Time Is Life

We have twenty houses on the Bill Rice Ranch. These are the homes of the people who live here year-round and are the Bill Rice Ranch, who do the cooking, wrangling, counseling, and all the work that goes into having a place like the Bill Rice Ranch. The house I live in is not a new house and I love it. It is plenty big for us, but I have to tell you that though it was an average size home at one time, it is now way under the average. Today, houses are much larger. That is not innately or intrinsically wrong. I am simply making an observation that an average-size house when I was a child is now a very small house.

At the same time, an interesting juxtaposition is most of the churches that I was familiar with as a child would have been some of the larger churches in America of any denomination at the time. Today, most of those churches are gone or greatly diminished. In short, people’s houses are bigger but their churches, young groups, deaf ministries are smaller.

In the book of Haggai, the prophet is talking to God’s people. They had returned to their land after years in captivity in Babylon. They were rebuilding the temple, but they got stopped. In verse 2 God says to the prophet, “Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not come, the time that the LORD’s house should be built.” They were saying, “We need to build the Lord’s house. That is good, but now is just not the time.” Verse 3 says, “Then came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet, saying, Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste?” They didn’t have time to build God’s house, but they did have time to build their own houses. Their houses were beautiful, but God’s house was nonexistent.

It is a lot like today. Our houses are as good as they have ever been and it is not wrong to have a nice house, but the work of God seems to be diminished and we don’t seem to be needy. We don’t think we need God because we don’t need money. We are doing just fine. We sometimes talk about time being money, which is true, and they are somewhat interchangeable when it comes to projects, but time is more than money. Time is life. Verse 5 says, “Now therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways.” Today, consider not just the way you are spending your money, but the way you are spending your life. How do you spend life? Time is life.

First, the way I spend my time reveals my priorities. So many people are ruining their health to make money, ignoring time they could be spending with their kids just to have pleasure in their own lives. They are exchanging time for eternity. Last night my pastor preached on I Timothy 6, and we talked about verse 19, “Laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.” Eternal life is a life that is real. I think you should save money and be a wise steward, but if all you are doing is looking ahead to college or retirement, you are short-sighted because the Bible talks about laying up a good foundation against the time to come. He is not talking merely about time but eternity. Time is life. The way you spend your time reveals your priorities.

Second, the way you spend your time reveals your long game. To what end are you doing what you are doing? Oftentimes young people want a job so they can have a car. A job, money, and a car are not wrong. You have to have the wherewithal to feed yourself, but why does a fifteen-year-old have to have a job? It is so he can buy a car. Why? It is so he can drive to his job. Why? It is so he can have a car. Now he is forty and has a bigger car, a better job, and is living on easy street. It is the same thing except to scale. You have a job to have a car to what end? Eventually we are going to die. It is not wrong to have money, but why? What is your long game?

In verse 8 God contrasts what He takes pleasure in and what they were taking pleasure in. In verse 9, He contrasts His own house and the houses they were running to build and beautify, their own homes. God had brought these people back from captivity. God had chastened and love them and now He brought them back to their land, and the question was, “To what end?”

God has given you life to what purpose? He says in verse 6, “Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes.” Save money; be a wise steward. I Timothy 6 says that God has given us “richly all things to enjoy.”

I am thankful for the good things I can enjoy. I love nice cars, good food, clothes that fit well and look nice, but is that the only thing on which you are spending your time and therefore your money? Are you just building up security against medical, college, and retirement expenses? Do you have money? Do you have time? You may know how much money you have, but none of us know how much time we have. The Bible tells us to consider our ways and realize that our lives are just like a vapor. What is your life? Only time will tell. Time is life. It reveals your priorities and your long game, and the way we spend it is the way we are spending life.