TIME

If I were to ask you, “Are you concerned about the time?” how would you answer? If you were to answer “No!” then I would probably ask “Why do you have a watch on your wrist?” Most of us would be completely lost without our timepieces. I have two wristwatches and both of them I can push on the stem and they light up so I can be aware of the time day or night. We may lose track of what day of the month it is but we certainly want to know what time of the day it is! Have you ever forgotten what day of the week it was? The time was once when I never forgot what day of the week it was; but when you retire the day of the week isn’t as important; just so I know when Wednesday or Sunday rolls around. If you are faithful in church attendance these two days are still important to any retiree.

In God’s Book, the Bible, we see that God has established time. First, He has set up years: (Gen 15:13) “And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years;” God tells Abram that the children of Israel will be “strangers in a land that is not theirs” for a period of “four hundred years”. By this we know that God is concerned with the number of years. How do we know when another year rolls around? Here in Missouri we can judge when the years change because we have seasons of the year. We have an interesting statement in the book of Daniel: (Dan 9:2) “In the first year of his reign I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem.” Here we learn that Daniel was able to understand by “books the number of years”.

From God’s Word we also become aware of months: (1 Chr 27:1) “Now the children of Israel after their number, to wit, the chief fathers and captains of thousands and hundreds, and their officers that served the king in any matter of the courses, which came in and went out month by month throughout all the months of the year, of every course were twenty and four thousand.” Here we are not only told there are months but we are made aware that months turn into years. It would be very difficult to keep track of time if we only did so by months. I cannot even imagine the number of months it would be since God created the heavens and earth if we only kept time by the month.

Furthermore, months of the years are divided into weeks: (Dan 10:2) “In those days I Daniel was mourning three full weeks.” From the New Testament we learn from a self-righteous Pharisee that a week was important to him: (Luke 18:12) “I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.” If we disregard his self-righteousness we are still reminded that he was concerned with religious matters; are we as concerned with attending all of our worship services each week?

Of course we know that the week is divided into days: (Gen 8:3) “And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated.” Our Lord Jesus Christ even taught us of the importance of the “day” when He taught his disciples how to pray: (Luke 11:3) “Give us day by day our daily bread.” I do trust that you have your “daily prayer!”

Finally, we see from the words of Jesus that the day is divided into hours: (John 11:9) “Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world.” The apostle Peter once declared the importance of the time of day: (Acts 2:15) “For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day.” Having been accused of being drunk Peter reminds them that it is just “the third hour of the day” [9 a.m.] and no good Jew would be drunk at this time of the day. So we see that time can be very important to all of us. This justifies our wearing of our wristwatches. Time is important to God and it should be important to us also.