Wait a Minute
John 8:58, Psa 93:2, Jeremiah 10:10, Romans 1:23, 1 Timothy 6:16, Job 36:26, Psalm 102:27
Ecclesiasties 3:11, 2 Corinthians 11:23-25, 2 Corinthians 4:17, Isaiah 48:3, 2 Corinthians 4:17
November 24, 2004
I. How many of you have ever asked you kids, can’t you wait a minute?
A. Have you ever stopped to think about how much our world is bound by time?
B. We have clocks on more than one wall in our houses. We wear watches, and most of us have clocks in our cars. If businesses want people to look at their signs they put clocks on them.
C. Our world is driven by time. We have appointments that we have to get to, games times, time to be at school, time to get out of school. We have lunch times, dinner times, day time night time, and we all say that we are out of time a lot.
D. We have a time to go to bed and a time to get up. Time to be at work and time to go home. There are practice times, and church times, and vacation times, Summer time, winter time, and we even have something that we call daylight savings time, although I have not seen it save up any time.
E. Sometimes when people need us to do something we say give me a minute. That would be great! Wouldn’t it be great to be able to create minutes, so we could hand them out to people who needed more? Wouldn’t it be great to be able to create minutes so we could have more of them to use?
F. We are driven by time. Time rules our lives! In his autobiography The Sacred Journey, Frederick Buechner says that time is divided into three parts. Below time, above time, and beyond time.
G. Below time he says is where the childhood years are lived. Children are not constrained as much by time. When Summer is happening children don’t worry that much about time. They don’t worry so much about when Summer will end, that they don’t enjoy the moment.
H. When kids are playing in the snow they don’t think that much about when there wasn’t any snow. That’s the way it was when Adam and Eve were in the garden before they listened to satan.
I. Before the fruit was eaten nobody printed calendars, because time didn’t matter. There were no calendars, or watches, because they lived in a time free world. Time had not yet invaded our world.
J. Wouldn’t it be great if we could create minutes, and add some to our stack, but we can’t. Life is measurable, divided into ticks of a clock. You may have decades left in your time bank and others may not, but everybody has only so many minutes.
II. Everybody that is, except God! God is not bound by time, and one of the things that Jesus said while he was here on this Earth that made the mobs so mad was that he was not bound by time.
(John 8:58 NIV) "I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!"
A. That stirred them up. Jesus had claimed to be the eternal God! He had claimed to be the one that lives in eternity. And that is one attribute that definitely separates us from God.
B. Scripture lets us know that God is Everlasting. God is with out beginning or end! God is not bound by time.
(Psa 93:2 NIV) Your throne was established long ago; you are from all ETERNITY.
(Jer 10:10 NIV) But the LORD is the true God; he is the LIVING God, the eternal King. When he is angry, the earth trembles; the nations cannot endure his wrath.
(Rom 1:23 NIV) and exchanged the glory of the IMMORTAl God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
(1 Tim 6:16 NIV) who alone is IMMORTAL and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.
(Job 36:26 NIV) How great is God--beyond our understanding! The number of his years is past finding out.
(Psa 102:27 NIV) But you remain the same, and your years will never end.
C. Every thing we know, we can trace back to a beginning, but not God!
D. Nobody made God, not even God. If you can believe the first 4 words of the bible the rest of it should not be a problem. IN THE BEGINNING GOD!
E. God does not explain His existence. He just was!
F. Jesus didn’t say before Abraham was born I was born. He says before Abraham was born I AM!
G. God doesn’t say I was, He says I AM. He is right now, He is during the time of Abraham, He is in the future and for all eternity.
H. God does not live in measured minutes like we do he does not have a past present and future his world is one minute, ro better yet his world is without minutes.
I. He doesn’t look at history as a progression of time but as a single picture. In one glance he sees you whole life.
J. He knows your beginning and your end because he doesn’t have either.
K. It doesn’t make sense does it? To those who are time bound timelessness doesn’t make sense. To those who live in a state where everything has an end eternity is mind boggling.
L. To try to understand eternity is about the same as being handed a book written in Japanese. You mind just can’t wrap around it. But, what if someone taught you how to read the language? It would different then wouldn’t it?
M. Well, that is what God is trying to help us learn about eternity. God is minute by minute, day by day, teaching us what eternity is.
(Eccl 3:11 NIV) He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
N. God has put eternity in our hearts we just can’t understand it all yet!
O. Have you ever heard the story about the eagle that was raised by chickens. One day he sees an eagle soaring in the clouds, and he says I can do that! The other chickens laugh but the eagle knows better, because it was born with something different. When you were born again you were born with something different.
P. You were born with a belief that there is more to it than we can see. Even if you can’t understand it all yet, you know that your world goes beyond the constraints of time.
Q. Forever pulls at you. If you took all the sand in all the world and piled it. And, if all that pile of sand was eternity you life would be a small fraction of one grain of it, compared to eternity.
III. Paul understood that. Paul suffered, but rejoiced, Paul sat in a prison beaten and sore, and sang praises to God. Now if we are honest we would say, " how did he do that?.
A. The list of things that he enured goes on too. Listen to part of his list.
(2 Cor 11:23-25 NIV) Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea,
B. How could Paul say those things about his life with excitement and not a woe is me attitude?
C. It was because of the way he looked at it!
(2 Cor 4:17 NIV) For our light and MOMENTARY troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
D. He looked at all his troubles as something to be endured for just a minute.
E. What if we would look at all our tough times as a fraction of a grain of sand, as compared to a pile of all the sand in the world? What if we could see that this life was a minute compared to eternity?
F. The attitude of our world is, life is short get as much as you can while you can. Get out of the marriage, get out of the job, shun responsibility, my time is my time, my minutes are my minutes and they don’t belong to God or anybody but me.
G. But God’s wisdom says life is short, its just a minute!
H. The shortness of life says stick with it, don’t bail out. Fleeting days don’t excuse fleeing your problems.
I. The fact that it is just a minute should strengthen us to endure!
J. It goes back to that bible verse that I like so much....(Isa 48:3 NIV) I foretold the former things long ago, my mouth announced them and I made them known; then suddenly I acted, and they came to pass.
K. If they came to pass it means that they didn’t come to stay! Will all your problems pass? In a world bound by time there is no guarantee.
L. Will all you pain go away? In a world bound by time there is no guarantee.
M. But in a world that is not bound by time, in heaven we have this promise.
(2 Cor 4:17 NIV) For our light and MOMENTARY troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
IV. We need to look at it in terms of weight. Yep, that’s what I said. In terms of weight.
A. You know what a pan scale is? It was the way that they measure the weight of a purchase long ago.
B. You know what I’m talking about it’s the way that a lot of people think that God is going to deal with them when they get to heaven.
C. The scale with a pan on both sides, and you put one thing in one side and another thing in the other.
D. God does that with our struggles, pains, firings, financial problems, parents who forgot us, bosses who ignore us until something is wrong, bad breaks, bad health, bad days, disappointments.
E. He stacks them all up on one side of the scale and then boom that side of the scale bottoms out. Woe is me we say.
F. If God took those things away the scale would balance back out, but that is not what God does. He just puts the weight of eternal glory on the other side, and you know what happens?
G. Everything changes, because the burden lifts. The heavy becomes light when it’s weighed against the glory of eternity.
H. What does all this mean preacher? It means if this life is just a minute, can’t we endure anything for just a minute?
1. Can’t we be sick, for just a minute?
2. Can’t we bare loneliness, just a minute?
3. Can’t we stand persecution, just a minute?
4. Can’t we deal with struggles, and temptations, for just a minute?
5. Well Can’t we?
I. Can’t we wait a minute for perfect peace? I think we can, because it is not about US, and it is definitely not about NOW!
J. This life is only a minute, and what is coming is surely worth waiting a minute!
K. Maybe God is asking His children Can’t you wait a minute?
