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  PURITY AND THE USE OF YOUR TIME (VIDEO)
  by James Jennings
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Summary: This sermon emphasizes the importance of using time wisely and
avoiding the misuse of time that can lead to falling into sin. It
highlights the need for self-discipline, self-control, and a focus on
seeking God first in all things to prevent falling into temptation. The
speaker draws examples from the Bible, such as David's fall into
adultery due to the misuse of his time, to illustrate the consequences
of not prioritizing God in our daily lives.

Topics: "Time Management", "Prioritizing God"
Scripture References: Proverbs 26:14, Ephesians 5:15, Psalms 90:12, 1 Corinthians 9:27, Matthew 25:23, Psalms 39:4, Hebrews 3:13, Ecclesiastes 3:1, 1 Corinthians 10:11, James 4:17

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon emphasizes the importance of using time wisely and avoiding
the misuse of time that can lead to falling into sin. It highlights the
need for self-discipline, self-control, and a focus on seeking God first
in all things to prevent falling into temptation. The speaker draws
examples from the Bible, such as David's fall into adultery due to the
misuse of his time, to illustrate the consequences of not prioritizing
God in our daily lives.

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CONTENT
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So, I was thinking about 2017. Different things that happened in 2017.
And one of the things that grieves me, that was sad looking back on
2017, was the amount of cases that I had personally of people in the
church coming to me and mentioning their falls into sexual sin.

It happened multiple times last year. At times, confessions, maybe they
look like this. Someone mentioned to me, I was trying to analyze what
happened.

What's going on, brother? And they said, well, I was up really late.
Randomly browsing stuff on YouTube. I saw related video.

Thumbnails that tempted me. I clicked on those. And the snowball just
started rushing, getting bigger and bigger as it rolled down the hill.

And eventually, the lust of the eyes, which is adultery according to
Jesus, ended up in more outward sin. Or, some would say this. They'd
say, ah, brother, I look back.

I was doing this, but I should have been doing this. Someone says, I was
here, but I should have been there. I was at the wrong place.

I put myself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Different answers
like that. But as I look back on 2017, that's one of the things that
grieves me.

And it grieves me because it doesn't have to be the case. It doesn't
have to be the case. When I was first converted, I didn't hear
triumphant Christianity where I came from.

I remember going to my youth leader and mentioning battles in these
areas, and he basically said, well, that's fine. Paul the Apostle had
the same thing. He couldn't do the good he wanted to do.

It's no big deal. He said there's even elders in this church. They keep
falling into this stuff.

Basically, comfort. You're okay. When you go to the Bible, that's not
what you find.

No, you don't find perfection, but you find a very clear change of
direction that the power of God is working in the Christian. You find
that no temptation is overtaking you. It is not common to man.

But God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your
ability. But with temptation, He'll also give a way of escape. For every
fall that someone in this church had into any sin last year, there was a
way of escape.

With every fall, there's a way of escape that was refused, that was not
taken, that was ignored. I was thinking about Ephesians 5. Tim's going
to get there after a little while longer. But in Ephesians 5, it says
impurity, sexual immorality.

It says that these things should not be what? They should not be named
among us. They shouldn't be named. So one reason to be grieved about the
number of confessions in sexual sin in the last year is it shouldn't be
named among us.

So we should be grieved when something's named among us that should not
be the case and does not need to be the case because God's grace and
power is such that you just don't have to fall into those things. So
this morning, I have an exhortation that focuses in on one of the main
factors behind those who have fallen. One, there's different factors.

There's different ways you can look at it, and they can all be right,
but I want to look at one thing. Turn to 2 Samuel 10. 2 Samuel 10.

Chapter 10. Verse 18, And the Syrians fled from Israel. Verse 18, And
David killed of the Syrians the men of 700 chariots and 40,000 horsemen,
and wounded Shobak the commander of their army, so that he died there.

And when all the kings who were servants of Hadiezer saw that they had
been defeated by Israel, they made peace with Israel and became subject
to them. So here a victory is. So the Syrians were afraid to save the
Ammonites anymore.

So some of the enemies are stepping back. They realize they're not going
to win. Chapter 11, In the spring of the year, so time has went on.

You've got to finish the job that was started. In the spring of the
year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his
servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and
besieged Rabbah.

But David remained at Jerusalem. It happened late one afternoon when
David arose from his couch, was walking on the roof of the king's house,
that he saw from the roof a woman bathing. And the woman was very
beautiful.

And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, is not this
Bathsheba, the daughter of Elion, the wife of Uriah the Hittite? So
David sent messengers and took her. And she came to him, and he lay with
her.

Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanliness. Then she
returned to her house, and the woman conceived. And she sent and told
David, I am pregnant.

And it goes on. She got pregnant. David had to try to cover it up.

He had Uriah killed by the Ammonites, putting him too close to the wall.
And eventually, the Lord in His kindness has Nathan the prophet come and
rebuke David and say, Thou art the man. Now in this passage, we see a
great man of God.

Not a young convert. A great man of God falling into lust of the heart,
which is adultery, and then into physical adultery, and then he falls
into trying to cover it up and murder. This whole chain of events
happens.

And this is given for our example. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 10,
referring to what happened with the Israelites, but we could apply it
here. These things took place as examples for us that we might not
desire evil as they did.

They were written down for our instruction on whom the end of the ages
has come. Therefore, let anyone who thinks he stands take heed lest he
fall. Let anyone who thinks what happened to David could never happen to
me take heed lest he fall flat on his face like David did.

Why did David fall? There's many answers to that. Why do I say there's
many? Depends on how deep you think about the passage. Someone could say
David fell because unlike Joseph did, David didn't flee when he saw
Bathsheba.

Sure, I could see that in the text. He looked at her. He should have
fled right there.

He should have not let his mind be taken captive by those thoughts. But
I think we need to think deeper than that. And what I'm going to put
forward, I realize you could think deeper than this.

But this is what I'm putting forward this morning. One way to look at
David's fall into adultery is the misuse of his time. The misuse of his
time.

And as I look back on all these people in 2017 who came to me and said
they fell into sexual sin, you know one thing that is for certain about
all of those people? When you step back and look at it, they misused
their time. At the time they should have been doing this, just like
David, they remained. And then late one afternoon, they fell into deeper
sin than before.

So, the misuse of your time. If David had went with the army, the sin he
fell into would have been prevented. Imagine David at war falling into
adultery.

It wouldn't have happened. If he would have been at war, his fall
wouldn't have happened. Matthew Henry said, had he been now at his post
at the head of his forces, he would have been out of the way of this
temptation.

When we are out of the way of our duty, we are in the way of temptation.
So by misusing his time, not being at war where he should, by remaining
at the time when kings go to war, David put himself in a place where
there was perfect provision to fall into sin in the midst of all the
ease and the Zion that he had at that moment. Why war at that season?
Why go to war at that season? They say that the rains were over during
the spring and there was grass in the fields and fruit on the trees and
the corn was ripe, and so food for horses and men was abundant.

So it was known as a custom. This is when we go to war. This is when we
take our armies out there and go to war.

David remains. He doesn't go to war. Ecclesiastes 3 says there's a time
for everything.

A time for war. A time for peace. At this moment, for David, it was a
time for war, but he remained.

He remained. Think of sin you've fallen into just by doing that one
thing. Remaining.

Remaining in a spot you should not be. Remaining in a situation that you
need to get out of. And you don't.

Obviously, laying on the couch in itself is not sinful. But what was
sinful was David's timing of laying on the couch. A battle was waging.

The kings go to war, and David's laying on a couch. Nothing sinful about
laying on a couch. But if you're supposed to be at battle and you're
laying on a couch, it's the wrong time.

Everything would have been different. It could be safe to say if he was
out at war. Some of you young people, you know what? Everything would be
different.

If you would use self-control, get to bed at a decent hour, not waste
your time away on the evening on a computer, on YouTube, with all manner
of related thumbnail videos that have inappropriate stuff, in a
vulnerable place, tired, just flooding in all this entertainment, you'd
be a lot better off going to bed, waking up early, and setting your face
to seek God. Like Christ arose while it was still dark. He went to a
desolate place and prayed.

John Trapp says that while Joab was busy laying seeds to Rabbah, Satan
was busy laying seeds to David. And Satan prevailed quicker on David
than Joab did on the walls of Rabbah. I'll tell you, you put yourself in
a place where you're misusing your time, Satan is going to wage war at
you at that moment.

He sees they're in a vulnerable spot. They're misusing their time.
They're disobeying and not being where they should be.

Satan is going to send an all-out attack on you. He wants you to fall.
Now what led King David to this bad use of time? I can speculate.

We saw in chapter 10, he just had a victory. The Syrians were no longer
going to support the Ammonites as we saw in v. 19 of chapter 10. So
maybe David in his pride, he thought, look, we just had a big victory,
and now the Syrians, they're afraid to save the Ammonites anymore, so
this next battle, it's a give-in.

I don't have to go. I can stay back now because we just had a big
battle. This one's going to be an easy one.

I don't need to take this serious. This one day, this one battle, I can
step back. It's no biggie.

Maybe that's what David thought. He thought he didn't have to be there.
Remember, a lot can happen in one day, right? A lot can happen in one
day.

Hebrews 3, it says, "...exhort one another every day as long as it's
called today, that none of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin."
Look, if I don't get truth in my innermost being today, my heart can
harden just like that. And one day, you can become hardened, and the
next day, you become deluded and you're trying to murder Uriah. And this
is no new convert falling here.

He who conquered Goliath by the power of God was now being conquered by
the lust of the flesh. What a thing. We don't want to let our guard
down.

Instead of being in the heat of the battle and cast upon God for
strength, David was in the spring weather on the roof laying around. It
says there, it happened late one afternoon. Isn't David the man who
prayed morning, evening, and night? Doesn't it say that in the Psalms?
It doesn't sound like David was praying.

Picture him at war and the dangers of possible death. You're praying
there. But here he is.

His guard is down. He's remained. He's misusing his time.

He's disobeying. He's not doing what the Lord has called him to do. And
James 4.17 says, if I know the right thing to do and I fail to do it for
Me, it is sin.

David knew the right thing to do. You go to war. He's already sinning by
not going to war.

And now he's put himself in this vulnerable spot. He's ignored self-
discipline and self-control at this point in his life. Now on the flip
side, you think about self-discipline.

Think about Uriah. Look at 2 Samuel 11. Verse 8. Here David is throwing
off all self-restraint and self-control.

Look at Uriah. David said to Uriah, this is Bathsheba's husband, he just
called him back from war. So he was out on the battlefield.

He called him back from war and he says, go down to your house and wash
your feet. Uriah went out of the king's house. And there followed him a
present that was meat from the king.

But Uriah slept at the door of the king's house with all the servants of
his lord. And he did not go down to his house. When they told David,
Uriah did not go down to his house.

David said to Uriah, have you not come from a journey? Why did you not
go down to your house? Uriah said to David, the ark and Israel and Judah
dwell in Booth's, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are
camping in the open field. Shall I then go to my house to eat and drink
and lie with my wife? As you live and as your soul lives, I will not do
this thing. And David said to Uriah, remain here today also, and
tomorrow I will send you back.

Look at the self-discipline and self-control of Uriah. David, he's not
going to war when he should. Here Uriah is being tempted by David to
take the easy way, but he knows the soldiers are out there and he thinks
how can I do that? This is a season not of peace, but of war.

It's not time for me to be going to my wife. Thou come at another time.
I'm in the middle of a battle.

I'm not going to soften the flesh up. You could say it was Uriah's
perspective. Very commendable what he did here.

And David eventually, he tried to get Uriah drunk to get him to go and
sleep with his wife in order to make it look like she got pregnant by
him, but even that, Uriah did not give in to that. And then David sends
Uriah back to war. And think about it, David sent the letter talking
about Uriah getting killed.

He sent it in the very hands of Uriah. And Uriah was such a noble man,
David knew the guy's not going to open the letter. He has integrity.

You see, this was David though at some point. David's out of character
here. He's disobeyed a clear custom, a clear order at this time when the
kings go to war.

That's what you did at that point. And David's not doing that. Whether
it's pride, probably is.

He's staying back on his couch, now an adulterer and soon to be a
murderer. You know what? Every misuse of our time is rooted in
selfishness in some way or another. If you look back at every time you
misuse your time in a way that did not honor and glorify God,
selfishness was involved.

Selfishness causes you to be distracted constantly, but death to self.
When you die to self, you die to distractions. You focus on the mission.

You think about Paul in Titus 2.6. He says, likewise, I urge the younger
men to do what? Exercise self-control. Have control over appetites, over
passions. The other day, my wife was reading Rosalind Goforth's book
called Climbing.

And on page 34, this missionary to China, she recorded this lesson they
learned and it's in regards to self-control and discipline. Another
important lesson was learned. This from the dear twin sisters.

At that time, home mail came only once a month. So they get mail once a
month in China at this point. One morning as we were studying with our
language teacher, an extra bulky foreign mail arrived.

At once, my husband dismissed the teacher as it was nearly 11 o'clock,
and we gave ourselves up to the enjoyment of at least skimming through
our letters. So your emails come in at 11, some long-awaited email. Bye,
teacher.

I'm going to read these emails. Right at this moment. She says, then I
remembered the twins.

The twin girls who were co-laboring. They had been anxious about their
beloved mother who was ill in America. I went over to their room to
inquire.

I found them both studying hard with their language teacher. Expressing
my surprise as I pointed to the great heap of mail waiting on a side
table, one of them looked up and said hastily, yes, yes, we know the
letters arrived, but duty first. It's study till 12 o'clock.

I turned and closed the door softly behind me, but a lesson had been
learned. When I told my husband, he exclaimed, well, I'm humbled, but we
have learned our lesson. These young women probably never knew what an
important lesson they had taught us through their example in putting
first things first.

Just a small example of self-control. So my wife is reading that to me a
couple of days ago. And I'm thinking, am I having deja vu? I've read
that exact same thing somewhere else.

So I went and found it. D.E. Host. Page 44 of his biography.

He was the one who took over China Inland Mission after Hudson Taylor.
Listen to this. When he was first in China, he says this, males were few
and far between.

And sometimes weeks passed without any arriving. One day after such a
period, a male arrived. And the author says, Host's first impulse was of
course to sit down and read his letters.

He was arrested by the thought that however, had he still been in the
army, he would not thus have allowed the personal to take first place.
Why should he be more lax in serving as a missionary? Resolutely putting
away his letters until lunchtime, he resumed his study. Now look, that
is two examples of different people who God called and used mightily in
the missions field.

We'd be foolish to step back and say, oh, they're taking it too serious.
No, that's just self-control and discipline. They're knowing this is a
time to be at war.

I won't be found here reading my letters when I should be waging war.
And they recognize there's a time to read the letters, but let me wait
until then. That's the type of caliber of missionaries that get sent
out.

People who have self-control and discipline. D.E. Host on Self-
Discipline, page 172, said this, A sensitive conscience about the use of
time needs to be maintained. The fact that a missionary is not
immediately responsible to some superior as to the use of his time
carries with it a serious temptation to looseness in this matter.

He says on page 187, It is not possible, is it not possible that by a
thoughtful readjustment, the use of our time, some, if not all of us,
may be able to accomplish more for God than ever before. You see, these
people had a heart, I'm seeking first the Kingdom of God and His
righteousness. I'm putting first things first.

Yes, there's a time for everything, but Lord, I want to do Your will. I
want to put You first. And as they're busy doing that, consuming their
lives, setting their mind on things above, living for the Lord, not for
self, it's very difficult to go to fall into sexual sin when that's
what's controlling your life at that moment.

Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9, I discipline my body. I keep it under
control, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be
disqualified. He said to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2 as Kevin quoted to us on
Wednesday night with the song we sang, no soldier gets entangled in
civilian pursuits since his aim is to please the One who enlisted him.

When David was boldly going out before Goliath, he was gripped with an
aim to please the Lord and not dishonor the Lord. Fast forward in his
life, he has a victory. The very next chapter, they should be going to
war.

He remains. Brethren, we don't want to lose that hot love for Jesus
Christ because at the root of it, that's what you need. When the love of
Christ controls you, you're going to make right decisions with your
time.

What we need is not more time management, though that can be helpful.
What we need is a greater love for Christ and what He has done. Paul
said, for the love of Christ controls me.

Why? Because I made a simple conclusion that Christ died for me.
Therefore, I have died to myself and I no longer live for myself. But I
live for Christ who for my sake died and was raised again.

How you use your time factors into how close you are to Christ. How
close to Christ you are factors into your purity. And if you're near to
the Lord as Joseph was, you will flee when Potiphar's wife comes
tempting you.

Think about the value of time. It's something we don't want to waste.
Psalm 90.12, he says, teach us to number our days that we may get a
heart of wisdom.

Psalm 39.4, O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my
days. Let me know how fleeting I am. Obviously, they're asking and
pleading with that before God because what happens to us is we forget
how fleeting we are.

We forget. He says, teach us to number our days. We need to learn more
to number our days, to actually number them.

And realize, I don't know how long I have to live. Someone wrote this.
Imagine there is a bank that credits your account each morning with
$86,400.

It carries over no balance from day to day. Every evening deletes
whatever part of the balance you failed to use during the day. What
would you do? You would draw out every cent, of course.

Each of us has such a bank. Its name is time. Every morning, it credits
you with 86,400 seconds.

Every night, it writes off as lost whatever of this time you have failed
to invest to good purpose. It carries over no balance. It allows no
overdraft.

Each day, it opens a new account for you. Each night, it burns the
remains of the day. If you fail to use the day's deposits, the loss is
yours.

There's no going back. This person went on to say, to realize the value
of one year, ask a student who failed a grade. To realize the value of
one month, ask a mother who gave birth to a premature baby.

To realize the value of one minute, ask a person who missed the train.
To realize the value of one second, ask a person who just avoided an
accident. And to realize the value of one millisecond, ask the person
who won a silver medal in the Olympics.

And I would add to that, to ask the value and importance of going to war
when you should instead of lazily remaining around on the castle walls,
on the walls of the palace. Look at 2 Samuel 11 at King David. I'm sure,
looking back, wow, he would have went to war.

But he remained. He knew the right thing to do. He failed to do it.

He misused his time. Time is not stopping. It can't be saved, reversed.

It's passing away. When you think about it, every sin we've committed
has happened in the space of time. And something led to it.

How was I using my time leading to that? Leading to that. You know, we
don't have time to kill. Steve Lawson said this.

He says, I remember one man coming by my office while I was early in my
pastorate. He came by and he wanted to visit. And he came.

He came to my office, sat down, and I said, how can I help you? And he
said, nothing really. I just want to kill some time. I just wanted to
kill some time.

I think there are a lot of people who go through life that way. They're
just time killers. And it would be nice if they would just kill their
own time.

But they want to kill other people's time. And you're taking away from
other people their maximum opportunity to glorify God, to be productive
in the pursuit of what God has laid out in His will. Look, you know
what? There are a million ways to kill time on the Internet.

There are a million ways to kill time laying in bed for an extra hour
with your phone out. Then you get to bed later. Then you don't wake up
earlier.

Then the day starts and you've not really been able to seek the face of
God. And then before you know it, you're vulnerable in positions at
work. How you use your time deals directly with how close to Christ you
are.

And with how close to Christ you are and how intimately He's walking
near you, it's very difficult to sin. If you're pouring your time into,
Lord, more love for Thee, O Christ. Lord, I want to put first things
first.

I want to prove what's excellent. And you're abiding in Christ. You're
not going to click on that filth on the Internet.

You're going to do what Joseph did and flee. Sometimes we misuse our
time. One, as we saw, maybe David's apparent pride in all the victories
he had.

He felt like he could sit this one battle out and not join the army.
Two, some of it's the opposite. You don't go to war out of fear.

You're living your life in fear, not doing what you should do. Instead,
you should go in faith and trust God. In Matthew 25, Jesus rebuked the
servant who hid the talent in the ground and He called the man a wicked
and slothful servant.

He misused his time based on fear. Another way people waste time,
anxiety. They sit around in fear and unbelief and they're anxious,
thinking about the what-ifs rather than believe in God and going and
obeying Him.

Another way people waste time, hastiness, leads to the misuse of time.
They're constantly doing things in a rushed manner, not submitting it to
God, not asking of the Lord and acknowledging Him in all of their ways.
Another way people waste time, I was telling my wife, I thought one way
someone could waste time after the sermon is they could sit around
wrongly condemned by my message.

So don't do that. Don't sit around wrongly condemned. Remember, in part,
I'm aiming at those who have a lack of self-control that's evident
through the patterns and sin in their life.

Look, if you step back and look at this last month and you say to me,
you know what, James? There are things I have thought in my mind more
than some one second. I've meditated on lustful thoughts and committed
adultery. I have looked at things.

I mean, any sin, not just lust. You should look at your life and say,
how am I using my time? Just like the one person who said, I was up late
on YouTube and saw all these thumbnails. What a horrible use of your
time.

It would have been different if you were up at 1 a.m. that night
counseling someone about their soul. The use of our time. Self-pity is a
big time waster.

We waste time feeling sorry about ourselves. That's a sin. Self-pity is
sinful.

J.O. Frazier, he went through all these trials in China. I've been
reading his biography this last week. He said this, I have given way to
discouragement, dark discouragement, far too much in the past.

Now I know, rather better and thoroughly, agree with the assertion, all
discouragement is of the devil. Discouragement is to be resisted just
like sin. To give way to one is just as bad and weakens us as much as to
give way to the other.

Notice this point? If you give in to sin, it has the same effect as
giving in to discouragement. Both end up you wasting your time and
believing lies about the Lord and grieving the Lord. So some
encouragements to keep you from being wrongly condemned.

Jesus was perfect in the use of His time. When did He start full-time
ministry? Thirty years of age, it says in Luke 3.23. This implies Jesus
worked and spent much time with His Father in construction, yet this was
not a waste of time. George Whitefield said, it is a great mistake that
some run into to suppose that religion consistent only in saying our
prayers.

I think He only will adorn the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in all
things who is careful to perform all civil offices of life with a single
eye to God's glory. George Whitefield's right. The way to not misuse
your time at work is to obey your earthly masters as unto Christ.

The way to misuse your time at work is on your boss's hour to be reading
Bible verses when you should actually be working and you have to hide
your phone when he comes in. That's not spiritual. Are you married? Paul
says, those who are married will have worldly troubles.

It's not a waste of time to deal with the worldly troubles that come
along with marriage and children. It's actually using your time
properly. Do you desire productivity? I desire productivity.

Productivity though, it might look like me sitting and praying and doing
the one thing necessary like Mary instead of being anxious and troubled
about the many things like Martha. Do you need a nap? Jesus said in Mark
6.31, He told the disciples, come away by yourselves to a desolate place
and rest a while. He wanted them to go rest a while.

Now when you look at the passage, if we're honest with it, they didn't
get to rest. They got to the desolate place. And the hour was late.

And the disciples were saying, send them away. And Jesus said, no, you
give them something to eat. So Jesus says, let's go rest.

And then they don't even get to rest at that moment. But Christ wasn't
joking around. He did have a heart for the disciples to rest a while.

And no doubt they had opportunities to rest. The use of your time. You
think about women in the church.

A young woman came to Ravenhill's wife and asked her, do you pray and
read as much as your husband? He prayed like eight hours a day. And
Ravenhill's wife answered her and said, oh, honey, no, no. Somebody has
to take care of the house and get food on the table.

But how does one do so much in so little time? Discipline. Make
decisions in view of eternity. Make decisions that improve your soul
rather than gratify the flesh.

Make a decision that, Lord, I want to be pleasing to You and make the
best use of my time because the days are evil and time is passing away.
My life is a vapor. I don't know if I'll live for tomorrow.

I don't know what hour my Master will return. We've all felt it. Maybe
we all have.

Maybe we all haven't. But I felt Proverbs 26, 14, as the door turns on
its hinges, so does a sluggard on his bed. For there have been days,
again, it's okay to sleep in.

That's between you and the Lord. But there are days I'm turning that
alarm off, getting back in bed, and by the end of that day, I look back
with regret. And I would have given anything to beat my flesh into
submission and getting out of bed and had time to really hammer some
truth into my mind, even if it was just 10 minutes before the kids are
up running around making all sorts of noise in the house.

Mueller, like George Whitefield, rose at 4 a.m. And part of what led to
that, Mueller said of this in his biography, page 163 by A.T. Pearson,
referring to the sacrifices in Leviticus, Mueller said, is the refuse of
the animals was never offered up on the altar, but only the best parts
and the fat. So the choices of our time and strength, the best parts of
our day, should be especially given to the Lord in worship and
communion. Mueller determined that he would no longer spend his best
hours in bed.

Henceforth, he allowed himself but seven hours sleep and gave up his
after-dinner rest. This resumption of early rising secured long seasons
of uninterrupted interviews with God in prayer and meditation on the
Scriptures before breakfast and the various inevitable interruptions
that follow. Now, I'm not saying we all need to wake up at 4 a.m., but
you know what? When you look at Whitefield and you look at Mueller, you
just can't be challenged by their lives.

The discipline. The heart to serve Christ. Steve Lawson said of Jonathan
Edwards, Therefore, this time is precious, and it is invaluable, and it
is like liquid gold, and I cannot waste it, and I cannot squander one
moment of time, because it is in the proper and most efficient use of my
time that I will glorify God.

If I use my time most wisely, I can most glorify God with what is put in
front of me. So he said, Edwards said, I have no time to lose. He would
argue that riches can be lost and then later regained, but not time.

Once time is forfeited and lost, it can never be replaced. The use of
our time. Everything we do takes place in time and eternity.

It's not stopping. Think of the decisions we make. Part of my point in
these things I'm sharing is the people from 2017 who came to me, and
they said that they had fallen into different forms of sexual sin or any
sin.

When you look at their life, there was an undisciplined lack of self-
control in the use of their time. And that lack of discipline in the use
of their time led to a lack of intimacy with Christ. And that lack of
intimacy with Christ ultimately leads to a lack of a passionate desire
to be wholly pleasing to Christ on this day.

And when you lose that, zeal for good works for the Lord, and you're
pulled away by all these distractions and different things, it's very
easy to fall into sin. It's very easy to give in to the lust of the
flesh. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the
flesh to gratify its desires.

So, my point is, walk as wise, making the best use of your time. As Paul
says in Ephesians 5, right before he says this in that chapter, he says,
he talks about those engaged in impurity and sexual morality that should
not be named among us. You know, one way they're not going to be named
among us in this coming year is the use of your time in the small
things, brethren.

Why not put time into Scripture memory? Verne Poitras' son said this, I
was able to goad out of dad more precisely how much of the Bible he had
memorized. And Verne Poitras, from what I understand, he's still alive.
And his son says this, my dad had memorized the entire New Testament,
the Psalter, the second half of Isaiah, Ecclesiastes and the Song of
Solomon, all the minor prophets, Ruth, and other select portions of Old
Testament narrative.

That's not a waste of time. Dr. Andy Davis, who is still alive, Donald
Whitney mentioned that Andy Davis had memorized 42 books of the Bible.
He memorizes a book, Whitney says, like Matthew, reviews it for a
hundred days, and then stops reviewing and moves on to another.

Use of their time. Use of their time. The more you know Scripture, the
more you know of Christ, the more you'll live for eternity, and the less
time you will waste and the less opportunities for sin you will create
by the misuse of your time.

You know, Ravenhill on his tombstone, it says this, are the things you
are living for worth Christ dying for? You could change that and say,
how you use your time. Is that worth Christ dying for? Because He gives
you this time. He gives you this life.

He gives you this momentary life to live that's going to be gone in a
vapor. Are we using that for the Lord? You know, David's sin, it says
the thing that David did had displeased the Lord. We need to set our
minds, our hearts, on being pleasing to Christ.

Let me pray. Father, Lord, we look to You. We ask for Your help that we
would properly use our time.

Lord, the world is evil. The distractions are so many. Lord, help us to
not remain in a spot, in a place, or doing something, or in a situation
that we should not be in.

Lord, help us to lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely
and run with endurance the race that is set before us. And Lord, I just
pray, would You allow in our church this coming year there to be greater
degrees of purity. And Lord, as there's greater degrees of purity, that
means there's a greater usefulness of how people use their time.

And as there is a greater usefulness of how we use our time, that means
there's more glory for Your holy name. And Lord, all the glory, all the
honor, it's all for You. Lord, we want to not account our lives of any
value, nor as precious to ourselves, as only we would complete the
course that we've received from You, that is to testify of the Gospel,
the grace of God.

And so Lord, would You give us right discernment to prove what is
excellent and how to use our time in the best ways that we can. Lord,
that we'd imitate from other godly men things that are imitatable. But
Lord, the things that could condemn us where we should not be condemned,
Lord, would You help us to just walk faithful to what You call us to do?
Lord, we just want to be faithful to Your will in our life and be holy
as You are holy.

Lord, we want to strive for peace and for the holiness without which we
will not see the Lord. And we just pray, Lord, we ask You that we would
grow. Lord, help us to grow this year in the area of self-discipline and
the use of our time.

Lord, we don't want to waste any of those 80,000 plus seconds that we
get every day. Lord, we want to use those seconds for Your name. And we
don't want to waste those seconds in self-pity, being condemned where we
should not be condemned.

Lord, I think of my sisters here who are mothers specifically. But Lord,
at the same time, Lord, we don't want to make excuses and live soft and
be at ease in Zion. So Lord, I just pray You'd help us.

God, give us grace. Lord, we realize at the end of the day, we're cast
on Your supernatural grace to work in our lives. Lord, work in us to
will and to work for Your good pleasure.

Pray You'd do that in my life. In Christ's name, Amen.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/kqkHQpA7kio.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/james-jennings/purity-and-the-use-of-your-time-video/
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