The Bible instructs us to number our days wisely, for the same God who knit us together in our mother’s wombs holds in his hand our lifespan as well.
The Bible instructs us to number our days wisely, for the same God who knit us together in our mother’s wombs holds in his hand our lifespan as well.
– SERMON TRANSCRIPT –
In Daniel Chapter 5, one of the most dramatic moments in redemptive history occurred with a wicked king named Belshazzar. Belshazzar was putting on a big feast, and he was stopped in his tracks suddenly by a disembodied hand that began writing in the wall above his corrupt throne. The hand that wrote the words was terrifying to everyone there, and the words could not be understood easily or read. The hand carved letters into the plaster in the wall, and I envisioned dust sprinkling down to the floor while the hand continued to write the mysterious words. I imagine at that time that the music and the lustful revelry in the entire hall from the 1,00 noble men partying with him instantly came to an end. If you’d been close enough to the throne, you would’ve seen the color drain from the king’s face. You would’ve been able to hear his knees knocking together, but the focus of everyone in that formerly riotous hall would’ve been the writing on the wall. That moment moved into proverbial truth.
To see the writing on the wall in our culture means to see something inevitable, something that’s coming and there’s nothing that can stop it. It means to see clearly that your end is near. Of course, this story is recounted for us in Daniel Chapter 5, Belshazzar’s feast, and the man who read the writing on the wall at that time was a prophet named Daniel. He first, as he read it, proclaimed the great wickedness of the king of Babylon. After recounting the famous story of Belshazzar’s grandfather, Nebuchadnezzar, how God humbled him and changed his mind of that of an animal and then changed it back again seven years later, teaching him that God alone rules over the kingdoms of men and that all people are accountable to Him. After accounting that history, Daniel then leveled Belshazzar with this righteous accusation. He says in Daniel 5:22-24, “But you his son, O Belshazzar, have not humbled yourself though you knew all this. Instead, you have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven. You had the goblets from his temple brought to you and you and your nobles, your wives and your concubines drank wine from them. You praise the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wooden stone which cannot see or hear, understand, but you did not honor the God who holds in His hand your life in all your ways. Therefore, He sent the hand that wrote this inscription.”
That phrase has arrested me for years. You did not honor the God who holds in His hand your life in all your ways. Daniel then read the writing on the wall clearly so everyone could hear him, the words were “MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN”, and then Daniel interpreted them. “This is what the words mean. MENE; God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end. TEKEL; You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting. PERES; Your kingdom is divided, and given to the Meads and Persians.” That very night Belshazzar was slain and the Babylonian empire came to an end and the Medo-Persian empire took over.
The words that very night remind me of Jesus’s parable of the rich fool. You remember that man who had a bumper crop and thought he had plenty of years to enjoy all of that wealth and he thought, “’What shall I do? I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger barns, and I’ll store up all of this harvest, and I’ll eat and drink and be merry for years to come.’But God said to him, ‘You fool, this very night, your soul will be required of you.’” That’s an important phrase, isn’t it, “required of you”? It’s not an option when that summons comes. When God who gives life takes it from us, there’s nothing we can say. There will come a time that all of us, our souls will be required from us by the God who gave them. That’s the point of my whole sermon. We do not know how much more time we have left here on Earth, and we should number our days wisely.
“When God who gives life takes it from us, there’s nothing we can say. There will come a time that all of us, our souls will be required from us by the God who gave them.”
Today is the last day of the year 2023. If God wills, tomorrow will come, and it will be a new year, 2024. We’ve been instructed by the Lord to say that, to say, “If the Lord wills.” In James 4, it says, “’Today or tomorrow I’ll go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money. You don’t even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life that it’s a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes? Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’” So if the Lord wills, January 1, 2024 will come for any of us, most likely for most of us, if not all of us. Therefore, it seems wise for us to heed the timeless advice that you heard read for us in Psalm 90:12, “Teach us to number our days aright,” or properly, “that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
Let’s look at Psalm 90 briefly. Let’s try to understand Moses, the man of God, and what he said. We’re also going to go over to another passage, Ephesians 5, and we’re going to try to number our days rightly so we can make the most of the time that we have left. Moses begins by asserting that God alone is our eternal dwelling place. Look at Verses 1 and 2, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the Earth in the world from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” The doctrine there is the majestic eternality of God. He alone is from everlasting to everlasting. He is timeless. He is eternal. He is above time. He’s not bound by time, unlike us. God knows the end from the beginning and the beginning from the end because He ordained every day that ever has been or ever will be. The statement “from everlasting to everlasting” means that God is the same yesterday, today and forever. He never changes. He’s always the same, and He is our dwelling place. God is where we will spend eternity. God is the New Jerusalem. God is the new heaven and new Earth. Not to say that there will not be beautiful created things at that point or a place for our resurrected bodies to be, not at all. There will be, but God is our home. God is our dwelling place from generation to generation.
Then Moses goes on to speak of the temporariness and the frailty of all human beings. Look at Verse 3-6, “You turn men back to dust saying, ‘Return to dust, oh, sons of men for a thousand years in your sight or like a day that has just gone by or like a watch in the night.’ You sweep men away in the sleep of death. They are like new grass in the morning. Though, in the morning it springs up new, by evening, it is dry and withered.” All of us, the Bible teaches, are ultimately fashioned from the dust of the earth. To dust, someday all of us will return as God said to Adam, condemning him to the death penalty that his sin deserves. When we die, our bodies go back into the native elements from which they’re originally taken, back to dust, but God is eternal. “A thousand years in his sight is as a few hours or like a single day or like a watch in the night.”
God’s judgments stand over all human beings. They don’t just die accidentally as though God has nothing to do with their deaths. Not at all. “God,” it says, “sweeps men away in the sleep of death.” It’s because God takes away their breath that they die. It’s not an accident. “People,” it says in the text, “spring up quickly like fresh new blades of grass.” They flourish, they look beautiful, they’re radiant and strong, but in a short amount of time they wither, they sink back down just as quickly. “In the morning, they’re new. In the evening, they’re dry and withered.” So our time here in our strength, especially in our youth, the prime of life is very brief. We should therefore make the most of our days when we have youth, when we have strength, when we have vigor and ability because soon one by one we will lose all of those capabilities. All you have to do is walk through a nursing home and look around into each room and see most likely your future. You see the feeble, elderly people there, all of them stripped of strength, stripped of their possessions. They’ll never go to their homes again. They’ll never enjoy their material possessions again. They occasionally have visitors. If they have a family structure of people that visit them, then it’s kind. Sometimes they don’t even remember their closest family members. This is what the text is saying happens to some degree to all of us, and so therefore, it is essential for us to make the most of every moment that we have of every opportunity. Each day has unique opportunities. Soon we can do little because age and feebleness has overtaken us and we can’t do much at all.
Behind all of this, according to Moses and according to the Bible more generally, is the sinfulness of man. It’s because we are sinners the wages of sin is death. The troubles are caused originally by Adam’s sin but then by our own sinful choices. In Verses 7-11, Moses recounts this, the sinfulness of man and the wrath of God. He writes, “We are consumed by your anger and terrified by your indignation. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. All our days pass away under your wrath. We finish our years with a moan. The length of our years is seventy years or eighty. If we have the strength yet their span is but trouble and sorrow for they quickly pass and we fly away. Who knows the power of your anger for your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you?”
Moses was very aware of the sinfulness of the Jewish nation. God had warned them according to Ezekiel Chapter 20, before He ever took them out of Egypt, before He ever took them out of bondage to Egypt, that they needed to give up their idolatry, which they had learned and their pagan ways. They weren’t any different than the Egyptians that surrounded them. They were every bit as pagan and idolatrous as the Egyptians were. He warned them and it says plainly in Ezekiel 20 to give up their idols, but He said, you would not do it. They were a pagan nation when they were brought out in the Exodus, this is what I think Moses referred to. We saw it very, very clearly in the golden calf at the bottom of Mount Sinai, how God said very plainly, “I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other God. You shall not make any idols or worship any idols.” In a short amount of time, they broke all of those commandments immediately, and we see their paganism and their idolatry and their wickedness. Soon after that, after testing God in many ways and trying Him in many ways, they utterly rebelled when the twelve spies came back and brought a good report about the land. But they said that the Anakimes are there with cities walled up to the sky, and we look like grasshoppers in our own eyes and to them, and “we can’t do it.” Ten of the twelve spies gave that report, Joshua and Caleb alone spoke words of faith. God then condemned the nation to wander around in the desert until that generation of fighting men should die. In a short amount of time, destroying all actuarial charts and all that, that entire generation, 40 years, fell dead.
Moses, the man of God, wrote this psalm during those years. When he was writing also the Pentateuch, he’s writing the rest of the Scripture, he’s watching that generation of sinners wither and die; they’re dying before his eyes. He has this in mind, “You’ve taken our secret sins, our idolatries and our wickedness and our paganism and you’ve put it in the light of your holy presence and because of that we are dying.” He says, “In a very short amount of time, we fly away and we are no more.” Then he makes the central request, which is the reason why I chose Psalm 90 for this New Year’s Eve sermon.
Look at verse 12, “Teach us to number our days of right that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” This is a prayer. The entire Psalm is a prayer of the man of God, Moses. This is the central prayer. Looking up to God, the man of God is saying, “God, would you please teach us something that we don’t know? Would you please give us a heart of wisdom specifically in the right understanding of time. God teach us to number our days properly that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” We need to understand this. We need to see why it is essential for us to number our days properly. We need to number our days because God has already numbered them so that we can be wise about salvation, so that we can make the most of the days that we have left here on Earth.
I. Number Your Days To Be Wise About Death
Let’s walk through it. First, number your days so that you may be wise about death. Teach us to number our days properly or rightly that we may gain a heart of wisdom. First of all, the Bible tells us that your days are already numbered. Your days are finite. You’re not going to continue in this present state, in this present world, in this present body forever. We are all of us mortal. It says in Psalm 13:16, “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” God has set a boundary to our lives. There is our birth day and there will be our death day, and nothing will change that. That’s what Psalm 139 means, all the days that God has laid out for us, that all the days He has ordained were written in God’s sovereign book, the book of his decrees before even one of them came to be, and that’s what Moses asked for.
Secondly, we don’t know the number of those days. That number is hidden from us. God has hidden from each person the day of his or her death. In a very real sense, therefore, we can never number our days. We just don’t know. It’s a bit of an ironic prayer because it’s the very thing that we cannot do. We are not ever going to be able properly to number our days. Instead, it seems the wisdom that Moses is seeking here is an acute mindfulness of the limits of the days, an acute mindfulness of the fact that we will die someday, an awareness of that that should dominate the way we live our lives. This will not go on forever. As the psalmist said in Psalm 39:4-5, “Show me, oh Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreath, the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath.” I think that’s a partner to Psalm 90:12, “Show me how brief my life is. Show me how a breath it is. Show me how quick it is. Help me to know that.” That’s all we can do. We cannot actually know the numbers.
As he says here in Psalm 90 in Verse 10, “The length of our days is seventy years or eighty. If we have the strength, yet their span is but trouble and sorrow for they quickly pass and we fly away.” We need to understand, as I’ve already said, God’s direct activity in sustaining us and then in His own good time taking us out of this world. Look at Verse 3, “You turn men back to dust saying return to dust, O sons of men.” None of us dies accidentally. We use that kind of language just in the human, the horizontal way. Talk about people dying from a car accident or something like that, we use the word “accident”, but there are no accidents when it comes to God. God is absolutely sovereign. He rules over all things. You could have prevented that so-called accident. People do not accidentally die when it comes to God. What Moses is saying here is He takes away the breath and they perish.
Again, in Verse 5 and 6, “You, [meaning God] “sweep men away in the sleep of death. They’re like new grass in the morning. Though, in the morning it springs up new, by evening it is dry and withered.” As Daniel said to Belshazzar, this really convicting and haunting verse, Daniel 5:23, “You did not honor the God who holds in His hand your life and all your ways.” If I could get one thing out of this sermon for all of you that are listening to me, intensely feel that God holds in His hand your life and all your ways. That’s the point of the whole sermon. Feel that. Understand you’re not your own. Understand your days are not your own to do whatever you want with. Recently, I was doing men’s Bible study on Thursdays when we went to the Book of Titus. The thing about that Bible study is we take forever to go through Books of the Bible. Anybody who’s gone to it knows. It’s like, “Well, when are we going to be done with Gospel of Matthew? Who knows? How long will it take you to go through Titus?” This is what happens, Titus 1:1, “Paul, a slave of God.” All right, stop right there. How long are we going to take on that phrase? Maybe the whole time. What does it mean to be a slave of God? Are we? We actually are, or we’re slaves of sin. Roman 6 says you’re a slave of one of the other. Suppose you say, “I don’t want to be a slave of anyone?” Well then, you’re being lied to by Satan, you’re being deceived. You are a slave either of God or of sin/Satan/death. You are a slave. We were born to be a slave.
The beauty of salvation is we come to realize that the master that we’re serving, God and Christ are good masters and the yoke is easy and the burden is light. We’re not deceived, but we still live like we are our own entities. Like we get to do whatever we want with our time, energy, money. It’s ours, isn’t it? Isn’t our time ours to spend as we see fit? No, it’s not. If you had a faithful slave back in those days in the first century and you saw him in the morning in the marketplace and he’s a good slave and you asked him, “So what are your plans today?” What do you think he would say? “Whatever my master wants. Whatever my master wants.” Let me ask you a question. Do you think that’s the right way for a Christian to think? It is absolutely the right way for a Christian to think, for none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. That’s what ownership language sounds like. Jesus died to buy you as He says openly in 1 Corinthians 6, “You’re not your own, you’re bought at a price.” But we still think like free agents, don’t we? We still think we get to do whatever we want with our time and our energy and our money, but we don’t.
“It is absolutely the right way for a Christian to think, for none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord.”
That’s why we spent all that time on, “Paul, a slave of God,” because I realized much to my shame, I don’t think like that, not enough. I still think too much like a free agent, and I need to think, in the year 2024 if God lets me live, more like a slave than I’ve ever thought in my life. I would commend that to you. So the prayer, “Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom,” means to be aware that the same God who knit us together in our mother’s wombs and holds in His hand our lifespan as well, in Him, we live and move and have our being. We need to be prepared for death so we can live a wise life honoring the God who holds in His hand our life and all our ways.
II. Number Your Days To Be Wise for Salvation
Secondly, remember your days to be wise for salvation. Moses ultimately yearns for a heart of wisdom. Given the brevity of life, the wisest thing we can do is to find salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. There is nothing wiser that you could do, conversely, there’s nothing more foolish that you could ever do than to live 70 or 80 years in this life and go to hell. It’d be the most foolish thing you could ever have done with your 70 or 80 years. The wisest thing you can do is to find salvation. The scriptures are given for that exact purpose, to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Since death is certain and its timing is uncertain, the wisest thing we can do is to say, “Today is the day of salvation for me,” and flee to Christ because you don’t know if you’ll have tomorrow. 2 Corinthians 6:2 says, “In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation, I helped you. I tell you now is the time of God’s favor. Now is the day of salvation.” So that’s what we have, we have today. It’s all we ever have. God set aside a certain day calling it “today”. That’s what we have [Hebrews 3:4]. Today is about salvation and not just justification, not just crossing over from death to life, but growing in grace in the knowledge of Christ. You’re left alive here on Earth for salvation, so the wisest thing you can do is to immerse yourself in Scripture for your own salvation and that of others.
I would charge you in the year 2024, give yourself like never before to the Word of God. Start there. 2 Timothy 3:15-17 speaks of the holy scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. “All scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work,” says it all. The Scripture is given first to save your soul from hell and secondly, to make you maximally fruitful through every good work. That’s what Scripture is given to do. That’s its purpose.
The scripture has power to show you your sin, has power to convict you of your sin. Scripture has the power to show you Christ and to move you to trust Him for salvation. Scripture has the power to continue to instruct you, rebuke you, correct you, and train you in righteousness and to thoroughly equipped you for every good work. There is no better way for you to use the limited days that we have left than to immerse yourself first in Scripture. A new year is a great time to renew your commitment to daily Bible intake and to prayer, a daily quiet time.
II. Number Your Days To Be Wise About Redeeming Time
Thirdly, number your days so that you can be wise about redeeming the time. Ephesians 5:15-16 says, “Be very careful then how you live not as unwise, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil.” I want to say something about almost every modern translation of that verse. They almost all say something like making the most of every opportunity, which is fine, but it’s not technically what the Greek is. The Greek is “exagorazo”, which means “agora.” In the marketplace it’s a buying kind of marketplace word. “Ex” meaning “out of”, a prefix. So to buy out of, that’s what redemption is. The idea of redeeming is of the payment of a price to get an individual out of trouble like slavery or a kidnapped victim or a hostage, something like that. They are redeemed by the payment of some silver or gold and the individual is brought out. You can imagine David and his men when they found out that their families have been kidnapped by the Amalekites after weeping and whatever, they went after their families to rescue them out of danger. That’s the idea. Only the KJV and I think NKJV still retained “redeeming the time” language. The idea is that time, the day, is in danger. It’s lost. It starts lost. You have to get up and go redeem it, or it will end lost as well. It’s just like “carpe diem”, “seize the day.” If you don’t get up and exert energy and faith and love toward the day, it will be wasted. You and I have both had plenty of those days. That’s what Paul says, be very careful how you live, not as foolish, but as wise. It’s the same idea. Teach us to number our days so that you gain- What? -a heart of wisdom and not be foolish. Paul’s using the same foolishness, wisdom type language. Be very careful then how you live, not as foolish, but as wise. That’s what he’s saying.
Years ago I came across a sermon that helped me understand this text. It was preached by Jonathan Edwards when he was 31 years old, and it was called “On the Preciousness of Time.” It’s one of the most convicting sermons I’ve ever read. I read it again last night and again this morning and I was thoroughly convicted. I realized this isn’t going to be some happy New Year’s Eve sermon for you all, but that’s okay. The fact is we’re not supposed to come to the Scriptures and say, “I thank you God that I’m doing so well.” That’s not what primarily I desire to do. What I want to do is say, “Lord, show us where we need to repent. It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. How can I repent? What is there in my life that is sinful and is wasting time? I need to understand that.” Edward’s sermon helped me understand that, the preciousness of time. His doctrine was clear. Time is a thing that is exceedingly precious. He then gave reasons. Reason number one time is precious is because eternity, your eternity and mine, depends on improving the time. It depends on making the most of the time you have while you’re alive. You’re born and then you live. At some point in time, you have to repent and believe in Jesus. Time is precious because your eternity depends on the improvement of it.
Edward says this, “According as we either improve or lose time, so shall we be happy or miserable for all eternity. Without the improvement of time, our eternity will be miserable, and with a good improvement of time, our eternity will be happy. As we use our time wisely with the gospel of Jesus Christ, as we walk wisely in this present age storing up treasure for eternity, in that proportion we shall be happy for all eternity. As people squander the gospel through unbelief and waste their days in sin, they guarantee their own eternal misery.” Time must be very valuable indeed simply because so much depends on using it wisely.
Second, time is precious because it is very short. It’s a commodity that is in short supply. The more scarce a precious commodity is, the more valuable it is. This is basic economics, the law of supply and demand. We’ve already established that time is precious, but it’s even more so because the time we’re told in the Bible is short. The time is short. When there’s a famine in the city, even the smallest crust of bread will sell for much silver or gold. The bread at that point is far more valuable than the silver or gold. So if time is already short and we squander even a small proportion of it, how dreadful would that be? A number of years ago I listened, I do a lot of listening to books on tape while I ride my bike, and there was this book about Louis Zamperini called Unbroken. It was later made into a movie. Louis Zamperini was a World War II airman, and his plane crashed in the Pacific Ocean. He and two other men survived the crash, and they’re floating in two rafts tied together in the midst of the vast Pacific Ocean with only a very slim hopeless survival. Their raft had meager supplies of food and drinking water. They had a few precious chocolate bars, the calories of which could sustain them for a few vital days, and they divided the bars up into small squares and stored them. But unfortunately, one of the men panicked and while the other two were sleeping, ate all of the chocolate in one night. Their food supply up to that point was already critically low and limited. But now it was even in a worse situation because this one man had squandered it. This is a picture of us in life with a very limited supply of the precious thing known as time. Our life depends on it. It depends on the use of it, and it’s limited. It’s in a limited supply.
Furthermore, thirdly, Edward says, “Time is precious because we don’t know how much of it we have.” They’re able to do an inventory and they knew how much food they have. We are not able to actually number our days as I already said. We have a sense that they’re limited. We have a sense that there’s just a few of them, but we just don’t know how many. So time is precious because time is uncertain. Our lives could end tonight or they could continue for many years. We actually have no idea, so we have to make the most of what God has given us. Edward said this, “If a man has food and supplies laid up for his journey and he doesn’t actually know how much food is left or how much he will need, and if he knows that his stores are going to run out, if his stores run out, he will die. His life depends on it that he’ll be exceedingly careful about how he uses each morsel of food.” How much more than that would people prize their time if they knew they had about a few months left or even a few days left in this world? So it is with multitudes in this world who assume that they have plenty of time left. I think about around the world, how many people who it is ordained for them to die tomorrow are thinking right now they have plenty of time left. We who read the Bible should not be so deceived. We should be aware that we don’t actually know how much time we have left. How many will be surprised by the coming of their death and think to themselves, “I always assumed that I would have more time.”
Fourth, time is precious because once it is spent, it can never be recovered again. You could imagine someone having a precious heirloom like a piece of jewelry or something like that and losing it through theft maybe or losing it or going to a pawn shop because they needed some money. You could imagine through extreme effort they might be able to reclaim that precious item again somehow. It might be difficult, but they could get it back. But that’s not the way it is with any Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday. Once that Monday is gone, it’ll never come back again. It was a unique gift. “This is the day the Lord has made.” God crafted it, and how you spent it is done. It’s in the past, you can never get it again. Therefore time is unspeakably precious because once it’s spent, it can never be reclaimed. Edwards says this, “Every moment of time is served up to you as if it were a meal. If we turn up our noses at it, the divine table waiter will take it away and you’ll never see that dish again.” You can imagine every day it’s like God is a chef and you’re sitting at a table with a nice tablecloth and heavy silverware and He sets before you a dish that He’s crafted. This is the day the Lord has made and you get to eat that dish as He has ordained. But if you waste it, that particular dish is taken away and will never be served to you again. That’s how precious time is. Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance that we should walk in them.”
So that’s what I mean by “this day.” God has crafted unique opportunities for the day, and we are to make the most of them, and we’ll never have that chance again. If we have lived up to this point 50 or 60 or 70 years and we haven’t improved those years, it can’t be helped. There’s nothing that can be done for them now, it is eternally gone from us. All we can do is to improve the time we have left. If we waste our money, we might be able to get money back, but if we waste our time, our days, they are gone forever. I remember when I was going through this, when I was preaching through Ephesians 5, it’s very easy to become overwhelmed with discouragement at this topic. We are meant to be convicted, but we’re not meant to be crushed. It doesn’t make actually any sense for us to be overwhelmed and say, “What’s the use?” I was thinking about that, that feeling of discouragement or whatever, it’s like, “I’ve wasted so much time in my life. Well, what’s the use?” I don’t know, I picture a wheat farm out West and the family’s all asleep. There’s a fire burning in the fields and also burning a corner of the house and part of the barn. Imagine a neighbor sees the fire and comes and rouses the family and starts yelling and say, “Get up. Your fields are on fire. Your house is on fire. Get up. You need to put the fire out. You need to save what’s left.” It would make no sense for those people to come to their senses, realize what the situation is and say, “Well, we’ve already lost so much. What’s the point?” and just sink back down into the bed. That would be literally deadly for them. Therefore, the point of this sermon and the point of these kinds of reflections is there’s nothing you can do about the past except learn from it. The question is what are you going to do with the time you have left? What are you going to do with that year if God does give you 2024? That’s the point. So what has been spent has been spent how you chose to spend it.
“There’s nothing you can do about the past except learn from it. The question is what are you going to do with the time you have left? What are you going to do with that year if God does give you 2024?”
III. Number Your Days To Be Wise About Heaven
Fourth, number your days properly to be wise about heaven. In one sense, I want to say it’s actually good news that our time here on earth is brief. This is a world characterized by death, mourning, crying and pain. In heaven, there will be no more death, mourning, crying and pain. We’ll be free from those forever. As Revelation 21:4 says, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There’ll be no more death, mourning, crying or pain for the old order of things has passed away.” It’s good news that we’re not going to be here forever. That is a good thing. If you come to faith in Christ, you’ve trusted in Him for the forgiveness of your sins, you’re going to spend eternity in a place completely free from pain. Also, time we are told brings us closer and closer to our final salvation. As it says in Romans 13:11, “And do this understanding the present time, the hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.“
That implies there’s some aspect of our salvation that hasn’t come yet, and that’s the final salvation that we’ll get on Judgment Day. That salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. Every day brings us closer to that good destination. Therefore, we should number our days properly, gain a heart of wisdom and think like aliens and strangers in this world. As it says in Hebrews 11, the heroes of the faith admitted that they were aliens and strangers on Earth. “People who say such things show that they’re looking for a country their own. If they’d been thinking of the country they had left, they would’ve had opportunity to return, but they were longing for a better country, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.”[Hebrews 11: 14-16]
IV. Applications
What applications can we take from this topic? Today is the last day of 2023. If God wills, we’ll venture ahead into 2024 tomorrow. It’s a good opportunity for us to look both ways. Look back at 2023 and honestly, by the power of the Spirit, evaluate yourself on this topic. Did I use my time well and wisely in the twelve months that were given me? God gave me a whole year. How did I use my time? Did I grow in grace in the knowledge of Christ in the year 2023? Am I closer to Christ’s likeness than I was on December 31, 2022? Was it a year of growing for me? It may have been, it may not have been. Maybe you’re further away from Christ than you were a year ago, but maybe you’ve grown. Just evaluate.
Secondly, did I help others to grow in grace in the knowledge of Christ? Was I useful? Did I use my spiritual gifts? Did I use the Gospel? Did I use biblical exhortations? Did I help brothers and sisters in Christ? Did I help lost co-workers and neighbors and family members to come to faith in Christ? Did I use my time well? Did I serve God in this world? Did I serve God’s purposes or did I serve myself? Did I live selfishly? Did I waste time? What are my habits? What do I generally do with a day? What do I generally do with free time?
Just evaluate. Say, “Lord, show me what I’m like. Show me what I do. Help me to understand myself.” Like Edwards would say, “Let time seem unspeakably precious to you.” Think of it as a valuable thing for me to spend my time well and wisely. This afternoon, I don’t know what your plans are. What are your plans, you bond slaves of God? What you should do is you should say, “God, what do you want me to do with my afternoon?” I would commend if you have some time to be reflective based on the themes of this sermon and say, “Lord, what changes do you want to see in me in 2024 if you let me live? What new habits do you want me to develop?”
Start with the Bible. “Am I regular in my Bible intake? Am I memorizing scripture? Am I giving myself fully to scripture?” Let’s start there. That primes the pump for everything in the Christian life. What’s my prayer life like? God, how can I grow in that? Search me, oh, God, and know my heart.
What bad habits do you want me to slay as was said earlier?” What are some sin habits that have crept up that are stronger in you now than they were a year ago, that you need to kill by death by starvation? What can you put to death? What lusts and habits can you put to death in the year 2024 if God gives you time to live? How can you serve this present generation? There are some things we can do here on Earth now that we will not be able to do in the new heaven new Earth. One of them is to suffer well. If you’re going through suffering, the ability to suffer well is something you’ll get to do now you cannot do in heaven because there’ll be no suffering in heaven.
Secondly, you can also help alleviate other people’s suffering now. You can’t do that in heaven because no one of all the redeemed will be suffering at all, but we are able to alleviate suffering in this world. Maybe you didn’t do that in 2023 the way you wanted to, but you say, “Lord, would you make me an instrument of your grace? Would you make me an instrument to alleviate the suffering of people around?”
Obviously, the most important thing that any of you could do if you’re lost is to come to faith in Christ. There’s no point in you doing any of these other things if you’re lost listening to me now, if you’re not yet a Christian. I would beg you, while there’s time, crossover from death to life. Understand that God sent His Son. That’s what we celebrate at Christmastime. The incarnate Son of God came, took on a body and blood so that He could give that body and that blood to bring us to Christ, bring us to salvation. Trust in Him. That is the purpose of time. Once that’s happened, then say, “Lord, help me to redeem the time, make the most of the time that I have here on Earth.”
Close with me in prayer. Father, thank you for the opportunity we’ve had to look at this sobering text. God, we know that if we’re Christians and we look back at 2023, we have to be honest and say it was mixed. There was some wood, hay and straw mixed in with the gold, silver and precious stones. We know that if we’re Christians, we did some good works. It’s impossible for us to be alive in Christ and not bear some fruit. We also know that we wasted a lot of time. So Lord, I pray that you would help all of us who are Christians to look ahead to 2024 with resolution by faith relying on you to waste far less time in 2024 than we did in 2023, that more of our days would be gold and silver and costly stones than wood, hay and straw. God, help us to be faithful in sharing the gospel. We’re surrounded by lostness. We’re surrounded by people who don’t understand what life is about. They’re like Belshazzar. They’re eating and drinking in idolatrous ways, and they don’t know that time is short. Help us to be willing to tell them the truth for the sake of their eternal souls. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
The Bible instructs us to number our days wisely, for the same God who knit us together in our mother’s wombs holds in his hand our lifespan as well.
– SERMON TRANSCRIPT –
In Daniel Chapter 5, one of the most dramatic moments in redemptive history occurred with a wicked king named Belshazzar. Belshazzar was putting on a big feast, and he was stopped in his tracks suddenly by a disembodied hand that began writing in the wall above his corrupt throne. The hand that wrote the words was terrifying to everyone there, and the words could not be understood easily or read. The hand carved letters into the plaster in the wall, and I envisioned dust sprinkling down to the floor while the hand continued to write the mysterious words. I imagine at that time that the music and the lustful revelry in the entire hall from the 1,00 noble men partying with him instantly came to an end. If you’d been close enough to the throne, you would’ve seen the color drain from the king’s face. You would’ve been able to hear his knees knocking together, but the focus of everyone in that formerly riotous hall would’ve been the writing on the wall. That moment moved into proverbial truth.
To see the writing on the wall in our culture means to see something inevitable, something that’s coming and there’s nothing that can stop it. It means to see clearly that your end is near. Of course, this story is recounted for us in Daniel Chapter 5, Belshazzar’s feast, and the man who read the writing on the wall at that time was a prophet named Daniel. He first, as he read it, proclaimed the great wickedness of the king of Babylon. After recounting the famous story of Belshazzar’s grandfather, Nebuchadnezzar, how God humbled him and changed his mind of that of an animal and then changed it back again seven years later, teaching him that God alone rules over the kingdoms of men and that all people are accountable to Him. After accounting that history, Daniel then leveled Belshazzar with this righteous accusation. He says in Daniel 5:22-24, “But you his son, O Belshazzar, have not humbled yourself though you knew all this. Instead, you have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven. You had the goblets from his temple brought to you and you and your nobles, your wives and your concubines drank wine from them. You praise the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wooden stone which cannot see or hear, understand, but you did not honor the God who holds in His hand your life in all your ways. Therefore, He sent the hand that wrote this inscription.”
That phrase has arrested me for years. You did not honor the God who holds in His hand your life in all your ways. Daniel then read the writing on the wall clearly so everyone could hear him, the words were “MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN”, and then Daniel interpreted them. “This is what the words mean. MENE; God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end. TEKEL; You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting. PERES; Your kingdom is divided, and given to the Meads and Persians.” That very night Belshazzar was slain and the Babylonian empire came to an end and the Medo-Persian empire took over.
The words that very night remind me of Jesus’s parable of the rich fool. You remember that man who had a bumper crop and thought he had plenty of years to enjoy all of that wealth and he thought, “’What shall I do? I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger barns, and I’ll store up all of this harvest, and I’ll eat and drink and be merry for years to come.’But God said to him, ‘You fool, this very night, your soul will be required of you.’” That’s an important phrase, isn’t it, “required of you”? It’s not an option when that summons comes. When God who gives life takes it from us, there’s nothing we can say. There will come a time that all of us, our souls will be required from us by the God who gave them. That’s the point of my whole sermon. We do not know how much more time we have left here on Earth, and we should number our days wisely.
“When God who gives life takes it from us, there’s nothing we can say. There will come a time that all of us, our souls will be required from us by the God who gave them.”
Today is the last day of the year 2023. If God wills, tomorrow will come, and it will be a new year, 2024. We’ve been instructed by the Lord to say that, to say, “If the Lord wills.” In James 4, it says, “’Today or tomorrow I’ll go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money. You don’t even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life that it’s a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes? Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’” So if the Lord wills, January 1, 2024 will come for any of us, most likely for most of us, if not all of us. Therefore, it seems wise for us to heed the timeless advice that you heard read for us in Psalm 90:12, “Teach us to number our days aright,” or properly, “that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
Let’s look at Psalm 90 briefly. Let’s try to understand Moses, the man of God, and what he said. We’re also going to go over to another passage, Ephesians 5, and we’re going to try to number our days rightly so we can make the most of the time that we have left. Moses begins by asserting that God alone is our eternal dwelling place. Look at Verses 1 and 2, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the Earth in the world from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” The doctrine there is the majestic eternality of God. He alone is from everlasting to everlasting. He is timeless. He is eternal. He is above time. He’s not bound by time, unlike us. God knows the end from the beginning and the beginning from the end because He ordained every day that ever has been or ever will be. The statement “from everlasting to everlasting” means that God is the same yesterday, today and forever. He never changes. He’s always the same, and He is our dwelling place. God is where we will spend eternity. God is the New Jerusalem. God is the new heaven and new Earth. Not to say that there will not be beautiful created things at that point or a place for our resurrected bodies to be, not at all. There will be, but God is our home. God is our dwelling place from generation to generation.
Then Moses goes on to speak of the temporariness and the frailty of all human beings. Look at Verse 3-6, “You turn men back to dust saying, ‘Return to dust, oh, sons of men for a thousand years in your sight or like a day that has just gone by or like a watch in the night.’ You sweep men away in the sleep of death. They are like new grass in the morning. Though, in the morning it springs up new, by evening, it is dry and withered.” All of us, the Bible teaches, are ultimately fashioned from the dust of the earth. To dust, someday all of us will return as God said to Adam, condemning him to the death penalty that his sin deserves. When we die, our bodies go back into the native elements from which they’re originally taken, back to dust, but God is eternal. “A thousand years in his sight is as a few hours or like a single day or like a watch in the night.”
God’s judgments stand over all human beings. They don’t just die accidentally as though God has nothing to do with their deaths. Not at all. “God,” it says, “sweeps men away in the sleep of death.” It’s because God takes away their breath that they die. It’s not an accident. “People,” it says in the text, “spring up quickly like fresh new blades of grass.” They flourish, they look beautiful, they’re radiant and strong, but in a short amount of time they wither, they sink back down just as quickly. “In the morning, they’re new. In the evening, they’re dry and withered.” So our time here in our strength, especially in our youth, the prime of life is very brief. We should therefore make the most of our days when we have youth, when we have strength, when we have vigor and ability because soon one by one we will lose all of those capabilities. All you have to do is walk through a nursing home and look around into each room and see most likely your future. You see the feeble, elderly people there, all of them stripped of strength, stripped of their possessions. They’ll never go to their homes again. They’ll never enjoy their material possessions again. They occasionally have visitors. If they have a family structure of people that visit them, then it’s kind. Sometimes they don’t even remember their closest family members. This is what the text is saying happens to some degree to all of us, and so therefore, it is essential for us to make the most of every moment that we have of every opportunity. Each day has unique opportunities. Soon we can do little because age and feebleness has overtaken us and we can’t do much at all.
Behind all of this, according to Moses and according to the Bible more generally, is the sinfulness of man. It’s because we are sinners the wages of sin is death. The troubles are caused originally by Adam’s sin but then by our own sinful choices. In Verses 7-11, Moses recounts this, the sinfulness of man and the wrath of God. He writes, “We are consumed by your anger and terrified by your indignation. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. All our days pass away under your wrath. We finish our years with a moan. The length of our years is seventy years or eighty. If we have the strength yet their span is but trouble and sorrow for they quickly pass and we fly away. Who knows the power of your anger for your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you?”
Moses was very aware of the sinfulness of the Jewish nation. God had warned them according to Ezekiel Chapter 20, before He ever took them out of Egypt, before He ever took them out of bondage to Egypt, that they needed to give up their idolatry, which they had learned and their pagan ways. They weren’t any different than the Egyptians that surrounded them. They were every bit as pagan and idolatrous as the Egyptians were. He warned them and it says plainly in Ezekiel 20 to give up their idols, but He said, you would not do it. They were a pagan nation when they were brought out in the Exodus, this is what I think Moses referred to. We saw it very, very clearly in the golden calf at the bottom of Mount Sinai, how God said very plainly, “I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other God. You shall not make any idols or worship any idols.” In a short amount of time, they broke all of those commandments immediately, and we see their paganism and their idolatry and their wickedness. Soon after that, after testing God in many ways and trying Him in many ways, they utterly rebelled when the twelve spies came back and brought a good report about the land. But they said that the Anakimes are there with cities walled up to the sky, and we look like grasshoppers in our own eyes and to them, and “we can’t do it.” Ten of the twelve spies gave that report, Joshua and Caleb alone spoke words of faith. God then condemned the nation to wander around in the desert until that generation of fighting men should die. In a short amount of time, destroying all actuarial charts and all that, that entire generation, 40 years, fell dead.
Moses, the man of God, wrote this psalm during those years. When he was writing also the Pentateuch, he’s writing the rest of the Scripture, he’s watching that generation of sinners wither and die; they’re dying before his eyes. He has this in mind, “You’ve taken our secret sins, our idolatries and our wickedness and our paganism and you’ve put it in the light of your holy presence and because of that we are dying.” He says, “In a very short amount of time, we fly away and we are no more.” Then he makes the central request, which is the reason why I chose Psalm 90 for this New Year’s Eve sermon.
Look at verse 12, “Teach us to number our days of right that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” This is a prayer. The entire Psalm is a prayer of the man of God, Moses. This is the central prayer. Looking up to God, the man of God is saying, “God, would you please teach us something that we don’t know? Would you please give us a heart of wisdom specifically in the right understanding of time. God teach us to number our days properly that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” We need to understand this. We need to see why it is essential for us to number our days properly. We need to number our days because God has already numbered them so that we can be wise about salvation, so that we can make the most of the days that we have left here on Earth.
I. Number Your Days To Be Wise About Death
Let’s walk through it. First, number your days so that you may be wise about death. Teach us to number our days properly or rightly that we may gain a heart of wisdom. First of all, the Bible tells us that your days are already numbered. Your days are finite. You’re not going to continue in this present state, in this present world, in this present body forever. We are all of us mortal. It says in Psalm 13:16, “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” God has set a boundary to our lives. There is our birth day and there will be our death day, and nothing will change that. That’s what Psalm 139 means, all the days that God has laid out for us, that all the days He has ordained were written in God’s sovereign book, the book of his decrees before even one of them came to be, and that’s what Moses asked for.
Secondly, we don’t know the number of those days. That number is hidden from us. God has hidden from each person the day of his or her death. In a very real sense, therefore, we can never number our days. We just don’t know. It’s a bit of an ironic prayer because it’s the very thing that we cannot do. We are not ever going to be able properly to number our days. Instead, it seems the wisdom that Moses is seeking here is an acute mindfulness of the limits of the days, an acute mindfulness of the fact that we will die someday, an awareness of that that should dominate the way we live our lives. This will not go on forever. As the psalmist said in Psalm 39:4-5, “Show me, oh Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreath, the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath.” I think that’s a partner to Psalm 90:12, “Show me how brief my life is. Show me how a breath it is. Show me how quick it is. Help me to know that.” That’s all we can do. We cannot actually know the numbers.
As he says here in Psalm 90 in Verse 10, “The length of our days is seventy years or eighty. If we have the strength, yet their span is but trouble and sorrow for they quickly pass and we fly away.” We need to understand, as I’ve already said, God’s direct activity in sustaining us and then in His own good time taking us out of this world. Look at Verse 3, “You turn men back to dust saying return to dust, O sons of men.” None of us dies accidentally. We use that kind of language just in the human, the horizontal way. Talk about people dying from a car accident or something like that, we use the word “accident”, but there are no accidents when it comes to God. God is absolutely sovereign. He rules over all things. You could have prevented that so-called accident. People do not accidentally die when it comes to God. What Moses is saying here is He takes away the breath and they perish.
Again, in Verse 5 and 6, “You, [meaning God] “sweep men away in the sleep of death. They’re like new grass in the morning. Though, in the morning it springs up new, by evening it is dry and withered.” As Daniel said to Belshazzar, this really convicting and haunting verse, Daniel 5:23, “You did not honor the God who holds in His hand your life and all your ways.” If I could get one thing out of this sermon for all of you that are listening to me, intensely feel that God holds in His hand your life and all your ways. That’s the point of the whole sermon. Feel that. Understand you’re not your own. Understand your days are not your own to do whatever you want with. Recently, I was doing men’s Bible study on Thursdays when we went to the Book of Titus. The thing about that Bible study is we take forever to go through Books of the Bible. Anybody who’s gone to it knows. It’s like, “Well, when are we going to be done with Gospel of Matthew? Who knows? How long will it take you to go through Titus?” This is what happens, Titus 1:1, “Paul, a slave of God.” All right, stop right there. How long are we going to take on that phrase? Maybe the whole time. What does it mean to be a slave of God? Are we? We actually are, or we’re slaves of sin. Roman 6 says you’re a slave of one of the other. Suppose you say, “I don’t want to be a slave of anyone?” Well then, you’re being lied to by Satan, you’re being deceived. You are a slave either of God or of sin/Satan/death. You are a slave. We were born to be a slave.
The beauty of salvation is we come to realize that the master that we’re serving, God and Christ are good masters and the yoke is easy and the burden is light. We’re not deceived, but we still live like we are our own entities. Like we get to do whatever we want with our time, energy, money. It’s ours, isn’t it? Isn’t our time ours to spend as we see fit? No, it’s not. If you had a faithful slave back in those days in the first century and you saw him in the morning in the marketplace and he’s a good slave and you asked him, “So what are your plans today?” What do you think he would say? “Whatever my master wants. Whatever my master wants.” Let me ask you a question. Do you think that’s the right way for a Christian to think? It is absolutely the right way for a Christian to think, for none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. That’s what ownership language sounds like. Jesus died to buy you as He says openly in 1 Corinthians 6, “You’re not your own, you’re bought at a price.” But we still think like free agents, don’t we? We still think we get to do whatever we want with our time and our energy and our money, but we don’t.
“It is absolutely the right way for a Christian to think, for none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord.”
That’s why we spent all that time on, “Paul, a slave of God,” because I realized much to my shame, I don’t think like that, not enough. I still think too much like a free agent, and I need to think, in the year 2024 if God lets me live, more like a slave than I’ve ever thought in my life. I would commend that to you. So the prayer, “Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom,” means to be aware that the same God who knit us together in our mother’s wombs and holds in His hand our lifespan as well, in Him, we live and move and have our being. We need to be prepared for death so we can live a wise life honoring the God who holds in His hand our life and all our ways.
II. Number Your Days To Be Wise for Salvation
Secondly, remember your days to be wise for salvation. Moses ultimately yearns for a heart of wisdom. Given the brevity of life, the wisest thing we can do is to find salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. There is nothing wiser that you could do, conversely, there’s nothing more foolish that you could ever do than to live 70 or 80 years in this life and go to hell. It’d be the most foolish thing you could ever have done with your 70 or 80 years. The wisest thing you can do is to find salvation. The scriptures are given for that exact purpose, to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Since death is certain and its timing is uncertain, the wisest thing we can do is to say, “Today is the day of salvation for me,” and flee to Christ because you don’t know if you’ll have tomorrow. 2 Corinthians 6:2 says, “In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation, I helped you. I tell you now is the time of God’s favor. Now is the day of salvation.” So that’s what we have, we have today. It’s all we ever have. God set aside a certain day calling it “today”. That’s what we have [Hebrews 3:4]. Today is about salvation and not just justification, not just crossing over from death to life, but growing in grace in the knowledge of Christ. You’re left alive here on Earth for salvation, so the wisest thing you can do is to immerse yourself in Scripture for your own salvation and that of others.
I would charge you in the year 2024, give yourself like never before to the Word of God. Start there. 2 Timothy 3:15-17 speaks of the holy scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. “All scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work,” says it all. The Scripture is given first to save your soul from hell and secondly, to make you maximally fruitful through every good work. That’s what Scripture is given to do. That’s its purpose.
The scripture has power to show you your sin, has power to convict you of your sin. Scripture has the power to show you Christ and to move you to trust Him for salvation. Scripture has the power to continue to instruct you, rebuke you, correct you, and train you in righteousness and to thoroughly equipped you for every good work. There is no better way for you to use the limited days that we have left than to immerse yourself first in Scripture. A new year is a great time to renew your commitment to daily Bible intake and to prayer, a daily quiet time.
II. Number Your Days To Be Wise About Redeeming Time
Thirdly, number your days so that you can be wise about redeeming the time. Ephesians 5:15-16 says, “Be very careful then how you live not as unwise, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil.” I want to say something about almost every modern translation of that verse. They almost all say something like making the most of every opportunity, which is fine, but it’s not technically what the Greek is. The Greek is “exagorazo”, which means “agora.” In the marketplace it’s a buying kind of marketplace word. “Ex” meaning “out of”, a prefix. So to buy out of, that’s what redemption is. The idea of redeeming is of the payment of a price to get an individual out of trouble like slavery or a kidnapped victim or a hostage, something like that. They are redeemed by the payment of some silver or gold and the individual is brought out. You can imagine David and his men when they found out that their families have been kidnapped by the Amalekites after weeping and whatever, they went after their families to rescue them out of danger. That’s the idea. Only the KJV and I think NKJV still retained “redeeming the time” language. The idea is that time, the day, is in danger. It’s lost. It starts lost. You have to get up and go redeem it, or it will end lost as well. It’s just like “carpe diem”, “seize the day.” If you don’t get up and exert energy and faith and love toward the day, it will be wasted. You and I have both had plenty of those days. That’s what Paul says, be very careful how you live, not as foolish, but as wise. It’s the same idea. Teach us to number our days so that you gain- What? -a heart of wisdom and not be foolish. Paul’s using the same foolishness, wisdom type language. Be very careful then how you live, not as foolish, but as wise. That’s what he’s saying.
Years ago I came across a sermon that helped me understand this text. It was preached by Jonathan Edwards when he was 31 years old, and it was called “On the Preciousness of Time.” It’s one of the most convicting sermons I’ve ever read. I read it again last night and again this morning and I was thoroughly convicted. I realized this isn’t going to be some happy New Year’s Eve sermon for you all, but that’s okay. The fact is we’re not supposed to come to the Scriptures and say, “I thank you God that I’m doing so well.” That’s not what primarily I desire to do. What I want to do is say, “Lord, show us where we need to repent. It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. How can I repent? What is there in my life that is sinful and is wasting time? I need to understand that.” Edward’s sermon helped me understand that, the preciousness of time. His doctrine was clear. Time is a thing that is exceedingly precious. He then gave reasons. Reason number one time is precious is because eternity, your eternity and mine, depends on improving the time. It depends on making the most of the time you have while you’re alive. You’re born and then you live. At some point in time, you have to repent and believe in Jesus. Time is precious because your eternity depends on the improvement of it.
Edward says this, “According as we either improve or lose time, so shall we be happy or miserable for all eternity. Without the improvement of time, our eternity will be miserable, and with a good improvement of time, our eternity will be happy. As we use our time wisely with the gospel of Jesus Christ, as we walk wisely in this present age storing up treasure for eternity, in that proportion we shall be happy for all eternity. As people squander the gospel through unbelief and waste their days in sin, they guarantee their own eternal misery.” Time must be very valuable indeed simply because so much depends on using it wisely.
Second, time is precious because it is very short. It’s a commodity that is in short supply. The more scarce a precious commodity is, the more valuable it is. This is basic economics, the law of supply and demand. We’ve already established that time is precious, but it’s even more so because the time we’re told in the Bible is short. The time is short. When there’s a famine in the city, even the smallest crust of bread will sell for much silver or gold. The bread at that point is far more valuable than the silver or gold. So if time is already short and we squander even a small proportion of it, how dreadful would that be? A number of years ago I listened, I do a lot of listening to books on tape while I ride my bike, and there was this book about Louis Zamperini called Unbroken. It was later made into a movie. Louis Zamperini was a World War II airman, and his plane crashed in the Pacific Ocean. He and two other men survived the crash, and they’re floating in two rafts tied together in the midst of the vast Pacific Ocean with only a very slim hopeless survival. Their raft had meager supplies of food and drinking water. They had a few precious chocolate bars, the calories of which could sustain them for a few vital days, and they divided the bars up into small squares and stored them. But unfortunately, one of the men panicked and while the other two were sleeping, ate all of the chocolate in one night. Their food supply up to that point was already critically low and limited. But now it was even in a worse situation because this one man had squandered it. This is a picture of us in life with a very limited supply of the precious thing known as time. Our life depends on it. It depends on the use of it, and it’s limited. It’s in a limited supply.
Furthermore, thirdly, Edward says, “Time is precious because we don’t know how much of it we have.” They’re able to do an inventory and they knew how much food they have. We are not able to actually number our days as I already said. We have a sense that they’re limited. We have a sense that there’s just a few of them, but we just don’t know how many. So time is precious because time is uncertain. Our lives could end tonight or they could continue for many years. We actually have no idea, so we have to make the most of what God has given us. Edward said this, “If a man has food and supplies laid up for his journey and he doesn’t actually know how much food is left or how much he will need, and if he knows that his stores are going to run out, if his stores run out, he will die. His life depends on it that he’ll be exceedingly careful about how he uses each morsel of food.” How much more than that would people prize their time if they knew they had about a few months left or even a few days left in this world? So it is with multitudes in this world who assume that they have plenty of time left. I think about around the world, how many people who it is ordained for them to die tomorrow are thinking right now they have plenty of time left. We who read the Bible should not be so deceived. We should be aware that we don’t actually know how much time we have left. How many will be surprised by the coming of their death and think to themselves, “I always assumed that I would have more time.”
Fourth, time is precious because once it is spent, it can never be recovered again. You could imagine someone having a precious heirloom like a piece of jewelry or something like that and losing it through theft maybe or losing it or going to a pawn shop because they needed some money. You could imagine through extreme effort they might be able to reclaim that precious item again somehow. It might be difficult, but they could get it back. But that’s not the way it is with any Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday. Once that Monday is gone, it’ll never come back again. It was a unique gift. “This is the day the Lord has made.” God crafted it, and how you spent it is done. It’s in the past, you can never get it again. Therefore time is unspeakably precious because once it’s spent, it can never be reclaimed. Edwards says this, “Every moment of time is served up to you as if it were a meal. If we turn up our noses at it, the divine table waiter will take it away and you’ll never see that dish again.” You can imagine every day it’s like God is a chef and you’re sitting at a table with a nice tablecloth and heavy silverware and He sets before you a dish that He’s crafted. This is the day the Lord has made and you get to eat that dish as He has ordained. But if you waste it, that particular dish is taken away and will never be served to you again. That’s how precious time is. Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance that we should walk in them.”
So that’s what I mean by “this day.” God has crafted unique opportunities for the day, and we are to make the most of them, and we’ll never have that chance again. If we have lived up to this point 50 or 60 or 70 years and we haven’t improved those years, it can’t be helped. There’s nothing that can be done for them now, it is eternally gone from us. All we can do is to improve the time we have left. If we waste our money, we might be able to get money back, but if we waste our time, our days, they are gone forever. I remember when I was going through this, when I was preaching through Ephesians 5, it’s very easy to become overwhelmed with discouragement at this topic. We are meant to be convicted, but we’re not meant to be crushed. It doesn’t make actually any sense for us to be overwhelmed and say, “What’s the use?” I was thinking about that, that feeling of discouragement or whatever, it’s like, “I’ve wasted so much time in my life. Well, what’s the use?” I don’t know, I picture a wheat farm out West and the family’s all asleep. There’s a fire burning in the fields and also burning a corner of the house and part of the barn. Imagine a neighbor sees the fire and comes and rouses the family and starts yelling and say, “Get up. Your fields are on fire. Your house is on fire. Get up. You need to put the fire out. You need to save what’s left.” It would make no sense for those people to come to their senses, realize what the situation is and say, “Well, we’ve already lost so much. What’s the point?” and just sink back down into the bed. That would be literally deadly for them. Therefore, the point of this sermon and the point of these kinds of reflections is there’s nothing you can do about the past except learn from it. The question is what are you going to do with the time you have left? What are you going to do with that year if God does give you 2024? That’s the point. So what has been spent has been spent how you chose to spend it.
“There’s nothing you can do about the past except learn from it. The question is what are you going to do with the time you have left? What are you going to do with that year if God does give you 2024?”
III. Number Your Days To Be Wise About Heaven
Fourth, number your days properly to be wise about heaven. In one sense, I want to say it’s actually good news that our time here on earth is brief. This is a world characterized by death, mourning, crying and pain. In heaven, there will be no more death, mourning, crying and pain. We’ll be free from those forever. As Revelation 21:4 says, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There’ll be no more death, mourning, crying or pain for the old order of things has passed away.” It’s good news that we’re not going to be here forever. That is a good thing. If you come to faith in Christ, you’ve trusted in Him for the forgiveness of your sins, you’re going to spend eternity in a place completely free from pain. Also, time we are told brings us closer and closer to our final salvation. As it says in Romans 13:11, “And do this understanding the present time, the hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.“
That implies there’s some aspect of our salvation that hasn’t come yet, and that’s the final salvation that we’ll get on Judgment Day. That salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. Every day brings us closer to that good destination. Therefore, we should number our days properly, gain a heart of wisdom and think like aliens and strangers in this world. As it says in Hebrews 11, the heroes of the faith admitted that they were aliens and strangers on Earth. “People who say such things show that they’re looking for a country their own. If they’d been thinking of the country they had left, they would’ve had opportunity to return, but they were longing for a better country, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.”[Hebrews 11: 14-16]
IV. Applications
What applications can we take from this topic? Today is the last day of 2023. If God wills, we’ll venture ahead into 2024 tomorrow. It’s a good opportunity for us to look both ways. Look back at 2023 and honestly, by the power of the Spirit, evaluate yourself on this topic. Did I use my time well and wisely in the twelve months that were given me? God gave me a whole year. How did I use my time? Did I grow in grace in the knowledge of Christ in the year 2023? Am I closer to Christ’s likeness than I was on December 31, 2022? Was it a year of growing for me? It may have been, it may not have been. Maybe you’re further away from Christ than you were a year ago, but maybe you’ve grown. Just evaluate.
Secondly, did I help others to grow in grace in the knowledge of Christ? Was I useful? Did I use my spiritual gifts? Did I use the Gospel? Did I use biblical exhortations? Did I help brothers and sisters in Christ? Did I help lost co-workers and neighbors and family members to come to faith in Christ? Did I use my time well? Did I serve God in this world? Did I serve God’s purposes or did I serve myself? Did I live selfishly? Did I waste time? What are my habits? What do I generally do with a day? What do I generally do with free time?
Just evaluate. Say, “Lord, show me what I’m like. Show me what I do. Help me to understand myself.” Like Edwards would say, “Let time seem unspeakably precious to you.” Think of it as a valuable thing for me to spend my time well and wisely. This afternoon, I don’t know what your plans are. What are your plans, you bond slaves of God? What you should do is you should say, “God, what do you want me to do with my afternoon?” I would commend if you have some time to be reflective based on the themes of this sermon and say, “Lord, what changes do you want to see in me in 2024 if you let me live? What new habits do you want me to develop?”
Start with the Bible. “Am I regular in my Bible intake? Am I memorizing scripture? Am I giving myself fully to scripture?” Let’s start there. That primes the pump for everything in the Christian life. What’s my prayer life like? God, how can I grow in that? Search me, oh, God, and know my heart.
What bad habits do you want me to slay as was said earlier?” What are some sin habits that have crept up that are stronger in you now than they were a year ago, that you need to kill by death by starvation? What can you put to death? What lusts and habits can you put to death in the year 2024 if God gives you time to live? How can you serve this present generation? There are some things we can do here on Earth now that we will not be able to do in the new heaven new Earth. One of them is to suffer well. If you’re going through suffering, the ability to suffer well is something you’ll get to do now you cannot do in heaven because there’ll be no suffering in heaven.
Secondly, you can also help alleviate other people’s suffering now. You can’t do that in heaven because no one of all the redeemed will be suffering at all, but we are able to alleviate suffering in this world. Maybe you didn’t do that in 2023 the way you wanted to, but you say, “Lord, would you make me an instrument of your grace? Would you make me an instrument to alleviate the suffering of people around?”
Obviously, the most important thing that any of you could do if you’re lost is to come to faith in Christ. There’s no point in you doing any of these other things if you’re lost listening to me now, if you’re not yet a Christian. I would beg you, while there’s time, crossover from death to life. Understand that God sent His Son. That’s what we celebrate at Christmastime. The incarnate Son of God came, took on a body and blood so that He could give that body and that blood to bring us to Christ, bring us to salvation. Trust in Him. That is the purpose of time. Once that’s happened, then say, “Lord, help me to redeem the time, make the most of the time that I have here on Earth.”
Close with me in prayer. Father, thank you for the opportunity we’ve had to look at this sobering text. God, we know that if we’re Christians and we look back at 2023, we have to be honest and say it was mixed. There was some wood, hay and straw mixed in with the gold, silver and precious stones. We know that if we’re Christians, we did some good works. It’s impossible for us to be alive in Christ and not bear some fruit. We also know that we wasted a lot of time. So Lord, I pray that you would help all of us who are Christians to look ahead to 2024 with resolution by faith relying on you to waste far less time in 2024 than we did in 2023, that more of our days would be gold and silver and costly stones than wood, hay and straw. God, help us to be faithful in sharing the gospel. We’re surrounded by lostness. We’re surrounded by people who don’t understand what life is about. They’re like Belshazzar. They’re eating and drinking in idolatrous ways, and they don’t know that time is short. Help us to be willing to tell them the truth for the sake of their eternal souls. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
