Please turn to the book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament.
To everything there is a season,
And a time to every purpose under the heaven.
For there is a time there for every purpose and for every work.
Or, in some versions: “A time is assigned for every purpose and for every work.”
A wise man’s heart knoweth time and manner.
For to every purpose there is time and manner.
The Amplified Version says, “Know when and what to do.” Let us look to the Lord.
Heavenly Father, how we do praise and thank Thee for the privilege of entering into Thy very presence and standing before Thee. It is all because of the precious blood of Thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the new and living way that He has opened for us.
We do praise and thank Thee, knowing that He is now our High Priest, interceding for us even at this very hour. So, Father, we just come together into Thy presence, rejoicing in our hearts, knowing that Thou art going to meet us.
We pray that Thou wilt remove any veil that may be upon any heart, that we may behold with unveiled face and be transformed from glory to glory according to Thy image, by the Lord, the Spirit. And to Thee be all the glory, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
We mentioned the first night that our God is the eternal God. In other words, He is beyond time; He is timeless. But in His dealings with men, He uses time to accomplish His purpose.
He divides time into special dispensations, and through these special periods of time He is to accomplish His special work in that duration, until finally, when time is no more—that is, at the time when all His purposes are realized—we shall enter into the eternity to come.
So time is a very important factor. Because it is through time that God is to accomplish His purpose, Solomon says, “There is a season for everything, and a time for every purpose.”
A time is assigned to every purpose of God. It is therefore wise to know the time. It is wise to know the manner—that is to say, how should we act in the time?
So, brothers and sisters, here you find three important factors:
God sets the time. He ordains His purpose. And we are to know what to do in the time in order to be in His purpose.
This morning, we would like to go through the history in the Old Testament and see how time, purpose, and manner are illustrated in the lives of God’s people in the past, that we may learn the lesson we should learn.
Of course, we have to begin with Genesis.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
That is not only the beginning of space; it is also the beginning of time. Time begins at the hour when God created the heavens and the earth.
We find in the first chapter of Genesis that God created man, and He put man in the garden of Eden. In the midst of the garden, God planted the tree of life, and beside it, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
When man was first created, he was an innocent being. That is to say, he had not sinned yet. But neither did he have eternal life. He was in the state of innocency.
When God put him in that garden, with all the trees and with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life, God told man that of all the trees in the garden he might freely eat. But he should not eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
In other words, God put man under a commandment. Man at that time was like a child. You know, a child is innocent, and when man was first created, he was like a child.
He did not have the knowledge of good and evil. He could not discern good from evil and evil from good. But he was put under God’s command.
In other words, as a child, if he wants to know whether something is good or bad, he cannot decide because he is innocent. But he can go to his parents and ask whether this is something he could do or whether he should not do it.
Adam, when he was first created, was in that position. He did not know good and evil, but he was put under God’s command. His responsibility was to obey God.
If he obeyed God, the result would be, no doubt, that he would eat of the tree of life and receive the life of God in him. But if he disobeyed God and tried to decide for himself, then we know what the end result would be: death.
So the time was the time of innocency, and the purpose was life. God desired to give His own life to the man He created by eating the fruit of the tree of life.
Now, you cannot miss it, because the tree of life was in the center of the garden. So if God said, “You could eat all the fruit of the trees in the garden except that one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” naturally his attention would be drawn to the tree of life.
The manner was obedience. If he obeyed, he would have life.
But unfortunately, we find that Eve did not know the time. She heard the words, but she refused to acknowledge that she was ignorant—that she was innocent.
You know, innocence is a great blessing. Sometimes we know too much, and that really is a curse. As a baby, as a child, one is so innocent, and he has his parents to look up to. That itself is a blessing.
But when it comes into that child’s mind that he knows everything, and all he wants is to make his own decision before he is able to know good from evil and evil from good, then you find he falls into temptation. That is what happened to mankind in the beginning.
Eve did not realize the time. She refused to acknowledge that she was innocent. She wanted to act on her own. She looked at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She saw that it was pleasant to her eyes, and she fell into temptation.
Instead of going to God to ask God about it—and as a matter of fact, she did not really need to ask God about it, because God had already said it—she did not listen. She did not obey God’s command. She took initiative into her own hands.
Being tempted by the devil, she ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the result was the fall of man. Man was driven out of the garden of Eden.
As man was driven out of the garden of Eden, we find in the fourth chapter of Genesis that the second generation appeared on earth. Adam and Eve had children. The first one was Cain, and the name Cain means acquisition.
After they sinned, God came to them in the garden. On the one hand, God pronounced judgment upon the man, the woman, and the serpent, the enemy, Satan. But on the other hand, God gave mankind a tremendous promise.
God said that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head. In other words, out of the woman would come a seed, and that seed would completely defeat the enemy.
Man had just fallen into the hands of the enemy, and now God promised that He would deliver man out of the enemy’s hand through the seed of the woman.
So when the first child was born, Adam and Eve mistook this child for the seed of the woman. So they said, “Acquisition—behold, a man! We have gotten a man.” But this was the wrong man.
Today, of course, as we look back, we know that the seed of the woman is none other than the Lord Jesus.
Afterward they had another child, and they called that child’s name Abel. The name Abel means breath, or vanity. They began to realize that the first child was not the seed of the woman, and actually they were in the period of vanity.
Man is just like a breath—vanity of vanities. They lived outside of the garden, most likely on the east side, because the Bible says that God set cherubim with a flaming sword on the east side of the garden, guarding the way to the tree of life.
So man actually lived very close to the garden. Probably they could still see the trees there, but they could not get in.
Evidently, Adam and Eve must have told their children what happened in the garden of Eden. After man fell, their communication with God was cut off.
The Bible says that men were dead in sins and transgressions. Being dead in sins and transgressions simply means that their communication with the source of life was cut off. They could not have any communication with God.
They were outside of the garden of Eden. Yet, thank God, through the fall, through rebellion, through doing evil, their conscience was awakened to the extent that they were under the accusation of their conscience.
Conscience is a wonderful thing. Conscience actually is a function of the human spirit. But when men were dead in sins and transgressions, their communication with God was cut off.
Conscience, of course, lost its standard, because the standard of conscience is God. Yet you find that their conscience was awakened. But unfortunately, it was under constant condemnation, under accusation.
Conscience should excuse us sometimes. But, dear brothers and sisters, the result is that conscience always accuses us and never seems to excuse us.
So here you find in the second generation of men that they lived very near to the garden. They could not communicate with God, and yet their conscience was under accusation. They had a desire to worship God. They had a desire to draw near to God. But how?
The time was the time of conscience. They were no longer in the time of innocency; they lived in a time of conscience. They should listen to what conscience told them.
Actually, the purpose of that time was salvation. If they listened to the voice of their conscience, God would use that last link between man and God. Conscience is the last link between fallen man and God.
You know, whenever the Holy Spirit works, He strikes our conscience. There is the last link. God’s purpose in putting man under conscience was that God wanted to save him.
But how? What would be the manner? The manner is to confess that you have sinned and offer sacrifice to God.
So, in the process of time, or at the end of days, both Cain and Abel wanted to approach God. Because deep within them, they knew there was God, and they should worship God. They should draw near to God.
Cain took the produce of his land, because he was a farmer. Probably he took the best produce of his land. He was a good farmer, a diligent farmer. He took the produce of the land and probably came near the east gate of the garden and tried to offer the produce to God.
In doing that, he was hoping that God would accept him. But the Bible says God rejected him and rejected his offering. Why? Because Cain did not know the time.
In other words, he should have known that this was a time of conscience. He should have listened to the voice of his conscience. If he had listened to the voice of his conscience, he would have known that he had sinned against God.
There was no way to approach God except through the shedding of the blood of an innocent lamb—a sacrifice.
How did he know it? Because that is what God did for Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden after they sinned. God clothed them with the skin of an animal. Where did the skin come from? An innocent animal had been killed.
This is what God was trying to tell them: the only way they could approach and stand before God was through a substitute, a sacrifice.
But Cain refused to accept the fact that he was under condemnation. He did not listen to the voice of conscience. He reasoned that he was a good man, a diligent farmer, and that he was bringing the best produce to God. So God must accept him.
In other words, he tried to come to God on his own merits. Because of that, he was rejected.
But there came his brother Abel. Abel came with a sheep, a lamb. He was a shepherd.
You know, dear brothers and sisters, at that time people did not eat meat. Men began to eat meat only after the flood. Before the flood, men ate vegetables and fruits. God did not give them meat for food.
It was after the flood that God consented that their physical bodies needed animal protein. That is why you find that only after that did men begin to eat meat. But Abel was a shepherd.
His profession did not support him. Why did he take up the profession of a shepherd? Evidently, he knew that he was but a breath—vanity of vanities.
He acknowledged that he was a sinner, and he saw that the only way of salvation was through the sacrifice of a lamb, through the shedding of innocent blood. Of course, he looked forward through the lamb to the Lamb of God.
So he knew the time. He acted according to his conscience, and he offered a lamb to God. God accepted him because God accepted his sacrifice.
Then we find, in the fifth chapter, a young man by the name of Enoch. The name Enoch means discipline.
But he was not born a man of discipline. Very likely he was a careless young man. He lived his own life. At that time the population began to grow, and civilization began to make progress.
As a young man, probably he enjoyed his life—a carefree, careless young man. Here he was, sixty-five years old. Now, today sixty-five is old, but at that time sixty-five was really young because people lived to be more than nine hundred years old.
When he was sixty-five years of age, something happened. The Bible says he begot a son, and he called his son Methuselah.
Evidently, at the birth of that son, he received a revelation from God. The revelation was that he lived in a time of judgment.
Even though everything around him went on as usual and nothing special happened, when the son was born, God revealed to him that man was actually under judgment. God was going to judge the world.
This world will not continue endlessly. God has set a time to judge the world. This awakened Enoch. He was so awakened that he began to walk with God. Before that, he did not walk with God, but now he began to walk with God.
Probably everyone here would like to walk with God. You think it is quite a blessing that you can walk with God. Oftentimes people say, “Well, unfortunately we were born in the twentieth century. If we had been born in the first century, in Judea, when Jesus was there, and we could walk with Him—what a blessing that would be!”
But, dear brothers and sisters, walking with God is not easy. It means discipline. Enoch walked with God for three hundred years, and God took him.
Before God took him, there was testimony that he had pleased God. He realized the time: it was judgment. But the purpose of God was deliverance. So he acted by walking with God.
Do you know that of all men Methuselah lived the longest life? He lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years—the longest life upon this earth. That shows the longsuffering of God.
God had already set the time for judgment, and yet God waited nine hundred and sixty-nine years. The longsuffering of God—because God wanted every man to be saved and not to perish.
We find that Enoch not only walked with God, but in Jude we find Enoch, the seventh from Adam, actually preached and prophesied.
He prophesied of the coming of the Lord. Think of that: judgment. Yes, God was going to judge, but he prophesied of the coming of the Lord with myriads of angels.
God would judge the world for its ungodliness: the ungodly words they spoke against God, the ungodly deeds, the ungodly people. He preached while he was walking with God, and God took him.
Enoch knew it. And his grandson, Noah, knew it.
When Noah was born, his father said in Genesis 5:28-29:
And Lamech lived a hundred eighty and two years, and begat a son:
And he called his name Noah, saying,
This same shall comfort us in our work and in the toil of our hands,
Because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed.
His parents saw, with the birth of the child, that mankind would enter into rest. But, of course, they did not know that the rest did not come with the old creation. The rest came after the earth was judged, and in the new earth there came that repose and rest.
But anyway, you find Noah walked with God. Why? Because he knew that this was the time of judgment. God told Noah that the days of man would be one hundred and twenty years. His Spirit would not strive with flesh forever.
God would give them another one hundred and twenty years, and that was all. Noah was moved with the fear of God, and he built an ark. He and his family were saved.
At the same time, he preached. He preached righteousness. If you read 2 Peter 2:5, you find that Noah preached righteousness during that whole period.
He was preaching righteousness because the wickedness of the world was reaching its fullness, and God would judge the world with the flood. So, dear brothers and sisters, the time was judgment, the purpose was the fear of the Lord, and the manner was walking with God.
Now, after Noah, we come to Abraham.
Abraham lived in Ur of the Chaldeans. Ur of the Chaldeans had been excavated, and people found in that city lots of idols. Ur of the Chaldeans was a city of idols.
Tradition says that Abraham’s father, Terah, actually was an idol maker. He made idols. So Abraham lived in a city full of idols. Man had left God so far away that men began to worship all kinds of idols.
Abram actually was brought up in a home that was an idol-making home. But somehow the Lord of glory appeared to him, and God commanded him to depart from his native land, away from his own people, separated unto the place of God’s appointment.
If you read the life of Abraham, you will find that God gave him promise after promise. Why? Because with Abraham, the time was promise.
If you turn to Genesis 12, you find that when God commanded Abram to go out from his land, away from his kindred and his father’s house, to the land that God would show him, God gave him the first promise.
And I will make of thee a great nation,
And I will bless thee,
And make thy name great;
And be thou a blessing:
And I will bless them that bless thee,
And him that curseth thee will I curse:
And in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
That was the first time God promised blessing to Abraham. Then Abraham obeyed God, and he left.
In the same chapter, Genesis 12:7, he arrived in the promised land:
And the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said,
Unto thy seed will I give this land:
And there builded he an altar unto the Lord,
Who appeared unto him.
This is the second time God blessed him. God promised that unto his seed He would give the land.
Then the third time, in Genesis 13:14, Lot, his nephew, chose the best land at that time and left Abraham behind. But after Lot left, God said to Abraham:
Lift up now thine eyes,
And look from the place where thou art,
Northward and southward and eastward and westward:
For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it,
And to thy seed for ever.
And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth:
So that if a man can number the dust of the earth,
Then shall thy seed also be numbered.
Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it;
For I will give it unto thee.
The third time, God gave him promise. Then in Genesis 15, after Abraham delivered his nephew Lot out of the hand of the four kings and refused the offer of the king of Sodom, we read:
Fear not, Abram:
I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.
Afterward, you remember how God took him out and said that his seed would be as the stars in heaven. God also made a covenant with him—a covenant to give him the land.
Then in Genesis 17, when Abraham was ninety-nine years old:
And when Abram was ninety years old and nine,
The Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him,
I am God Almighty;
Walk before Me, and be thou perfect.
And I will make My covenant between Me and thee,
And will multiply thee exceedingly.
God changed his name from Abram to Abraham, father of a multitude.
Then again, in Genesis 22, when Abraham offered Isaac, God promised:
By Myself have I sworn, saith the Lord,
For because thou hast done this thing,
And hast not withheld thy son, thine only son:
That in blessing I will bless thee,
And in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven,
And as the sand which is upon the sea shore;
And thy seed shall possess the gate of His enemies;
And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed;
Because thou hast obeyed My voice.
Now, dear brothers and sisters, here you find Abraham. He lived in the time of promise, and the purpose of God’s promises is blessing. God said, “I will bless,” and you find all kinds of blessings being promised to Abraham.
What should be the manner in such a time? Faith. Faith believes. That is what you find in the life of Abraham. Abraham is the father of faith. How he believed in God!
Now, brothers and sisters, faith is not natural to mankind. We do not have faith in being born. Faith is something that we grow into as we begin to see God.
Then our faith begins to grow in us, because the Lord Jesus is the Author and Finisher of our faith.
Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.
You do not have faith within yourself—you do not. But as you look to God, as you look to the Lord Jesus, faith will be built up within you to inherit the promises.
Then we come to Moses.
When God promised Abraham that He would give him the land, the land was occupied by the seven tribes of Canaan. God said there would be four hundred years during which his children would be in slavery, because the iniquity of the land had not been fulfilled yet.
You remember the story of how the children of Israel went into Egypt, and there they were under slavery. They cried unto the Lord, and when the time was right, God sent Moses to deliver the children of Israel.
It was a time of danger. In one sense, it was still the time of promise, but in that particular period the children of Israel were in great danger of being completely annihilated.
Pharaoh would not allow any male child to live. All male children who were born had to be thrown into the River Nile. It was at that period that Moses was born.
His parents could not hide him any longer after three months. So they put him in a basket in the River Nile. God sovereignly ordered that the daughter of Pharaoh should come to the river that day.
She saw that basket and asked for it to be brought to her. When the basket was opened, the baby cried, and you know the cry of a baby touches a woman’s heart.
So Pharaoh’s daughter took Moses in as her adopted son. Moses actually was reared in the palace of Egypt. He had all the riches of Egypt before him.
Yet he remembered the promise of God. He refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter.
In Hebrews 11, we are told that he made his choice. He would rather suffer with the people of God than have all the riches of Egypt. As a matter of fact, he was third in line to the throne of Egypt.
But he rejected the riches of Egypt. He chose the reproach of Christ because he saw the invisible.
Dear brothers and sisters, in the time of promise, it is the time that we live by faith and not by sight. Moses could have lived by sight, with all Egypt in his hand. But he lived by faith. He saw the One who was unseen, and he followed Him.
God used Moses to deliver the children of Israel. But in the latter part of his life, after he led the children of Israel out of Egypt, they came to Mount Sinai.
There God said, “If you will obey Me and keep My covenant, I will make you a nation of priests. You shall be My people, and I will be your God.” God gave them the Ten Commandments.
In other words, God put them under the law. So you find the time changed from promise to law. Men at that time were put under law, and the purpose of the law is to lead us to Christ.
But under the law, if you keep—if you do—the commandment, then you live. If you do not do the commandment, then you die.
Even Moses, under the law, was not able to enter into the Promised Land. How serious that must be.
Then we find David. David lived in a time of transition. God was going to change the time from judges into kings.
Before that time, the children of Israel lived in the land of Canaan, but they lived in the era of the judges. God was really going to change the time from the judges to the kings.
Under the time of the judges, even though they had revivals from time to time, these revivals never lasted very long. They were constantly under the oppression of their enemies.
At the end of the book of Judges, you find the comment of the Holy Spirit:
In those days there was no king in Israel:
Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.
In other words, people were scattered, and people did whatever was good in their own eyes. There was no concentration; there was no uniting force under a king. God was going to change the time from the judges to kingship.
But unfortunately, the children of Israel could not wait for that time to come. In other words, they tried to anticipate the time. So they told Samuel, “Give us a king like the rest of the nations.”
Because they tried to make that transition before the fullness of time, the result was that they got a king, but not the king after God’s heart. They got a king after the tradition of the nations. They got Saul.
Saul was a man before God’s time. But here you find David. The time came, and God anointed David to be king. David was a man of the hour.
He was anointed and chosen king, as our brother mentioned last night, not because of his outward appearance. Even though he was handsome, God chose him because God looked upon his heart.
God saw that he had a heart—a perfect heart. He was a man after God’s own heart. He was not perfect, but he had a perfect heart, and God chose him because of this.
He was anointed, but he had to wait. He had to suffer. He was refined deeply. As our brother said, all these were part of his training—the training of a king. God was preparing him.
Until finally, God put him on the throne. When he was on the throne, he was able to do the will of God.
So you find in Acts 13 that David ministered to his own generation according to the will of God.
David was a man who knew the time. David was a man who knew what God’s purpose was. God’s purpose was that God was the King. David was just an instrument in God’s hand, and his manner was to do the will of God.
As you go into the history of the children of Israel, there was an interesting incident during the time of the kings. In 2 Kings 5, you find Elisha and how Naaman was healed.
After Naaman was healed, he wanted to give gifts to Elisha, but Elisha refused them. Elisha’s servant Gehazi became greedy, ran after Naaman, told a story, and got some money.
Then he came back, and Elisha said:
Whence comest thou, Gehazi?
And he said:
Thy servant went no whither.
Elisha said to him:
Went not mine heart with thee,
When the man turned again from his chariot to meet thee?
Is it a time to receive money,
And to receive garments, and oliveyards, and vineyards,
And sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and maidservants?
The leprosy therefore of Naaman shall cleave unto thee,
And unto thy seed for ever.
And he went out from Elisha’s presence leprous as snow.
In other words, Elisha knew the time. It was the time of grace, and he should not make grace into merchandise and gain from it. But Gehazi did not know that. He tried to get some benefit out of it.
This was not the time. He was a man acting outside of the time. You know, when you act outside of God’s time, you miss God’s purpose, and you misbehave.
You can go on and find that toward the end of the nation of Judah there was a prophet, Jeremiah. Jeremiah again was a man of the hour.
He was a weeping prophet. He looked at the condition of Judah, and he wept. He called the people to repentance, and they refused.
Because they refused to repent, God decided to judge the nation. So he lived in a time of national crisis. The nation was going down and down and down. Unless they repented, the whole nation would be destroyed.
But they refused to repent. When they refused to repent, the prophet Jeremiah advised the king and the people to surrender.
You know, it was a very difficult thing to do. He was in a time of national crisis. The enemies surrounded them, and here was a prophet saying to the king, “Do not fight; surrender.”
No wonder he was greatly misunderstood. They called him a traitor. They put him in a dungeon. But he was a man of the time.
He knew that in this time of national crisis, because the people refused to repent, judgment was bound to come. Judgment from God is really unto recovery.
What should be the manner? Submission. Submit yourselves under the mighty hand of God. That is the only way when you are under discipline.
Jeremiah was a man of the hour. He knew the time.
There was an interesting incident also. If you read Jeremiah 45, you know Jeremiah had a secretary, Baruch. Jeremiah would speak, and Baruch would write it down. He was a scribe.
But it was during the days of national crisis, and when you are in a day of national crisis, everybody is thinking of himself. What should we do?
Jeremiah told Baruch in Jeremiah 45:2-5:
Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning thee, O Baruch;
Thou didst say, Woe is me now!
For the Lord hath added sorrow to my pain;
I am weary with my groaning,
And I find no rest.
During that time of national crisis, he was restless. He was afraid for his life and everything. He did not know what the future held.
Then God said:
Thus shalt thou say unto him,
Thus saith the Lord,
Behold, that which I have built will I break down,
And that which I have planted I will pluck up;
And this in the whole land.
And seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not:
For, behold, I will bring evil upon all flesh, saith the Lord:
But thy life will I give unto thee for a prey
In all places whither thou goest.
In a time of crisis, when judgment is coming, this is not a time to seek great things for yourself. It is a time to seek the Lord, and your life will be given to you as a prey.
Of course, the children of Israel were taken into Babylonian captivity. But thank God, after seventy years of captivity, God remembered His own word. He stirred the heart of King Cyrus to issue a royal decree that whoever of God’s people in the land of captivity might go back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple, the house of God.
What is the time? The time is the time of recovery. God called His people to come out of Babylon, to go back to Jerusalem, and to rebuild His house, that God might have a name on earth.
But unfortunately, the majority of the children of Israel were content to remain in the land of captivity. Why? Because during those seventy years, they began to buy properties, build their own houses, and build up their own businesses.
You know, the Jews are famous for that. Within seventy years, they had built up their businesses and were well established in the foreign land. They lived a very comfortable life and were given quite a great degree of liberty, even in religion. They were allowed to worship God.
They could not leave Babylon because they were slaves. They could not go back to Jerusalem. Even if they had been allowed to go back to Jerusalem, the temple was no more. The temple was destroyed.
But during that period, the system of synagogues was invented. I always feel that was the most ingenious human religious invention.
You know, it was so convenient. There was only one temple, and all the males of the children of Israel, no matter where they were in the four corners of the world, had to go back three times a year to Jerusalem to worship God and offer sacrifice. That was the only place to offer sacrifice.
But now, with synagogues, if you had ten Jewish men of leisure, you could have a synagogue. So you find synagogues mushrooming everywhere.
You could have a synagogue of your taste. You know, even at the time of Paul, you find synagogues of guilds, labor unions, and tradesmen. Very, very convenient.
You could have a church, as it were, of your own taste. You could run it to suit your taste. In the synagogue, you could read the Torah, sing the songs, and expound the prophets. There was certain liberty in the synagogues.
You remember that even when our Lord Jesus was on earth, He went into the synagogue and sat there. The ruler of the synagogue would come over and say, “Do You have anything to say?” In other words, there was certain liberty in the synagogue. Wonderful.
The only thing was that they could not offer sacrifice. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin—no salvation.
You have everything that will appease and gratify your religious instinct, but there is nothing to satisfy God’s heart.
Now, here you find God setting a time of recovery. God gave the children of Israel the time to go back, to rebuild the house of God, that God might have a name on earth.
But, dear brothers and sisters, most of them were so content with themselves and with their religious life. They did not care about God and what He would have. They only cared about their own things. They refused to go back.
But thank God, God stirred the heart of Zerubbabel and Joshua, and a remnant of the children of Israel. They were willing to be uprooted. They were willing to face the perils of the journey. They were surrounded by enemies.
They were willing to go back to Jerusalem, which was sitting in ruins. They were willing to start from scratch to rebuild the house of God. If it was not for God, what did they return for?
But unfortunately, even with these people, when they returned, they gathered as one man. They built the altar, and then they began to build the foundation.
But the enemies surrounding them used all kinds of means to weaken their hands, until finally they were so weakened that the work of building the house was stopped.
They came back for that purpose, but they said, “This is not the time.” You read Haggai. After a period of time, they stopped working on the temple.
But you had to do something. If you were not building God’s house, what would you do? You would build your own house, of course.
So they began to build their own houses. What beautiful houses they built! God said through the prophet Haggai:
Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your ceiled houses,
While this house lieth waste?
Thank God, through the word of prophecy, the people’s hearts were smitten. They began to go to the mountains, bring in the wood, and build the house of God until the temple was finished.
Dear brothers and sisters, in the time of recovery, the purpose of God is to recover His own name through the building of the house.
What should we do? It is not a time to think about our own house. It is a time to think of the house of God.
Finally, it was during that period that, if you go to the book of Esther, you find that Esther was sovereignly placed by God in a situation where she became queen to Ahasuerus—that is, Xerxes in secular history.
There was an enemy of the Jews. This enemy actually was a descendant of Amalek. Haman was a favorite of the king.
He persuaded the king to destroy all the Jews in the kingdom, and the king gave him permission to do it.
I cannot go into the whole story; it would take too long. But the Jews were in great danger. It was a time of danger—great danger.
Mordecai said to Esther, “Go to the king.” But Esther said that according to the royal rule, unless one was called by the king, she could not go.
If she should go, unless the king stretched out the golden scepter, she would die.
Then we have the word of Mordecai in Esther 4:13-14:
Think not with thyself that thou shalt escape in the king’s house,
More than all the Jews.
For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time,
Then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place;
But thou and thy father’s house shall perish:
And who knoweth whether thou art not come to the kingdom
For such a time as this?
It was a time of danger. God’s purpose was to deliver His children. But how? Through a vessel who was willing to sacrifice herself.
Brothers and sisters, God was looking for such a vessel. God put Esther in that place even before that danger came, for that very time.
If she had missed that, she would have perished. But thank God, she was willing to perish in order to fulfill God’s purpose. How God used her to deliver the children of Israel!
So, brothers and sisters, as you go through the history in the Old Testament, you find that all these men and women of God were men and women who knew the time. They knew the purpose of God, and they were able to cooperate with God.
They were able to do the will of God, and the result was that God’s will was done, and they were rewarded by God.
So, brothers and sisters, we have just used history to prove that point: time, purpose, and manner.
Shall we pray?
Dear Heavenly Father, we do praise and thank Thee that Thou dost set apart a time for Thine own work. We just pray that we may be given wisdom to know our time and Thy purpose, that we may offer ourselves to Thee as a living sacrifice for Thee to use to accomplish Thy will.
To Thee be all the glory, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.