Part 1: Why Time Is Precious
“Redeeming the time” (Eph 5:16).
Redeeming always has to do with something that is either lost, or has in some way gone out of our possession, or at least is at risk of being lost or about to be taken from us. These words of the apostle can be understood in several senses.
When the apostle urges the Ephesians to redeem the time, he may have in view the time they had already lost. Earlier in the same passage he reminds them how they had misspent their precious time in the past: “For ye were sometimes darkness; but now are ye light in the Lord” (Eph 5:8). So he may now be advising them to redeem their time, that is, to use the rest of it so carefully as to make up in some measure for what they had lost.
Or he may have in view the great danger that they would lose their time, because the days were then so evil. That being so, there was abundant temptation to misuse time. Unless they took great care, time would slip through their hands, and they would gain nothing from it. They needed, therefore, to “walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise,” as the previous verse says (Eph 5:15), so that they might save their time.
Or, lastly, he may have in view redeeming time from the dreadful calamities that God was about to bring on the wicked. The apostle often foretold terrible judgments that were about to come. Perhaps he is advising Christians to take all the greater care to live holy lives, and to work at reclaiming others from their evil ways. In that way God might delay His anger, and time might be redeemed, saved as it were, from that terrible destruction. Once that destruction came, it would put an end to the time of divine patience.
This may be why the apostle adds the reason “Because the days are evil” (Eph 5:16). It is as if he had said, “The corruption of the times tends to hasten the threatened judgments. But your holy and circumspect walk will tend to redeem time from the devouring jaws of those calamities.”
But in whatever sense we take the expression, this much is certainly set before us in these words: we should place a high value on time and be extremely careful not to lose it. We are therefore urged to exercise wisdom and circumspection, so that we may redeem it.
Doctrine
Time is exceedingly precious.
Time is precious for the following reasons.
1. It is precious because a happy or a miserable eternity depends on whether we use it well or badly. Things are precious in proportion to their importance, or to the degree that they concern our welfare. People usually set the highest value on the things they know their interests chiefly depend on. And this is what makes time so exceedingly precious: our eternal welfare depends on how we use it.
Time is precious for other reasons as well. It is precious because our welfare in this world depends on how we use it. It is precious because if we do not use it well, we will be in danger of falling into poverty and disgrace. It is precious because by using it well we may obtain things that will be useful and a comfort to us here. But above all it is precious because our state through all eternity depends on it. The importance of using time well for those other reasons is subordinate to this one, and is little or nothing in comparison with it.
People consider gold and silver precious. Yet they are worth nothing to anyone, except as they give a man the opportunity to avoid or remove some evil, or to gain some good. And whatever a man possesses, the greater the evil it gives him the means to escape, or the good it gives him the means to obtain, the greater the value of that thing to him.
So if something a man has can save his life, which he would lose without it, he will regard as very precious the thing that lets him escape so great an evil as death. In the same way, if something gives him the opportunity to obtain a kingdom, he will value it highly.
This is why time is so exceedingly precious: it is through time that we have the opportunity to escape everlasting misery and to obtain everlasting blessedness and glory. Our escape from an infinite evil, and our attainment of an infinite good, depend on how we use our time. This gives time an infinite value.
2. Time is very short, and this is another thing that makes it very precious. When any commodity is scarce, people value it more highly, especially if it is a necessity they cannot do without. So when the Syrians besieged Samaria and food was extremely scarce, “an ass’s head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of dove’s dung for five pieces of silver” (2 Kgs 6:25).
In the same way, people should prize time all the more because a whole eternity depends on it, and yet we have only a little of it. “When a few years are come, then I shall go the way whence I shall not return” (Job 16:22). “My days are swifter than a post: They are passed away as the swift ships: as the eagle that hasteth to the prey” (Job 9:25-26).
What is our life? It is only “a vapour which appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away” (Jas 4:14). Compared with eternity it is only a moment, and bears no proportion to it. Time is so short, and the work we have to do in it is so great, that we have none of it to spare. The work we must do to prepare for eternity has to be done in time, or it can never be done. And it proves to be a work of great difficulty and labor, which makes time all the more necessary for it.
3. We ought to regard time as very precious for this reason also: we cannot be sure how long it will last. We know that it is very short, but we do not know how short. We do not know how little of it remains, whether a year, or several years, or only a month, a week, or a day. Every day we are uncertain whether that day will be our last, whether we will have the whole of it, or how little of it we will have. Experience confirms nothing more clearly than this.
Another thing that makes time precious, and gives us reason to be all the more careful not to lose even the smallest part of it, is that our everlasting welfare depends on using our time rightly. Suppose a man had supplies laid up for a journey or a voyage, and knew that he had only a little. Suppose he also knew that if his supplies ran out, he would perish on the way. He would be all the more sparing with them.
How much more would many people prize their time if they knew they had only a few months, or a few days, left to live? And a wise man will certainly prize his time all the more because, for all he knows, the same may be true of him.
This is in fact the case with multitudes in the world now, who are in good health and see no sign that death is approaching. No doubt many such people will die next month, many next week, and many probably tomorrow, or even tonight. Yet these same people know nothing of it, and perhaps give it no thought. Neither they nor their neighbors can say that they are more likely than others to be taken out of the world soon.
And there are probably several people here now, hearing what I am saying, who will die very soon and yet have no idea of it. This teaches us how we ought to prize our time, and how careful we should be to lose none of it.
4. Time is very precious because once it is past, it can never be recovered. There are many things people possess that they can get back again if they part with them. If a man has parted with something without knowing its worth, or how much he would need it, he can often regain it, at least with effort and expense. If he has made a poor bargain, trading away or selling something, and afterward regrets it, he can often be released from the deal and recover what he gave up.
But it is not so with time. Once it is gone, it is gone forever, and no effort or expense will recover it. However much we regret that we let it pass, and did not use it well while we had it, our regret will do no good. This is true of our time both as a whole and in every single part.
Each part of it is offered to us in turn, so that we may choose whether or not to make it our own. But it does not linger, waiting on us to see whether we will accept the offer. If we refuse, it is immediately taken away and never offered again. As for the time that is already gone, however much we have neglected to use it well, it is out of our possession and out of our reach.
If we have lived fifty, sixty, or seventy years without using our time well, nothing can be done about it now. It is gone from us forever, and all we can do is make good use of the little that remains. Indeed, if a man has let all his life except a few moments go by unused, all that is gone is lost, and only those few remaining moments can possibly be made his own. And if the whole of a man’s time is gone, and all of it has been lost, it can never be recovered.
Eternity depends on how we use time. But once the time of life is over, once death has come, we have nothing more to do with time. There is no possibility of having it restored to us, or of being given another span in which to prepare for eternity.
If a man loses all his worldly wealth and goes bankrupt, his loss may possibly be made up. He may come to have another estate just as good. But when the time of life is gone, we can never obtain another time like it. Every opportunity of securing our eternal welfare is utterly and everlastingly gone.
Application
1. The first application of this doctrine may be to prompt people to reflect on what they have done with their time, and to look into it. You have now heard how precious time is, and you are the people it concerns. You are among those to whom God has entrusted time, that precious talent. You have an eternity before you. When God created you and gave you rational souls, He made you to exist without end. He gave you time here so that you might prepare for eternity, and your future eternity depends on how you use that time.
Consider, then, what you have done with the time already past. You are not now at the beginning of your time, but a great deal of it is past and gone, and all the ingenuity, power, and treasure in the universe cannot recover it.
Many of you may well conclude that more than half of your time is gone. Even if you live to the ordinary age of man, your hourglass is more than half run out, and perhaps only a few grains of sand remain. Your sun has passed its noonday height, and is perhaps just setting, or passing into an everlasting eclipse. Consider, then, what account you can give of how you have used your past time. How have you let the precious golden sands of your hourglass run?
Every day you have been granted has been precious. Indeed, your moments have been precious. But have you not wasted your precious moments, your precious days, even your precious years? If you were to count up how many days you have lived, what a total it would be! And how precious every one of those days has been!
Consider, then: what have you done with them? What has become of them all? What can you show, in good use made, or good done, or benefit gained, to match all this time you have lived? When you look back and search, do you not find this past time of your lives largely empty, not filled with any good use? And if God, who has given you your time, were to call you to account now, what account could you give Him?
How much can be done in a year! How much opportunity there is to do good in such a span of time! How much service people may do for God, and how much for their own souls, if they use it to the utmost! How much can be done in a day!
But what have you done in all the days and years you have lived? You who are past your youth, what have you done with the whole time of your youth? What has become of all that precious season of life? Has it not all been in vain for you? Would it not have been just as well for you, or better, if you had been asleep all that time, or had not existed at all?
You have had much leisure time, free from worldly business. Consider to what purpose you have spent it. You have had not only ordinary time but a great deal of holy time. What have you done with all the Sabbath days you have been granted! Consider these things seriously, and let your own consciences answer.
Part 2: Redeeming the Time
“Redeeming the time” (Eph 5:16).
Doctrine
Time is exceedingly precious.
In the previous sermon on these words, I gave several reasons why time is precious. I then began to apply this doctrine and made one application of it.
Application
2. The next application is one of reproof to those who lose or misspend their time. How little the preciousness of time is considered! How little sense of it most people seem to have! And to how little good purpose many spend their time! There is nothing more precious, and yet nothing that people squander more freely.
With many people, time is like silver in the days of Solomon, as the stones of the street, and nothing accounted of. They act as if time were as plentiful as silver was then, as if they had far more than they needed and did not know what to do with it.
If people were as lavish with their money as they are with their time, and if it were as common for them to throw away their money as it is to throw away their time, we would think them out of their minds and not in possession of their right senses. Yet time is a thousand times more precious than money. When it is gone, it cannot be purchased for money; it cannot be redeemed with silver or gold.
There are several kinds of people whom this doctrine reproves, and I will mention them in particular.
(1) It reproves those who spend a great part of their time in idleness, doing nothing, or nothing that turns to any account for the good of either their souls or their bodies. They do nothing for their own benefit or for the benefit of their neighbor, whether of their family or of the civil community to which they belong.
Time seems to hang heavy on some people’s hands. Instead of being concerned to use it well as it passes, and taking care that it does not pass without their making it their own, they act as if their concern were to devise ways to waste and use it up. It is as though time, instead of being precious, were merely a burden to them.
Their hands refuse to labor. Rather than put themselves to work, they will let their families suffer and will suffer themselves. As Proverbs warns, “An idle soul shall suffer hunger” (Prov 19:15). And again, “Drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags” (Prov 23:21).
Some spend much of their time at the tavern over their drinks, or wandering from house to house. They waste their hours in idle and unprofitable talk that will come to no good: “In all labour there is profit; but the talk of the lips tendeth only to poverty” (Prov 14:23).
The apostle directs us in Ephesians 4:28 that we should “labour, working with our hands the thing that is good, that we may have to give to him that needeth.” But lazy people, instead of gaining anything to give to the one in need, only waste what they already have: “He that is slothful in his work, is brother to him that is a great waster” (Prov 18:9).
(2) This doctrine reproves those who spend their time in wickedness. They do not merely spend their time doing nothing to any good purpose; they spend it for evil purposes. Such people do not only lose their time but do worse than lose it, for with it they harm both themselves and others.
Time is precious, as we have heard, because eternity depends on it. By using time well, we have the opportunity to escape eternal misery and to obtain eternal blessedness. But those who spend their time in wicked works not only neglect to use it to gain eternal happiness or to escape damnation, but spend it for the very opposite purpose: to increase their eternal misery, or to make their damnation heavier and more unbearable.
Some spend much time in reveling, in unclean talk and practices, and in keeping company with people given to vice. They corrupt and ensnare the minds of others, set bad examples and lead others into sin, ruining not only their own souls but the souls of others. Some spend much of their precious time disparaging and backbiting, talking against others. Some spend much time in strife, not only quarreling themselves but stirring up and fomenting strife and contention.
It would have been well for some people, and well for their neighbors, if they had never done anything at all, for then they would have done neither good nor harm. But as it is, they have done far more harm than all the good they have done or ever will do. For some people, it would have been better for the towns where they live to pay the cost of supporting them in doing nothing, if that would have kept them inactive.
Those who have spent much of their time in wickedness, if they ever reform and begin to spend their time differently, will find not only that they have wasted their past time, but that they have made work for their remaining time. They must spend it repenting and undoing what they have done.
When many people have done with time and look back on their past lives, how they will wish they had never had any time! The time they spend on earth will be worse for them than if they had spent the same amount of time in hell. For an eternity of more dreadful misery in hell will be the fruit of their time on earth, as they use it.
(3) This doctrine reproves those who spend their time only in worldly pursuits and neglect their souls. Such people lose their time, however diligent they may be in their worldly business, and even though they take care not to let any of their time pass without its turning, one way or another, to their worldly profit. Those who use time only for their benefit within time lose it, because time was not given for its own sake, but for the everlasting duration that follows it.
Some people’s time is taken up only with caring and laboring for the world. They are absorbed in asking what they shall eat, what they shall drink and what they shall wear. They plan how to lay up treasures for themselves on earth, how to make themselves rich or great in the world, or how to live in comfortable and pleasant circumstances while they are here. They busy their minds and spend their strength on these things only, and the stream of their affections runs toward them. Such people, therefore, lose their precious time.
Let those who have been guilty of spending their time this way consider it. You have spent a great part of your time and a great part of your strength getting a little of the world, and how little good it does you now that you have it! What happiness or satisfaction can you gain from it? Will it give you peace of conscience, or any rational quiet or comfort? How is your poor, needy, perishing soul any better for it? What better prospect does it give you of your approaching eternity? And what will all you have acquired be worth to you when time shall be no longer?
3. The third application is one of exhortation: use your time to the utmost. Consider what has been said about the preciousness of time: how much depends on it, how short and uncertain it is, and how impossible it will be to recover once it is gone. If you rightly grasp these things, you will guard your time more carefully than the finest gold. Every hour and moment will seem precious to you.
But besides the considerations already set before you in the doctrinal part, consider also the following things.
(1) Consider that you are accountable to God for your time. Time is a talent God has entrusted to us. He has set us our day, and not for nothing: our day was appointed for some work. Therefore He will doubtless call us to account at the day’s end. We must give Him an account of how we have used all our time. We are God’s servants. As a servant sent out to work must answer to the master for how that time is spent, so we must answer to God.
If people would rightly consider this and keep it in mind, would they not use their time differently than they do? Would you not behave differently if you reminded yourselves every morning that you must give God an account of how you will have spent that day? And if, at the start of every evening, you reminded yourselves that you must give God an account of how you will have spent that evening?
Christ has told us that “for every idle word which men speak, they shall give account in the day of judgement” (Matt 12:36). How rightly, then, may we conclude that we must give an account of all our idle, misspent time!
(2) Consider how much time you have already lost. Because you have lost so much, you have all the greater need to use diligently whatever time remains. You ought to mourn and grieve over your lost time, but that is not all you must do. You must apply yourselves all the more diligently to using the rest of your time well, so that you may redeem the time you have lost.
You who are well along in life, who have so far spent your time in vanities and worldly cares and have largely neglected the interests of your souls, may well be terrified and stunned when you think how much time you have lost and wasted. Because you have lost so much time, you have all the more need of diligence, for three reasons.
First, your opportunity is that much shorter. Your time, even at its full length, is short, as has already been shown. But take away all that you have already lost, and how much shorter it is! The part of your time you have already lost cannot be counted as part of your opportunity, for it has been nullified and destroyed. It will never exist again, and it is no better for you, indeed it is worse, than if it had never been.
Second, you have the same work to do that you had at first, and now under greater difficulties. So far you have done none of your work at all. It all remains to be done, and with far greater difficulties and opposition in your way than if you had set about it in good time. So the time in which to do your work has not only grown shorter; your work has grown greater.
You not only have the same work to do, but you have more work. For while you have been losing your time, you have not only shortened it, but have been making work for yourselves. Is this not a consideration well fitted to awaken you to take thorough care not to let things go on like this any longer, and to rouse you at once to apply yourselves to your work with all your might?
Third, the part of your time you have lost is the best of it. The first part of one’s time is the best part, that is, the first part after coming to the use of reason and becoming capable of doing one’s work. You who have lived in sin until past your youth have lost the best of your time.
So here are all these things to consider together. Your time as a whole is short, and there is none to spare. A great part of it is gone, so it has become much shorter. The part that is gone is the best. Yet all your work remains, and not only that, it now comes with greater difficulties than ever before. And the shorter your time is, the more work you have to do.
What will make you feel the need to use your remaining time diligently, if these things will not? Sometimes considerations like these have another effect. They discourage people and make them think that, since they have lost so much time, it is not worth trying to do anything now.
The devil makes fools of them. When they are young, he tells them there is time enough later, there is no need to hurry, and it will be better to seek salvation later on, and they believe him. Afterward, when their youth is past, he tells them that they have now lost so much of their time, and the best of it, that it is not worth trying to do anything, and now they believe him too.
So for them no time is a good time. To them, the time of youth is not a good time, for it is best suited to pleasure and merriment, and there will be time enough afterward. And when the later time comes, it is not a good time either. It will not do, because the best of their time is gone. In this way people are deluded and ruined.
But what madness it is for people to give way to discouragement and neglect their work because their time is short! How much more they need to wake out of sleep, rouse themselves thoroughly, be truly in earnest, even violent in their striving, so that, if possible, they may still obtain eternal life! Perhaps God may yet give them repentance leading to the acknowledgment of the truth, so that they may be saved.
Though it is late in the day, God still calls on you to rouse yourselves and apply yourselves to your work. In this great matter, will you not listen to His counsel rather than to the counsel of your mortal enemy?
(3) Consider how time is sometimes valued by those who have come near the end of time. What a sense of the preciousness of time poor sinners sometimes have on their deathbeds! Some have cried out, “Oh, a thousand worlds for an inch of time!” Then time truly seems precious to them.
Yet an inch of time then could do them no more good than it could before, when they were healthy, if only they had been equally inclined to use it well. In fact, it could not do them as much good. A person’s time on a deathbed is at a far greater disadvantage than time in health for the kind of use that will benefit the soul.
But the nearness of death makes people feel the inestimable worth of time. Perhaps, when they were healthy, they were as unaware of the value of time as you are, and as negligent of it. But how their thoughts have changed now! It is not because they are deceived that they think time so valuable, but because their eyes are opened. It is because you are deceived and blind that you do not think as they do.
(4) Consider what value we may conclude is set on time by those who are past the end of time. What do you suppose those who have lost every opportunity of obtaining eternal life, and have gone to hell, think of the preciousness of time? Though they were very lavish with their time while they lived and set no great value on it, how they have changed their judgment! How they would value the opportunity you have, if only it might be granted to them! What would they not give for one of your days under the means of grace!
So you too, sooner or later, will be convinced of the preciousness of time. But if you are not convinced until you are convinced in the way they are, it will be too late.
There are two ways of making people feel the preciousness of time. One is by showing them the reason for it: setting before them why time must be precious, and telling them how much depends on it, how short it is, how uncertain, and so on. The other is experience, in which people are convinced of the preciousness of time by finding out firsthand how much depends on using it well. The second is the more effective way, for it always convinces, if nothing else does.
But if people are not convinced by the first means, the second will do them no good. If the first is ineffective, the second, though certain, always comes too late. Experience never fails to open people’s eyes, even if they were never opened before. But if their eyes are first opened by experience, it does them no good at all. Let everyone, therefore, be persuaded to use their time to the utmost.
I will conclude by advising you to do three things in particular.
1. Use the present time without any delay. If you delay and put off using your time well, still more time will be lost, and it will show that you do not feel the preciousness of time. Do not talk of more convenient times later on. Use your time while you have it, following the example of the psalmist: “I made haste, and delayed not to keep thy commandments” (Ps 119:60).
2. Be especially careful to use well those parts of time that are most precious. Though all time is very precious, some parts of it are more precious than others. Holy time, in particular, is more precious than ordinary time, since it is a time of great advantage for our everlasting welfare. Above all, therefore, use your Sabbaths well, and especially the time of public worship, which is the most precious part of holy time.
Do not lose that time in sleep, or in carelessness, inattention and wandering thoughts. How senseless are those who waste not only their ordinary time but holy time, even the very time when they attend God’s holy ordinances!
Again, the time of youth is in many respects more precious than other time. So if you are now enjoying that time, take care to use it well. Do not let the precious days and years of youth slip away unused.
A time when God’s Spirit is striving with you is more precious than other time. That is the time when God is near, and we are directed in Isaiah 55:6: “To seek the Lord while he may be found, and to call upon him while he is near.” Such a time is above all an accepted time and a day of salvation: “I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in a day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor 6:2).
3. Make good use of your time of leisure from worldly business. Many people have a great deal of such time, and everyone has some. If only people are inclined to it, such time may be used to great advantage. A time when we are most free from cares for the body and from outward business is a happy opportunity for the soul.
So do not spend such times unprofitably, or in a way that will leave you unable to give God a good account of them. Do not waste them entirely in idle visits, or in useless diversions or amusements. Recreation should serve only as a help to our work. We should use just so much of it, and no more, as best fits mind and body for the work of our general calling as Christians and our particular callings in life.
You need to use every talent, advantage and opportunity to the utmost while time lasts. For it will soon be said of you, according to the oath of the angel we read of in Revelation 10:5-6: “And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon earth, lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven and the things that therein are, and the earth and the things that therein are, and the sea and the things which are therein, That there should be time no longer.”
