Limited Time

The key to using your limited time correctly, and not wasting your life away, is seeing it as a gift given to you by Jesus to prepare you for eternity with Jesus.

[00:00:00] Well, I remember when I was younger and in school, I remember thinking, someday when school is finally over, I would have more time. Did you ever think that? Did you ever feel like that? Did you ever remember back when you were writing your papers and you were studying for your finals, thinking as soon as this is over, I’ll have just one job. That’s what I kept saying to myself. I’ll have just the one job, and then my calendar will be wide open. In my junior year of college, I remember speaking with Rachel when we were dating at the time, and I remember telling her how tired and frustrated I was because it just seemed like school would never be over and I’d never be free of these terrible burdens. And wouldn’t it be great to finally just be done and begin our lives? I pictured myself with just endless amounts of free time and doing only the things that I really wanted to do. How many of you know that’s not how that turned out? Not at all. Never mind that I ended up with ten more years of school after that. What I didn’t know is that life becomes even more packed, doesn’t it? Becomes even more packed. It didn’t get easier. It got way harder. It got way more complicated. Wouldn’t you love this afternoon to just take your family down to a cafeteria? Wouldn’t you love that?

[00:01:14] Just pile them all up. Just go down to the cafeteria. They’ve already prepared and laid out all the food. You just point at it like kings and queens. I’ll have that. I’ll have that. Wouldn’t you love that? Now you have to buy and cook all that food, don’t you? You’re the cafeteria now, and you can have a hamburger prepared for you if you’d like to. It’ll be only $15. Everything in life becomes more complicated. It all becomes more difficult, and time itself becomes a rarer and rarer commodity. You become more aware of the limited time that you have. We’ve been in a section of Luke where Jesus has been teaching on eternity how to think about our lives in light of eternity. Now, if you tell me that you don’t think like that, that you don’t think about eternity, that you don’t consider eternity in front of you in the choices that you make today, I would argue that you do – probably more than you think you do. God has placed a desire for eternity in the hearts of all of us. That’s what Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament tells us. And to some degree, everyone I’ve ever talked to is concerned with eternity. Sometimes it’s eternal destination – where will I be when I die? Sometimes it’s legacy – how will I be remembered? For some, the thoughts of eternity are something to be suppressed. They try to explain away their feelings or their apprehensions about the future.

[00:02:38] But what millions of artists and philosophers, poets, lyricists, playwrights and moviemakers have told us throughout all of human history is that there is a longing deep within every human heart to understand what’s next, what’s coming, and whether or not we are living correctly in light of that eternity. Jesus is going to tell us today that if you want to use this increasingly packed, slowly dwindling amount of time that you have correctly, then it needs to be informed by eternity. And if you want the right view of eternity, then you need to listen to what God Himself tells you eternity will be. And the way to do that is to listen to Jesus, the one who came to reveal God’s message to us and who secured in his death and resurrection our eternity for us. The key to using your limited time correctly and not wasting your life away is seeing it as a gift given to you by Jesus to be used in preparation for eternity with Jesus. If you have your Bibles, you can open up to Luke chapter 12. We’re going to be beginning in verse 54 today. It will be on the screen as well. We’re going to look at four short illustrations that all have to do with the limited time that God has given to us. And these are going to seem very different to you. These illustrations are quite different from one another.

[00:04:08] You’re going to wonder why we’re looking at all of them in the same sermon. Is it because I’m trying to move us quickly through the book of Luke? You know that’s not true. I’ll never be accused of that. It’s because these last four illustrations are given to the full crowd. This is sort of the grand finale of what he’s been teaching through chapter 12. Thousands of people who have gathered on this occasion to hear Jesus teach, this is how he ends it. And there’s a common thread that runs through these illustrations. They’re all slightly different angles, looking at what it means to live now for Jesus in light of eternity with Jesus. This is the final lesson given to a huge group of men and women, some of whom are committed to Jesus, some of whom aren’t. It includes the Pharisees who are out to kill Jesus, and it includes Jesus’ closest disciples who love him the most. If you want to think about eternity and this world and your life correctly so you don’t waste it, Jesus says, start by thinking about the weather. “He also said to the crowds, when you see a cloud rising in the west, you say at once, a shower is coming. And so, it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, there will be a scorching heat and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky. But why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” So, this is a tough argument to make

[00:05:43] on a week when we’re told that we’re going to be hit with Snowmageddon, the blizzard to end all blizzards. And instead, we got a little snow. I know it went north. I get it. It went north. But I did have this ironic moment this week on Wednesday when I was working from home because of this so-called blizzard that was coming and I was writing a sermon about how easily predictable the weather is. But that is Jesus’ point. That’s his point here, his argument. The two weather items that Jesus picks here would be very easy to interpret if we were in Israel. If a cloud is coming from the west, that means it’s coming over the Mediterranean Sea. It’s picking up all that warm water, and it’s going to probably rain. If you see clouds there, it’s most likely a sign of rain. If a south wind blows, that means it’s coming up from the hot deserts to the south of Israel, and then there’s going to be warm weather, there’s going to be a temperature rise. And apparently people have been making small talk about the weather for a very long time because when the people saw the clouds, or when they felt the wind, they would point it out. They’d say, ah, look, there’s rain coming.

[00:06:53] Ah, look, it’s going to get hot today. And Jesus says, that’s exactly what happens. You’re exactly right. And then he calls them hypocrites, which seems like a sharp negative turn, doesn’t it? He tells the crowd they’re really good at pointing out obvious weather patterns, but there’s something just as obvious, and it’s right in front of them, and they refuse to interpret that properly. Now, it’s important to note who Jesus is talking to here. Verse 54 says he’s talking to the crowds. You should, by the way, always note anytime you’re reading the Bible, always note who’s being addressed, who’s being talked to. The audience always matters in Scripture. Jesus speaks to different groups in different ways, because their spiritual state determines the aspect of the gospel that they need to hear, the way they need to hear it. This is a mixed crowd. It’s a mix of disciples, it’s people curious about Jesus, and it’s his critics. So, when Jesus calls out the hypocrites here, he’s clearly addressing the people in the crowd who don’t believe him. They don’t stand with him. They don’t think that he’s the Son of God who has come to teach the Word of God to save God’s people. And they don’t believe this, despite all of the evidence that is right in front of them, like clouds and wind. Jesus has been performing miracles, healing people, casting out demons. He’s been teaching with the authority of God Himself.

[00:08:23] Jesus embodies everything the Jewish people have been waiting for in their Messiah told to them in the Old Testament scriptures. They have the scriptures to tell them who is standing in front of them. And yet the skeptics sit here choosing not to believe and trust in him. The first way you can go wrong. The first way you can go wrong with the limited time that God has given you on this earth is to reject Jesus, to push away his kingdom, and to reject the salvation that the Lord has sent. If you think of a life well lived as a series of forks in the road, this is the first and most consequential for your entire life. What are you going to do with Jesus? What are you going to do with him? You can look at the testimonies of the people who were there with Jesus. That’s what we’re doing now. When we look at Luke, we are looking at eyewitness accounts of what happened when Jesus walked the earth from people who were there. You can consider the accounts of his death and resurrection. You can look at the history of the last 2000 years, the worldwide spread of the church across every nation. You can listen to and you can read the overwhelming amount of biblical and archaeological and philosophical evidence. You can hear every apologetic argument, but at the end of the day, you’re going to have to decide if all of those clouds and all that wind move you down the path to follow Jesus, or the path that goes away from him.

[00:10:00] And those are very different lives. Those two different directions, those are very different lives. One leads to eternal life in the presence of God. The other leads to eternal damnation away from the presence of the Lord. And these aren’t my ideas. I’m not coming up with this. This is what Jesus has been saying to the crowd throughout chapter 12, and he’s saying it to every crowd that gathers to hear his gospel all across time. Like right now here at Calvary. When you choose to follow Jesus, everything else lines up, right? The evidence is everywhere. It’s one of the songs we sing here, right? Evidence is everywhere. Everything else lines up. Everything else in your life orients around Christ, and the gospel begins to make sense of the world around you. So, there’s many, many pieces of evidence to look at. Let me give you an example. Why are there wars in the world with innocent victims suffering? Well, it’s because humanity has fallen into evil and has rejected God. But why do we, at the same time that that’s happening, care about those victims? Why is there a heart passion for the people who are suffering? Well, it’s because God has written his law on our hearts. He stamped his image on every human being. So, everyone knows that people are valuable. So we are at the same time, fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God

[00:11:28] and we are valuable to him and in his sight. And yet at the same time, we are desperately wicked with hearts full of idols, and we are in need of God’s grace. That’s our human condition according to Scripture. And here’s the thing. You won’t find that view of humanity in any other worldview. It’s the only one that makes sense of the tension between human evil and human value. And Jesus is the most beautiful solution to resolving that tension. Removing our sin, sanctifying our minds and hearts, restoring us to our original design. That’s just one example. Okay, that’s one piece of evidence. That’s one cloud. That’s one southern wind that tells us to put our belief and trust in Jesus. So, the question really just remains, what will you do with him? What have you done with him? Here’s a second illustration. “And why do you judge for yourselves what is right? As you go with your accuser before the magistrate, make an effort to settle with him on the way, lest he drag you to the judge, and the judge hand you over to the officer, and the officer puts you in prison. I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the very last penny.” Now, on the surface it may seem like Jesus has now changed his topic altogether, his subject. And now he’s telling us how to handle legal matters at this point.

[00:13:02] But notice that the legal trouble here is just the example that Jesus uses for his own rhetorical question. Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right? And then his illustration ends with a guy sitting in jail, unable to get out. And the point of the story isn’t about how to settle legal matters. It’s a metaphor for the spiritual debt of sin that we carry with God and what we should be doing about it right now. So, in the story there’s someone with an accusation, and he’s dragging us to court. We owe something to this accuser. But instead of acknowledging the debt and admitting we owe it and settling up, we drag it all the way to court. And before the judge we’re found guilty, we’re handed over to the officer, then were thrown into prison and we will not get out until we pay every last cent of the debt, which is impossible because now we’re in prison. How are we going to pay for it? Now we don’t have debtors’ prisons here in our country, in the United States, but they do have them around the world, and they are designed to never allow the prisoner to go free. They’re unjust, actually. Jesus’ crowd would have heard this as an awful and inescapable end. What’s Jesus saying? What’s he saying here? He’s saying that we’re on our way to the judge right now. Our accuser is God.

[00:14:38] The weight of conviction you feel for the wrong that you’ve done in your life is the work of the Holy Spirit on your heart and on your mind. You may have seared over your conscience over time. You may have hardened yourself to the truth of your own sin. But everyone knows the truth about themselves. We all do. If God accused us of sin, we know he’d be right. You know he’d be right. If God said you’ve done wrong in your life, he’s correct. Right? The Bible says our sin is ultimately against God. It’s a debt that he holds against us. And right now on the timeline, we are not standing before the judge who also is God. Right now, the Lord is our accuser. Someday he will be our judge. And if some day we stand before that judge with a debt outstanding, we will be rightfully found guilty and handed over to the officer who punishes, who also happens to be God. This entire story is a metaphorical description of what we should be doing about that sin right now. I know way too many people who know that they’re guilty, but think court is going to go just fine for them. I know so many people that yes, I know I’ve done the wrong things, but I think court is going to go just fine for me. They’re absolutely convinced that they have settled up with God already because they say, surely God knows that I’m a pretty good person.

[00:16:14] You’ve heard this before? Well, surely God knows. God knows I’m a pretty good person. I’m a pretty decent person. Let me ask you this. In how many courts of law across the United States have criminals been proven guilty of a crime, but then declared not guilty because they didn’t commit every possible crime? Have you ever heard that before? Has that ever been the case? Sir, we know that you robbed the bank. You have all of the bank money. We have footage of you robbing the bank. Your accomplice who robbed it with you says that you robbed the bank. You told everybody you robbed the bank on a Tik Tok challenge for some reason. We have all the evidence that you robbed the bank. But because you’re a really decent guy in every other non-bank robbing area of your life, you are innocent. Have a nice day. Has that ever happened? No, because that’s not how it works. That’s not how court works. We don’t pay the sin debt with good works. It’s not the currency for it. It’s the wrong currency. The wages of sin is death. It’s death. Death has to be paid for sin. The very last penny here of our sin debt is our eternal death. But the gift of God is eternal life. How? Through Jesus Christ our Lord, that’s how. That’s what Scripture says. To settle with our accuser right now, in this limited time leading up to the final judgment, you need to declare that Jesus died for you in your place for your sins.

[00:17:51] He needs to pay your death, if you will. He is your substitute death paid in full to the Lord. And with that bill settled, there’s no judgment to come. Now, how do we do that? How do we enact that transaction? What’s the key? Well, here’s the third illustration. “There were some present at the very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you. But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those 18 on whom the Tower of Siloam fell and killed them. Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” Now this changes the angle on time just a little bit. When Luke says there were some present at that very time, I take this to mean that this is the same crowd, but there are a few in the crowd during a lull or something where that spoke up, that talked to Jesus, and they tell Jesus about a situation where the Roman governor Pilate, put some of the Galileans who were down in Jerusalem to worship, he put them to death, and they were there to make sacrifices.

[00:19:19] Now we’re not told why pilot did this, but there were a lot of Jews who had a more antagonistic approach to the Romans. And so, there was probably some sort of a skirmish, some sort of an incident that occurred. And the way the Jews tell it, Pilate killed them like sacrificial animals, and he mixed their blood with a sacrifice. We don’t know if they mean this sort of metaphorically or something literal here that took place. This would be just like, however, every religious persecution that we find across the globe. There would be a pretty loud outcry in Jerusalem because of something like this. Now, I don’t know exactly why they brought this up because Luke doesn’t tell us, but based on Jesus’ response, it must have been something to do with these guys in the crowd thinking that those Galileans must have really upset God. They must have done something wrong. Those guys must have finally crossed the line in God’s eyes. And so, God brings his judgment down on them in such a shameful way to be killed while making a sacrifice. What that means is that their final sacrifices made to the Lord, were unclean. They must have been some pretty awful people, they think. Much more awful than us. Because we’re still here. We’re fine. We’re doing well. Jesus says, do you think that because that happened to them, that somehow that they are worse sinners than everybody else? Now, Jesus doesn’t deny that their death was God’s judgment.

[00:21:00] He doesn’t say God was not in control. We do know that God judges in this way. We heard it earlier when we heard the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah, right? God does judge in this way, but Jesus does challenge the assumption that because they died under the Romans that somehow, they were morally worse than other people because of the way that they died. And then he says, here, I’ve got another one for you. You remember that tower that fell over and killed 18 people? Do you think God allowed that because those 18 people were worse than everybody else? So that’s a natural disaster or a design flaw or an accident. We don’t know what knocked over the tower, but there’s no Roman violence involved with that one. So, this would be what insurance companies would call an act of God. Were those people judged because they were worse than everybody else? It seems to me every time a sort of big national disaster, you know, some natural disaster of some kind, some sort of a storm, something that’s nationally known or an act of violence or an act of terrorism, seems like every time one of these comes up, there’s always a segment of the church that draws an equal sign between the tragedy and the sin of those particular people. It just seems like this comes up a lot.

[00:22:26] I can remember 20 years ago, one of the big examples of this was Hurricane Katrina. Remember Hurricane Katrina 20 years ago? You know, and it came and it hit New Orleans and it just seemed like there were so many people would come out and say, oh, boy, New Orleans, they’re so sinful down there. It’s so wicked down there. I can see why God would bring his judgment down on a place like New Orleans. Some did it with New York City and the 911 attacks. It’s very easy to do. Whenever something bad happens, just find out what sin is popular there, where it took place, and then say that their sin must be worse than every other place and all the people who are doing just fine, like we are. You can do it at an individual level too. If God brings tragedy into somebody’s life and not into your life, it’s easy to assume that they must have done something much worse than you. That’s precisely the argument of Job’s friends in the Book of Job, if you remember that one. So, when you’re doing it, you can say, I’m being biblical. That’s if you’re familiar with the Book of Job, that’s not how you want to act, right? Jesus says, we have all of this wrong. All of that thinking, that whole line of argument is completely wrong. God brings an end to every life because this world is riddled with sin and it is passing away

[00:23:45] and death is judgment for sure. But people don’t die tragically because they’re worse sinners than people who don’t. They die because their God-appointed days are done and no one sees it coming. That’s what Jesus is saying here. The limit on your life expectancy is set by God and you don’t know what it is. You can’t know when time is up. The takeaway for those who live on shouldn’t be judgement of those people. Smooth sailing and a blessed life right now are not signs that our sins are light or tolerable by God. The takeaway should be an acknowledgement that our limited time before we face the Lord can end at any moment when we least expect it. And so, we should repent. We should repent. We should settle the debt with our accuser by repenting of the sins that we’ve committed, turning from them and trusting in the grace of the Lord that comes only through Jesus Christ. I love how Jesus turns our eyes around with this example. I love it. They came at him for a reason. The crowd probably wanted Jesus to comment on the tragedy, to condemn Rome, to call down God’s curse on their oppressors. But he tells the crowd that those events are an opportunity not to look at the way the world is going, but to look at the way they themselves are going.

[00:25:22] Where are you headed? We look out into the world and we see tragedy. We think our job is to interpret what God is doing and why he’s doing it. And Jesus says no, the point of seeing what God is doing is so that you can take a good, long look at yourself and repent so that you don’t face the Lord unprepared. That’s what you should be doing with your limited time. And then Jesus makes one final point about our limited time. And it has to do with God’s patience. And he told this parable, “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vine dresser, look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground? And he answered him, sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good. But if not, you can cut it down.” So, this last illustration shows us our limited time, but this time from God’s perspective. When the owner of the vineyard comes out to get his figs for three years, he consistently gets none. Do you know what a fig tree that doesn’t produce figs is? It’s just a useless tree. It’s a weed. It’s in the way.

[00:26:50] And I know that we’re not very familiar with figs. Most of us know them only in Newton form. So, I’m trusting the experts when they tell me that three years is plenty of time to have gotten figs off this tree. That’s plenty of exposure to the sun and rain and soil. There should be some fruit on that tree, but there isn’t any fruit on that tree. The owner and the vine dresser have a little different way of seeing this, right? The owner wants to just cut it down. They agree that this is a problem, they both see that. But the owner wants to cut the tree down. The vine dresser wants one more year to see if extra care will lead to fruit before cutting it down. And if in a year there’s fruit, then things will continue. But if not, that tree is coming down. The tree gets one more year of time to be the tree that it’s supposed to be. It’ll get the best care to produce. But does it produce? We’re not told. We don’t know. And that’s the point. This is an open-ended parable. This is Jesus’ final challenge to this crowd. And it’s our final challenge this morning. Fruitlessness here in Jesus’ story isn’t good works. I know that being fruitful in other places in Scripture refers to doing the good works that come when the Lord is at work in us. I know that’s how it’s usually used, but that’s not how it’s used here.

[00:28:24] Here, fruitfulness is accepting the gospel to actually grab hold of the gospel. This is a direct warning to those of you who have had the gospel sowed into you for long periods of time. Maybe you’ve been here at Calvary for years, you’ve been in churches for years, you’ve been in and around the church, you’ve heard the story, you know what the Bible says about who Jesus is. You’ve had it sowed into you for a long period of time, and still, you resist Christ. You have this second life. You live a different way. You don’t actually follow him. You’re in and around the gospel, but you haven’t grabbed hold of it. This is a warning to American churchgoers who have been around the gospel and have had plenty of opportunity to trust in Christ, but have basically placed Jesus on the shelf thinking, someday maybe I’ll get serious about Jesus. Maybe someday I’ll do something about him. We all have limited time, limited time to acknowledge the person and work of Christ. Limited time to settle our sin debt with God through repentance and trusting in Christ. For those of you who are dragging your feet, you’re only wasting what precious little time God has given you, and it’s likely shorter than you expect. As the great military leader Joshua in the Old Testament would say, choose this day whom you will serve. Choose this day whom you will serve. Let’s pray.

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