JESUS, LORD OF YOUR TIME Part 9 of 11

TEXT- ECCLESIASTES 3:1-8

INTRODUCTION

Since today is the first Sunday of the month of October we are emphasizing our 1996 church theme, which is, "Making Jesus the Lord of Your Life."

In preaching on this topic throughout the year we have been looking at the need to make Jesus the lord of our life and the many practical ways we can implement the lordship of Jesus in our life.

This morning our text is found in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 and the title of my message is, "Making Jesus the Lord of Your Time."

While on our vacation to Wyoming my wife noticed along the highway near cedar city, Utah that we had crossed over into the mountain time zone which required us to move our clocks back one hour since California is on daylight savings time.

This reminds me of a story about a man who was on vacation driving through a remote section of the country. After stopping in a small town for something to eat, he noticed that his watch had stopped. As he paused on the porch of the small café, he turned to a man resting nearby and said: "I wonder if you could tell me what time it is?" "It's twelve o'clock," the man said slowly. "Only twelve o'clock?" questioned the traveler. "I thought it was much more than that." "It's never more than that around this part of the country," replied the man. "It goes up to twelve o'clock and then starts all over again."

Here in our text Solomon uses the word "time" 30 times and lists 28 activities that are regulated by time.

Fourteen of these are negative and fourteen are positive.

All of this shows us that God is in control of time and we as human beings are also governed by time.

Several years ago I was preaching on a Sunday morning and used an illustration to conclude my message showing how someone had mathematically calculated the times of the day to correspond to the times of our life.

For instance, if you are 15 years old it would correspond to roughly 10:30 a.m., 25 years old would be approximately 12:45 p.m., 35 would be about 3:00 p.m., 45 would be about 5:15 p.m., 55 would be about 7:30 p.m., 65 would correspond to 10:00 p.m., 70 years old would be about the same as 11:00 p.m. and anyone over 80 years old would be living in the midnight years of their life.

At that exact moment, a 95-year-old woman said out loud, "And we are waiting for the alarm to go off."

If we learn anything from making Jesus the Lord of our time we need to learn how short our life or time is here on this earth in relationship to eternity.

Solomon said in our text that there is, "A time to give birth, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to uproot what is planted.

The time between the day that we are born and the day that we die is very, very short in comparison to eternity.

Psalm 90:10-12, "As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, or if due to strength, eighty years, yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; for soon it is gone and we fly away. [11] Who understands the power of Thine anger, And Thy fury, according to the fear that is due Thee? [12] So teach us to number our days, that we may present to Thee a heart of wisdom."

James 4:13-14, "Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow, we shall go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit." [14] Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away."

How do you make Jesus Lord of your time? Let’s look at four ways.