a better brand of you and me.

He is completely different than you and me. Completely set apart from creation. He's God and we are not.

So he wants you to be set apart from creation. That's why he says you're an alien and a stranger in a foreign land. You're not welcome here.

But we spend our whole lives, think about it, trying to fit in. We want to fit in at school. We want to fit in at work.

We want to fit in with our neighborhood. We want to be like everybody else. And God said, no, I want you to be holy.

I want you to be separate from your creation. I want you to recognize that you are a stranger and an alien in a foreign land. You are citizens of another country, not this one.

You're completely set apart. So when we consecrate our lives to Christ, we are constantly thinking, am I different than the creation around me? Am I separate from the corruption that's around me and in me? Am I separating myself from sin? See, that's redeeming the time. That's buying back the moments for the sake of eternity.

That's honoring the Lord in your life, see? And that's walking wisely. The days are evil enough, Paul says. They're filled with evil.

Don't engage in the evil. That's why he says over in Ephesians chapter 4, remember these words? Ephesians 4, verse number 17. Paul says, I say and affirm together with the Lord that you walk no longer as the Gentiles walk.

Don't walk like the unbeliever. Don't do that. In the futility of their mind, in the emptiness of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them because of the hardness of their heart, and they having become callous have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness, but you did not learn Christ in this way since indeed you have heard him and have been taught in him just as truth is in Jesus.

Paul says, I don't want you to walk like the Gentiles walk. They walk in the futility and emptiness of their mind. Their hearts are hardened and calloused. Their hearts are given to every kind of sensuality and immorality and greed.

Don't do that. Why? Because you've been bought with the price.

You've been purchased by God. You're his child. Walk as a child of the king.

Live as a child of the king. Live a consecrated life unto the king. And so when you go through each and every day, and each and every second of every day and every minute of every day, it's a constant recollection and remembrance.

Is my life separate from that of the world? Or am I trying to look like the world, dress like the world, smell like the world, talk like the world, because I kind of love the world, right? That's why Christ says, do not love the world, right? And all that is in it, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, because you gotta love the Father. And this is the love that God hates. If you love the world, God hates that.

He wants you to be completely and totally separate. So that's how you redeem the time. You consecrate your life unto Christ.

Here's another one, number eight, if you're following along in your outline. If you're not, it's still number eight, and that is conduct your life in the fear of God always. What a way to redeem the time.

Conduct your life in the fear of God always. That's what it says in Proverbs 28, 14. It says in Proverbs 23:17, live in the fear of God all day long.

All day long, all 86,400 seconds, all 1,440 minutes, all the 24-hour period, live in the fear of God all day long. So important, that was Israel's problem way back in the book of Jeremiah when they went into Babylonian captivity. God said very clearly in Jeremiah 2, verse number 19, your own wickedness will correct you and your apostasies will reprove you.

Know therefore and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the Lord your God. Why would Israel forsake the Lord their God? Simply because, and the dread of me is not in you, declares the Lord God of hosts. You don't fear me, that's why.

You need to conduct your life in the fear of God all day long. King David is writing to his son Solomon in 2 Samuel 23. Listen to what he says.

He says in verse number 1, now these are the last words of David. David, the son of Jesse, declares, the man who was raised on high, declares, the anointed of the God of Jacob and the sweet psalmist of Israel. The spirit of the Lord spoke by me and his word was on my tongue. The God of Israel said, the rock of Israel spoke to me. He who rules over men righteously, who rules in the fear of God, is as the light of the morning when the sun rises, a morning without clouds, when the tender grass springs out of the earth through sunshine after rain.

David says to his son Solomon, listen, this is what the God of Israel says. This is what the Lord, the rock of Israel, has spoken to me. If you're going to rule over men, two things must be paramount.

Number one, you must lead righteously and you must live reverently.

You must lead righteously and you must live reverently. Any man, he says, who rules over others must rule righteously and in the fear of God. That's a good verse for you as a husband because you're a ruler of your house.

You're the leader of your home. So you can take it and say, any man who leads in his home must live righteously or lead righteously and live reverently. Those are the two cornerstones by which you build your family.

Live a righteous life and live a reverent life in the fear of God. Because then look what he says. He says this, that man is the light of the morning when the sun rises, a morning without clouds.

You ever get up early in the morning and it's crystal blue outside, and the sun's coming up over the mountains? As it begins to rise and lightens the day, it shines so radiantly. The man who leads righteously and the man who lives reverently shines radiantly. But not only that, he smells refreshingly.

Look what it says. When the tender grass springs out of the earth through sunshine after rain, nothing smells more refreshingly than the sun after the rain and the grass that begins to grow after the rain has fallen. There's something refreshing about the man who leads righteously and lives reverently.

There's something radiant about the man who lives reverently and leads righteously. So David says, this is what the God of Israel says. You're gonna be the ruler of Israel and I want you to shine brightly. I want you to be a refreshing kind of king.

Every woman in the room who's married wants a man who shines radiantly. And smells refreshingly.

Doesn't want to marry a stinker. Don't want to do that. She wants him smelling really, really good.

Well, the only way he's gonna smell good is if he leads righteously and lives reverently. That's everything. It's all about conducting your life in the fear of God.

Way back in the book of Deuteronomy, in the sixth chapter, as Moses begins to speak, he says, this is the commandment, the statutes of the judgments, chapter 6, verse number 1, which the Lord your God has commanded me to teach you that you might do them in the land where you are going over to possess it so that you and your son and your grandson might fear the Lord your God and keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you all the days of your life.

I'm giving you these statutes. I'm giving you these commandments so that in every one of those 86,400 seconds, you fear the Lord. That's what you need to know.

And then he says this. He says, in verse 13, you shall fear only the Lord your God and you shall serve him and swear by his name.

Again, you need to fear the Lord. And then he says this in verse 24. So the Lord commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God for our good always and for our survival as it is today.

Listen, this is for your good. What's for your good? To keep the commandments of God and to fear him always. He says, this is for your survival in the land, the promised land that God has given to you.

If you wanna survive, this is the only way it's gonna happen. You must fear me only. And they didn't.

So when you go back to the verse we read earlier in Jeremiah 2:19, he says, why did you forsake your God? You know why? Because you did not live in the fear of me all day long. That's why. That's why.

And that's why we conduct ourselves in the fear of God. That's why we said, look, if you don't have this booklet, I'll give it to you. I'll give it to you so you can read it and understand it on what it means to fear the Lord, how you fear the Lord, why you are to fear the Lord.

It's very simple read. You can read it in 20 minutes, probably less than that if you're a fast reader. But the principles will help you understand what it means to fear the Lord and how to teach your children to fear the Lord, to live in the fear of God all day long.

What does Solomon say at the end of Ecclesiastes? He says, to sum everything up, and all is vanity. It's all vanity in the world. It's all empty.

It's all frivolous. There's nothing meaningful in the world. Then here's a guy who had all the money in the world to buy whatever he wanted to buy in the world.

He was the most influential man in the world. There was no one quite like Solomon. He could do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, to whomever he wanted without any consequences.

He's a king, had it all. Only to write, it's all empty. It's all vanity.

It means nothing. So at the very end in Ecclesiastes 12:13 says, to sum it all up, fear God, keep his commandments. That's it.

Same thing David, his father, said to him before he died. Just live, live righteously, and live in the fear of the Lord all day long. Because the only way you can live righteously is to live reverently.

That's it. So Solomon, when he's at the end of his life, and he's writing Ecclesiastes, he says, this is it. It's almost as if he's saying, I should've listened to my dad.

I should've listened to what my dad said years ago, and I didn't. That's it. I set my heart to do whatever I wanted to do, reap the consequences because of it, and the sum of everything is just to fear God and keep his commandments.

You wanna redeem the time, you wanna buy it back for the sake of eternity? You wanna maximize every moment of the day for the sake of the master? Conduct yourself in the fear of God. Consecrate your life completely to him. When you begin to do that, your life is consumed with Christ.

You have no time to do anything else outside of Christ because you wanna honor him with your life. Let's pray together.

Father, we thank you for today, a chance to spend a brief moment in the word of God, and we thank you, Lord, for what you've taught us.

Please, Lord, continue to go before us. Help us to maximize the moments of the day. One thing about it is that, Lord, once the day is over, you can't get it back.

All those seconds and minutes are gone, and they just pass so quickly. So, Lord, help us to always live in the light of the word of the Lord. Help us to truly look at every moment as a means by which we can magnify the name of the master of the universe, the king of all kings and the Lord of all lords.

I pray for every family and every husband and every wife and every child in the room, that, Lord, you'd be with them and protect them, watch over them. May they live for your glory and honor. May they know that to live is Christ and to die is gain.

May they know that you're to walk wisely, redeeming the time for the days are evil. May they be like Moses, Lord, teach us to remember our days, that we might play our hearts into wisdom. We love you, Lord.

Thanks for this time. In Jesus' name, amen.