SPEAKER_00: Hi, and thanks so much for joining us on the Sierra Bible Church Sermon of the Week.
SPEAKER_00: I hope that you enjoy this message by Nate Milman.
SPEAKER_01: All right.
SPEAKER_01: Oh.
SPEAKER_01: Good morning.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I'm coming in a little hot this morning.
SPEAKER_01: I had a moment at 10 p.m.
SPEAKER_01: last night that made me rethink point two in your outline.
SPEAKER_01: And it was one of those moments where you're just, it's kind of hard.
SPEAKER_01: And then my wife this morning's like, so what do you, what were you, what was wrong last night?
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, well, I just had this thought.
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, here's what I think it's saying.
SPEAKER_01: And she's like, yeah, if you share that, you're done.
SPEAKER_01: Said, okay, great.
SPEAKER_01: We'll do that.
SPEAKER_01: Um, so that's always fun.
SPEAKER_01: Uh it's a hard topic.
SPEAKER_01: Um, let me just frame out where we're at in case you haven't been to Sear Bible or just showing up.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna be in Ecclesiastes 3 starting out today, if you want to turn there.
SPEAKER_01: But uh we're doing a series on narrow, um, this sort of illustration by Jesus that narrow is this path that leads to life, and few find it.
SPEAKER_01: Um he also speaks about the narrow gate.
SPEAKER_01: And in that, we're doing these different sort of snapshots of what it means to live or find the narrow way.
SPEAKER_01: And so we've gone on to the S in SBC, which is stewardship.
SPEAKER_01: And in that, Nate kind of framed it up last week as being managers or stewarding.
SPEAKER_01: And typically in the Christian framework, you hear about you steward your time, your talents, and your treasure.
SPEAKER_01: So Nate said, Hey, can I get you to talk about stewarding time?
SPEAKER_01: So that's where we're landing today.
SPEAKER_01: And I I just want to say from the outset, this is why I didn't start right away.
SPEAKER_01: The stewardship of our time and our talent and our treasure, it's a it's a thing in the Bible that if you sort of read the Bible, it really confronts you with all sorts of things.
SPEAKER_01: And and and just sort of overarching this message, one of the things that confronted me with is just the idea that in 2026.
SPEAKER_01: I feel like every time I I I teach up here, I get up here and I basically say, like, I suck and you kind of stink, and like let's get better.
SPEAKER_01: Which is a great summary, hopefully.
SPEAKER_01: Last night I just had this moment where it's like it's not only that I stink and you stink, it's that like we maybe we have like the picture wrong of what we're aimed at.
SPEAKER_01: And maybe the church sort of builds up these images, and when we see them, we go, yeah, would we would we even like recognize that that we have that image wrong?
SPEAKER_01: And so in stewarding our time, it was just really confrontational to me to to dwell on Paul and Christ and think, these guys, what what they did with their time, we would use words to describe it that I'm gonna say in a little while that are just a little interesting.
SPEAKER_01: And so as we go through this, I just want you to know that that's like running in the background of Nate's operating system right now.
SPEAKER_01: And it's really combative towards me.
SPEAKER_01: And it's like, you know, fighting.
SPEAKER_01: So there you go.
SPEAKER_01: Let's begin.
SPEAKER_01: All right, Ecclesiastes three.
SPEAKER_01: Let's start with Nate at 20.
SPEAKER_01: I um some of you know, and I've mentioned before, I went to like this Bible Institute.
SPEAKER_01: It's like a fake Bible college of a Hume Lake called the Joshua Wilderness Institute.
SPEAKER_01: And in that institute, the point of the whole thing, uh, I talked about this like a year ago, is that they would make effective Christians.
SPEAKER_01: So, Steph, that's what we want to be, effective Christians, right?
SPEAKER_01: So part of that is that they have this curriculum and it consists of these classes.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the classes are sort of what you'd typically think.
SPEAKER_01: So there's like an Old Testament class, there's a theology class, and then they had this one class.
SPEAKER_01: It was at 1:30 on Mondays, I remember, and we all went every week.
SPEAKER_01: And the class was called Personal Life Skills.
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, the first week we all kind of walk in, it's like, hey, here's what personal life skill is gonna be.
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be great.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna teach you about life.
SPEAKER_01: Great.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: So, what did this mean?
SPEAKER_01: Well, one of the first classes I remember was about balancing a checkbook.
SPEAKER_01: Talk about a personal life skill, right?
SPEAKER_01: Dave here works as an accounting firm.
SPEAKER_01: He knows what it's like.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what it's like to balance a checkbook still.
SPEAKER_01: But I sat through an hour and a half of how to balance a checkbook.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, I saw Mary on the way in.
SPEAKER_01: She could tell you I have no idea how to balance a checkbook because she'll call me everyone's and I'll be like, You're out of money.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, I need more money.
SPEAKER_01: What am I doing?
SPEAKER_01: This autopay is killing me because they don't teach you about what do you do with an auto pay world and balancing a checkbook.
SPEAKER_01: Anyways, I digress.
SPEAKER_01: Let's go back to the class.
SPEAKER_01: The next week, they had a guy come in and he said, I'm gonna talk to you about time management.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, great.
SPEAKER_01: I guess I'm 20.
SPEAKER_01: Do I need to manage my time?
SPEAKER_01: I kind of do what I want.
SPEAKER_01: I don't need to be anywhere.
SPEAKER_01: At this point, I'm at Hume Lake.
SPEAKER_01: I don't even have a job.
SPEAKER_01: Time management, whatever.
SPEAKER_01: Next week, it's a guy who teaches you for an hour and a half about how to make a bed.
SPEAKER_01: Fold sheets, pillows, blankets.
SPEAKER_01: There's multiple ways to do that.
SPEAKER_01: He was in the military, and this is somewhat important to him.
SPEAKER_01: A few weeks go by, we learn how to change flat tires.
SPEAKER_01: All the guys don't know what they're doing.
SPEAKER_01: The girls want to do it even though they don't know what they're doing.
SPEAKER_01: It's a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_01: But another week goes by, and then sure enough, another person comes up, and these are all people that kind of live or work around Hume or visit Hume.
SPEAKER_01: And this guy gets up and goes, Hey, I'm gonna speak to you about time management.
SPEAKER_01: And the whole class is like, wait a second, like like six weeks ago, there's a guy that talked about time management too.
SPEAKER_01: And so we sat through the class, and sure enough, you know, we kind of started joking about it, like time management.
SPEAKER_01: Ha ha.
SPEAKER_01: Another weeks go by.
SPEAKER_01: We we learned how to one guy came in and talked about personal fitness.
SPEAKER_01: He wore like a weighted vest and would run around the mountains at Hume Lake.
SPEAKER_01: That's really popular now.
SPEAKER_01: But back then we were like, this guy is interesting.
SPEAKER_01: What's really funny is his name was Jeff, you know, G-E-O-F-F, but you he wanted you to pronounce it G off, so that was funny too.
SPEAKER_01: That guy was interesting.
SPEAKER_01: But then a few more weeks go by, right?
SPEAKER_01: We get about halfway through the year, and then another guy comes in, he says, I'm gonna talk to you about managing your time.
SPEAKER_01: And at this point, like some of us around the thing started joking, like, hey, do we have life skills today, or are we taking a class in time management?
SPEAKER_01: What do you guys think?
SPEAKER_01: Because we learned about it so many times.
SPEAKER_01: What's funny is to a 20-year-old Nathan Milnik, it is seemingly not important.
SPEAKER_01: What's interesting is like the last three weeks of my life have been crazy, right?
SPEAKER_01: We went on a trip to, we went camping at Shaver Lake with my family.
SPEAKER_01: We went to Bend, Oregon to visit my sister-in-law.
SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to kind of run a business that should make money that Mary wants.
SPEAKER_01: I'm teasing Mary.
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, you didn't ask for this.
SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, the last week, all four of my kids got sick a total of five times because one of them got sick at the beginning and then at the end.
SPEAKER_01: And what do you think I want to read a book on at this point in life?
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's a book about how to get rid of your kids legally.
SPEAKER_01: No, come on, it's a book about time management.
SPEAKER_01: Because at 43 years old, I sit there like you do, raise your hand, and go, my goodness, time is just happening.
SPEAKER_01: And I am just trying to exist through it.
SPEAKER_01: And you feel like it's this like drowning and you're breathing, and it's just going, going, going.
SPEAKER_01: And 43-year-old Nathan responds to Ecclesiastes 3 a lot differently because Ecclesiastes 3 is speaking to this very thing: the idea that mankind has this internal confrontation in his mind, in our minds, that we are constantly confronted with.
SPEAKER_01: So let's jump into it.
SPEAKER_01: Ecclesiastes 3 is where we're at.
SPEAKER_01: He has just gotten done, Coalette, this teacher, has just gotten done talking about that there's a time for everything under the sun, you know, a time to be born and a time to die, and a time to plant, and a time to pluck up.
SPEAKER_01: And this is a very famous passage.
SPEAKER_01: But at the end of it, he says this really interesting thing.
SPEAKER_01: He's sort of surveyed the landscape.
SPEAKER_01: And in Ecclesiastes 9, he says this what gain has the worker from his toil?
SPEAKER_01: I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.
SPEAKER_01: Also, he has put eternity into men's heart, man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from beginning to the end.
SPEAKER_01: So he starts out by saying, you know, what gain can man get from doing all these things, all these well-laid plans, all these busy things we do all the time.
SPEAKER_01: And then he kind of shifts and says, I have seen the business that God has given the children of man to be busy with, meaning I've observed this.
SPEAKER_01: He kind of says it in like an almost negative way.
SPEAKER_01: I've observed this, but uh, you know, it's interesting.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, he has made everything beautiful in its time, which is a wonderful sort of reassurance that everything we think is ugly potentially can be beautiful at the right time.
SPEAKER_01: But then he says this really interesting part.
SPEAKER_01: Also, he has put eternity into man's heart.
SPEAKER_01: The the old King James, don't put the new one up there yet, but the old King James says he has put the world into man's heart, the universe.
SPEAKER_01: He says, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from beginning to the end.
SPEAKER_01: That the interesting word there is that word eternity.
SPEAKER_01: Also, he has put eternity into man's heart.
SPEAKER_01: As you research that word, there's different kinds of translations that come up.
SPEAKER_01: A couple of them are going to show up on the screen, but eternity can be sort of translated as eternity, duration, flow of time, or something like the word incessancy.
SPEAKER_01: How many of you know what incessancy means?
SPEAKER_01: No?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Jen Pepito does.
SPEAKER_01: Let's see it.
SPEAKER_01: What does it mean?
SPEAKER_01: The quality or state of being incessant.
SPEAKER_01: This is informative.
SPEAKER_01: We're doing great this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: And so you have to dig down in Google, right?
SPEAKER_01: And go to the next thing.
SPEAKER_01: So incessant, what does that mean?
SPEAKER_01: Continuing or following without interruption.
SPEAKER_01: God has put this eternity in the heart of man that we understand that there's this continuance that's ongoing from the moment we're born to the moment we die to the moment that we're with God.
SPEAKER_01: And it's this constant flow called time.
SPEAKER_01: It's a duration following without interruption.
SPEAKER_01: And then if you really want to get an interesting perspective on it, you could use Gemini, which is Google's AI, and it says the following comes from the Latin words meaning not stopping.
SPEAKER_01: And that's where we're at.
SPEAKER_01: We have minds that God has created into this world, and we perceive time as this flowing through of events, event after event after event, and it does not stop, and it's constantly going.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the part that sometimes gets stressful.
SPEAKER_01: And why?
SPEAKER_01: The author of Ecclesiastes believes it's because God sort of stands outside of time and it says he cannot find out what God has done from beginning to the end.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, I'm stuck in Nathan Milnik at 43, and I remember Nathan Milnik at 20, and I hope that Nathan Milnik exists at 70, but there's this problem that it keeps marching forward, and I'm in it or stuck with it.
SPEAKER_01: What's interesting is I read the NRSV, which is a fascinating translation, it's put it perfectly.
SPEAKER_01: It says this He has made everything suitable for its time.
SPEAKER_01: Moreover, he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
SPEAKER_01: And so as we open this idea or this teaching about time management or time stewardship, recognize that one of the things we're trying to manage here is that our mind tends to dwell on the past and dwell on the future.
SPEAKER_01: And there's no issue with that at some level.
SPEAKER_01: But notice how that informs something like the present.
SPEAKER_01: What you've done in your past informs how you're probably going to act now.
SPEAKER_01: And what you're perceiving will happen in the future also probably comes to bear on right now.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of famous quotes out there about this, you know.
SPEAKER_01: I'm always starting to live.
SPEAKER_01: I'm always living and starting to live.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, these these sort of quandaries of philosophy that go, whoa, I'm living, but I'm not really living because I'm always living in the past or the future, not the present.
SPEAKER_01: Now, we're not going to go down this philosophical road, but I want to set up the idea that at least the author of Ecclesiastes recognizes this problem and says, God has said eternity in the hearts and man in the hearts of men, and yet they cannot perceive what God is doing from the beginning to the end.
SPEAKER_01: And that puts God in this sort of driver's seat of all eternity and us stuck in right now, having this problem.
SPEAKER_01: And we're called to steward that problem for the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: So let's jump into that.
SPEAKER_01: First point on your outline is we don't get time, we get a life.
SPEAKER_01: James 4 says this like the following says this.
SPEAKER_01: James says, Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit.
SPEAKER_01: So James sets up this idea that there's a person, maybe it's a small business owner, and they sort of create these future plans, this future idea.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, you know, we're gonna start a business and it's gonna be a snow cone shop in Twain Heart, and then we're eventually we're gonna open in Oakdale and then Modesto, and this is our plan.
SPEAKER_01: And James says, interesting thing here.
SPEAKER_01: You don't know what the future holds.
SPEAKER_01: So he goes on.
SPEAKER_01: Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.
SPEAKER_01: What is your life?
SPEAKER_01: For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.
SPEAKER_01: And he kind of corrects us in that thought and says, You who believe you're gonna go into such and such a town and start a business, what is your life?
SPEAKER_01: It's a vapor.
SPEAKER_01: Here today, gone tomorrow.
SPEAKER_01: And he proposes a different way of looking at it.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.
SPEAKER_01: As it is, you boast in your ignorance.
SPEAKER_01: All such boasting is evil.
SPEAKER_01: So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him, it is sin.
SPEAKER_01: Now, that last part is interesting because he's talking about two concepts.
SPEAKER_01: We didn't read the first one, and we don't need to, but I'll explain it to you.
SPEAKER_01: Uh James is confronting two problems that the church was having, or two ways that Christians thought that were sort of wrong-headed.
SPEAKER_01: The first was uh in the verses before this, he's correcting someone who is speaking against, or he's he's saying that we need to be against people speaking evil of their fellow Christians.
SPEAKER_01: There it is.
SPEAKER_01: So James is warning against this, and then he's warning against knowing the future.
SPEAKER_01: And to both of these things, he says this interesting part whether you're the type of person who is speaking evil of a fellow Christian or is attempting to make these well-laid plans for the future, in both those instances, you're actually taking the place of God.
SPEAKER_01: He says it like this right there.
SPEAKER_01: As it is, you boast in your ignorance, all such boasting is evil.
SPEAKER_01: Boasting is evil because boasting is you pretending to be God.
SPEAKER_01: We boast in our arrogance, assuming we can be like God, judging people, condemning them, or knowing the future.
SPEAKER_01: Now, why does this have to do with my point?
SPEAKER_01: We don't get time, we get a life.
SPEAKER_01: What we mean when we say we steward our time is that we are really stewarding a life.
SPEAKER_01: You could say it like this: we don't get a certain amount of time, we get a life.
SPEAKER_01: Whether you get 80 years or 40 years or 10 years, that's your life.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what you get.
SPEAKER_01: And so when James is saying this, what he's saying is you might make these future plans.
SPEAKER_01: You might have ideas for the future that either involve God or don't involve God.
SPEAKER_01: What's interesting about that is you're sort of playing God in that because all you're guaranteed is right now, what is life?
SPEAKER_01: You are a vapor.
SPEAKER_01: When you realize that, you realize that what matters truly is what?
SPEAKER_01: The present.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus reinforced this.
SPEAKER_01: Think about the Lord's Prayer.
SPEAKER_01: Give us this day our daily bread.
SPEAKER_01: It's not give us worries about the past that cripple current action.
SPEAKER_01: It's not give us social media influencers that make me feel like I live through them.
SPEAKER_01: It's not give us this day our economic certainty for the foreseeable future.
SPEAKER_01: Give us this day our daily bread is the idea that what we have is here and now, and anything else is sort of not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_01: And that's not like to scare you like you're gonna walk out this door and die.
SPEAKER_01: You might, that's true.
SPEAKER_01: But it's it's really to look at it and go, okay, wait.
SPEAKER_01: All I'm guaranteed is the life God gives me.
SPEAKER_01: I don't get any certain amount of time in this whole thing called planet Earth or in the will of God.
SPEAKER_01: And that's why James corrects this and to go back to it, it means that being a good steward of time is being a good steward of here and now.
SPEAKER_01: And assessing God's will in that is a particularly hard thing.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Well, if you're like me, maybe you say to yourself, uh, when our kids get older, we'll do this stuff for the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: They're bad ages now to like do a missions trip.
SPEAKER_01: You know, you find yourself staying saying things like this.
SPEAKER_01: And that's hard because we are in the present.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the good news is you all are doing a great job of stewarding your time in the present.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: You came to church.
SPEAKER_01: Right, Norm?
SPEAKER_01: Hey! All right, let's go home.
SPEAKER_01: This is great news.
SPEAKER_01: But I think we have to have eyes to see the present as the thing we need to be stewarding.
SPEAKER_01: I I this was brought home yesterday when I went to a pool at a neighbor's house with my two sons, a five-year-old and an eight-year-old.
SPEAKER_01: The five-year-old can't swim yet.
SPEAKER_01: So he's got a life vest on, and he was doing this activity where he keeps getting up on this raft in the pool, and he'll just he would sit there with his life vest on, he'd plug his nose and hop off the raft just into the water.
SPEAKER_01: And the first couple of times the water goes up to here, right?
SPEAKER_01: And then it gets up to like here, and then finally he goes in over his head and he's like very proud of himself.
SPEAKER_01: So, what does dad do?
SPEAKER_01: Well, dad watches him five or six times and he's very proud of him.
SPEAKER_01: That's me.
SPEAKER_01: Then dad goes, you know what?
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna get out of the pool and have a soda water because soda water sounds great.
SPEAKER_01: Get out of the pool, sit in a chair, got the soda water.
SPEAKER_01: What's next to me in the chair?
SPEAKER_01: What do I start doing?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, man, I gotta look up what the Dodgers score is, right?
SPEAKER_01: A real baseball team, unlike those Giants.
SPEAKER_01: Unbelievable.
SPEAKER_01: And and uh oh, we just lost everybody in this example.
SPEAKER_01: So, right, I start, I start kind of scrolling.
SPEAKER_01: And what does my son do?
SPEAKER_01: Dad, watch.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, Dodgers, you know, doing pretty good.
SPEAKER_01: And I go look at him, you know.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, good job, dude.
SPEAKER_01: And then as soon as he's like in the water and trying to get back up, I like look away at my phone, right?
SPEAKER_01: And then when he says, Dad, watch, what do I do?
SPEAKER_01: Good job, bud.
SPEAKER_01: Dad, watch.
SPEAKER_01: Good job, bud.
SPEAKER_01: Dad, watch.
SPEAKER_01: Good job, bud.
SPEAKER_01: At some point, if this were like a not a comedy, right?
SPEAKER_01: Like someone would be like, hey, you should probably say something to your son other than good job, bud.
SPEAKER_01: Because you should probably pay attention to your son.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, you're responsible for the present, be a good steward.
SPEAKER_01: And what's hard about that is when you realize that it hits you with a ton of bricks, then my five-year-old just wants to hang out with his dad.
SPEAKER_01: And while this isn't like some profound Christian point about, you know, sharing the gospel with somebody in Africa, that little example, it's the hardest to reflect on sometimes as a parent and be like, I am missing this.
SPEAKER_01: I am missing the time God has given me with my child because it will be over, right?
SPEAKER_01: 90% of the time I'm gonna spend with them is before they're 18.
SPEAKER_01: That's crazy when you think about it.
SPEAKER_01: And so it's many things like that that we look at in life and we go, ultimately, being a good steward of time is being a good steward of the here and now.
SPEAKER_01: God doesn't give us some certain amount of time, he gives you life now.
SPEAKER_01: What you do with it is totally up to you.
SPEAKER_01: Now, what's interesting is God wants to be involved in that.
SPEAKER_01: That's why James says maybe we should change it to if the Lord wills, then we do.
SPEAKER_01: Which takes us to our second point, which is the idea that God wants us to use it wisely, meaning time.
SPEAKER_01: He wants us to steward it wisely.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: I said at the beginning that I got a little spun out last night at 10 p.m.
SPEAKER_01: This was what did it.
SPEAKER_01: Point two here completely changed last night at 10 p.m.
SPEAKER_01: Like the slides still kind of make sense, but not really.
SPEAKER_01: So we'll only put a couple of them up there.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what didn't make sense to me last night when I started thinking about this verse.
SPEAKER_01: I put on the outline, God wants us to use it wisely, use time wisely.
SPEAKER_01: For being a good steward, we'll be wise about it.
SPEAKER_01: I shared this verse in your outline, which is Ephesians 5.
SPEAKER_01: Let's read Ephesians 5, and then I'll explain what kind of hit me and made me rethink my existence last night.
SPEAKER_01: Look what it says in Ephesians 5.
SPEAKER_01: It says, look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so that's pretty straightforward.
SPEAKER_01: Look, look what you're doing.
SPEAKER_01: Make sure it's wise, not unwise.
SPEAKER_01: Then he says, This making the best use of the time because the days are evil.
SPEAKER_01: Then his conclusion is, therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
SPEAKER_01: So he ties these things: best use of time, wise not foolish, will of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is an easy point to understand.
SPEAKER_01: And the part I want to share with you this morning before I got a little interesting last night was this that there's really practical applications.
SPEAKER_01: Like if you were just to take the New Testament and go, you know what?
SPEAKER_01: What's a really direct way or a practical way of looking at the will of God?
SPEAKER_01: You could just put into a search engine, right?
SPEAKER_01: Like will of God, and it would spit out the following.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to put it up there, I'm just going to read it to you.
SPEAKER_01: It would say this.
SPEAKER_01: You pray without ceasing.
SPEAKER_01: You give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Jesus Christ for you.
SPEAKER_01: Those are various verses from like Thessalonians and other epistles.
SPEAKER_01: Now, those are those are straightforward.
SPEAKER_01: Be sanctified, abstain from sexual immorality, rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: Very practical.
SPEAKER_01: Kinda easy to follow.
SPEAKER_01: Not easy, but like I can rejoice.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not having a problem with that.
SPEAKER_01: What's interesting is to, and this is what hit me with a ton of bricks last night.
SPEAKER_01: I was thinking about, okay, so so the context of this is, you know, Paul wrote this to the church in Ephesus.
SPEAKER_01: Now, hold on for a second.
SPEAKER_01: Paul, let's talk about Paul.
SPEAKER_01: And in my head, I go, okay, so Paul believes that a wise use of time is following the will of God.
SPEAKER_01: Now, every one of Paul's epistles starts with sort of the idea of the will of God, if you read them straight down, right?
SPEAKER_01: So, like if you read like I have them all here, but 1 Corinthians 1.1, Paul called by the will of God to be an apostle in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: 2 Corinthians 1.1, Paul an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timothy our brother.
SPEAKER_01: Ephesians 1-1, Paul an apostle Jesus Christ by the will of God.
SPEAKER_01: Colossians 1-1, Paul an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God.
SPEAKER_01: 2 Timothy 1-1, Paul an apostle of Jesus Christ, Jesus by the will of God.
SPEAKER_01: You have this guy who's on a mission and he's tying it to what he did in that Ephesians 5 verse, which is the will of God.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is, making the best use of the time.
SPEAKER_01: What's interesting is that use of time for Paul involved the following.
SPEAKER_01: If we take Paul over here on this end of the stage, let's talk about the great things that resulted from Paul's life.
SPEAKER_01: So many Gentiles and Jews came to Christ because of Paul.
SPEAKER_01: So many people since then have read you know read his letters.
SPEAKER_01: There's an immense body of work there in which a changed soul changed the world.
SPEAKER_01: And you look at that Paul and you go, man, if we're talking about time management, I want my kid to be like that guy.
SPEAKER_01: Like I want myself to be like that guy.
SPEAKER_01: Mark, don't you want to be?
SPEAKER_01: Mark, you're Paul right here.
SPEAKER_01: Now what else do we know about Paul though?
SPEAKER_01: Somewhere in the middle over here, some use of time management, good use of time, will of God stuff.
SPEAKER_01: He was a tent maker.
SPEAKER_01: Was he famous for his tent making?
SPEAKER_01: Not really.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: You don't go to REI and find, you know, Paul's perfect pop-ups or whatever, right?
SPEAKER_01: You know he was a tent maker, you know what he did for a living, but that's sort of secondary and it's sort of in the middle because it was some part of maybe the will of God, or it's some part of his time management algorithm, right?
SPEAKER_01: That he's using to make money.
SPEAKER_01: But then I'm sitting there thinking last night, like, okay, so Paul writes this, make wise the use of your time.
SPEAKER_01: And I went to this side and I sort of got into what I've done in the past, which is 2 Corinthians 11.
SPEAKER_01: If you've ever read 2 Corinthians 11, it's where Paul chronicles how much he should be sort of successful.
SPEAKER_01: And yet all these bad things have resulted in his life.
SPEAKER_01: He says he's been beaten five different times with the 40 lashes minus one.
SPEAKER_01: He's been shipwrecked three times.
SPEAKER_01: He's learned what it's like to live.
SPEAKER_01: I'm getting emotional because of what I thought after this.
SPEAKER_01: You know, he's he says, I learned how to live in plenty and want, right?
SPEAKER_01: But basically, he's learned how to live, he says, in the elements and homeless, sometimes with a home, sometimes without a home.
SPEAKER_01: And and it's this litany of things that make his life, you go, oh my goodness, like this is a crazy life.
SPEAKER_01: Like, would I even recognize Paul if he was like at church today?
SPEAKER_01: Because he sounds like a homeless guy that would just be up here and be like, this was wild, but this is what happened.
SPEAKER_01: And then the crazy part where I started getting emotional was like, I was like, man, as a Christian, I'm okay with like if my kid, let's say Jude, Jude's over there, he's 10.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, Jude.
SPEAKER_01: If my kid wants to follow around this Pa, I'm good with it, right?
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: He's changing churches, he's doing missions.
SPEAKER_01: But then I thought, man, honestly, let's let's imagine this Paul comes to my to my house.
SPEAKER_01: This is the part where I think I fail.
SPEAKER_01: And he's like, hey, this was funny to me last night.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know why I'm emotional, but whatever.
SPEAKER_01: So this part's funny.
SPEAKER_01: Then then you can get serious with me again.
SPEAKER_01: So I imagine Paul comes to my wife.
SPEAKER_01: This was like what I was thinking last night at 10:30 by myself in my office.
SPEAKER_01: And I thought, okay, so so Paul shows up and he's like, hey, I want your 10-year-old to go with me.
SPEAKER_01: And like the last two times we've gone to like Philippi, I really don't know if you need a boat to get to get to Philippi.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't study that.
SPEAKER_01: But let's imagine that Paul's going to Philippi again and he goes, Hey, I want your son to go with me.
SPEAKER_01: And then he's like to my wife, he's like, you know, the last two times I went, we kind of ended up on an island.
SPEAKER_01: Our ship hit a rock.
SPEAKER_01: We kind of starved for a few days.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking, would are my wife and I the the kind of people that would like be like, dude, take Jude.
SPEAKER_01: He can go on this trip.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to go to Philippi.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to be with you.
SPEAKER_01: And the answer is probably no.
SPEAKER_01: And and how would we describe that, Paul?
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: I was thinking about this, like, you know, talking about time management, right?
SPEAKER_01: Stewarding our time, will of God.
SPEAKER_01: I thought we'd probably like describe him as like reckless, like a guy who's gotten beaten a bunch of times and ended up in prison.
SPEAKER_01: We'd probably describe him as neglectful.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_01: If you sent your kid with him, that millnik, the millniks, they sent their Paul shipwreck, what's going on over there?
SPEAKER_01: You know, we might describe him it is irresponsible.
SPEAKER_01: And the hardest part to me in thinking about this was that I'm sitting there going, okay, wait.
SPEAKER_01: Like I'm telling people that you got to use your time wisely.
SPEAKER_01: God wants us to use it wisely.
SPEAKER_01: But what that resulted in for Paul was, of course, changing the world.
SPEAKER_01: But the other thing that resulted in is something I would probably never send my kids on a mission with him towards or for.
SPEAKER_01: And and what's interesting is you you sort of get both of those.
SPEAKER_01: And and I couldn't help but think, like, it's hard to encourage Christians that the wise use of their time in relation to God's will may appear sometimes something like reckless, neglectful, irresponsible.
SPEAKER_01: And I I don't know how to cash that out other than in my own life.
SPEAKER_01: I don't believe I'm like up to the task sometimes.
SPEAKER_01: That's a really hard thing, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's funny, the the most insightful thing someone said to me after the first service was a a woman down below said, Nate, it's hard, but like think about it.
SPEAKER_01: Everyone has a testimony.
SPEAKER_01: And while I want my kids' testimonies to be perfect, you realize they're gonna have to have some lumps.
SPEAKER_01: And then you realize, like, wow, a wise use of time might be sometimes described as these things: neglectful, irresponsible, reckless even.
SPEAKER_01: And I couldn't help but think that if we met Jesus and Paul today, we might look at these guys and go, man, this is, these aren't who we thought they were.
SPEAKER_01: They're a little interesting.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the results awesome over here, but over here, this comes with it.
SPEAKER_01: Whew, that's a tough one to swallow and a tough one to encourage.
SPEAKER_01: And a tough one to have your kid follow, you know, into the will of God doing things that are potentially dangerous.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and that was the hard part for me last night because I sat there and I thought, well, God wants us to use our time wisely.
SPEAKER_01: How do you explain stewarding it wisely?
SPEAKER_01: Well, the best you can do is read Paul and describe what he got out of life.
SPEAKER_01: Now, how does that apply to us today?
SPEAKER_01: I would say it applies like the following.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you may have heard God's call in your life to give up money.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you may have heard God call in your life to, you know, make your marriage better.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you may have heard God's call in your life to go to the mission field.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what it is, but there's this impractical side that I can't just read down from the Bible like I did about abstaining from sexual immorality, rejoice always, pray without ceasing.
SPEAKER_01: There's this part of you that has to wrestle with God and go, God, what do you have for my life?
SPEAKER_01: You've given me time, talent, and treasure.
SPEAKER_01: Show me what you have for me today.
SPEAKER_01: And then respond to it.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the key part is the responding to it.
SPEAKER_01: And I don't know what that is for you.
SPEAKER_01: I know that for me, I was deeply convicted last night about what I allow to happen because I don't want to be perceived by myself or others as a neglectful father.
SPEAKER_01: And that's hard to admit.
SPEAKER_01: And so I encourage you in that way that be wise in the use of your time, but always submit it to the will of God.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, point three on your outline.
SPEAKER_01: Here we go, moving on.
SPEAKER_01: Numbering our days.
SPEAKER_01: This is an easy one because it's super existential, and I'm a philosophy guy.
SPEAKER_01: So here we go.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 90 says the following So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.
SPEAKER_01: Return, O Lord, how long?
SPEAKER_01: Have pity on your servants.
SPEAKER_01: Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that me we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
SPEAKER_01: Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil.
SPEAKER_01: Let your work be shown to your servants and your glorious power to their children.
SPEAKER_01: Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands upon us.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, establish the work of our hands.
SPEAKER_01: It's this glorious psalm in which we're asked to be taught the number of our days.
SPEAKER_01: And what that phrase means is sort of to be taught that our life is finite, that what God has for us is a lifetime, but we do not know how long.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, our days are numbered.
SPEAKER_01: What's this like?
SPEAKER_01: It's like a cell phone.
SPEAKER_01: How many of you, when you have 100% charge on your cell phone, feel like you own the world?
SPEAKER_01: Sure, you can watch YouTube, kid, whatever.
SPEAKER_01: Don't let your kids watch.
SPEAKER_01: Well, whatever.
SPEAKER_01: Do whatever you want.
SPEAKER_01: Right, we can do whatever.
SPEAKER_01: We're talking on the phone.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, 98%.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, we're still good.
SPEAKER_01: Let's, you know, surfing wherever.
SPEAKER_01: What happens when it gets red and gets to like 3%?
SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you what I do.
SPEAKER_01: Well, you plug it in.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, good.
SPEAKER_01: It's great.
SPEAKER_01: And you don't have a plug.
SPEAKER_01: I had this happen this last week, and what did I do?
SPEAKER_01: I texted my wife.
SPEAKER_01: My phone's gonna die.
SPEAKER_01: If I die, find me.
SPEAKER_01: We're so reliant on these things, right?
SPEAKER_01: And numbering our days is that concept of if we there's an urgency to our life if we realize that that number is shrinking.
SPEAKER_01: There's an urgency to what God has for us if we realize that our phone just isn't always at 100%.
SPEAKER_01: And and and part of this, and and you know, part of the words of Christ in something like the parable of the talents is getting us to realize that we've been given a certain amount of time and we're stewards over, again, time, talent, treasure, and that in that counting down, we need to be extremely purposeful.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, it's funny because at the end, the psalmist says, Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands upon us.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, establish the work of our hands.
SPEAKER_01: The psalmist is telling us that our cell phones at a certain percentage percentage is probably lower than we all think.
SPEAKER_01: And as it counts down, the urgency with which God says, Hey, I want to work along with you, I want to do things with you, becomes much more important.
SPEAKER_01: And and learning the number of our days is a hard concept, but if you start to think about it, it gets really easy because you go, you know what?
SPEAKER_01: Everyone dies.
SPEAKER_01: That's sort of the central theme of Ecclesiastes.
SPEAKER_01: Is that we're hearing gone, or even as James puts it, vapor.
SPEAKER_01: And and what's fascinating is if you start to realize that, you start to realize that God has this immense amount of ministry for us, we just need to figure out what it is and get along with it or get on with it.
SPEAKER_01: There isn't infinite power in this material body, and the wise thing to do is to live like that's true.
SPEAKER_01: In closing, I want to sum up just a couple things back to the beginning.
SPEAKER_01: 20-year-old Nathan had no need for time management classes at all.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, it was laughable.
SPEAKER_01: 43-year-old Nathan realizes that the truths of Christ is that the God of the universe has a plan for my life, a will, and then I'm given a certain amount of time to sort of live and dwell in that.
SPEAKER_01: He gives me help, his Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: We talked about that a few weeks ago.
SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, there's got to be a part of me that does sort of these three ideas, right?
SPEAKER_01: That I learn to number my days, that I learned to be wise about my use of time, and that I realize that all I get is a life and not some guaranteed amount of time.
SPEAKER_01: If I can do that, I think I can have the courage sometimes to live like Paul, even when that's hard.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, thank you for this time.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for uh, whoo, just a whirlwind of a week with kids and stuff going on.
SPEAKER_01: I pray that for people here, we would learn to be people who steward the here and now, people that learn to steward the number of days we have left.
SPEAKER_01: You've entrusted us as sort of managers of our time, and I pray that we would manage them wisely.
SPEAKER_01: I pray that parts of this teaching stir in hearts.
SPEAKER_01: I pray that my heart is completely stirred and that things in my life change because of how you speak to me and what you speak to me.
SPEAKER_01: We ask that we would be people who are in your word, people who are in your will, who do the practical and the impractical.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for this time together, and uh thank you for a picnic later.
SPEAKER_01: That'll be a wonderful time for a lot of us together.
SPEAKER_01: In your name, amen.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining us, church.
SPEAKER_00: We hope that you enjoyed this message.
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