Okay. You know, these verses that were given to us by brothers and sisters here in Toronto were very practical verses, really: walk worthy and redeem the time.
I would like for us to look at Ephesians 5:16. My version has now changed “redeem the time” to another phrase which means the same thing, but I actually prefer “redeem the time.” In any case, verse 16 says:
Making the most of your time, because the days are evil.
Now, what we are going to find is that this exhortation is in the midst of a larger exhortation. I would now like to go back and read it, because it will have relevance to what we share tonight. So, if you will go back to Ephesians 5:6, we will read up to that verse, and perhaps you will see it in a fuller light.
Ephesians 5, beginning in verse 6:
Let no one deceive you with empty words;
for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.
Therefore do not be partakers with them.
For you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light
(for the fruit of the Light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth),
trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.
Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them;
for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret.
But all things become visible when they are exposed by the Light, for everything that becomes visible is Light.
For this reason it says,
“Awake, sleeper,
And arise from the dead,
And Christ will shine on you.”
Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit.
Now you see there, this is a long exhortation. You see a lot of practical things about walking carefully—“circumspectly” is the old word for it—to walk carefully. And it says to redeem the time because the days are evil.
So we want to look at this matter tonight, this matter of redeeming the time, because time has great value. Why is it that time has great value and is not just pointless? It is because eternity’s plans are fulfilled in time. Every moment of time is ticking toward God’s plan being fulfilled. This makes the things that happen important.
Making the most of your time, because the days are evil.
Now, there are time bandits—time bandits in your life and in my life—time bandits that want to steal every blessing in Christ Jesus, in the heavenly places, that is yours.
We should be so rich as Christians. We should be so blessed. As a matter of fact, as we learn to redeem the time, strange things happen. Even though it is an evil day, we find ourselves abounding in grace and full of blessings.
In the latter days, the testimony of the church will not be that she has to fight, but that she will have such blessing, such abounding grace, that those who are in darkness will see the light within brothers and sisters and be saved. So we should be full of blessing, but of course there are bandits.
Now, the bandits can steal your luggage. When that happens, they can steal your peace. How many of you know that you can waste the whole session just thinking, “What happens if my luggage does not come?” Maybe somebody did not redeem this morning’s meeting, just thinking about luggage. You see, we can get caught up in that.
Now, there is another bandit: a lack of sleep. Sleep can rob us. But these are just small time bandits. What all the bandits are bound together to do is to steal your inheritance as a Christian.
We end up with just enough religion to bug us instead of bless us, and we are always having things stolen from us. It gets me mad when I get something stolen from me, I have to tell you. When I get something stolen from me, I do not like it, you know?
One day I walked out to my car, and my window was smashed in. They had taken my radio and all of my stuff. I had an iPod hookup and everything. Man, it made me—I hate getting things stolen.
But after all, behind all of the time banditry, there is this enemy, the thief, that comes to steal and kill and destroy. He comes to steal our peace, then to kill our spiritual life, and eventually, if possible, to destroy our lives.
Thank God Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly. Such a contrast.
Now, there are three major amigos behind the robberies. They are not the Three Eagles. They are, as you can clearly see by this picture, the world, the flesh, and the devil. That is what we have right here.
Of course, the devil we know. But our biggest problem is that—your belly button, your flesh. Your flesh allows more time to be stolen from your life in the Lord than the devil can ever muster a plan to do.
The world also can take you out for quite a while in its fancy car. But your flesh, every day, has the wonderful knack—because your flesh is so close to you, as near as your belly button—of turning your attitude off in such a way that you miss opportunities, which is what we are talking about.
But before we can stop the daily robberies, first, we have to wake up. Do you notice the verse that just precedes “redeem the time”?
Awake, sleeper,
And arise from the dead,
And Christ will shine on you.
Then you can redeem the time. Aha! So first we have to wake up, because sometimes we are sleeping through the robbers.
Second, we have to initiate actions from a new time zone. Our time is being frittered away on one level, but we can come at it from another if we can learn what time zone we should be living in. That is what we will deal with somehow tonight.
Finally, we have to know the currency needed to buy back our time. Now, you probably know that the word redeem means “to buy back.” This is talking very practically about taking the opportunities—a good translation—but buying back the time.
You have only so many days on this earth, and you need to buy them up for Jesus. Otherwise, they get taken by others. But what kind of currency can you use to buy back the time? There are a lot of people who would like to, but we find that they do not have the right currency.
These are our three sessions ahead, you see. All right, not today. We are just going to be really simple, because the first thing is the necessity of a wake-up call.
Now, this sounds like gospel, and it is gospel, because people who are asleep are awakened from the dead, Christ shines on them, and they are saved. But there has to be a reason why Paul tells Christians this little poem:
Awake, sleeper,
And arise from the dead,
And Christ will shine on you.
Could it be possible that Elmo—we all know that he is a Spirit-filled Christian—could it be possible that he is asleep at the switch? And there is all kinds of time thievery going on, and he does not even realize it?
Oh, you have to watch out. You know that you are going to have something stolen from you if you come to a conference and bring your own pillow. Now, that means you are one of those people who likes to sleep through anything, even through devotions—which is a robbery. We will get to that later.
Okay, wake up. Number one. That is all we are going to talk about: this matter of waking up.
Now, who is asleep? Just a couple of examples. We are within our quarters here, all right? That happens to be Jeremiah right there, our good friend from Queens. But it could be anybody. That is my true-life portrait of Jeremiah, too.
Well, anyway, who is asleep? Anyone who is saved but is not a disciple.
Now, that should be a contradiction in terms, for sure. I mean, saved but not a disciple. But they are not carrying their cross, they are not following Jesus, and they are effectively asleep.
Anyone who has been apprehended but is not apprehending. Huh? That is a Christian who has really been fully saved, but they are not chasing after the Lord yet. They are chasing after a lot of things, but they are not chasing after the Lord. Until you are chasing after the Lord, you are asleep at the switch, and things get stolen.
Anyone who is on cruise control without full consecration. There are a lot of people who have gotten pretty smart about this whole Christian business, and they realize, “Hey, you know what? The best thing to do is kind of sit on the fence.”
There was a nineteenth-century political group called Mugwumps. I think they were Democrats who voted Republican for Grover Cleveland, or something like that. They were called Mugwumps—the kind of bird down South that sits on the fence with their mug on one side and their wump on the other.
There are a lot of Christians who like to say, “Well, I do not want to be too spiritual, too religious. I do not want to be too worldly, too bad. I am just going to sit on the fence, kind of.” Ah, those are people asleep.
Anyone who is saved but does not realize what has really happened. This is what our brother was talking about this morning: consider what has happened. You would be surprised. It could be a wake-up call.
So our time is vitally linked to our relationship to light. This wake-up matter has to do with light shining on us. Now we are going to look at the relationship of time and light.
As it says in Ephesians 5:14–16:
For this reason it says,
“Awake, sleeper,
And arise from the dead,
And Christ will shine on you.”
Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
Now first, let us remember what it was like to be in darkness. Ephesians 5:7–8 tells us:
Therefore do not be partakers with them;
for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light.
But you remember now, is it not interesting what Paul says here? He is not being mystical. He is sharing something more profound than you realize. In fact, you are either darkness or light.
He says that you formerly were darkness, not merely a child of darkness. You were darkness. So when somebody looked at you, they saw darkness.
There are a lot of people, you know, because I live around NYU—I live in Manhattan. When you go around NYU, some people here actually went to NYU. You can tell they are creased badly by the experience.
People who walk around NYU often look angry. They look dark. You say, “Hey, let’s have a conversation.” They say, “Okay, let’s talk about the philosophy of nihilism. Let’s talk about chaos. Let’s talk about ultimate destruction.”
These are the kind of things that take their hours, because they are darkness. What they exude kind of draws the light out of you. It leaves you confused. It is a terrible state to be in.
But, surprisingly enough, to get a little idea of this, we are going to enter the darkness of Solomon’s backslidden life. We all know where you can find that, right? In Ecclesiastes.
If you turn to Ecclesiastes 3, we are all going to read this passage about time, and we will get a little picture of what it is like to live in darkness.
Solomon, the son of David—Solomon, this wise man who said, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean to your own understanding”—started leaning to his own understanding. He went into darkness, and what he lost is inestimable.
Now, God still gives him credit for building the house of God and for speaking words of wisdom. But in his latter days, he went into a darkness. We see his definitions in that darkness.
There is an appointed time for everything, and there is a time for every event under heaven:
A time to give birth and a time to die;
A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted;
A time to kill and a time to heal;
A time to tear down and a time to build up;
A time to weep and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn and a time to dance;
A time to throw stones and a time to gather stones;
A time to embrace and a time to shun embracing;
A time to search and a time to give up as lost;
A time to keep and a time to throw away;
A time to tear apart and a time to sew together;
A time to be silent and a time to speak;
A time to love and a time to hate;
A time for war and a time for peace.
What profit is there to the worker in this kind of time? Basically, he is saying, “I have seen the task which God has given the sons of men with which to occupy themselves.” Oh, man. Time. We are all in this endless cycle.
Here is Solomon. He is in a time zone where everything is vanity, vanity. Everything is vanity—or maybe your version says everything is meaningless, meaningless; everything is futile, futile; everything is empty, empty.
Everything is emptiness. The time to sow, the time to harvest—so what is the big deal? What do you do with your harvest? You sow next year. I mean, it just goes around and around.
The time to love, the time to hate—ah, la, la, boring, boring. That is life. That is what you have ahead of you. You are only eighteen years old, but you are going to live to eighty-eight. You have seventy more years of total boredom.
“Yeah, honey, I love you. Nine-millionth kiss. I really got a lot out of that one.” The time for kids, the time to pull out the teeth—you know, it just all goes on, right?
Everything is futile in this time zone that he is in. He is in the time zone where wisdom makes no difference; it only hurts. Look what he says in Ecclesiastes 1:18:
Because in much wisdom there is much grief,
and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain.
No wonder some of you look like you are in such pain. You are too smart. You learned too many things. You are like a walking encyclopedia. You have furrows in your brow; it is like a binder, for crying out loud.
Solomon says, “You know, I gathered and found all kinds of wisdom, and what was all this for?” He is in the human time zone that makes one insensible to God’s time.
That dreaded time zone that he was in is known as under the sun. I call that the UTS time zone. Everything under the sun is vanity, vanity, vanity.
It means everything on this earth, but it means something more. It means this: whatever happens on earth, if it is not related to God—whatever happens on earth, if we do not know what God is doing—it is vanity.
In this darkness, Solomon said, “Oh, there is God, all right, and He is a God who punishes if you do something wrong. But you know what? We cannot really tell what He is doing. We have to live here under the sun, down here on this globe, and do the best we can. But it is all vanity, vanity.”
“I have seen a righteous man working, working, and he died young. I have seen an unrighteous man getting big, fat, and happy, and he lived to be a hundred years old. Where is the justice in that? Vanity of vanities.”
Boy, Solomon is really sated and burned out. He is in this under-the-sun time zone.
The way he got there was because of his sexual obsession, and where it led was even deeper darkness. In 1 Kings 11:3, it says very clearly that he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines. His wives turned his heart away from the Lord.
How they did it was that these wives had the idols they worshiped. Solomon went along to these temples, and he started building some temples right around the temple in Jerusalem. God was not pleased.
This man fell prey to the darkness of idolatry, which the Bible always calls adultery. For a believer, for a Jew, to worship an idol is adultery in God’s mind.
Solomon went into this darkness, as many people do, because of sexual obsession. It is a very real problem. It is a real time cheater for a lot of people. It brings them into a haze of darkness.
I have to say this more and more lately, but I know it is because more and more young people are daily hitting pornographic sites on the internet. I wish it were just people who were not Christians. But it is a tremendous draw.
Anyway, this has become an obsession with people—an absolute obsession—and it leads right into this under-the-sun time zone.
But wait a minute, wait a minute. Solomon was a child of God. He was worse off for the darkness because he knew there was something more. It was eternity. There was another time zone.
As a matter of fact, you go on in Ecclesiastes 3, and it says in verse 11:
He has made everything beautiful in its time.
He has also set eternity in their heart,
yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.
So Solomon is saying, in his position of darkness, “You know, it is frustrating to know that there is eternity, and God is doing things, but I cannot figure it out.”
Man, by his reason under the sun, cannot figure out what God is doing. I would like to tell you—and I would like to tell Solomon—that although there are many things that remain secret with God, there are wonderful things He tells you about His work, but not under the sun.
So there has to be an awakening, as it were, into a new time zone. How can we break into that other dimension and know God’s will?
A footnote about Solomon before we pass on to other time zones: there is no more miserable creature on earth than the believer who has become one-dimensional. That means his time has only one dimension.
His life is full of vanity, and yet he knows there is more. A person who truly lives in darkness and has never been saved does not know any different. They can be quite happy in their darkness.
But if somebody has seen the light, experienced it, tasted of the heavenly gifts, tasted the word of God, and tasted God’s love, and then gone back into darkness, it is a pitiful condition to be in.
We should learn from Solomon. It is time to wake up and let God shine on us.
Now I want to show the connection of time and light—time and light as it has revolutionized science. Those of you who were in Richmond know that I did a little thing on time and probably confused everybody. Well, now I have it up on the PowerPoint so you can really get confused.
But what I want to show you is that there is a relationship between time and light that scientists have discovered.
Once upon a time, in 1905, classical science was sleeping under Newton’s tree when they were hit on the head with Einstein’s apple.
Newtonian physics ruled. You know, energy equals mass times velocity squared, divided by two—a simple formula for energy. Then along came, well, you know:
E = mc²
The theory of relativity. Einstein’s theory made things that were constant relative and things that were relative constant. He turned everything upside down from what the classical scientific world understood as reality.
He was a great man. Although there were some mistakes in a few of his calculations, he was basically on target. All of this invention and new understanding had to do with the relationship of time and light.
Einstein did not just come out of nowhere. There were things preceding him that opened up the door. The first thing was molecular science. In the late nineteenth century, Dalton and Mendeleev discovered that what was called mass was not simply a fixed thing.
This is a Bible. It is a book. What is it made out of? Leather and paper? They said, “No, wait a minute. It is made out of atomic particles. There are protons and neutrons and all these things running around.”
Molecular science took mass, which had been considered a constant, and said, “No, wait a minute. Mass is a sea of swirling atomic particles.” You have learned all that today, but do you realize that in 1900 nobody in school was being taught that?
Einstein’s theory was also paved by new discoveries in spectroscopy, connected with astronomy. They started looking at the stars through spectroscopes. They saw the different elements within the stars, and they began to see the wavelengths and the speed with which some of those rays traveled.
Amazingly, they discovered rays traveling near the speed of light. Up to that time, the speed of light was something nobody had any idea about.
But as the nineteenth century closed, and classical science closed, Einstein and others were putting things together. They changed science completely. The equation of energy was changed forever: E = mc².
That means energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared. The idea being that if you could take a particle and speed it up to the speed of light, it would explode in energy.
But in the process, the speed of light—three hundred thousand kilometers per second—became the constant in the equation. Mass became relative to the speed of light. Time became relative to the speed of light. Everything began to change.
After Einstein’s theory, time was no longer one-dimensional. Everybody thought time was this period that you could measure by seconds or minutes or hours or days or eons—whatever you wanted to say. It was measurable: boom, boom, boom, boom—the sands of time going through the old hourglass. It never changes.
But time was no longer one-dimensional. From time as a constant, measured time was found to condense near the speed of light. In other words, it was as if the opening of the hourglass allowed more sand to fall through in the same amount of time.
Time actually becomes dense. In other words, in the same space of time, more things happen. As things move toward the speed of light, all kinds of strange things happen to time.
Time could also be bent or warped as mass moved, especially in the vicinity of black holes. This time warp—all this stuff on Star Wars, you know, warp five—has to do with the fact that as light and particles pass through the area of a black hole, time gets warped and bent.
It is amazing that light is the constant that affects time. We thought time was the constant, but time could be changed according to light.
Now, scientists have not been able to see particles traveling faster than the speed of light. You can imagine the problem, because we can only see with the speed of light. But they surmised tachyons—in fact, particles that travel faster than the speed of light.
Here we have a gun that shoots a bullet at twice the speed of light. When you stand still and see this tachyon bullet moving twice the speed of light, you see it move from the gun to the target, right?
But now suppose that you are traveling at fifty percent light speed, and you see the same thing happening. What you see is the gun shooting and the bullet hitting the target at exactly the same moment.
Now suppose you were traveling at eighty percent light speed and saw this same tachyon bullet go across. What would happen? You would see the bullet go from the target back to the gun. Ah, see? Traveling back in time.
My point is very simple. Our understanding of time has everything to do with the light that we are under.
Suppose we are praying under the-sun time zone. It appears that we pray and shoot our gun up at God. The bullet goes up to heaven and hits the throne. If you pray off target, then it comes back down and hits you on the head—which I think is a lot of prayer that I hear doing that. But anyway, that is another story.
Now suppose that you pray at fifty percent light speed, which happens to be faith. What happens is, when you pray, you see the answer hit the throne as soon as you pray.
Ah! Even under fifty percent light, you can see that when you speak, God says:
Whatever you shall bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven.
Faith can see that. And that is just fifty percent light speed.
Now suppose you were at eighty percent light speed—what we call the heavenly perspective. Then, when you pray, you could see that everything is actually moving back to its original purpose. From the moment you pray, you can see the end from the beginning.
Of course, only a few people have gotten to eighty percent light speed in prayer. But you see, the whole thing has to do with how much light you have when you pray.
You can tell when people pray what kind of light they are under. Have you ever noticed? Some people are under the light of condemnation when they pray: “Oh Lord, I’m a turkey. No, I’m worse than that—a rat. No, no, no, forget it. I’m a worm. You do not want to talk to me. I know that, but I have something to say to You anyway. But I know You are not going to listen to me.”
Well, they are under a light, I do not know. What light are you under? It affects your spiritual life. Light has to do with how you are dealing with time.
So this is the point: light affects what time zone you are living in. What time zone do you live in? Under-the-sun time zone?
How does God get us to the point where we are lifted from our under-the-sun time zone? That is our default time zone. God does this by exploding His light—that means the Lord Jesus, the Light of the world—into our time of grace and mercy, in order to bring us into condensed eternal time.
There is a life to be lived by us that is condensed, powerful, efficient, fruitful. There are opportunities to be gained, and, as the Bible says, good works that God has prepared beforehand for us to walk in.
But guess what? Under the sun, you cannot find those things. Knowing the will of God is a great mystery to Christians who are still living under the sun, but you do not have to live there.
The first thing that has to happen is an awakening. So we need to go back to the gospel, just to see how fundamental this understanding is.
When Jesus came into the world, according to the Gospel, He came into the world as the Light of the world. Everywhere Jesus walked, it was a different time zone.
Everybody was living in the under-the-sun time zone. Then Jesus suddenly comes into the situation. He comes to Capernaum and begins to teach, and suddenly a new time zone opens up. What is that? KTZ—the kingdom time zone.
People were saying, “La, la, la. Yeah, Judaism. Yeah, laws. Yeah, feasts. La, la, la. Everything in its season. Everything is beautiful, but I have no idea what is going on.”
Then Jesus comes in the midst and says, “Open your eyes. Repent. The King is in your midst.” Suddenly they are shaken because they realize, “Wait a minute, I am on the edge of some different kind of time zone.”
This Man is doing things immediately. He is not waiting around. He is not wasting time. He is not in some kind of gray fog. He seems to be marching to a drummer—even God, His Father. He is working. He is living. He is living a life, a standard of life, a level of life. He is in a different zone.
It all has to do with time. Matthew says that His coming to Capernaum was a fulfillment of Scripture:
The people who were sitting in darkness saw a great Light,
and those who were sitting in the land and shadow of death,
upon them a Light dawned.
From that time Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
The first fundamental way we come to the light, and the light comes to us, is that it awakens us and we repent of our former time zone.
Paul testified to the same thing. Paul’s testimony from the road to Damascus remained his fundamental understanding of the gospel.
In 2 Corinthians 4, Paul testified:
Even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing,
in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving
so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ,
who is the image of God.
You can talk to people about God and what they believe about God, but as soon as you talk about Jesus, there are blinders that have been put on them by the god of this world, so that they might not see that Jesus is God, that Jesus is the Son of God, that Jesus is divine.
As long as Jesus is a great man, no problem. As soon as you say Jesus is divine, there is a veil that has to be taken off. So when you are witnessing to people, you do not just reason with them alone. You have prayer behind you, saying, “Lord, lift the veil from off their eyes,” because they cannot see unless that veil is removed.
Then Paul, talking about his own testimony, says:
For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,”
is the One who has shone in our hearts
to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of Christ.
Paul somehow saw the face of Christ and was full of the glory of God. It was full of light, and it brought him and awakened him to a whole other life. Paul’s time zone changed.
Now let me ask you a question: did Paul waste time before he was saved? Man, he was busy. But he was not redeeming the time because he was not living in the time zone of the kingdom. He was just living in a self-propelled, strong-willed, religious zone. There is a lot of difference.
Then the Holy Spirit comes along after Jesus breaks into our life with light. The Holy Spirit comes into that kingdom time zone, and He presses our hearts with a sense of time, with that light upon us—what is called in the Scriptures the conviction of the Holy Spirit.
Under that conviction, we sense, “The time is now. The time is now.” As Jesus said when He came into Galilee:
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.
He did not tell them, “Wait a week. Study about it. Think about it.” He said, “The time is now.” Kingdom time zone is now. When are you going to enter the time zone? Now. You do not have to wait until next week. But you have to be awakened if you are slumbering.
John 16 talks about the Holy Spirit and His faithful ministry:
I will send Him to you.
And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.
Sin: because when you talk to somebody about the fact that they have sinned, they just brush it off as nothing. But when the Holy Spirit goes into their lives and starts to push their nose into their sin, they begin to sense, “I have to do something about it. I have to do something.”
There I was, twenty years old. I was not a Christian, and people told the gospel to me. Of course, I did not believe it because I was supposedly an intelligent guy, and these people were not intelligent. They were sharing this gospel with me, so I just laughed it off.
But the Holy Spirit came in and started working on me. He said, “It is true. It is true. You are a sinner, and that is sin. That pride is sin.” Suddenly I had a new idea of myself.
The Holy Spirit impressed us: “You need to do something now about righteousness, because your righteousness that you think is so good is not good at all. Your righteousness is filthy rags. Look at it, look at it,” the Holy Spirit says.
And judgment. Judgment is coming. Judgment is coming. Do you not know that if you do not believe in Jesus, you fall into judgment? There is no excuse for you to wait. Now is the time. Now is the time. Now is the time.
I remember a story back in those days, in the seventies. There were two musicians who later turned out to be famous Christian musicians. One guy had been saved for a while. Actually, he wrote the song, “I Wish We’d All Been Ready.”
He was talking to another guy, a friend of his from a rock-and-roll band before his salvation. He was talking to this guy about the gospel. The guy said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I heard about the gospel.”
He said, “Well, are you ready?” The fellow said, “No, I’m not ready.” So the Christian waited about thirty seconds. He said, “Are you ready now?” The fellow said, “No, no, no, no, I’m not ready.”
He waited another thirty seconds. “Are you ready now?” His friend got the idea. It is not something you put off. If you are really in the light of it, you respond to it.
How important light is in bringing us into what God wants us to see. We talk about revelation for the Christian. First, we have to be apprehended by light, even in the light of the gospel.
But these verses that we read about the Holy Spirit’s conviction in the lives of unbelievers continue on in the Christian life, because even Christians cannot handle all the light at once.
There is so much light in Christ. He is Light. God is Light. It is too much for us to handle.
Listen to what the Holy Spirit does. This is the very next verse after what He does to the world. Then Jesus says:
I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth.
You cannot bear the light of it. You cannot bear the truth of it. You cannot bear the reality of it. You are still in the shadows. But the Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth, one step at a time, as you are able to bear it.
He will help you take off those sunglasses, get adjusted to the light, begin to walk in the light, live in the light, and know the cleansing efficacy of the finished work of Christ.
The Holy Spirit says, “I will talk about Jesus every day, and I will show you who He is more and more. I will show you what He has done for you more and more. You cannot take it now.”
Imagine: the disciples had been with Jesus over three years, and Jesus says, “You know what? If you knew the whole truth, you could not take it now.” So the Spirit is going to lead you in that truth as you are able to bear it.
So now that is the gospel. But how come Christians are told to wake up in these verses?
For this reason it says,
“Awake, sleeper,
And arise from the dead,
And Christ will shine on you.”
Because now, thank God, we as Christians have a choice in which light we will walk.
First of all, we can walk in kingdom time zone.
You are Light in the Lord.
What an amazing thing. You are the light of the world. You are Light in the Lord. In my version, the New American Standard, you can capitalize Light. You are Light in the Lord. There is this divine Light in you, in the Lord Jesus.
As it says in Ephesians 5:8:
You were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light.
Second, you can walk in that Light. Walk as children of that Light. Walk in that Light, and walk with other children in the Light. What an amazing place.
This is a different time zone, brothers and sisters. When you really walk in the Light, there is so much more clarification. Sometimes, when we are reading the Bible and the Bible gets old and dusty and we cannot figure out what it is talking about anymore, the problem is we have gotten out of the Light.
When you are walking in the Light, fellowshipping in the Light, the word of God has a way of springing all kinds of meanings at you. You can discover, as you walk, what is pleasing to the Lord.
There is a process of learning what the Lord likes. As He says, you are trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord, bearing these fruits of the Light: goodness, righteousness, truth. What a wonderful life. Kingdom time zone. Walking in the Light.
Oh, listen tonight: if we all could be awakened by the Light of God and begin to walk in it with a heart that is clean, cleansed by the blood of the Lord—no guilt and shame and clouds hovering over us—what a different life we could live, even now, tonight.
But on the other hand, Ephesians shares that it is possible to still live in that under-the-sun time zone, where we live in the dark and there is secrecy and disgrace.
It is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret.
There, deeds are unfruitful. Those things that you try to do are unfruitful. Those things that you do in secret eventually get exposed anyway, because the Light will eventually expose those things that you are doing in secret.
While you are living in that under-the-sun time zone, in the darkness, God is arranging an exposure for your own sake. If you do not turn away and repent, that exposure, of course, is mighty unpleasant.
Before we close, let us look at a couple of passages that say more or less the same thing, because these are practical exhortations that you find near the end of a number of the books.
First, this is Romans 13:11–14. Listen to how similarly Paul is talking about time and light:
Do this, knowing the time, that it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep;
for now salvation is nearer to us than when we believed.
The night is almost gone, and the day is near.
Therefore let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.
Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness,
not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy.
But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.
There is nothing more clear than that. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and get out of the darkness. Get in the Light, because that is where there is peace. Get in a time zone where you can know God’s will.
Listen to what He says in Ephesians 5: after He says, “Redeem the time,” He says, “Know the will of God.” It can be known in that zone of Light.
Or listen to 1 Thessalonians 5:4–8:
But you, brethren, are not in darkness, that the day would overtake you like a thief;
for you are all sons of light and sons of day.
We are not of night nor of darkness;
so then let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober.
For those who sleep do their sleeping at night, and those who get drunk get drunk at night.
But since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love,
and as a helmet, the hope of salvation.
He is not talking about literal day and night. He is talking about spiritual day and night. It is our choice if you want to live in the day or live in the night.
First Peter 4:1–5:
Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose,
because he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin,
so as to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men,
but for the will of God.
For the time already past is sufficient for you to have carried out the desire of the Gentiles,
having pursued a course of sensuality, lusts, drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties and abominable idolatries.
In all this, they are surprised that you do not run with them into the same excesses of dissipation, and they malign you;
but they will give account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.
You see, flesh has a lot to do with getting in the wrong time zone. But now it is time to live the rest of your time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men, but for the will of God.
It is almost the same list—stuff that goes on in darkness. You will give an account to Him as to how you are living in these last days.
It is necessary in the evil day to redeem the time. You are going to have to fight for time, because what falls and flies by in the evil day are things aggravating against your time being used for the Lord.
We have already missed too many opportunities because we have lurked under the sun. What has happened in the last year since we met? A lot of things. But I am just going to mention seven.
Number one: there has been another study tour to Egypt and the Holy Land. Even now, our dear brothers and sisters are heading out on camels through the Sinai.
You may think this is a foolish thing, but I tell you what: people’s lives get changed when they go on something like this, especially with our dear brother Christian Chen. You will see more of the Lord in the Holy Land than you ever saw in your life when you travel with a man like that.
He has gone for two weeks in Egypt and one in Israel. I think they are leaving, or maybe they have left already. It is pretty something. It already happened. You missed the opportunity. What if it comes up next year? I do not know if it will.
Last year, eighty young people met in Chile and started memorizing books of the Bible. Our dear brother Christian, of course, went down there and challenged them, then left. He came back this year and reported to us in a prayer meeting last Tuesday night that he met four of them who had memorized the Gospel of Matthew.
Now they did that this year. What did you do this year? That is my whole point. There is redeeming the time, and then there is just, “Oh well, next year. That is when I am going to memorize Luke, or whatever, next year.”
I know twenty young people in the Russian Bible school that I went to and spoke at in April. They have already gone out since June and led hundreds of people to the Lord in these tent meetings, and they started thirteen churches. Most of them are not even twenty-four years old yet.
All I am trying to show you is that some people are taking hold of time for the Lord. It is a serious matter.
When I look out on you, wonderful brothers and sisters, you have so much more knowledge and understanding than any of these guys from the Bible school.
This year, another great saint and servant has gone home: Esther Kerr. I do not know if you know her. She is a wonderful sister. She served faithfully many years and has gone home. We look for others to be raised up who will be so faithful—faithful to the Lord.
Fifty-two Sabbaths have passed—the chance to spend a few hours with Him.
Often, when some young person comes and says, “You know what? I would really like to know the Lord more,” I say, “You know what you do? Take two hours on Saturday and make it for the Lord.”
Two hours on Saturday, out of that whole day of freedom and shopping and whatever else you are doing. That is fine; I do not care. Two hours for the Lord.
Some time on your knees, some time in the Word, some time asking questions, some time maybe listening to a message you heard and taking notes so you really make it yours. Two hours on Saturday.
Is that redeeming the time, or do you think it is a waste of time?
Last year, ten minutes of Bible reading per day would give you a chance to read half the Bible. Just ten minutes. Ten minutes. What is ten minutes?
Nowadays, ten minutes is like nine advertisements strewn together on TV between shows. I am not saying give God all the advertising. When the advertising comes on, click the mute button and read the Bible. It is probably a little over-distracting, but at least that is better than nothing.
Ten minutes a day, and you would be halfway through the Bible. Now, just ten minutes. Just think of that.
Are we willing to buy this time up? Now, I just leave this for you. This is just my thought.
During this last year, there have been some special moments where Jesus came to you in a special way. Maybe you cried. Maybe He touched you. He said, “You know what? Let’s talk.” But things got busy. You never did.
You know what I am trying to get at here. We will look at some more tomorrow. How do you think somebody becomes faithful to the Lord, becomes fruitful, becomes a soul winner, becomes a servant in the body of Christ? How does that happen?
It happens in a lot of little opportunities that are taken. They add up to faithfulness. It does not come with a big crisis one day where somebody is wholly bad and becomes wholly good, and it is done.
Ten minutes a day. When Jesus comes to you, go by yourself over there. Forget just fooling around with your pals and friends for a little bit, and talk. That is what makes the difference, I am telling you.
Just ten minutes here and ten minutes there, and a two-hour session on a Saturday—this kind of thing is what makes a man of God. There is no secret to it.
People do not take these things, and they wonder, “I wonder why I am still sort of in the same place.” I am not trying to condemn you or make you feel bad, but I hope there is some conviction bearing on you as to the importance of your time.
All of you are young. There is so much you can do. When you get old, you just do not have that energy, strength, or intelligence. It is a lot harder.
There is an old saying:
Only one life, ’twill soon be past;
only what’s done for Christ will last.
Yesterday is gone. It cannot be redeemed. But will we redeem tomorrow?
Okay, now, you are not on the Egypt trip, so I know you blew that chance. There are other things you passed up in the last year. What is going to happen tomorrow? You can start buying back the time or just continue on in the routine.
That is why next time we are going to look again at this matter of seizing the opportunity—redeeming the time—for your sake as well as for the Lord.
This all has to do with our walk. Will we walk worthy of the Lord? Then part of what we have to do is take our disheveled lives and be awakened by the Light.
It is not like you can do twenty-six things all at once, but the Light will tell you to repent and do one thing. It is one opportunity.
During these few days, there will be opportunities to worship. Will you take them? An opportunity for you to pray—will you be there? Time in the dorm to pray—will you be alive there? Then devotion time—all of these opportunities.
Hey, may the Lord help us. There is so much working against us: the world, the flesh, and the devil want us to be completely distracted.
But, oh, what can happen in the Lord if we can learn and find some Marys who just say, “Lord, this is Your time. I want to sit at Your feet.”
So let us pray. You put your books away there. I appreciate your patience. I know I have run overtime here.
I know that there is no other reason for you to be at this conference than because you love the Lord. I mean, I guess there are some friends and things, but I believe most of you are here because you love the Lord. And He loves you.
But surely there needs to be an awakening to lay hold of your life in Christ and all the blessings that are there. It is not as difficult as you think. It is a matter of awakening and of laying hold.
Lord, we come to You, and we thank You for Your mercy to us. Oh, Lord, if we had to account for all the days we have wasted, we would all just feel the sharp bitterness of Solomon.
But You tell us to ask forgiveness, to repent of folly, of wasted time, and then to begin to lay hold, as You direct us in the Light, of the ways we might mend and spend the time that we have here upon this earth.
Lord, You know my heart for this generation, that they might be a generation that really serves the purposes of God, that they might really rise up and be a special generation.
But it is not going to happen in a great uprising. It is going to happen when an individual life redeems the time.
Oh Lord, we know there are many thieves in our lives, and we know that much has already been stolen. We also know Your mercy can reclaim even the years that the locusts have eaten.
Redeem the time. We know that we cannot redeem the time until You have redeemed us and our time.
Lord, we are busy with many things. Oh, that we might be filling our time in a way that is pleasing to You. Awaken us, Lord, to the zone we are living in. Bring us into the Light.
We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.