We are all in the play of life and we have a very significant line to act out.  The play does not go on endlessly. Our most important part to play is when we answer to the Gospel Call. The sermon explores how time is short, not only due to our limited lifespan, but also because of God’s prophetic timeline and the passing nature of this world. The preacher highlights Jesus Christ as the centre of the Gospel, focusing on His unique role as both fully God and fully man.  The preacher urges listeners to recognise the fleeting opportunity to connect with eternity through Christ, stressing the importance of making this decision while the moment is here.

Automatically Generated Transcript
[00:00:00] This morning I want us to talk about something that is in the scriptures often is not talked about these days in churches but there’s several issues that are wrapped up in the one passage and as a title for the message I wrote on my notes Time is Short which is the major thrust of this passage. We’ll put it up on the screen. It’s from 1st Corinthians chapter 7 and in this particular passage, the Apostle Paul is trying to get his readers to know that exactly that time is short for several reasons. Now the context in which he’s speaking, though, is about marriage, which could throw you off the scent, and he’s actually not speaking about marriage being not a good thing at all. Though there has been down through years of Christian history people who thought that marriage was a better condition to be in to serve the Lord. The truth is the Bible teaches that people have different
[00:01:07] senses of callings and giftedness’s that includes whether you’re able to handle being married or handle being single. I’m not sure which way around to say that but there is a specialty of what God may have for you that’s not the same for someone else, but we ought not to be teaching that there is a type of celibacy that makes you a more spiritual person. It’s not what the Bible teaches. If you want some evidence of that God himself said, before creating Eve, God said, it’s not good for man to be alone I will make a make a help me suitable for him. One of the persons who’s known to be in back in the early history of humanity, someone that walked with God closer than anybody so that God actually took him and translated him into eternal regions without him
[00:02:06] actually having to die his name was Enoch, indistinguishable from another guy who was called Enoch, but Enoch is a man who so pleased God that God just took him but he also was recorded as having had sons and daughters, lots of them. So being married and having a family is not necessarily incongruous with being close to God and in the normal outworking of life, it’s more to be the expected thing and the New Testament speaks about let each man have his own wife it’s interesting you know that passage because when it says that, I think about the years where some men had many wives but the New Testament makes the best condition to be when you only have one wife, and that’s just something to note. And the Bible also tells us in the New Testament about the fact that God has had people in various capacities and not everybody ends up in the
[00:03:17] merry condition, but all can serve the Lord, and whether they do or not often depends upon upon his purposes for the individual rather than there being a special best way. Well anyway, that’s the context of marriage that this is set in, but in actual fact it’s got a deeper thing that it’s getting through to us, and as I read the beginning, if you look up there, this is what I mean brothers. The appointed time has grown very short. Some of the translations were right. Time is short. there is an imperative that the Apostle Paul is trying to get through. There can be special times of crisis in which it might be better not to be married. Now if
[00:04:05] you want an illustration of that, if you look into the history of Enzo Ferrari, for example, the man whose championed the Ferrari sports cars and racing ideas, This particular fellow was an Italian and in the history of Italy there was a time, World War II, when Italy was recruited because of Mussolini, their fascist dictator person, to be fighting on the side of the Nazis and many Italians got forced into, that’s why lots of them used to used to surrender really quickly when the war any given fight started. Because they were really with their hearts wanting to join all that silly business and there are many people in Italy who had difficult scenarios, it was a time of stress. And that’s a part of the explanation for how Ferrari had two wives, it was
[00:05:04] something very difficult with the laws of the land, so one of them was hidden. But that’s a part of the explanation of the difficulty that comes in times of stress that do affect whether marriage is a good idea or not. But that’s special circumstances which can also include times when there is a persecution of Christians and so that could well happen in Australia if we don’t get busy as Christians and start evangelizing our own nation and bring people to Christ we might find that the nation has drifted so far away from Christianity that that will become a time of stress, of crisis for us as Christians, if not already that is happening. But anyway, the passage is emphasizing this time being short, as particularly the case when Paul wrote the letter that we’re reading this in, but there do come times of special crisis
[00:06:04] where the norm that God would usually have is not what necessarily would be wise. But this passage is careful to say, and if you read the verses before this one when you get home, chapter 7, he talks about the fact that the ones who do get married aren’t sinning so to do. So there’s nothing special about celibacy as far as making you more holy. As long as the marriage, Listen is in the Lord which means Christians marrying Christians. And so that’s the import of the passage but it’s that idea that time can be short that Paul is picking up on that actually is something for us to understand quite away from whether or not we’re living in a time of stress. I think if you were living right now in Ukraine you’d wonder whether being married and having children that could get killed or having scenes where husband has to go and fight
[00:07:05] and they they’re really suffering a lot in Ukraine and the men go off to fight and they don’t all come back. And these times of crises are one where it would be very difficult to have a family and to be caring for them and worried about them being killed, the same in other places of tension at the moment. Well anyway, what the idea of time being short is further than just due to crises in society. It’s a truth. I remember reading about Billy Graham saying, Do you know that he lived over a hundred years, as long as you count the time he was in his mother’s womb it gets up to a hundred figure? So little bit few months short otherwise, but he lived to a hundred.
[00:07:56] one of the things he said as he grew older was he was surprised at the brevity of life. And it’s true. Sometimes especially when you’re young you think that life is just some long long time that’s ahead of you that you don’t have to even consider it, I used to be like that. And I used to not bother really thinking about preparing myself but in the economy of God I got led to go overseas and ended up doing some studies and because of the studies I did I when I came back I got a job down in Tasmania. I became the state evangelist, and part of it was the fact of the training that I’d done. And there’s another young man the same age as me who was the Secretary of one of the churches where I ministered, but he lamented because he said he sort of let out out that he was jealous of my opportunity. He was the same age, he was a very capable person,
[00:08:55] he had his issues of course, as they’ll do but he was someone who lamented that he had gone to England and spent his years in doing nothing really, just enjoying being you know having a life that would go on forever, but when he came back found that there are a lot of people like me who were now doing things that he couldn’t get into straightaway because he hadn’t put in the preparation. I wish we could get through to our young people that the years when you’re young are wisely spent in preparing so that you’ve got something to do with yourself, some expertise that you’ve gotten into that you can use but life doesn’t go on forever. And, you know, you often discover when I was teaching in the College, a Theological College They would come in, people who’d start doing the preparation to be a pastor, because they’d been having this sense of call to be, make themselves available. So to be. But they kept
[00:09:53] putting it off. There was one fellow in particular, someone that I know well, who started his study at 53, and his professors, or I was one of them, were all young, and he was starting his study. and nonetheless he’s still going by the way and he’s quite a bit older than me now. He always was older than me, but I’m trying to say he’s lamented the fact that he begins so late and it’s one of the things that happens to people who don’t realize that life, the very fact of it, like Billy Graham says, he was surprised at the brevity of life. If you don’t understand that you may waste a good lot of it not doing what you want to do. I’m going to finish today with what to do to make sure you don’t waste the years. Don’t let me not get to that point, not that you can do anything about it, but that’s where we’re going to, but but time is short merely by the brevity of human
[00:11:01] life.” The Bible says… what is it, 70 is the figure? What’s that, so many score, years and ten? That’s right. Three-score years and ten. And then it adds in, but if because of strength you get to be four-score years, then good for you, basically, is what it’s saying but it’s still short. And it’s an amazing thing as you get into the older years of life, where you look around, I get phone calls – as I’m telling you from people interstate – who want to know about how to last longer in ministry things. Because life is short, and you know you get to be some – I’ve met some who were called to do something for God but they got old and died before they ever did it. And the brevity of life, just the fact of it, is what Paul’s trying to talk about life is short? Wake up and find his will and get doing it. He’ll guide you in it.
[00:12:05] And then life can be short because of special circumstances which, you know, the idea of crises causes. But when it talks about at the end, the present form of this world is passing away, look at it in the verse, the final thing, the present form of this world. Some of the older translations were that the fashion of this world is passing away. It’s not just talking about the clothes you wear, the fashion. It’s talking about the very makeup of how the world is is in a temporary form and if you sell yourself to what is the fashion of this world, You’ve spent your money in something that’s going to not last. By money I mean the resources of your person. The present form of this world is passing away and so the world is, the time of the world is passing away, and anybody who gives
[00:13:05] themselves, you look at the politicians, they get one or two goes, getting into place of influence, many of them don’t, they miss out. Or you look at the people who give themselves in the sporting arena and they turn 36 or whatever it is and…. they’ve lost the opportunity and you could, some of them they lament the rest of their lives that they can’t be any longer a big hero in in the sporting world. I admire some of our swimmers, one of whom tried to get to the Olympics this time, and for the sixth or seventh occasion, I can’t remember now, but didn’t quite make it through. But that’s a wonderful thing to do, but that’s not all there is to do in life. Life is short. And you need to know that the nature of the world and the values it has and what it gives you opportunity to do is not a slice of eternity, it’s not the flavour of eternity, the fashion of this
[00:14:14] world is passing away, and we need to learn what it is to be related to eternity. Last week, the message was on Jesus’ cry on the cross and where he let out- it’s called, it’s got a special name, if you want to look it up on your computers, your phones. It’s called the cry of dereliction. The cry of dereliction is the name given to Jesus’ words when he says, My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me? very interestingly. I would pinpoint that cry if you had to pick a focus of what is the whole Bible, if you had to pick a pinpoint of the very central part of the gospel. The gospel is quite expansive. It includes lots of things as to the fulfillment of prophecy, to his birth to the Christmas stories, all a part of the gospel. It includes about Jesus rising from the dead, it includes about Jesus
[00:15:16] going to heaven, it includes about God making his name, the name that is above every name. The Gospels also about the fact that he’s going to come back again. The Gospels quite all-inclusive, but you know what makes the very centre of the Gospel is the very moment when Jesus cried and he said, My God! My God! How thou hast forsaken me, is one translation, or why have you forsaken me and I want you to understand I want you to observe that when he said my God that’s a cry that only a human can make I don’t mean that he’s not God himself he is, he’s a part of the Trinity the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit but the center of the gospel’s a moment when Jesus proved he’s in his humanity that he cried out what humans cry to the Eternal One my God my God the very idea
[00:16:11] that he had in that saying. I’ve been thinking about this during the week. The very idea that he said, when he said, Why have you forsaken me, is something that applies to humans, and God, and the interrelation between the two, because you see, God is the eternal one, and when you get related to eternity, you’re always with God, and God’s punishments in eternity is going to be eternal? There are some people who try to soften the very idea of God’s judgment and, and he’s, he’s people going to hell and they say, must be like, and they think it’s a softer thing to say, they just…people get extinguished, they don’t last forever. They, you know, God takes away their existence. But, you know, that’s complete misunderstanding.” The very words that describe hell as eternal is is the same word eternal that describes God, it’s the same word eternal that also describes
[00:17:09] the eternal life. The wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, because Jesus Christ in his incarnation is the centre point of the gospel, and Jesus Christ dying on the cross is the pinpoint centre of the gospel, where he cried that cry as only a human that is suffering, being forsaken from God, is suffering the punishment of our sins. The very meaning of death is God-forsakenness but God- forsakenness doesn’t mean that God is not there for all eternity. He is an eternal God and he’s in hell. God exists. There’s nowhere of existence that God does not continue to be present in because of the very nature of what eternity is during the week when I try and spend time getting sermons ready like this morning. I sometimes go out and take
[00:18:13] myself to where I can get a good meal and I’ve got a lot of places around where I can go and get meal I like, one of them in Mount Omni is where you can buy a hot dog. I like the hot dogs that taste like the ones you bought by New York. You know, the tape, you know, some people have a bygone of meat in it, that’s not a hot dog. It’s got to have the same sort of taste, but there’s a place I know where I can go. So I go and get a hot dog and even if I’ve had another meal I can always add an extra one like a hot dog. And I was sitting down there It was on Friday, yesterday, I can’t remember now. I was sitting down there. You buy your hot dog, and you get to sit in the seats out there. You know, it’s near one of the big department stores.
[00:19:03] There’s only pretty well one seat left where I sat in between two other groups of people. The man on this side was a really old man, and not young like me. He was an old man. He was very quiet, and I had mine taken books, and I started reading my books, and I scribbled them. And he was watching so he could stand there no longer. And he says, are you taking yourself back to school, have you? And I said, no. I said, I’m preparing, because I’ve
[00:19:36] got to preach on Sunday, 2 surveys. And so that got him talking. It turned out to be a J-W. And he was welcoming the chance to sort of witness to me. And that started a good conversation, but what I couldn’t help but notice again about the cults, the people who have a different gospel, they don’t have all the understanding of the gospel wrong. They have parts of it, and it varies from cult to cult, just how bad it is or how close it is
[00:20:11] to the truth of the Bible. But one thing that you keep noticing is, they don’t understand that the center of the gospels a person, Jesus, and a person who is God, and who came into the world and took on humanity, and of course, the JWs make a really big deal about John’s Gospel chapter one where it says, And in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God but their translation is Me Dehg and the Word was a God. So I had a little job of explaining to
[00:20:53] him about the presence or absence of the articles of that Word and that it’s not only the case that it means a God and there are plenty of other passages and I challenged him to look up the book of Hebrews in chapter one, and next time we meet, which will probably be over hot dog, we’ll have a talk about that. But in these last days, Hebrews 1 says, God has spoken to us by his Son or in his Son. And Jesus, spoken to us by coming amongst us, the Christmas story, the incarnation, by his humanity and his deity. And some of the cults, they’ll admit to his humanity, but they’ll slice away the deity. Like one time speaking in the radio out at Longreach, and the people who arranged the convention had me speak on the local radio, and the bloke, who was the fellow behind Turning the Knobs, was really good at
[00:21:56] it too, but a young man who knew his trade, but he took exception to the message I gave, because I gave a message of Jesus dying for our sins, and I think he was a Christadelphian and one of those groups that doesn’t believe that the real God part of Jesus stayed there, that part escaped and just the human ones suffered. And you’ll find that one of the features of cults is that usually, instead of that being the center of the gospel, there will be something happening like in the Book of Revelation or something happening in the future, something… but all this time we just believe, you know, where this is going to happen, but they miss the point that the heart of the gospel is Jesus! The heart of knowing God is knowing him now. And the opportunity that you have to know Him is in this life. And it’s short, because Jesus spoke to the people of his generation, as you will know what He
[00:23:03] said to His, the people He said, eternal peace was within your reach. And you turned it down, and now it is too late. Because time is short, not only in terms just the brevity of life. The time is short in terms of the opportunity that God gives to us, that we might find him as the savior. And that is something very hard to define because it’s not the same for every person that’s in the hands of God, but there comes a time in a person’s life when God draws near, and the message of the Gospel is heard, not every, I don’t think people all equally hear of the gospel? There’s millions in our country probably don’t know what it is, and one of the fruit of the cults is, it takes people’s concentration away from this man, this God-Man, this one who came and on a
[00:23:58] cross bore our sins, so that he cried, my God, my God, how you have forsaken me! And when Jesus took our place and bore our sins, that’s the heart of the gospel. And then it also calls for us to respond and come in repentance and faith and confession and let him be the Savior of our souls. And the call of God was put out by Peter on that first day of Pentecost, that they should so come. And he worded it to all whom the Lord our God shall call. Excuse me. There is a time, I believe often that can be a short time, when God is calling. And that time is very short sometimes. I’m amazed at the grace of God when it’s not short and someone who rejects him in their youth. In some cases he calls them later again when they’re old, but he doesn’t have to. And certainly to the Jewish leaders of
[00:25:19] Jesus’ day he explained that now it is too late. Time is short and that is particularly the case if you’re here this morning and you’re a person in whose life God has worked, but you kept saying no, or you said I’ll think about it or I’ll put it off, I’m warning you from the scriptures that time is short. Look up at Jesus speaking to Jerusalem where he gives that call just before they come to eventually crucify him. I’m going through ways that time is short but time is also short in a sense of prophecy, for the Bible does not describe there to be time in a sense of a repeating of everything going over and over again. All things remain the same is a bit of a dictum, a saying that we have, everything is the same, there is nothing really that changes, but that’s actually not what the Bible teaches.
[00:26:27] I believe the Bible teaches that time is a progression from a beginning to an end, end, and that the Scriptures teach about the beginning, that it was when Jesus was in eternity. Well, as the eternal Son of God before he took on humanity, and that’s the meaning that I wish I could get across. I had a little go with the JW fellow. In the beginning was the Word. Oh, do you know that they expect.. this is John chapter 1.. do you know that the very word was is in that imperfect tense which is a continuous existence idea how you might put it into our words and get the point? in the beginning the word was was-ing. He was, he always was. he’s eternal and one of the features about the eternal Son of God is that He is from eternity and He is going back to eternity, but He’s taking humanity with Him. Jesus taking on humanity was something that was something that was new, and in the
[00:27:39] beginning was the Word, the eternal one, and that’s the feature of Jesus. That He is the eternal one, but He’s taken on humanity so He could cry out and say, Why have you forsaken me? And that’s the very nature of how humanity and deity, always have this most unusual relationship. It’ll happen when you get to the Judgement Seat, where the world is being judged, and every single person will stand before Jesus, who is the judge. And God the Father, has decreed that the one who will be the most just, just, just judge, is a human. We get from this the fact of having been judged by your peers and Jesus, being, having been human, is being given the right to be the judge at the end of the days that every single person who’s ever been alive and is living now shall stand before the judge who is a human, is a human and in his humanity understands what it’s like for us to have to wrestle with sin.
[00:28:41] what it is for us to know that we have to learn to relate to the Eternal One. Eternal life is what Heaven—sometimes the Bible would use the word eternal life in Heaven as sort of a polite way to say, are you right with eternity? We do it when we ask people a question, have you made peace with eternity. Because eternity is the eternal God, and the son who’s taken on humanity has made himself the bridge of we who are mortals who can get right with eternity. We can get right with eternity he the eternal one takes us to be right with eternity with the eternal God and that’s why you can have eternal life and the Bible says he that has the Sun has life. He that does not have the Son of God does not have life, and the life being talked about is the life of God and
[00:29:40] is eternal life, and heaven is an eternal living, and we have been made to be related to eternity but we only have a short time to get into that connection. And Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me, and the mechanism that that needed him to do with those moments on the cross, when he bore our sins. And I cannot explain this in terms of philosophy, or in terms of how to describe existence. How did the Eternal One, Jesus, have a reason to say, my God, my God, well, I understand it’s because of his humanity. He became capable of suffering, severance, disconnection from the Eternal God, his Father. And that’s what happened in those hours of darkness. That’s what happened. That eventually his resurrection would lift him out of being one who was ever close to being not with the father. The father’s hand to resurrect him was
[00:31:06] the father saying he’s done it. He’s completed it. It’s finished. And he raised him from the dead. that we might know that the actions happened, and the eternal, yet human Jesus has made a reconnection for us with eternity. You, in the limitedness of your humanity, can connect to eternity and heaven through the person of Jesus, and the all-important thing is you and Jesus. He that or she that has the Son has life. The Bible talks about eternal life, a life that goes on forever, because the Son has paid the price of your sins, causing you not to ever deserve that. And the call of the Gospel is to come and to receive eternal life by receiving the person of Jesus. Remember his words, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. And here this morning, if ever there was a Sunday morning for someone to preach on, time being short, it’s today. And Jesus, through
[00:32:44] his Gospel about the shortness of time, I won’t go any further, but the prophetic calendar as to when he’s going to come back again and wind it all up. I think that’s another reason I could go into why time may well be short. The present form of the world is passing away. President Trump got shot still alive, what that will do to the American elections, I’ve no idea. Things happening all around the world in different places, the alliance of nations getting together in ways that you could say is pretty similar to how Ezekiel describes when the nations come down from the north and attack Israel, all of which is a part of the wind-up times. Time may be short prophetically and in that time God comes and calls to you and to me. If you haven’t made your peace with eternity, please do that today. In the time that we have coffee, find
[00:34:00] someone that you know here that you’re able to talk to, talk to them and say, I need someone to help me make sure I’m connected to eternity through Jesus and get Them to lead you in a prayer and make it today that you know what it is to have eternal life, life that goes on forever. And pray for the JWs and groups like that. They nearly always have some things that are right, but the most important one that makes them a cult is their attitude to Jesus and his salvation. And that’s what will count on the last day. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, I do pray for that man who knows his stuff as a JW, but doesn’t know his Savior. And I pray this morning for people present here who need to recognize that time is short and the time, there’s a moment of time from
[00:35:25] eternity’s measures which is always the now. Now, says the Bible, is the accepted time. Now is the day of salvation. And Father, I pray that whether it’s just one person or whether it’s others who need the Savior, that they will understand that he’s calling to them. I am the way, he says, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. May they answer the call, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.