Everyday Matters . . . Because Every Day Matters, Part 3: Seize the Season!

[*1] I want to begin today’s message with an apology. I am truly sorry for not kicking off our current sermon series “Everyday Matters” with today’s story of study. You’ll remember on New Year’s Day we had an ancient Greek lesson about the two words that both get translated as “time” in our English Bible. [*2] The time could be chronos — which is a quantity of time, a unit of measuring time. [*3] Or the time could be kairos — as in a quality of time, a moment, an opportunity, or a season that must be seized from our days which are evil.

And then last week we saw how kairos moments can be seized in the micro, in the small, ever day moments of life, in order to connect with God, be filled with His love, and to resist evil. And I hope you are seizing kairosin the micro, in the small, common moments of every day.

But I am sorry that I did not begin talking about the macro, the larger portions of time that can be seized to make every day matter. Kairos moments are not just found in minutes, they can be found in months, or in seasons. Not the seasons of fall, winter, spring and summer – but seasons spoken of in our Scripture reading, periods of life that hold a special work for us to do.

[*4] “To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, And a time to die; A time to plant, And a time to pluck what is planted; [*5] A time to kill, And a time to heal; A time to break down, And a time to build up; [*6] A time to weep, And a time to laugh; A time to mourn, And a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, And a time to gather stones; [*7] A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing; A time to gain, And a time to lose; A time to keep, And a time to throw away; [*8] A time to tear, And a time to sew; A time to keep silence, And a time to speak; [*9] A time to love, And a time to hate; A time of war, And a time of peace.”

Life is full of seasons that when seized, help make every day matter. That is, if we recognize the season and do not resist the work within that season that God has called us to do. [*10] Because failure to do so results in losing both the chronos and the kairos.

When given a season for peace — a time to make apologies, a time to have the conversations of “What can I do to make things right with us?” When given the opportunity to make intentional efforts to build back bridges that were once burned -- if that season is seized, then every day matters. But if the season of peace is not recognized or resisted – one can continue making war – wasting years holding to grudges, to stonewalling, to ignoring olive branches. The chronos of time and the kairosof reconciliation get wasted. What a tragedy!

Such tragedy is what we find in today’s story as a season is recognized but is resisted. And church again, I apologize because I wished I had preached this message on January first. [*11] Had I, I would asked you, “Looking back on 2021 did you fail to seize any important seasons God put before you? Was it due to failure to recognize the season or because you resisted the work of the season? And in a New Year, have you asked God to help you recognize and not resist any kairos seasons where God calls you to a special work?”

I should have asked you those questions two Sabbaths ago, but guess what, we are only 15 days into this year, and by God’s grace, there are three hundred and fifty days ahead to seize any seasons the Lord has given us to make every day matter. During these holy kairos hours of Sabbath, each one of us could ask God to help us see where we failed to recognize a season we should have seized or where we resisted the season’s work God set before us. We can ask for eyes to recognize His seasons before us and to help us not resist His season’s work. And as today’s story will show us, these are prayers worth praying. [*12] Because when a kairos season is not seized, much more chronos gets lost. But when a kairos season is seized, chronos gets put to good use, our days matter and our prosperity gets prolonged.

That point will be clear as we return to the book of Daniel, chapter four, a fascinating chapter, the majority written, not by Daniel but by King Nebuchadnezzar, who in previous chapters is a short fused powder keg ready to go off destroying anyone who fails him. But in Daniel chapter four, the king’s countenance has changed. Instead of declaring destruction upon others, chapter four begins with Nebuchadnezzar blessing others with of all things, “Peace.”

Something has happened. Nebuchadnezzar is not the same person we’ve seen. What has changed him? Well in his own words Nebuchadnezzar tells us about a second dream sent by Yahweh as an attempt of the Most High to save the Babylonian ruler. You’ll remember the first dream the Lord sent this monarch happened in Daniel two where Nebuchadnezzar sees a mighty metallic man, but in this dream from chapter four he sees a mighty tree that reached the heavens filled with large branches, bearing all kinds of fruit which fed the birds of the air and provided much shade to the beasts of the field.

But then something happens to this great tree that greatly disturbs Nebuchadnezzar, and in verse thirteen, [*10] the king tells us, “I saw in the visions of my head while on my bed, and there was a watcher, a holy one, coming down from heaven. He cried aloud and said thus: ‘Chop down the tree and cut off its branches, Strip off its leaves and scatter its fruit. Let the beasts get out from under it, And the birds from its branches. Nevertheless leave the stump and roots in the earth, Bound with a band of iron and bronze, In the tender grass of the field. Let it be wet with the dew of heaven, And let him graze with the beasts On the grass of the earth. Let his heart be changed from that of a man, Let him be given the heart of a beast, And let seven times pass over him. ‘This decision is by the decree of the watchers, And the sentence by the word of the holy ones, In order that the living may know That the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, Gives it to whomever He will, And sets over it the lowest of men.”

So disturbed by the dream, Nebuchadnezzar calls the wise men as he did in chapter two with the dream of the metallic man. And once more it is déjà vu all over again as Daniel provides the interpretation of this second dream which the wise men could not. When it comes to the meaning of the tree, Daniel says in verse 22 [*11] “…it is you, O king, who have grown and become strong; for your greatness has grown and reaches to the heavens, and your dominion to the end of the earth.” And you can hear old Neb saying, “Yes, that was what I was afraid of! That’s not good news. The tree gets cut down. What does that mean?”

Daniel then tells the king how he shall be driven from the palace and live as one of the beasts of the field, eating grass like an ox for seven years. Until, until, verse twenty five says, “… until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth and gives them to anyone he wishes. The command to leave the stump of the tree with its roots means that your kingdom will be restored to you when you acknowledge that Heaven rules.”

Nebuchadnezzar’s dream is both a prophecy and a pronouncement of God’s judgment. But as most prophecies are, this one is conditional - that is the prophecy can be walked back if certain conditions change. And so Daniel gives the king the following unsolicited and yet important counsel beginning [*12] in verse twenty-seven, “Therefore, O king, let my advice be acceptable to you; break off your sins by being righteous, and your iniquities by showing mercy to the poor. Perhaps there may be a lengthening of your prosperity.” Or as another translation [*13] says perhaps, “. . . there may be a prolonging of your prosperity.”

Oh king . . . Judgement is coming. Life is about to change. The bottom is about to fall out. If your life continues to trend in the direction you have been going. Or you can seize a season of repentance. Replace sinful, selfish activity with selfless righteous activity. The poor who you oppress, show mercy to them. If you seize the season God has put before you, perhaps you can avoid judgment, and prolong your prosperity. You can avoid the bottom from falling out right from under you. You can keep the wheels from falling off the wagon of your life.

You and I can pass the chronos of holy hours taking a nap or we can seize the kairos of Sabbath, asking Jesus about last year’s seasons not seized and this year’s seasons that must be seized, and [*14] one great question to ask our Savior is “Where in my life last year, where in my life this year do I need to practice repentance?” We can seize the season of repentance!

Repentance. That’s a big word that simply means “to turn around.” Remember Paul’s words from Ephesians five and verses fifteen to sixteen, “See then that you walk circumspectly [or live carefully], not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time [kairos – a moment or season], because the days are evil.” When we walk or live foolishly and by God’s grace realize the error of our ways, the pain we have inflicted upon ourselves or others, we have an opportunity to do the wise thing, and turn around, facing God’s direction, and walk towards Him by living differently. That process, that work is seizing a season and redeeming the time with repentance.

That’s what Daniel encourages Nebuchadnezzar to do — stop doing evil, turn around, do righteousness, stop oppressing the poor, turn around, show mercy. And Daniel encourages Nebuchadnezzar to do this, not for the king to clean up his act in order to be loved by God – that’s not the point of repentance. We don’t clean up our act, and straighten out how we have been living in order to be loved by God or in order to receive His embrace. God already loved Nebuchadnezzar – ready every chapter before this story and you see God making move after move to get the king’s attention because God already loved the king despite the king’s tyranny, his sin, and oppression of others. God wants, Nebuchadnezzar to repent, as he wants us to repent because the nature of walking foolishly away from God and His ways, always results in judgment, because God is just. And foolish living always results in a fall out of some kind, because when we sow the seeds of sin, we eventually reap a whirlwind of destruction. And God in His justice is also a God of mercy – who wants to spare us if possible from our own self destruction. Daniel knowing this encourages Nebuchadnezzar to seize the season of repentance, otherwise God’s judgment will occur, and the wheels of the wagon of the king’s life will fall off.

Some of us here frankly do not need God to tell us where we failed to repent last year and we know this year what season of repentance needs to be seized in some aspect of our lives. Because we know what fall out there will be if we do not repent.

Last October, after my annual checkup the doctor had some concerns over elevated enzymes in my blood work. So an ultrasound was ordered. Ultrasound said my liver and spleen were enlarged. Well that didn’t sound good. So I get referred to a specialist who wanted more blood work and a CT scan. He fears I have fatty liver disease which causes sclerosis. I’ve never consumed alcohol in my life but my well documented issues with Oreo cookies and French fries could have done permanent damage. What?? Are you kidding?? The results of CT scan provide both good and bad news. The bad news. I have fatty liver disease. The good news, no permanent liver damage detected – yet. But damage will be imminent if I continue to walk foolishly. I can resist repentance or seize the season of living differently, changing my lifestyle so my liver can heal. Church last Sabbath when I talked about seizing the kairos in the common moments of life — like breakfast, lunch, and dinner — I was preaching to myself.

When it comes to that one area in my life, I don’t need God to speak to me from a burning bush. He’s given me a brain to realize, that if I don’t repent I will cut short my days with Angela and Camile, or perhaps become a burden to them both. But if I repent, like Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar, I can prolong my prosperity.

[* ] Where in your life can prosperity be prolonged with repentance? That would be a great question to take to God today and in the week to come.

Other forms of repentance like with King Nebuchadnezzar take some divine intervention if they are ever going to happen. Take my friend Kurtis who like me, was born, bred and haystack fed in the Adventist church. His dream ever since we were classmates in a school just like Gateway, his dream has been to work a pilot for one of the major airline companies. So he joined the Air Force where he’s flown some big planes for Uncle Sam. And then, Kurtis moonlights for smaller airlines, but in all these years has never broke into the big leagues.

A few weeks ago Kurtis calls me, something that rarely happens because we live on opposite coasts. He tells me what God has been doing in his life. The realizations that all the foreign deployments and all his work for smaller airlines how that has taken him away from his wife and three children for too long. He’s missed so much of his kid’s lives. And if he keeps flying for a career, he’ll miss so much more of their future.

God showed Kurtis how his life’s dream of flying for a major airline and his current career in aviation, both were idols. He said, “I have been trying rationalize to myself, that flying on the Sabbath was OK because I was doing good. But the Lord helped me see how that has been me just making excuses for what I want. How in the world are my kids going to embrace my faith, and keep the Sabbath holy for themselves, with my inconsistent, my poor example?”

He said, “Jason, I’m giving it up. I’m all in with Jesus now.” That’s called repentance. That’s turning around from the path you’ve been walking apart from God’s Will, and returning to God, not in order to get God’s love because while we sin God still loves us, but we repent, we return to God because we acknowledge that Heaven rules, that God has it right, that we have it wrong, and in doing so our prosperity can be prolonged for living according to God’s will.

God provided my friend the vision to see how both chronos with his family and kairos of his spirituality and his family’s walk with God – how there would be a major fall out if he continued his present career path. And as soon as Kurtis made that decision to be all in with God, to repent, guess what happened? United Airlines called Kurtis asking for an interview. The elusive dream, that he has chased since childhood along with the money it would provide his family was now within grasp — if he was willing to resist God’s season of repentance. I asked Kurtis, “So are you going for the interview.” He said, “No. I’m all in with Jesus now.”

God allowed Kurtis to see as clearly as Nebuchadnezzar did, what the future fall out would be, how the bottom could fall out: for himself spiritually, for his marriage, for his children, for his children’s salvation if he continued on the path he’d been living. And Kurtis made a decision to seize a season of repentance — he is in the process of changing his entire career path because Kurtis knows that heaven rules and that in walking in God’s ways the prosperity of his soul, his marriage, and his children and their souls will be prolonged.

What season of repentance do you need to seize that would acknowledge before others that in your life heaven rules? What season of repentance do you need to seize that would prolong the prosperity of your soul, or your health, or your relationships, or your parenting, or your finances because you clearly see the way you have been living does not work? In some areas of your life, like in my health, you will not need God to speak to you in a burning bush – all you need to do is look at the areas in your life that lack peace and prosperity, or listen to those in your life who God has used to be a Daniel in your life giving you warnings. Hasn’t your physician been warning you? What has our spouse or trusted friends been advising though you don’t like to hear? What is that knot in your stomach shouting at you when you have too much month and not enough money? Could it be God’s way of shouting at you – Repent! Why not listen to those voices or listen to God’s voice today before the bottom falls out?

You would think that this gift of grace that God had given Nebuchadnezzar - the ability to know his pending bleak future but also to have the opportunity to repent so his prosperity would be prolonged— you would think the king would have seized the season. [* ] But look at what happens beginning in verse twenty-eight:

“All this came upon King Nebuchadnezzar. At the end of the twelve months he was walking about the royal palace of Babylon. The king spoke, saying, “Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for a royal dwelling by my mighty power and for the honor of my majesty?”

When Nebuchadnezzar says “Is this not the great city, that I have built?” — he really believes it. [* ] I don’t know how well you can see this on the screen, but this is a brink excavated from Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon. The king’s name was imprinted upon the bricks of the great city. “I built this! My name is on it!” And yet Nebuchadnezzar fails to remember the poor and oppressed whose backs, lives, and labor have built Babylon. And if he has forgotten their contribution, you know he’s failed to show mercy to them.

And Nebuchadnezzar believing he built Babylon fails to remember God. Both dreams given to Nebuchadnezzar by God in chapters two and four are clarion calls to the king — Heaven rules. There is a God who is given you power and a God who is more powerful than you. In chapter three, old Neb erects a golden image indicating that Babylon rules not heaven. And chapter four — ol Neb fails to remember the Almighty and that Heaven rules.

Nebuchadnezzar’s prideful arrogance thus ends the gracious one year kairosseason the king failed to seize. Look at verse thirty-one, “While the word was still in the king’s mouth, a voice fell from heaven: “King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: the kingdom has departed from you!” Skipping to verse thirty-three, “That very hour the word was fulfilled concerning Nebuchadnezzar; he was driven from men and ate grass like oxen; his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair had grown like eagles’ feathers and his nails like birds’ claws.”

Historians tell us that this Nebuchadnezzar who built the Hanging Garden of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, he reigned on Babylon’s throne for a duration of 43 years. But the Bible tells us that the chronos of seven of those 43 years was wasted because the king did not seize the season of repentance. Think of what a mighty Nebuchadnezzar could have done with that 16% of his career sidelined if the king had linked himself to the King of Kings? Think of what God can do for you if you seize the season – and do the work of repentance.

You say, “Pastor Jason, you make it sound so easy! As if in just a moment I could just change myself, these lifelong habits, this self-destructive behavior I do that I desperately want to stop. I have tried. Believe you I’ve tried to repent. But don’t you know Pastor that a leopard can’t change their own spots. And so every week I go to see a counselor. Or every week I go to a Celebrate Recovery Meeting. Or every week I meet with my sponsor. Or every week I go to a support group. Or every day I am calling my prayer partner. I’m doing whatever I can do to get the strength and resilience to keep my life from imploding again, because you see Pastor in my life the wheels have already fallen off the wagon, the bottom already fell out, multiple times.

Good luck Pastor Jason if someone leaves this church able to repent, able to move forward and change their ways for good. I just want to get through today without falling for that which I’ve fallen for hundreds of yesterdays.”

If that is you my friend, then I would agree a leopard cannot change their spots and that is why for us to repent we must go to the One who created the leopard. And if you are regular calling a prayer partner, or meeting with a sponsor, or in a counselor’s office, or taking seminar, because you realize you want change, you need different, you want better, you want prosperity to be prolonged in your life despite your past mistakes – then it sounds like to me you’ve already seized your season of repentance. This message isn’t so much for you, as it is for those in this place who are like a Nebuchadnezzar, who are in danger of resisting the season of repentance. They are too proud to seek help, to admit they have a problem, to go marriage counseling, or enroll in a financial seminar, or purchase a filter on their computer, or talk to their pastor, or attend an AA meeting. It’s those people I’m praying God will reach today. But if you are doing those kinds of things then you are seizing the season of repentance making every day matter.

For those of you who have already had the bottom fall out in your life, and you are calling your prayer partners, meeting with your sponsors, and going to your meetings – fighting the evil that crouches at your door than your prosperity may be prolonged – you have already seized and you need to keep on seizing your season of repentance. You are making every day matter. Keep working the twelve steps, which begins with steps one and two every day, two steps that those who know nothing of the chains of addiction, have trouble admitting for themselves though it is just as true for them as it is for you. Step one. [* ] “Admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and that my life is unmanageable.” Step two. [* ] “We came to believe in a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

Those were the two steps Nebuchadnezzar had to take when powerless to rule or control his beast like habits with his life completely unmanageable he finally believed that indeed there was a power greater than himself and that power being Yahweh restored the king to sanity.

Look at verse 34, “And at the end of the time I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my understanding returned to me; and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored Him who lives forever.” When Nebuchadnezzar admitted he was powerless and his life unmanageable [step one], and looked unto the power greater than himself [step two] – his sanity was restored, his kingdom was restored – and with the Lord his prosperity was prolonged. That is seizing the season of repentance which makes every day matter.

And it is those very steps of looking up to heaven when you are powerless and when life is no longer manageable due to sin that Jesus encapsulates in a story about a boy who seized a season of repentance. The story shows us that repentance isn’t about us changing ourselves but about who we go to each and every day. Jesus told the story of a young man who thought he would seize his kairosmoment by asking his father for his share of the inheritance, leave the family farm, and enjoy life in the big city. And he had a wild ride that lasted for a season. But when the money ran out the friends and good times did too. Until the farmer’s son turned city boy found himself broke and hungry back in someone else’s farm, feeding someone else’s animals, wishing to eat from their slop. And Jesus said, “But when he came to himself , he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father . . .” And the boy left the mud and the mire and changed course on a path back to his father. A father who saw his son, who hugged his boy, who cried over his beloved child, who restored him, and who threw a party for him.” And Jesus says that our Heavenly Father will do the same for us when we repent.