Gloria Dei Lutheran Church | Urbandale, Iowa

Our Time is In God's Hands

Pastor Meyer’s Sermon

New Year’s Eve Service, December 31, 2007

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our heavenly Father and from our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus, our Christ.

My time. Our time. This past week, I had an opportunity for my wife and me and our kids to go down to St. Louis to visit my side of the family. And we exchanged gifts and we had a great time and there is one gift that my father gave me. And I saw this box, I unwrapped it and I opened it up and here he had given me a pocket watch. And first of all, I’ve never had a pocket watch like this before so I was looking at it. And when I opened up the actual watch to look at the face, I noticed on the inside, it said “Mother and Dad 1976.” And that’s when I realized that my grandma and grandpa had given my dad this watch. And my dad thought it was time to pass it on to me so he gave it to me. And as I was talking to him, I said, “Dad, guess what? I’ve got time in my hands.” Then I was thinking about the service tonight and I was thinking, “Don’t we say that? Don’t we say my time, our time?”

I use the Outlook Calendar on the computer to help me to schedule my time. I keep my hair short so I don’t have to spend that much time with it in the morning so I can save some of my time. On the way up here from St. Louis, I was driving 3-5 miles an hour over the speed limit so I could get here and again save my time. We do the same thing, don’t we? Talk about our time. We have wrinkle-free shirts and pants. We use fast food to save time. We use instant coffee and we use instant tea. We even have automated bill pay but all of it is so I can same my time and we can save our time.

But tonight, this last night of 2007, the scripture is calling us, calling us not to make a New Year’s Resolution, no. It’s calling us to make a New Year’s Revolution. To make a change. To make a change on how we understand time and a way of our thinking of time. Did you catch it in our reading, in our responsive reading from Psalm 31? It said, “But I trust in you, oh Lord. I say you are my God. My times are in your hands.” All this time that I’ve been thinking about my time and how I can save my time and different ways we can save our time and what to do with our time. It’s all really who’s time? It’s God’s time.

And the interesting thing is God gives it to us as a gift. It’s very much like this watch. It was my dad’s but he gave me this timepiece as a gift. It’s the same with God. He gives us the time we have as a gift. And as we look back on 2007 and as we look forward to 2008, we can’t help but wonder how we’ve been doing with our time. Well, the first question we need to ask is what does God expect of us for our time? What does God mean about time? What does God want us to do with our time?

And the first thing we find out in scripture is that way back before time was even created, before time even started, each and every one of us here tonight was chosen by Him to be His child, to be His people. We also find out that God has given us the time to do one particular thing and we find it in Deuteronomy Chapter 6 where it says, “Here, oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Talk about this when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” God has given us the gift of time so we can spend time glorifying Him, remembering what He has given us.

But there’s a problem here. Because we know that when we look back on 2007, we haven’t always used our time the way God would have us use our time. And we also know when we look ahead in 2008, we’re going to have the same problem. We’re going to have trouble with how we handle our time. But there’s another aspect to time, the reason why God has given us this gift of time for us and Paul tells us, first of all, in Romans 5, “You see, at just the right time when we were still powerless, Christ died for us.” And he says it again even in Galatians 4, “But when the time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under law to redeem those under the law, that we might receive the full rights of Son’s eternal life.” God has given us the gift of this time so we can glorify Him but also so we may, too, receive forgiveness but through the fullness of time, at just the right time, Jesus was sent to die for us.

My dad gave me this watch as a gift and I guarantee you that in the years ahead, I’m going to take good care of this watch. This watch means a lot to me. God, too, has given us the gift of time. So we can start our revolution, our New Year’s Revolution by taking time to use it the way God would have us use it, for us to actually get closer to Him by spending that time in His Word, by being able to get closer to Him through understanding His love for us and being able to spend time with Him in His Word and as we do that, we would grow closer and we would grow in our love for Jesus and we would also spend our time carrying out His will, His will in our lives, that will being that anyone who looks to the Son will have eternal life.

So as we look ahead to the year 2008, we realize that it’s not my time. It’s not our time. It’s God’ time. It’s a gift He has given to us. And we also say, “But we trust in you, oh Lord. We say that you are my God and my times in 2008 are in your hands.” Amen.