Christopher Rush

Presented as a chapel message on Friday, May 20, 2011, culminating the theme of “redemption.”

Introduction

Forgive me if this perspective is redundant, but I thought that an appropriate focus for our final exploration of the topic of redemption this year is “redeeming the time.”  As we prepare to begin our summer break, which for some inexplicable reason for many of us portends to be even busier than the school year, a few final moments’ reflection on what it means to “redeem the time” are in order.  When one thinks of the phrase “redeeming the time,” perhaps what spring to mind immediately are the verses Ephesians 5:15-16: “Be very careful, then, how you live — not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil” in the NIV.  More archaic (in a good way) translations, such as The King James Version and the Darby Translation, phrase “making the most of every opportunity” as “redeeming the time.”  The parallel passage in another of Paul’s prison epistles, Colossians 4:5, phrases the notion “Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity.”  The contexts for the same thought are different, though: in Ephesians, we are to redeem the time in the way we live the entirety of our lives because the days are evil.  In Colossians, Paul enjoins us to redeem the time kairotically when we interact with non-Christians, making sure those opportunities to represent Christ well and accurately are not wasted.  These are certainly great verses on the importance of redeeming the time, but since I have spoken of them (at least Ephesians 5) at length in other settings this year, my focus this morning is on what may be considered a less-obvious passage that provides insight on both the importance of redeeming the time and some ways to go about doing it.  We all, by now, surely believe in the importance of redeeming the time, living our lives wisely and well, and surely we believe that the days are evil, despite the preponderance of advertisements to the contrary.  The question, then, is how do we do it?  Let us turn to Psalms 90 and 91 to find out.  I will read the NASB, to which you may compare your NIV translation.

Psalm 90

A Prayer of Moses, the man of God.

¹Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations.  ²Before the mountains were born or You gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.  ³You turn man back into dust and say, “Return, O children of men.” ⁴For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it passes by, or as a watch in the night.  ⁵You have swept them away like a flood, they fall asleep; in the morning they are like grass which sprouts anew.  ⁶In the morning it flourishes and sprouts anew; toward evening it fades and withers away.  ⁷For we have been consumed by Your anger and by Your wrath we have been dismayed.  ⁸You have placed our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your presence.  ⁹For all our days have declined in Your fury; we have finished our years like a sigh.  ¹⁰As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, or if due to strength, eighty years, yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; for soon it is gone and we fly away.  ¹¹Who understands the power of Your anger and Your fury, according to the fear that is due You?  ¹²So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom.

¹³Do return, O LORD; how long will it be?  And be sorry for Your servants.  ¹⁴O satisfy us in the morning with Your lovingkindness, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.  ¹⁵Make us glad according to the days You have afflicted us, and the years we have seen evil.  ¹⁶Let Your work appear to Your servants and Your majesty to their children.  ¹⁷Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us; and confirm for us the work of our hands; yes, confirm the work of our hands.

Psalm 91

¹He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.  ²I will say to the LORD, “My refuge and my fortress, My God, in whom I trust!”  ³For it is He who delivers you from the snare of the trapper and from the deadly pestilence.  ⁴He will cover you with His pinions, and under His wings you may seek refuge; His faithfulness is a shield and bulwark.  ⁵You will not be afraid of the terror by night, or of the arrow that flies by day; ⁶of the pestilence that stalks in darkness, or of the destruction that lays waste at noon.  ⁷A thousand may fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not approach you.  ⁸You will only look on with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked.  ⁹For you have made the LORD, my refuge, even the Most High, your dwelling place.  ¹⁰No evil will befall you, nor will any plague come near your tent.  ¹¹For He will give His angels charge concerning you, to guard you in all your ways.  ¹²They will bear you up in their hands, that you do not strike your foot against a stone.  ¹³You will tread upon the lion and cobra, the young lion and the serpent you will trample down.  ¹⁴“Because he has loved Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him securely on high, because he has known My name.  ¹⁵“He will call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him.  ¹⁶“With a long life I will satisfy him and let him see My salvation.”

It is argued in certain Talmudic circles that since no superscription occurs before Psalm 91, the authorship is tacitly understood to belong to the most recently-named author.  If this were true, and certainly the content of both psalms are similar enough not to discredit such speculation, we may very well have a two-part meditation by Moses on God, man, the connection between the two, and how to make that connection meaningful and lasting.

I wish to focus today on two key thoughts from this passage as aspects of “redeeming the time”: the aspect of “confirming the work of our hands” from Psalm 90:17, and the aspect of “presenting to God a heart of wisdom” from Psalm 90:12, with verses from Psalm 91 as corroborations and elaborations of these main ideas.  Hopefully by the time this message is over, you will notice these two facets cover the two important aspects of life: doing and being.

The Work of Our Hands

I am not implying that Moses was wrong when he discussed wisdom before action; only that as gatekeeper of the Realms of Gold, I understand that being (genuine leisure) is ultimately superior to doing — but since faith without works is dead, doing is an integral aspect of the Christian life that should not be ignored.  Thus, what does it mean to have the Lord “confirm the works of our hands,” and how can we “redeem the time” through that?

Other translations indicate that “confirm” in verse 17 can also mean “give permanence to.”  If God is going to give permanence to the work of our hands, of course even that “permanence” will have its limits — all the great works of art, the magnificent architecture, the grandeur of all sunsets will one day come to a cataclysmic end when the heavens and earth are wiped away and made new.  So the “permanence” is naturally of a limited fashion.  Since you are an intelligent audience, we can skip right to the sorts of work upon which God would indeed be glad to shine His favor and give permanence to: Bible study, evangelism, discipling, the works of Acts 2:42 (heeding the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, prayer).  Certainly those are the overt, important mildly-flannel-board related works of our hands.  Any life committed to those would certainly receive the favor of the Lord.  That sort of behavior is not exhaustive, of course: the lists of spiritual gifts throughout the New Testament also model behavior that God would confirm: teaching, administration, faith, healing, helps, mercy, giving, service, celibacy, and others.  These get down to the day-to-day activities and lifestyles outside and around corporate church life.

What about going to a ball game, playing the piano, reading graphic novels, and playing video games?  Are those “non-spiritual” activities things upon which God could shine His favor, works of our hands He would confirm?  I’m not sure about going to a ball game — ice hockey, certainly — but definitely the rest of them are meaningful actions with tangible, permanent results.  The unifying element of the activities already mentioned is not that they are “super spiritual,” but that they reflect the heart of wisdom Moses urged in verse 12.  To genuinely have a heart of wisdom, one must pursue knowing God and reality accurately and fully.  The behaviors in which we engage demonstrate that ever-growing conception of and pursuit of God and His reality.  Playing musical instruments, composing works of literature, painting, sculpture, papier-mâché, reading great works of literature, including the better comic books and graphic novels, are not less real or less meaningful than going to youth group (in many cases, they might even be more important).  Can time spent playing video games be truly considered “redeemed” in the sense we are discussing? redeemed for the glory of God and the light of His favor?  Of course!  If they are the better games, that is – the kinds of games that instruct us, challenge us, encourage us to think through the important philosophical questions of life: what is real, what is good, what is evil, who is man, what is his purpose?  Playing Final Fantasy VI or ChronoTrigger (or others of that ilk) can be just as meaningful to your life as reading a great novel by Dostoyevsky.  Some may disagree, but they are wrong.  Trust me; I’m a published author.  And I play video games and read comic books and watch fine, quality television series.  So I know.

If everything we do we do for the glory of God, whether it’s building bridges in Uganda or inviting our unsaved neighbor over for some philosophical video game play and discussion (accompanied by appropriate tasty snacks), we are redeeming the time God has given us.  Stop thinking of reality as a compartmentalized series of “secular” and “sacred” subfunctions.  All created reality is an unnecessary demonstration of God’s love and beauty — stop taking it too seriously in the wrong way.  Underlying all this, as mentioned moments ago, is the importance of the heart of wisdom, to which we now turn.

The Wisdom of Our Hearts

According to Moses, the primary reason why need to redeem the time, or “number our days,” is that we may present to God a heart of wisdom.  Of course when we are judged at the end time we will be judged according to our deeds — the Bible makes that clear enough (it’s certainly not just whether or not you “believe in Jesus”).  The thing so many Christians seem to forget, though, is that without the proper heart of wisdom, no good deeds can ever be done.  In order for the work of our hands to be made permanent by God, they must be performed by a heart of wisdom.  If we don’t first secure proper standing with God, a right understanding of who God is and who we are, then what we want and why we are here, the bridges we build and the games we play will be for naught.  Psalms 90 and 91 give us a great picture of Who God is and how grasping that enables us to have a heart of wisdom.

Some translations say “Lord, You have been our dwelling place.”  A more literal term for “dwelling place,” though, is “hiding place” or “place of refuge.”  God is not just where we live, but where we escape from the not-of-God things of reality.  God gave birth to the world, the mountains, and man, and long before those happened, God is.  God’s sense of time is nothing like ours; the rise and fall of human epochs and civilizations is like the grass sprouting in a morning and fading away at dusk.  He knows all the actions and thoughts that have occurred, are occurring, and will occur — and a fair percentage of them rile His anger justly.  Yet He is the same God whose lovingkindness satisfies us (or should) freshly every morning, to which we respond with songs of joy and gladness.  While He tarries for our benefit, He makes us glad — despite the days of affliction and years of evil.  He is our refuge and fortress, the God in whom we trust — a God so powerful that when we abide in Him we are secure even in His shadow.  He is the God who delivers us from traps and pestilence, night and day.

Metaphorically, He is an encovering eagle, a shield, and a bulwark.  When you are secure behind His fortification, you see reality for what it is: you see the nature and purpose of evil, you see the recompense of the wicked.  When you know who God truly is, you understand the power of His anger and fury, and you give the reverential fear due to Him.  When you know who God is, when you have made Him your refuge and dwelling place (not retirement plans and post-graduate degrees), you understand the frailty and ephemerality of humanity.  Then, regardless of what evil and troubles will befall you (for they will indeed befall you), you will be able to accurately contextually that no evil will ultimately befall you — for you are under the protection of the angelic realm as well, empowering you to live the life you are called to live, treading upon the lions and serpents of post-Modernity and pragmatism.  When you know God accurately, you know that true security comes from Him and Him alone — that the love you have for Him must be so intense and consuming that the love you have for your family and friends looks like hate in comparison.  When you know God, you will be truly satisfied in Him, the source of your salvation and honor.

When you know God and understand His reality accurately (including who you are and your place in His cosmic design), then and only then will you be able to present to Him a heart of wisdom: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; knowing God is the end of wisdom.  Then, and only then, will the favor of the Lord our God be upon you, and then the work of your hands will be given permanence.

There’s no need to ask God to move in a new way — we come to know Him the way people have always come to know Him: meditating on the book of His word and the book of His work.  Through active participation in the Great Conversation from Thales to Sophocles, Socrates to Copernicus, Wittgenstein to Vonnegut, and everyone in between.  By knowing who you are, what you want, and why you are here.  By acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God.  By rescuing Peach from Bowser and Zelda from Ganondorf.  By watching Londo and G’Kar forever at each other’s throats, Jack Shepherd finally figure out his purpose, and Adama realize why humanity is worth saving after all.

This is how you present to God a heart of wisdom so the work of your hands will be given permanence.  This is how you redeem the time.