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Redeeming the Time Beyond Western Chronology · Reformed Thinking

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Think about the last time your phone buzzed with a calendar
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reminder. Maybe it was a 10 minute warning
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for a Zoom meeting. Or, you know, a notification
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that you were supposed to be at the dentist across town.
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Oh, I know that feeling all too well.
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Right. Did your heart rate jump?
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Did your stomach tighten up? I mean, for most of us living in
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the modern Western world, time is an absolute tyrant.
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We treat it like a scarce commodity.
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We really do. We squeeze it, we budget it, we
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panic over it, and we treat it like a harsh master that we have
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to constantly appease. But what if that constant taking
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anxiety isn't just making you stressed?
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What if it is acting as a massive blindfold every single
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time you open your Bible to read?
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That is the big question. Well, welcome to Reform
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thinking. Today we are taking a deep dive
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into the very concept of time itself.
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We're looking at the core conflict between Western clock
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time and biblical event time. And let me tell you, once you
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see this distinction, you cannot Unsee it.
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It is a massive paradigm shift. I mean, today our discussion
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unpacks 2 theological essays dealing specifically with Paul's
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letter to the Ephesians, chapter 5, verses 15 through 17, and the
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specific concept of redeeming the time.
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Which is such a famous phrase. It is, yeah.
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And the mission of this deep dive is to strip away all those
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post industrial assumptions about time.
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We want to peel back those ideas you and I take for granted every
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time we check our smartwatches and examine the biblical text
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through the lens of God's sovereign timing.
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Yeah. To do that, the text demands
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that we look at how the original authors and the original
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audiences understood their days, which was vastly different from
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our modern color-coded spreadsheet approach.
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Right, and that brings us straight to you, the listener.
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Think about your own calendar anxiety for a second.
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Are you treating time as a master to appease?
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Or, you know, are you treating it as a canvas for obedience?
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Because that shift in perspective changes everything
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about the Christian life. OK, so let's unpack this.
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We have to start by contrasting the modern mindset with the
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ancient mindset. We need to establish how our
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current view of time was actually formed in the first
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place. Because we are not born with a
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factory whistle in our heads. Spot on.
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We are not. So to do this we have two Greek
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words for time that we need to define right out of the gate,
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Kronos and Kairos. Those two words are the absolute
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key to unlocking this whole discussion.
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So Kronos is quantitative. It is sequential clock time.
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It's the ticking of the second hand.
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You know, the passing of minutes, hours and days.
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So it's about measurable duration.
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Precisely when you ask someone how long will this meeting take,
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or how many days until the project is due, you are asking a
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Kronos question. You are literally measuring the
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sand falling through the hourglass.
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OK, and what about Kairos? Well, Kairos, on the other hand,
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is qualitative. It refers to an appointed
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timing, an opportune season or a fitting occasion.
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It is not about the measurement of the minutes.
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It is about the spiritual or moral weight of the moment.
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Which is so different from how we operate.
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It is. Ancient cultures, particularly
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the ancient Near East and 1st century agrarian Israel,
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operated almost entirely on Kairos.
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Their lives were dictated by creation rhythms.
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They looked for the early and latter rains, the harvest
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seasons or significant political events like a King's ascension
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to the throne. That is a staggering contrast to
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how we operate today. I mean, let's trace that history
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because our modern Western view of time was really forged in the
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fires of the Industrial Revolution.
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Yeah, that was the major turning point.
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Before that era, if you were a farmer, you worked when the sun
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came up and you rested when the sun went down.
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Yeah, your alarm clock was the rooster crowing or the sunlight
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breaking over the horizon. But then we bear factories.
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We brought in factory whistles. We literally replaced the
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sunrise with a mechanized bell. Human labor suddenly became
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quantified into hourly wages. Which is a crazy concept if you
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step back and look at it historically.
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It really is. For the first time, a human
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being's sweat and effort were sliced into 60 minute increments
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that could be bought and sold, and that bred this absolute idol
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of efficiency. We created a cultural system
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where time literally equals money.
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And that historical shift cannot be overstated.
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When time becomes money, it ceases to be a season given by
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God, and it becomes a resource hoarded by man.
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Oh, that is a heavy thought. The sociological illustration
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from the source material that captures this perfectly is the
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contrast between the Indonesian fishermen and the Western
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stockbroker. Yes, I love this part of the
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essays. Right.
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So consider the stockbroker on Wall Street.
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His entire existence is ruled by Kronos.
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High frequency trading algorithms operate in
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microseconds. A delay of a fraction of a
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second cost millions of dollars. It's just constant pressure.
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Completely. His day is a rigid, terrifying
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structure of alarms, countdowns and hyper efficiency.
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He eats lunch at his desk while staring at a ticking ticker
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tape. And then, you know, you can
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trust that with the Indonesian fisherman from the USA.
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His life is not governed by a rigid 9 to 5 schedule, Not at
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all. He does not clock in at a
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terminal. His life is governed by the
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tides, the phases, the moon and the sun.
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He goes out onto the water when the tide is right and the fish
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are running. And that is his Kairos.
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Exactly. He rests when the heat of the
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day is too punishing. Event dictates action, not a
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clock on the wall. He doesn't say I'm going to
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catch fish from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM, regardless of the water
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conditions. He waits for the opportune
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season. Because anything else would be
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foolish, right? If we bring this back to
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theology, the issue isn't just that Westerners are busy or
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stressed out. The issue is that this
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materialistic pragmatism distorts how we read the Bible.
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I keep thinking of our modern schedules like a frantic video
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game countdown timer. Oh, that's a good analogy.
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You know the feeling. You're playing a game.
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The timer on the screen is ticking down to 0.
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The music is getting faster and more frantic.
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The screen is flashing red and you were just panicking to
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finish the level. Yeah, but ancient time was
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entirely different. It was event driven.
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The ancient agrarian reality understood that man is entirely
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dependent on the Creator's rhythms.
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You plant the seed and then you wait.
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You just have to wait. Right.
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You cannot scream at the soil to grow faster.
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You cannot optimize the harvest with a life hack.
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You must wait for the early rains and the latter rains.
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You are subjected to a timeline that you do not control.
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I have to play devil's advocate here though.
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If we completely abandoned our calendars and just wait around
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for a, you know, a season to strike us, aren't we just giving
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Christians an excuse to be lazy? That is a fair pushback.
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I mean, didn't Jesus himself say you have to count the cost
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before building a tower? You cannot count the cost of
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building a tower without a timeline, a schedule, and a
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budget. So are calendars inherently bad,
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or have we just given them way too much authority in our lives?
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That is a highly practical question.
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The calendar is a highly useful tool, but it is a cruel,
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tyrannical master. God is not a victim of time.
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He does not wear a wristwatch, and he does not panic over a
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schedule. He inhabits eternity, and he
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ordains the end from the beginning.
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Calendars are helpful for organizing human affairs,
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ensuring that people show up to the same place at the fitting
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moment so they can actually work together.
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So they have a place. Yes.
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The problem arises when we elevate the calendar to a
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position of ultimate authority. When we do that, we idolize
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efficiency over faithfulness. We start to believe the arrogant
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assumption that if we can just manage our minutes better, we
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can somehow control our destiny and insulate ourselves from
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suffering or unpredictability. Which is an illusion anyway.
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It is a materialistic philosophy.
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It assumes time is a neutral resource we own rather than a
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season sovereignly appointed by God.
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OK, let's take that philosophical groundwork and
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transition into how this industrial mindset directly
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distorts our reading of the biblical text.
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Because this is where the rubber meets the road for anyone
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listening right now who is trying to understand Scripture.
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Yes, this is crucial. As Westerners, we naturally
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expect a strict chronological sequences.
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We open the Bible, and we expect it to read like a journalist's
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daily newspaper, giving us a strict, logical timeline from
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Monday morning to Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday night.
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We want everything time stamped right?
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And the most glaring illustration of this cultural
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blinder is the Nativity timeline.
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Every single Christmas we set up these beautiful nativity scenes
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on our mantels and we compress the historical events.
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We put everyone in the same room.
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We do. We put the wise men, the
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shepherds, the angels, Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus all
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crammed right there together at the Manger on the exact same
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night. We do that to satisfy our
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Western desire for chronological efficiency.
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We want the entire story wrapped up in a tidy 24 hour window.
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But the historical reality, as laid out in the Gospels is
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completely different. The shepherds visited Jesus at
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the Manger on the night of his birth.
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The wise men, the magi, arrived much later, likely up to two
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years later. Matthew tells us they visited
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Jesus in a house, not a stable, and they saw a child, not an
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infant. And why did this happen?
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Because Joseph and Mary did not rush back to Nazareth the very
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next morning. They stayed in Bethlehem for
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nearly two years. And why did they stay?
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This is the fascinating part. Westerners think, well, they
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must have missed their flight or the donkey broke down.
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We assume a chronological disruption.
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A breakdown in the schedule. Right, but the historical
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context shows is the Joseph stayed because he found a
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Kairos, an opportunity for his trade.
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Joseph was a Tecton, a builder or Craftsman.
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Bethlehem was very close to massive building projects
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happening in that region under Herod.
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So it was an economic opportunity.
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Exactly. Joseph did not have a strict
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timeline to rush back to Nazareth.
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He saw an opportune season to work, provide for his new family
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and establish himself. So he stayed.
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He was operating on event time, not clock time.
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That illustrates perfectly how we force our Chronos
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expectations onto a text that is written with a Kyra's mindset.
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And this tension gets even more pronounced when we look at the
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literary technique of thematic sequencing in the Gospels.
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Oh, let's get into this. The Holy Spirit inspired the
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biblical authors to arrange their material to make specific
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theological points, not to provide a police report of
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sequential events. Let us examine the temptation of
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Jesus in the wilderness. Matthew and Luke record the
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exact same 3 temptations. Turning stones to bread,
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throwing himself off the temple, and bowing down to Satan for the
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kingdoms of the world. Correct, but they sequence them
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differently. Right.
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And this is exactly the kind of thing that makes a skeptic or a
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liberal critical scholar pointed the page and yell contradiction.
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The Bible is full of errors. They love to do that.
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They see these sequence differences, they apply their
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western post industrial timelines to the ancient texts,
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and they assume someone made a huge historical mistake.
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So why are they different? Why does Matthew and the
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Temptations in one place and Luke and them in another?
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They're different because the arrangement carries the
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theological meaning. Matthew builds to a climax on
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the high mountain where Satan offers Jesus the kingdoms of the
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world. Why?
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Because Matthew is writing to a Jewish audience.
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OK, so he has a specific goal. Yes, his entire gospel is
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structured to demonstrate that Jesus is the prophesied King,
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the greater Moses who speaks for the mountain, the supreme
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authority over all earthly kingdoms.
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Luke, however, alters the sequence to climax at the
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pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem.
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And why the temple for Luke? If you study Luke's Gospel, you
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see that he frequently uses the temple as a central organizing
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theme throughout his entire narrative.
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His Gospel begins with the priest Zechariah in the temple,
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and it ends with the disciples praising God continually in the
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temple. Luke places the temple
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temptation last to fit his theological structure.
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I am tracking with you, but let me bring up another example that
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always confused me. If you read Mark's Gospel, the
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timeline makes no sense to a modern reader.
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I remember reading it and thinking the author just had
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terrible ADHD. Right, it jumps around so much.
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It does. Jesus curses A fruitless fig
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tree. Then suddenly the story cuts to
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Jesus going into Jerusalem and cleansing the temple, turning
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over the tables. Then the very next morning, the
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narrative cuts back to the disciples walking past that same
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withered fig tree. If I am reading that like a
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daily newspaper, I am just bewildered about the timeline.
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Why is he jumping back and forth?
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That is your Western bias showing.
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Mark is not writing a chronological play by play.
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He is using a brilliant ancient literary device called
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intercalation, or what scholars often call sandwiching.
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Sandwiching, yes. Sandwiching.
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He starts a story, interrupts it with a second story, and then
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finishes the first one. The outside layers of the
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sandwich interpret the meat in the middle.
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Mark surrounds the cleansing of the Temple with the cursing of
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the fig tree to teach a massive theological point.
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He is saying that the Temple establishment in Jerusalem is
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just like that fig tree. It has plenty of green leaves.
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It looks incredibly religious and busy on the outside, but
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when you look closely, there is no real fruit.
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The Temple is under divine judgment, just like the tree.
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So understanding the literary context actually defends the
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absolute inerrancy of scripture. Spot on.
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Imposing western post industrial timelines onto ancient literary
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structures does massive violence to the author's intent.
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The gospel writers were not sloppy historians.
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They were brilliant, inspired theologians.
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That makes so make sense. When we demand that they conform
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to our modern standards of chronological journalism, we are
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the ones making the error. We are allowing our cultural
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blinders to obscure the divine revelation.
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Because we are reading it wrong. Precisely.
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The inerrancy of Scripture means that the Bible is entirely true
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in all that it affirms, and what it affirms is inextricably tied
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to the literary forms the authors actually employed.
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Recognizing thematic sequencing protects us from manufacturing
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false contradictions and helps us grasp the actual spiritual
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weight of the text. OK, with all of that ancient
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context firmly in place, I want to dive into the specific text
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that addresses this tension directly.
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I'm talking about Paul's command in Ephesians chapter 5 to redeem
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the time. Yes, let's go there.
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We need to look at the historical context of Ephesus to
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really grasp the weight of what Paul is saying here.
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Paint a picture of this city for us.
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Ephesus was not some sleepy little rural village.
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Not at all. Ephesus was a massive, wealthy,
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pluralistic Roman metropolis. It was a bustling commercial
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center, a hub of global trade. You would have heard dozens of
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languages in the markets. And it was super Pagan, right?
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Extremely Pagan, It was famous across the known world for the
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massive Temple of Artemis, one of the wonders of the ancient
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world. The city was a dark hub for
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magic, the occult, and intense Pagan idolatry.
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There were silversmiths making vast fortunes, selling little
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idols of Artemis. So there's a lot of money tied
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up in the religion. Yes, the air was thick with
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civic pride, commercial greed and spiritual darkness.
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It was a chaotic, loud and morally corrupt environment.
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Into that specific chaotic environment, the apostle Paul
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writes a letter to a small group of Christians, and he builds
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this letter with a very specific, deliberate literary
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structure. If you read Ephesians chapters
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one through 3 layout the indicatives of grace.
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The reality is what God has done.
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Right. Paul talks about election,
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redemption through Christ's blood, and being sealed by the
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Holy Spirit. It is all about what God has
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already done. Then there is a pivot.
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Chapters 4 through 6 layout the imperatives of grateful
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obedience, how the believer is supposed to live.
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That structure is vital for reformed theology.
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Identity precedes conduct. The indicative always precedes
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the imperative. You don't work for your
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salvation. Right.
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You do not behave a certain way to earn your salvation or get
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God to love you. You behave a certain way because
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you already are saved, because you have been raised from
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spiritual death. Grace is the engine of obedience
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that is so good. And right in the middle of the
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section on obedience, in chapter 5, verse 15, we hit this
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mandate. Look carefully then, how you
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walk. Not as unwise, but as wise.
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Let's talk about that word walk. Because Paul uses it constantly.
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It is a brilliant biblical metaphor.
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Walking implies A continuous, morally examined path.
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It is not an accidental stumble. It is a deliberate step by step
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progression. It requires attention.
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Yes, Paul is telling these Ephesian believers who have been
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rescued out of the darkness of the Artemis cult that they must
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pay strict attention to the direction and the manner of
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their everyday lives. And the command contrasts the
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unwise person with the wise person.
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Yes, and we must define those terms biblically in Scripture.
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Wisdom and folly are not measures of intellectual IQ.
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A person can have a genius level intellect and be a total fool in
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the biblical sense. How so?
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Because folly is moral blindness before God.
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The fool lives as if God does not exist.
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The fool goes about his day entirely oblivious to divine
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judgement, divine Providence, and divine timing.
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The wise person, however, fears the Lord.
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The wise person views all of life, every interaction, and
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every decision through the lens of God's revealed.
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Will I want to stop you there and push back on that word,
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wisdom from the perspective of a modern listener?
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In our modern culture, wisdom usually translates directly to
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efficiency or life hacks. If you walk into a bookstore and
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go to the business or self help section, wisdom is defined as
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how to clear out your e-mail inbox faster, how to maximize
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your morning routine, or how to syndicate your workflow.
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But the biblical fool could potentially have a totally empty
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inbox, right? Oh, absolutely.
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A fool could have a perfectly color-coded Google Calendar.
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The contrast Paul is setting up seems completely divorced from
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our productivity metrics. That is a staggering contrast we
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have to reckon with. A person can keep a flawless
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calendar, achieve massive corporate success, optimize
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every hour of their day, and still be an absolute fool in the
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eyes of heaven. Wow.
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Think about what that implies. If a person's schedule is
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entirely dedicated to self advancement, hoarding wealth, or
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seeking status while completely ignoring the state of their soul
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and the desperate needs of their neighbor, their efficiency is
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simply expediting their path to ruin.
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They are just running toward a Cliff at a highly optimized
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speed. Precisely.
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Wisdom is practical righteousness.
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It is seeing all of life under the sovereignty of God's
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Providence. The wise person asks what does
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the Lord require of me in this specific season, rather than
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simply asking, how can I fit three more tasks into this hour?
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That changes the whole focus of your day.
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Paul is confronting the temptation to drift through life
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with the casual, pragmatic, selfish instincts of the
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surrounding Ephesian culture. He is calling for a vigilant,
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holy alertness. This brings us to the
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marketplace of time and the nature of the age we live in.
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We're zooming in on the specific phrase redeeming the time, and
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we need to understand why Paul attaches such intense urgency to
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it. Let's do a word study on that
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phrase in the Greek, because the English translation misses some
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of the punch. It really does miss the
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intensity. The phrase is exaggerazominoy
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ton chiron. If we break that down, we have
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Agora, which is the marketplace and X which means out of.
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The Greek syntax here is incredibly vivid.
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The verb exaggerazu is an intense compound word.
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It literally means to go into the marketplace and buy
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something up to ransom it, to rescue it from the Vanity Fair
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of this world. OK, and notice what Paul pairs
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this with. He pairs it with Kairos, not
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Kronos. So he is not saying manage your
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minutes efficiently so you can get more done.
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He is saying aggressively purchase at a personal cost to
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yourself the strategic moral opportunities that God places
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before you. It's an active thing.
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Very active. The use of the participle
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indicates that this is a continuous, relentless posture
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for the believer. You are constantly scanning the
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horizon of your life, looking for the Kairos, the appointed
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season for obedience. I was reading the source essays
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and they brought up the Greek Aoris tense regarding this
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phrase and honestly it sounded like a seminary textbook.
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It said something like the ARS tense describes the aspect of
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the action a complete whole without focusing on the internal
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duration. Right.
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Highly technical. Language.
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If I am driving to work right now listening to this, my eyes
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just glazed over, can you translate that into plain
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English? Let's use a visual analogy.
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Think of the ARS tense like taking a Polaroid picture of an
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entire. Football game.
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OK, a Polaroid. The Polaroid doesn't give you a
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play by play video timeline. It doesn't tell you how many
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seconds the quarterback held the ball or how long halftime was.
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It just hands you the photo and says the game happened and here
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is the result as a complete singular event.
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Oh, that makes sense. That is how Paul is talking
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about redeeming the time. Westerners almost always
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misinterpret the aorist tense as a simple past tense on a
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chronological timeline. But the biblical authors cared
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far more about the theological reality of the action than its
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exact temporal duration. They viewed the action as a
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complete whole. OK, the.
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Polaroid analogy makes total sense.
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So Paul is saying look at your life as a whole, step into the
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marketplace and buy up these opportunities.
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And the reason he gives for this aggressive purchasing of
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opportunity is jarring. He says to do this because the
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days are evil. That is a heavy statement.
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It is. It is a recognition of intense
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spiritual warfare. The temporal reality we live in
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is dominated by sin, deception, and decay.
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But here is the tension I feel as a Christian.
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Paul is saying the days are evil.
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If I turn on the news right now or scroll through social media
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and see how evil the days actually are, my first instinct
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is to lock my doors, retreat into a bunker, stockpile canned
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goods, and just wait for the end.
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A lot of people feel that way. Why?
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Should I go into the marketplace?
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How does recognizing the evil of the days actually fuel active
21:53
engagement rather than escapism? That tension is the very heart
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of the Christian witness in a fallen world.
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Evil days make wisdom necessary. They do not make obedience
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futile. If you retreat into a bunker,
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you are abandoning the marketplace.
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You are leaving the field entirely.
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You are abandoning the agora where the opportunities actually
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exist. Think about a darkroom.
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Light is most visible and most desperately needed where the
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darkness is real. That is a great point.
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The world's patterns are seductive, and darkness
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constantly seeks to normalize itself.
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False teaching, bitterness, laziness, greed and idolatry are
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competing for our attention every single day.
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The urgency of Paul's command comes from this reality of
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spiritual warfare. We are commanded to seize the
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opportunities precisely because the age is dark.
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We don't run from it. No, the believer does not
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retreat from the culture. The believer advances into the
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darkness with the light of the gospel, knowing that the days
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are morally contested territory. That reframes everything.
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We aren't supposed to be hiding. We're supposed to be hunting for
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opportunities to obey. But if we are out there seizing
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the opportunity, how do we know what to actually do in that
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moment? That is the practical question,
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isn't it? This brings us to verse 17.
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Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of
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the Lord is. We have to talk about how modern
23:11
Christians try to figure out God's will because it gets
23:14
weird. We have to contrast the biblical
23:17
command to understand God's will with modern evangelical
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mysticism. I'm talking about the tendency
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to hunt for secret messages. Open the Bible at random and
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point to a verse. Look for private impressions or
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try to interpret subjective signs in the clouds to figure
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out what job to take or who to marry.
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The modern church is heavily plagued by a mystical approach
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to decision making that is completely foreign to scripture.
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People wait for a subjective feeling or a random sign to tell
23:45
them which house to buy, treating God's will like a
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hidden code that needs to be cracked.
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Like God is playing hide and seek with us, right?
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But Paul is not advocating subjective mysticism.
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The text aligns heavily with the historic Reformed doctrine of
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Providence. Consider Chapter 5 of the
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Westminster Confession of Faith, which explicitly addresses
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Providence. What does it say?
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It states that God, the Great Creator of all things, does
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uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions
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and things, from the greatest even to the least.
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God's Providence is absolute. So how does that apply to
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figuring out what I'm supposed to do today?
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It means we do not need to hunt for secret signs, because the
24:24
Lord's moral will is already clearly revealed in the pages of
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Scripture. In the immediate context of
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Ephesians, Paul explicitly details what that will is.
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He spells it out. He absolutely does.
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It includes walking in love, rejecting sexual immorality,
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Speaking of the truth, forgiving one another, and ordering our
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households according to God's design.
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To understand the Lord's will is to read the Apostolic doctrine
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and obey it in your current situation.
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So it's not a mystery. Not at all.
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We rely on the sufficient written word of God illuminated
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by the Holy Spirit. We do not need fresh prophetic
24:59
revelations to know how to walk. We need faithful obedience to
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what has already been spoken. And when we lose sight of the
25:05
sufficiency of scripture, we get into the absolute folly of date
25:08
setting and eschatological obsession.
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This is such a vivid, embarrassing example of modern
25:14
chronos anxiety in the church. Really is.
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Think about the Y2K panic back in the late 90s, or the
25:20
continuous attempts to calculate the exact date of the rapture.
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People literally sell their homes, Max out their credit
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cards, write books with massive complicated charts tracing
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Daniel 70 weeks with red string on a court board and try to
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decode the calendar. It is a frantic attempt to
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control the timeline. It is a staggering error of
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presumption. If we look at the parable of the
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wedding banquet in Matthew 22, it exposes his error perfectly.
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Set that parable up for us. In that parable, a king throws a
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massive banquet for his son, but the invited guests refused to
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come. Now Westerners read that and
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think, oh, they must have had a scheduling conflict on their
26:00
Google Calendar. They were double booked.
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Ray they had a soccer game to get to.
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Exactly. But in ancient Near Eastern
26:06
culture, the exact day of a royal banquet was fluid.
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The initial invitation went out that the actual summons to
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attend it only happened when the fatted calf was killed and the
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feast was fully ready. When the event was ready.
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Yes, the guest's refusal to attend was not about a packed
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schedule or a lack of Kronos. It was an act of deliberate
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treason against the King's sovereign, Kairos.
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They rejected the season he appointed.
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So how does living in the Church age, you know this long epoch we
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are currently in demands sanctification over calculation?
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The parable brilliantly highlights the rebellion of
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ignoring God's appointed season. The guests loved their own
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Kronos more than the King's Kairos.
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When believers today obsess over calculating end times timelines,
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they are committing a similar error.
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Trying to force God onto their clock.
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Exactly. Jesus explicitly warned that no
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man knows the day or the hour. The chronological calculation is
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hidden in the secret counsel of God.
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What is clearly revealed is the command to be ready.
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And that takes work. It does.
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The Church Age is a massive, overarching season of grace
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extended to the nations. Our duty during this epoch is
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not to draw complicated charts of the future, but to pursue
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holiness in the present. The correct response to living
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in evil days is faithful obedience, preaching the gospel
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to your neighbor, and mortifying the sin in your own heart.
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Sanctification is the required posture, not speculative
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calculation. That makes total sense.
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To really cement this, we have to look at the ultimate model
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for navigating, I mean walking through time perfectly.
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How did Jesus interact with the clock in the calendar?
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Because if anyone in human history had a right to be
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stressed about time, it was him. He had.
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Three years to accomplish the salvation of the world.
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Look at Galatians 4, verse 4. But when the fullness of time
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had come, God sent forth his Son.
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This is the supreme intersection of history.
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This is where the ticking clock the Chronos met.
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The Divine season, the Kairos, all of history, all the
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prophecies, the Empire's rising and falling, it all culminated
28:05
in that precise intersection. The Christological fulfillment
28:08
of time is breathtaking to study.
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The Incarnation occurred at the exact sovereignly appointed
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zenith of history. Think of the conditions, the
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political stability of the Pax Romana, the vast network of
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Roman roads, the universal spread of the Greek language
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which allowed the gospel to be read everywhere, and the
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spiritual exhaustion of Israel. The stage was perfectly set.
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The Kairos conditions were perfectly aligned by God's
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Providence, and throughout his earthly ministry Jesus moved
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entirely according to divine appointment.
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He was never early and he was never late.
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I think about the Gospel of John where Jesus repeatedly states my
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hour has not yet come. He absolutely refused to be
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rushed by the chronological demands of the crowds, the
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political expectations of the Pharisees, or even the pushing
28:55
of his own family. John Chapter 7 is a perfect
28:57
example of this. Yes, there's that incredible
29:00
scene in John Chapter 7. The Feast of Booths is happening
29:04
in Jerusalem. Jesus's brothers come to him and
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they're essentially mocking him. They say leave here and go to
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Judea so that your disciples also may see the works you're
29:13
doing. For no one works in secret if he
29:16
seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show
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yourself to the world. They wanted a spectacle.
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They're pressuring him to make a PR move.
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They want him to maximize his exposure to be efficient with
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his platform. That scene is crucial.
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They are demanding that Jesus conform to a human, pragmatic
29:33
timeline. They want him to seize a Kronos
29:36
opportunity for fame. But Jesus responds to them by
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saying, my time has not yet come, but your time is always
29:41
here. Oh, your time is always here.
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He uses the word Kairos. He is saying you operate on a
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flat timeline where any day is just as good as a another for
29:49
self promotion. But I operate on the Father's
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sovereign timetable. Jesus resisted the intense
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social and chronological pressure of his culture.
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He was willing to be misunderstood, to appear slow,
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or to miss a strategic marketing opportunity because his sole
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focus was obedience, submission to the Father's timing.
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Contrast that with Adam in the Garden of Eden.
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Adam had a blessed, unbroken season.
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He had perfect fellowship with God, but he wasted the season of
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the Garden through his rebellion and impatience.
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He reached for the fruit before the appointed time.
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He wanted the knowledge of good and evil on his own schedule.
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Precisely the first Adam wasted the season, but Christ, the last
30:28
Adam, obeyed perfectly. In the harshness of the
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wilderness and throughout his ministry, He redeemed the very
30:34
meaning of our days. When His hour finally did come,
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as He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, it was the appointed
30:40
season of the Cross. The ultimate Kairos.
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Yes, there he bore the wrath of God for our wasted seasons, our
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frantic idolatry of the clog, and our careless walking.
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Think about how incredibly liberating that is for the
30:51
listener right now. Think up at the heavy burden of
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trying to manage every single second of your life perfectly.
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So many of us feel like absolute failures every time we waste an
31:01
hour or sleep through an alarm or miss an opportunity.
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It is a heavyweight to carry. We carry this crushing Guild
31:08
over our schedules, but the gospel tells us we don't have to
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save ourselves through perfect time management.
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Christ already fulfilled time's greatest demand perfectly on our
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behalf. His perfect obedience to the
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Father's Kairos is credited to us.
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A discussion about time management can very easily
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devolve into a crushing man centered moralism.
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Try harder, wake up earlier, buy a better planner, be more
31:31
productive. But the Reformed understanding
31:34
of the Gospel announces that our wise walk is the fruit of our
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salvation, not the root of it it.
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Is a huge distinction. We do not redeem the time to
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earn God's favor or to justify our existence.
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We redeem the time because Christ has already redeemed us.
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He's the Lord of the Sabbath rest.
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He offers deep relief to the weary scheduled worshipper.
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Because Christ came in the fullness of time and will return
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at the exact point of time, we can rest entirely in His
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finished work. We can walk wisely in the
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present, free from the paralyzing anxiety of the
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ticking clock. OK, so Jesus lived perfectly on
32:08
this Divine Kairos clock, but I'm looking at the phone right
32:11
now and I have three meetings this afternoon that I cannot
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just skip. I had to pick up my kids at a
32:16
specific time. The realities of modern life.
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Right. How does a regular person living
32:21
in a modern 21st century city actually practice this without
32:25
getting fired from their job? Let's bring all this theology
32:28
down to the ground. Let's talk about pastoral
32:29
application. How does the listener
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practically apply this distinction between Kronos and
32:34
Kairos in their daily life? We must start by examining how
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we conduct our corporate work. It because our individual lives
32:40
reflect our church culture, we have to critique the modern
32:43
pragmatic, seeker sensitive church model.
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Oh this is a massive point. We have all seen it.
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A church service tightly managed to a 60 minute production.
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It is everywhere. The music is time to the second,
32:55
the lighting cues are programmed, and the sermon is
32:57
trimmed to exactly 22 minutes and no one gets bored.
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It treats the congregation as consumers at a Dr. Thru.
33:04
It treats worship as a commodity, sacrificing biblical
33:07
depth for speed. It is capitulating completely to
33:11
the idol of Chronos. How did the factory whistle
33:14
become the church bell? It happened because church
33:17
leaders adopted the metrics of the industrial business world.
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The consumer driven church model is a direct result of imposing
33:24
Western industrial values, efficiency, speed and measurable
33:27
output onto the holy worship of the Almighty God.
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Which is tragic. When a church values a tight
33:32
schedule over the slow, deep, often messy work of
33:35
sanctification, it betrays the biblical mandate.
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Ministry is not an assembly line.
33:41
Souls do not heal on a predictable schedule.
33:43
You cannot put a stopwatch on grief counseling or repentance.
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You just can't. Discipleship, church discipline,
33:49
and the faithful. Expositional preaching of the
33:51
Word require immense patience. A church service is meant to be
33:55
a holy Kairos, a set apart season where heaven touches
33:59
earth through the means of grace.
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To shorten a sermon simply to accommodate the low attention
34:04
span of a carnal, entertainment addicted culture is to tell God
34:08
that our schedules are more authoritative than His Word.
34:11
Pastors and congregations alike must repent of prioritizing
34:15
speed over spiritual depth. And that mindset spills over
34:18
directly into how we view our personal lives, specifically how
34:22
we view interruptions. We naturally hate interruptions.
34:25
Someone knocks on your door when you're busy, or your car breaks
34:27
down on the way to work, or a phone call with a crying friend
34:30
goes an hour long and you feel your blood pressure rising
34:33
because your schedule is falling apart.
34:35
You feel like you are losing time.
34:36
But if we reframe that through the lens of God's Providence, a
34:39
delay in your schedule might actually be a divinely appointed
34:42
Kairos to share the truth of the gospel or to bear a brother's
34:45
burden. It's a shift in perspective.
34:47
That interruption is not a mistake, it is an appointment.
34:51
If God governs all things, then the flat tire is part of the
34:54
plan. The long phone call is the
34:57
marketplace where you are called to redeem the time.
35:00
Let's also address the grief of lost time.
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I know many listeners carry this heavyweight.
35:05
They mourn years spent in blatant sin, or they look back
35:08
at seasons consumed by deep physical or mental suffering
35:12
where they feel like they accomplished absolutely nothing.
35:14
Yes, that is very common. They look back at their 20s or
35:17
their 30s and just see wasted sand at the bottom of the
35:20
hourglass. They feel like they missed their
35:22
Kairos. That grief is a very real, very
35:24
painful reality for many believers, but we must offer the
35:28
robust comfort of God's absolute Providence.
35:31
The gospel does not erase the historical consequences of our
35:34
actions, but it proclaims A Redeemer who restores and
35:38
sanctifies. What a comforting thought.
35:40
Think of the promise in Joel where God says he will restore
35:43
the years the swarming locust has eaten.
35:46
God is able to work all things together for good.
35:49
Even our failures are wandering and are suffering.
35:52
The believer must not remain paralyzed by regret over wasted
35:55
Kronos. True repentance looks honestly
35:58
backward, acknowledging the sin or the loss without making
36:01
excuses. But faith walks obediently
36:04
forward. You move forward in grace, yes.
36:08
The Lord can make your remaining seasons incredibly fruitful.
36:11
You cannot change the past, but you can aggressively seize the
36:15
Kairos that is sitting right in front of you today.
36:18
That leads me to ask the listener a very direct
36:20
diagnostic question. Think about the calendar app on
36:24
your phone right now. Look at how your week is blocked
36:27
out. Are your schedules teaching you
36:29
to love Christ and love your neighbor, or are they simply
36:31
tools to preserve an illusion of control over your life?
36:34
That is the question, isn't it? Because if your calendar is just
36:37
a fortress you built to keep out unpredictability and protect
36:39
your own comfort, you are missing the entire point of the
36:42
Christian walk. That diagnostic question cuts
36:45
straight to the heart of the matter.
36:47
We must advise practical, immediate repentance.
36:50
We must flee from the obvious sin of laziness.
36:53
You know, the endless scrolling on our phones, the entertainment
36:56
addiction, the spiritual procrastination where we say I
36:59
will pray tomorrow. But we must equally flee from
37:02
what we might call respectable busyness.
37:04
What does respectable busyness look like?
37:06
Respectable busyness is the packed calendar that looks
37:09
highly productive and successful to the outside world but hides a
37:12
barren, prayerless soul. It is the person who is always
37:15
rushing to volunteer, always working late, always at a soccer
37:18
game, but never silent before the Lord.
37:21
Ouch, that hits close to home for a lot of us.
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Respectable busyness is often just a socially acceptable way
37:26
to avoid God and avoid the messy, inefficient work of truly
37:30
loving other people. Both laziness and frantic
37:32
busyness are rejections of God's sovereign timing.
37:36
The remedy is a humble submission to Providence,
37:39
laboring diligently in the vocation God has given you while
37:42
resting completely in the hands of the Savior.
37:44
We have covered so much ground today.
37:46
To summarize the overarching theme, we absolutely must take
37:50
off the cultural blinders of the post industrial clock.
37:54
The Christian life is not redeemed by productivity acts,
37:56
life optimization apps or color-coded planners.
38:00
The Christian life is redeemed by union with Christ, the One
38:03
who rules every fleeting hour and every passing age.
38:07
We have to shift our gaze from the anxiety of the ticking
38:10
second hand to the purposeful sovereign appointments of God.
38:14
That shift in perspective changes everything about how we
38:17
walk through this world. It moves us from a posture of
38:20
frantic control to a posture of watchful obedience.
38:23
And so I want to leave the listener with a final challenge.
38:27
Think about your upcoming week. Think about the days ahead.
38:29
What should they be looking for? Well, if you start viewing your
38:32
calendar as a terrifying countdown of minutes you were
38:34
constantly losing, and you start viewing it as a wide open field
38:37
of moral opportunities that got a specifically set up for you,
38:41
what specific conversation or action have you been delaying
38:44
that demands your obedience today?
38:46
What Kairos is staring you in the face right now while you are
38:49
worried about the Kronos? That is the question we all need
38:51
to answer. Are we going to keep running on
38:53
the treadmill or are we going to step into the marketplace?
38:57
The only way to see clearly is to step out of the factory
38:59
timeline and step into the light of God's Word.
39:03
Keep your eyes open for the Kairos.
39:05
The clock is ticking, but the Savior is raining.
39:08
Thank you for joining us on this deep dive.