Making Hard Decisions With Our Time

What to Do in a World That Does Not Value the Lord's Schedule

Good Morning!

We had a lovely time Sunday night singing the Bible Songs with friends and families from multiple neighboring ARP churches. It was a blessed time of fellowship and food. There is just something special about the comradery and brotherhood found among the children of God. As believers we are interested not only in the kind of life we live today, but in the type of reality we will have in the eternal Heaven with Christ Jesus. We are a forward-looking people. That is part of why we sing to begin with. It is part of our opportunity to give back to the Lord who has granted life itself, and more importantly the spiritual new life given through the sacrifice of the unbegotten Son of God. It’s exhilarating to me personally to have the opportunity to do that. Now, I could never be confused with a guy who can sing well. For me it’s definitely more on the “noise” side of “make a joyful noise”.

It’s like when we were kids and we made breakfast for our mom on Mother’s Day. The eggs might be a little soft, the bacon a bit dry, but our dear mother loved it with such a perfect joy that we felt the aura that poured out of her smile. Something similar takes place in the worship of Jehovah’s Church. While the world might look askance at the time we give to it, and snicker at the “quality” of it sometimes, we are comforted by the fact that what unbelievers might say about what you do matters less than zero.

All that we should be concerned with is what our heavenly Father thinks about what we are doing, how He has commanded us to bring praise to Him, and with what heart and soul He requires.

The scoffers will receive their reward.

We’ve spent some time last week, this week, and will be going into the next couple of weeks looking at the 4th Commandment and the place of the Sabbath Day in the life of the Christian. Sometimes we focus so much on Sunday that we forget about the other part of the statute, what we are to do on those other six days of the week.

We remember Paul’s words to the people at Ephesus that we are to make sure to redeem the time that God gives us. (Eph. 5:16). The apostle says something similar to the Roman believers when he calls the Church to not be conformed to this present evil world. (Rom. 12:1-2). One of the ways that we show ourselves separate from those whose hope and peace are in the things passing away is how we understand the cadence of life which the Lord provides for us in His providence. There are moments when the priorities of unbelievers are not going to match up with what we have been called to do as Christians. Many times this is going to involve situations that are not in and of themselves sinful. Hunting, fishing, concerts, etc… You name the leisure activity (even shopping for those inclined) and it could fit into this window. Yet, youth sports are a kind of the 5,000lb elephant in the room today. It used to be the case, especially here in the South, that both Sunday and Wednesday were understood to be kind of the domain of the Church and the rest of the week was free for whatever.

However, we all know that the days of this being true are long gone and are not going to come back, that is as long as Christians allow sports and other activities to row the boat. There is no question that even talking about this is meddling and stepping on toes, some of which are tied into my own feet. It stinks to have to tell your son, or daughter, that they can’t go to practice on a Sunday afternoon, or that they are going to have to miss out on an activity because it takes places during Lord’s Day morning or evening worship, or sometimes on Wednesday nights. It hurts to be honest. No one likes being Captain No Fun (though I have been told that I am a first-ballot hall of famer on that front) and the last thing any parent wants to do is take away the brief moments when kids are young that they get to be kids. The concern we all have, and the worry which comes into our minds (and my mind) is that we never want our children to hate to go to Church. We fear that if we make that choice for them then they’ll hold it against us, and worse gain a negative idea of God as the one who keeps them from doing what everyone else is doing. “If only the almighty had ordered His world different then I could do…”.

But think about that for a second. Is that really how we are to look at the LORD? Isn’t that the kind of grumbling that we associate with Israel in the Wilderness? Don’t we often say to ourselves as we read about them that, “I’d never act like that. I mean didn’t they just see the Red Sea open up?”? Inculcating a love of God that sees the beauty and glory of the one who made Heaven and Earth, and as being more important to our daily life is central to beginning to think about how we go through handling these difficult questions.

The question then becomes what are we to do? What are we to do as parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, or even for that matter the children themselves? One of the things that we need to do is to help children see and understand the hierarchy of needs that we have in life. We would never, to be silly for a second, say “I can’t breathe right now because I’d rather swim underwater” and think that is a rational choice. We are called by Christ in a Scripture like Luke 9:62 to make hard decisions between spiritual matters and earthly matters all the time, in fact most of the stories we have in the Bible are God’s people being in a difficult place and having to make that call. We need to think deeply, purposefully, and honestly about how believers are to consider these questions in light of the moral law of God found in commandments like the 4th, 5th, and as the words we’ve heard from Christ’s apostle to the Gentiles above, how a believer is to apportion their time, and what ultimately is going to be more important, and vital for eternal life.

I hate to be the harbinger of bad news here, but there are no easy answers. What does need to happen is that we need to be convinced in our own mind that the right choices are being made, not just for today, but long-term in regards to the way kids understand the consequences, and self-sacrifice that comes from faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We need to model that for them in the way we redeem our own time.

Making hard decisions in a world that is turning away from God at lightning speed means Christians in our context especially are going to be pushed to give an account for what our hope in the Savior means to us, not only for ourselves, but in the example we give to the culture around us, and to those who we have brought up in the household of Jesus. Part of the way we do deal with this is by talking to and supporting one another. Maybe we need to set up sports programs and other types of organized activities that run parallel to the existing structures, ones that render honor to whom honor is due, and maybe through that example we can show the world that the six days of labor are more than enough time to get done what we need to get done.

Because at the end of the day what is going to matter more to the future of our children, our Church, and the entirety of the body of Christ? If the children are our future, what kind of preparation are we doing for them as they inherit the roles and responsibilities that we hold now? Is our witness going to be giving up on the battles we wage now? Or, instead, is our being strengthened through these fights going to show to our young men and women that being a Christian matters in real life? In this later case they then going to see that and then be prepared for the much more serious persecutions that await us in the near future, which are going to make these questions seem moot.

Much wisdom is needed, much grace is required, and much trust in the goodness and of mercy of Jesus Christ to help us by His Bible word to understand and to know that we are not to lean on our own understanding, but on every testimony which proceeds from the God who loves us. Remembering, at the end of the day, what He thinks of us is what truly matters in this life.

No extra reading today. Just prayer.

In His Providential Care We Rest,

Rev. Benjamin Glaser

Pastor, Bethany ARP Church