This sermon focuses on the urgency of being spiritually awake and prepared for the coming of the Lord, emphasizing the need to cast off darkness and put on the armor of light. It highlights the importance of discerning the signs of the times and being aware of the prophecies regarding the last days, as described in the Bible.

This week we are studying the Book of Romans chapter 13. Such a short little chapter that it's easy to read and I would encourage you to read it over this afternoon again if you've been reading it all week. Read it once again and then come and join with us tonight as we study the 13th chapter of the Book of Romans. This morning we'd like to draw your attention to verses 11 through 14 where Paul is declaring, And that knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep. For now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ. Make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lust thereof. Paul said knowing the time. I'm firmly convinced that the Lord wants us to know the times in which we are living in order that we might know when the Lord is coming. I believe that that is one of the chief purposes of prophecy that we might be alerted to those times that are prophesied that will precede the coming of our Lord. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees in Matthew 16-2 for the fact that they weren't aware of the time. He said, when it is evening and the sky is red, you say, oh, we're going to have a fair day tomorrow. But if in the morning, if the sky is red and overcast, you say, oh, going to be bad weather today. He said, you know how to discern the skies as far as telling the weather, but you do not discern the time of my coming. And so it was a rebuke. In other words, they should have known that they should be looking for the Messiah. The angel had told Daniel that there were 483 years that would transpire between the going forth of the commandment to restore and rebuild Jerusalem under the coming of the Messiah, the Prince. In other words, the Lord gave them the year in which the Messiah would come. 483 years after the commandment to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. They all knew that the commandment to restore and rebuild Jerusalem had gone forth from Artaxerxes. They knew that it was about 483 years since that commandment had gone forth. And so they should have been looking for the Messiah. Had they read and discerned the word of God, they would have known that the Messiah was coming this very year. And so the Lord is rebuking them for not knowing, for not being aware, for you might say sleeping when the Messiah came. What time is it? From the prophecies of the scriptures, we must deduce that these are what the scriptures call the last days. We're very close to the time of the coming of our Lord. And the Lord gave us a lot of signs to look for that we might be alert, that we might be aware that the time of the Lord's coming is very, very close. Paul wrote to Timothy in his second letter, know this, that in the last days perilous times would come because men would love themselves and they would be proud, boastful, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy. They would be without natural affections. And let me say natural affections is for a man to love a woman and a woman to love a man, that's natural. And anything else is unnatural. But they will not have natural affections. They will not keep their word. They will be slanderers and without self-control. They will be brutal and despise those that are good. They will be treacherous, rash, and conceited. And their love for pleasure will exceed their love for God. These are the indications, Paul said, that we will know and be assigned to us that we are in the last days. Peter talks about the last days. And in 2 Peter 3.3 he said, Know this, that there shall come in the last days scoffers who are walking in their own lust, and they say, Where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation. This is known as uniformitarianism, and it is the basis for the evolutionary theory. That all things continue as they were from the beginning. That God may have created the earth. We know that the earth began somehow, somewhere. But he then just sort of let it evolve on its own. And I have, I must confess, difficulty. I really don't have enough faith to believe what they say is science. For they say that this whole vast universe, all of the galaxies, all of the stars within the galaxies and the planets and the moons and so forth, all of them were at one time compressed in a small little particle of dust about this size of a dried pea. That just challenges my imagination. I cannot accept that. Maybe I don't know physics well enough, or maybe I'm just smart enough to realize that that's stupid. It doesn't make sense. I can't even imagine myself reduced to the size of a dried pea, much less this whole vast universe. But that dried pea exploded in a great bang. And all of these galaxies and stars and so forth were thrust out. And that the sun, this ball of gas out here, as it was spinning, the planets were tossed out, little balls of gases that were spinning. And as they cooled off and so forth, they developed the crust, and thus we have our planetary system. Interesting. The sun, a ball of gas, spinning in a clockwise direction. How is it that the planets are moving in a counter-clockwise direction? Don't you think if we were thrown off from the sun, spinning in a clockwise, that we would be spinning clockwise around the sun instead of counter-clockwise? How in the world did that happen?