Philippians 4:4-5 “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.”

Just because you are a Christian doesn’t mean that you like the way your world is going. You may be stuck in a job you don’t like. You may be unhappy with your family. You may be one of those people who don’t like the direction the country is heading. Many American Christians have felt under fire from our current culture’s proponents. More and more of our core moral beliefs are rejected by the society around us. Maybe that has you feeling embattled, too.

When we feel under stress or attack, our patience wears thin. The anger comes out. We aren’t ourselves. We are like the people in those Snicker’s commercials: you know, the ones who are hungry and are griping and snapping at the people around them. “You’re not yourself when you’re hungry,” the announcer tells us. We become whiney and pushy. We get aggressive.

The problem is, at those moments we become all too much ourselves. We let the purely natural, purely human “me” come out, and it’s no fun for us or anyone around us. In fact, it’s a joy-killer. And unlike the TV commercials, a few bites from a Snickers isn’t going to fix it.

“Gentleness,” treating everyone around us with dignity, being careful with them as though our relationship could be fragile and easily broken, often isn’t valued. We don’t want to be pushed around. We don’t want others to take advantage of us. Gentleness often doesn’t get me the immediate results I want.

It wasn’t really valued in the ancient world, either. The Greeks generally saw it as a sign of weakness. But Jesus maintained his gentleness through the criticisms of his ministry, and the injustice of his trials, and the cruelty of his crucifixion. His enemies were the ones shouting and tearing their clothes. They carried on like children throwing a tantrum. They never seem very happy in the story, even though they seem to be “winning.” But the author of Hebrews can say of Jesus, “Who, for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of God.” Gentleness and joy go together. Crabbiness and aggression call for repentance.

No matter what’s happening to us now, the future gives us every reason for joy. “The Lord is near.” There is a phrase that has been used to defend certain social or foreign policies for several years now. “The right side of history.” It is politically charged, I know, and I don’t want to go into all the political ramifications here. I simply want to point out that you and I, as Christians, are the only ones who know how history actually turns out. We are definitely on the right side of history, because at the end of history, Jesus returns.

And when Jesus returns, he wins. Everything, everything, will wind up his way. And when Jesus wins, his people all win, too. “When these things begin to take place,” Jesus tells us near the end of Luke, “stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Don’t be afraid. Don’t feel sad. Lift up your heads. Take this all in with joy. You are about to be delivered from earth to heaven.

Even more, Paul promises us that it’s near. We don’t have to soldier ahead much longer in a world we don’t like much or a life we don’t like much. Jesus’ return is just around the corner. Heaven’s joys are almost in our grasp. It’s so close we don’t have to wait to celebrate. Let the joy begin already. For God’s gentle people, it is time for joy, because the Lord is near.

Matthew 11:9-10 “Then what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written: ‘I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare the way before you.’”

We go to see a prophet. Sometimes people hear the word prophet and they think “fortune teller,” predictor of the future. It is true that some of God’s past prophets predicted future events. But telling the future was incidental to their main assignment.

God called John the Baptist, “my messenger.” It was clear whom John the Baptist served, and it wasn’t popular opinion or the highest bidder. His heart and his voice belonged to the Lord. If that drew a large crowd, then God be praised. If that offended people and drove some of them off, then God be praised. If that got the prophet arrested and killed, then God be praised. But John wasn’t going to change the Lord’s script just because someone didn’t like it.

John’s message and mission could be summarized with the words, “who will prepare the way before you.” This applied to John in a special way because he was the last of the Old Testament prophets. He appeared right before Jesus to prepare the nation spiritually to recognize and believe in their promised Savior.

But in a wider sense, this job description applies to every prophet, every preacher of God’s word, from the beginning until our own day. There are two main tasks in preparing people to receive Jesus as their Savior. First, the preacher has to convince us of our need. What do I need someone to save me for if I’m not in any trouble? What would you say to the lifeguard if you were swimming laps, in no distress, getting a great workout, when all of sudden the lifeguard wraps his arms around you and begins dragging you out of the pool? “Have you lost your mind? Leave me alone! Go back to your stand. I don’t need you.”

We never run out of need for Jesus to be our Savior. We can become fuzzy on what that need is. We go to the prophet, the preacher, to have our sins exposed like we go to the dentist to find the plaque between our teeth and the cavities that need to be filled, or the doctor to tell us why we haven’t been feeling so well. I need him to tell me what’s wrong with me.

Then we go to see the prophet, the preacher, to present the Savior himself, to introduce us to Jesus all over again. This is the Lamb of God who takes away my sins. This is the perfect life that satisfies God’s demands for me to love and obey. This is the innocent death that serves the sentence for my sins and settles all my accounts with the Almighty. This is always where preaching is supposed to lead. Jesus’ saving love is the main event in preaching that deserves to be called “Christian.” For those who get themselves, and get Jesus, it is what they go to see.

A lot of people watch the Super Bowl just to see the commercials. The game itself? Not so much. There are other things we can go to see at church: musical performances, friends and family, meals and activities. Jesus reminds us to come and see him in the words of a preacher, a prophet, preparing his way.

Matthew 11: 8 What did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who wear fine clothes are in kings’ palaces.”

People don’t always attend events or watch presentations for their advertised purpose. I’ve seen people attend political rallies not to support candidates, but to heckle them. I know a young man who attended his friend’s church youth group because he thought the girls were pretty. A friend of mine in Dallas was a faithful watcher of one prominent televangelist, but he didn’t believe a word he said. He thought the melodramatic performance and outlandish claims were hilarious.

Jesus does a little digging with the motivations of his audience in these words. He knew that many, if not most of them, made the trip into the Judean wilderness to hear John the Baptist preach. Why did they go? What were they looking for?

Why do we go? What are we looking for? You see the guys on television: Rolex watch, gold cuff links, hundred dollar ties, thousand dollar suits. Their clothes are a badge of their success. For their adoring fans, this show of wealth is evidence that the preacher’s method works. Pray like he does, work like he does, and most important, step out in faith with a super-sized donation to his ministry, and God will reward that faith with earthly prosperity of your own.

Sometimes the preacher may be wearing camouflage on stage. Ripped jeans and a t-shirt make him look cool and relevant. Then he gets into his Porsche and drives home to his 5000 square foot house after church.

There is nothing wrong with wearing a nice suit or blue jeans and t-shirts. It is not wrong to drive a sports car or live in a big house. There is a problem with a man of God building his own little kingdom on earth.

Using the ministry to enrich oneself isn’t a strictly modern problem. Jesus is hinting at it here. Mercenary preachers tell people willing to pay what they want to hear. The Old Testament prophet Balaam was a “preacher for pay” and made quite a good living at it. The Apostle Paul warned his young friend Timothy about the kind of teachers “who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.” It’s not. 

These preachers may have the ear of the powerful and the respect of the masses, but one thing you can be sure of: your best interests aren’t what this kind of “successful preacher” has in mind. He is looking out for number one, and by that I don’t mean our Lord. That wasn’t John the Baptist, and it’s not what you or I should go to see, either.

The call to repentance isn’t only a message for preachers to preach. It is a message for them to take to heart and put into practice. The temptations of materialism affect clergy in the same way as everyone else.

The call to repentance invites us all not only to give up our greed and idolization of money. It directs us to put our trust in the One who gives us something better: the forgiveness of our sins. Jesus gives us God’s grace. He takes away the spiritual tatters we were wearing and dresses us in his own perfect righteousness. Clothed in his holy love, we are dressed for real success, and ready to take our place in the palace of our heavenly King.

Matthew 11:7 “As John’s disciples were leaving, Jesus began to speak to the crowd about John: ‘What did you go out into the desert to see? A reed swayed by the wind?”

Jesus’ picture isn’t hard to get. You’ve seen grass bend in the direction of the blowing wind. The slipstream from every passing truck on the highway is enough to bend the grass and point it in the same direction as the traffic. One might expect a little more resistance from the reeds you see growing along the edge of a pond or lake. They are considerably fatter than a blade of grass. But they are also hollow. There is nothing inside. When the wind blows the reeds go with the flow. They bend with the breeze. The direction in which they lean changes as often as the breezes themselves.

Jesus knew that preachers can be like that, and often people like them. They go with the flow. They bend with the breeze, because they are empty and hollow on the inside. Every culture develops its own beliefs and values. Sometimes some of them happen to agree with God’s. Many of them do not. The people going out to John the Baptist struggled with ideas about right and wrong not so different than false ideas popular today. Some believed their strict moral values and pious lifestyle put them in a “most-favored” class with God. They used that idea to defend their harsh criticism of less perfect people and their choice not to associate with them.

First Century Jewish society was less confused and deceived about sex and marriage than Twenty-first Century America after the “sexual revolution” (or “rebellion”). But John still had to address lackadaisical attitudes about adultery with the king. Jesus found that even the religious conservatives had gone wishy-washy on divorce. Some people just assumed that one of the perks of power was the ability to put the squeeze on the little guy. Others could look at their excess, and their neighbor’s poverty, and see no connection. They drew no conclusions. They felt no obligation to help.

What’s a preacher to do? Both John and Jesus could have preached volumes about non-controversial issues on which all agreed. In his “Sermon on the Mount,” Jesus repeats the phrase “You have heard that it was said…” six times. Each time he follows with some non-controversial idea everyone could agree to: Don’t murder, don’t insult people, don’t cheat on your wife, don’t break your promises, don’t let bad people get away with bad behavior, love your friends. How nice.

If Jesus stopped there, we could all feel good about ourselves. He could have told some chicken-soup-for-the-soul stories about people being nice to each other, and everyone would go home with warm and fuzzy feelings. If he kept his mouth shut about our anger issues, porn, divorce, watching your mouth, and worry, no one would have felt a need to kill him. He could be popular with everyone.

John the Baptist, likewise, could have complimented the Pharisees about their righteous exterior instead of calling them a bunch of snakes. He could have winked at the king’s sexual escapades. He could have overlooked the soldiers’ abuse of power, and the general greed and hard-heartedness of his listeners. Then everyone could like him. He might have died a national hero instead of a wretched, lonely prisoner.

But is that what the people went to see–someone whose message bent whatever direction the winds of popular opinion were blowing? Is that what we expect from our preacher–someone who never steps on our toes, makes us feel uncomfortable, or calls us to be different than the culture around us?

We still need preachers who will stand against the prevailing winds. We need them not just because we have been bad and need a spiritual beating. We need them because only such preachers will lead us to the cross, where a beaten and bleeding Jesus dies for our sins. A sober, uncompromising message of God’s law still goes together with a liberating, unconditional promise of God’s grace. God’s winds blow in the direction of redemption and love. Listen to the preachers who push in that direction.

Malachi 4:2 “But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall.”

“You who revere my name” is practically another way of saying, “You who believe in the gospel.” God’s name is not just the letters G-O-D or L-O-R-D. It is his good name, his whole saving reputation. When God explained his name to Moses on Mt. Sinai, these are the things he emphasized: “the gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in love, forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin.”

Ever afterward, that became a repeating theme, the way people who believed in him understood him. Five hundred years after Moses, David used almost the same words to describe the Lord in several Psalms. One hundred and fifty years after that these became the words of the Prophet Joel, and then Jonah, and after the Babylonian exile we find them again in Nehemiah–gracious, compassionate, loving, forgiving. That is the God the true believers in the Old Testament knew.

Jesus, of course, personifies all of that in the New Testament. His very name means that God saves people from their sins. He made that grace, compassion, love, and forgiveness real and tangible when he gave his life as the sacrifice for sins at the cross. And since then God has made the name of Jesus the name that is above every other name, the only name under heaven by which we must be saved.

For those who revere God’s name, who know and trust him this way, that bright shining light we see when the Day comes is not the fire of God’s justice, but “the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings.” Does that remind you of a Christmas carol? “Hail the heavenly Prince of Peace! Hail the Sun of Righteousness! Light and Life to all he brings, risen with healing in his wings.” When Charles Wesley wrote those words to Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, he understood that Jesus is the Sun of Righteousness, the Great Light that heals us. And while his first coming provided the medicine that heals us from our sins, it is his second coming that completes the healing of our bodies and souls, hearts and minds.

With the extermination of sin comes the elimination of all its consequences. That means complete healing, real healing for the bodies in which we live. The surgeon took half my thyroid out several years ago. While that means I don’t have a dangerous growth there anymore, it also means that I have half a working gland, a scar, and a lifetime of monitoring to show for it.

Many men and women I know have received knee replacements over the years. The new one will only last another 20 years or so, and then it will wear out, too. Maybe you take pills for diabetes, or high blood pressure, or some other condition. These may allow you to function now, but stop taking them and see what happens. They cover up and allow us to cope. They don’t cure and heal.

The Day is coming when the Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in his wings. These bodies will be transformed, restored, perfected, not taped and tied together so that we can limp along a little longer. We will know, finally, what it means to be completely whole, and well, and free.

I have seen a wedding day turn a bride into bridezilla. I have seen surgery day paralyze a patient with fear. I have seen the day of the big game make strong, fit, 250 pound athletes lose their lunch. God’s day, THE day, is coming soon. It promises to turn us into creatures fit for heaven.

Malachi 4:1 All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and that day that is coming will set them on fire, says the Lord Almighty. Not a root or a branch will be left to them.”

Sometimes the Lord inflicts pain to discipline the people he loves, just like a good parent. The word “discipline” comes from the same word from which we get “disciple.” It is a form of teaching. The psychologists would call it “negative reinforcement.” Or, as an old friend of mine used to say, it is “applied psychology” (with the “application” of the hand to the backside of the child).

The goal of God’s discipline is to make a person better. It corrects them and puts them on a better path. It helps them grow as a person. It takes a thousand different forms in the consequences we suffer for our behavior from youth to old age.

That is not what God is doing to the arrogant and the evildoer on the day of judgment. This is justice. It is payment. No one is getting better. Malachi says these people “will be stubble, and that day that is coming will set them on fire…Not a root or a branch will be left to them.” Maybe you have seen an area after a forest or grass fire has gone through. At first, everything looks dead and gone. But after some time and some rain, green growth appears again. Not in this case. Not even a root is left. The Lord isn’t clearing the field for future growth. He is simply clearing the field when his day comes with fire.

Does this seem out of character with what we know about God’s love and mercy? It can be hard to make God’s “justice” and “mercy” fit comfortably together inside our heads and hearts. But both characteristics of our God are true. And both are good.

In his book The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis paints a picture of a particularly bad man who rises to wealth and power by treachery and cruelty. He exploits his victims with no feelings of conscience and laughs at them. He betrays his own friends along the way. He goes to his grave with no guilt, no regrets. He believes that he alone has figured out the secret to life. Everyone else is a fool. He was not willing to be converted in this life, and he is certainly not going to convert to God’s point of view in the life to come.

What is the proper fate for such a person? Is it just a sinful desire for revenge that we want to keep him out of heaven, that we think that somehow he should suffer for what he has become? No, something inside us tell us that it is right that there are consequences, and that those consequences should be neither easy or pleasant. Such never ending enemies of goodness and love should not be rewarded. Even if such a person can’t be converted, it is better that he be confronted with his spiritual failure rather than live in the illusion that he got it right. The fires of God’s justice serve just a purpose.

Lewis reminds us that the Lord does not produce descriptions of the day he comes with justice for people who will never read or hear or believe them. He writes them for us. He is giving us warning. He is calling us to repent of the things that keep us from God. He writes them so that we can escape the fire on the coming day. We are the children he intends to spare and rescue, not the enemies he needs to eliminate. For those who repent and believe, God’s justice falls on his Son Jesus Christ instead of the sinners who had it coming.

Malachi 4:1 “Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and that day that is coming will set them on fire, says the Lord Almighty. Not a root or a branch will be left to them.”

The Big Day: Just three little words that serve up big helpings of anxiety. Maybe the first thing that comes to mind when you hear them is a wedding. Few events that people plan cause more stress. But depending on the context, maybe it is the day of the championship game, or the day you defend your dissertation for your Ph.D., or the day you make the big pitch to the company president for the great new product you thought of, or the day you go under the knife for open heart surgery.

They are all important days. They promise to be life-changing, and if everything goes right, “the Big Day” will be one of the greatest experiences you ever have. But just because so much is riding on it, it is also a day we approach with a sense of dread.

The Bible knows its own “Big Day.” It is so big that it doesn’t even need the word “big” to describe it. Across the Old and New Testaments, it is simply known as “The Day.” The prophet Malachi paints a picture of that day in these words from the last chapter of the Old Testament. This day, he warns will be a day of judgment.

Few things have become less acceptable to people than “judging others,” but people of all sorts do it…a lot. Some object, “Only God can judge.” While there is some truth to that, those who prefer to be judged by God than by people may want to rethink their preference. God’s judgment, Malachi points out, is coming with fire.

The Day of Judgment is going to be a very bad day for the arrogant and the evil doer, though they themselves probably don’t believe it. The irony of arrogance is that the very thing that makes you bad is your opinion of the thing you think makes you better.

On the one side you have the smug sinner. A man I know builds expensive custom cabinets and furniture of the highest quality for the rich and famous. Several years ago he finished an expensive project for a wealthy man. The cost ran well into five figures. After everything was done, his well-to-do customer insisted he would pay him only a fraction of the price agreed upon. He had no complaints about the workmanship. He actually liked it a lot. He didn’t lack the money to pay. But he considered himself a savvy businessman, and he told my friend that if he took him to court, my friend would owe at least the difference in legal fees and lost time. It was better just to accept the discount. And he was right. Mr. Moneybags was rather pleased with himself for being such a shrewd businessman. Actually, he should be ashamed of himself. But that’s how arrogance works.

On the other side you have the snobby saint. The Pharisees of Jesus’ day generally provide a good example–people so satisfied with their own moral behavior that they believe God himself must be impressed with them. Listen to the way that you, and I, and your fellow Christians criticize the misbehaviors of other people. When our tone is more like that of an angry activist, breathing out fire and condemnation, and less like that of grieved and concerned friend, sincerely saddened by the way someone is straying, we are probably showing our own inner Pharisee. The problem with this kind of arrogance is that it is often harder to detect in ourselves because it is hiding beneath a thin moral veneer. We think we look like the good guys.

Malachi’s words serve notice on our arrogance. They call us to repent before the day arrives. And if your high opinion of yourself has led to a painful fall somewhere along the way, if God used it to humble you and break you, consider it a blessing. God’s big day is coming with fire. It won’t be a good day for the arrogant and the evil doer. But those who repent find his grace and forgiveness. That is why he gives us warning. He wants to purify us now, to save us, before the day when his purifying fire simply wipes the sinners away.

Romans 13:12b-14 “So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.”

Living in the light is a matter of taking something off and putting something on. Off goes a lifestyle that simply lets our urges and desires run wild. There are three word pairs here, and each word in the pair is loosely connected. With orgies and drunkenness Paul is saying, “You can’t join your neighbors in losing all self-control and decency in hard partying and drinking. It is not wrong to get together to feast and celebrate. It is not wrong to have an alcoholic beverage. But those who live in the light won’t let either drinks or desires turn them into a different kind of person than they are when they are stone-cold sober.”

The second pair focuses more on our sexual behavior. Again, Paul isn’t saying that sex is evil. But living in the light means we will have nothing to do with it when it is not between one man and one woman who have taken a vow of marriage. Christians understand that it is not just for recreation and fun between consenting adults. God has a higher purpose for it, one that requires the stability of a life-long commitment.

The last pair, dissension and jealousy, deals with the angry passions. Believers find it much too easy to imitate their unbelieving neighbors in the first two sets of sins we have mentioned. But at least among believers, there is still some recognition that there is sin involved in them?

If the kind of language I hear coming out of professed Christians’ mouths is any indication, or the kind of things I see them post on Facebook gives any insight, then I am not sure that even many Christians recognize the problem with this last set. We have become inclined to defend our anger and its expression instead of regretting of it. Like the rest, off it has to come in repentance.

In place of all this “darkness” Paul urges, “Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” Off goes sin. On goes Jesus. Clothing ourselves with Jesus begins with simply trusting him. We stop with the rationalizations, the defenses, the excuses for our bad behavior. We trust him when he calls it sin and calls us to repent. Even more, we see his perfect life of love, his sacrifice and death as our substitute, his payment for our sins, his resurrection to new life and ascension to power. We trust him when he forgives us, offers us grace, invites us into God’s family, and gives us new life.

When we do, Jesus comes and lives inside of us. We know his power. We take on a new identity. It changes us. You know how dressing up can affect how you feel about yourself, your confidence, your behavior. If you put on wedding formals, and you know you look sharp, and you start to act the part. You carry yourself with dignity. You are civil and well-mannered. You are gracious and charming. Okay, maybe some people can become arrogant and insufferable, too. But dressing up can change things inside as well as out.

When we put our faith in Jesus we become new men and women. It is like dressing ourselves up in Christ, putting him on, only it is not an act. Jesus begins the process of making us more like him, and the more we look to him in faith, the more we focus on his love, the more like him we become. With the return of Jesus nearer every day, there is no time like the present to live in the light of his grace and love.

Romans 13:11-12“The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here.”

Sometimes, when the Bible uses slumber or sleep as a metaphor, it is talking about unbelief. At other times “sleep” is a picture of death. I think it’s clear that Paul is writing this letter to members of a Christian church, so he assumes that they are spiritually awake by faith. And obviously he wouldn’t write a book of the Bible to dead people. “Slumber” here has to refer to something else.

Sometimes we Christians let our faith become quite lukewarm. There is very little fire in our belly for loving our neighbor or reaching the lost. Our prayers lack fervency and grow fewer and farther between. We aren’t much concerned about getting to know God better. If we still go to church or Bible study, it is mostly a matter of habit, going through the motions. We have stopped feeling a need or desire to be there. If the church grows, we feel no particular joy. If it struggles and shrinks, we feel no sense of alarm. We could always go somewhere else, or do something else, on a Sunday.

The problem is that we have become far too distracted by our purely earthly circumstances. We pour our energy into having the things we want, achieving the lifestyle and experiences we desire. Have you seen the movie The Bucket List? Two men fighting cancer make a list of things they want to do before they die, and then they go on the world’s greatest road trip. One of them even tries to convince the other of God’s existence along the way. There is nothing wrong with going skydiving, or climbing Mt. Everest, or visiting the pyramids, if you can do it. But this is not why God chose you as his own, or the purpose for which he has left you here.

What if you never earn that degree for which you study, or land the job on which you set your heart? What if your career goes nowhere? What if you never find love or raise a family? What if you never build the house you planned to make your home, or your retirement doesn’t turn out the way you dreamed? Don’t misunderstand me. All of these things may occupy a legitimate part of our time and attention. They are good and wholesome in and of themselves.

But if they leave no place for God; if they move into a place ahead of God, chances are we need Paul’s words to confront us. “The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber.” The time has come to wake up. Spiritually, we are asleep and of no use for something much more important.

Why is it so vital that we wake up and understand the present time? “because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here.” We may be used to people speaking about “salvation” happening when we come to faith. It’s almost always what Christians mean when they ask, “Are you saved?” Have you come to faith in Jesus yet? Often the Bible uses the word that way.

But salvation is God’s work of rescue. Sometimes it refers to Jesus and his saving life and death, as Simeon meant when he took the baby Jesus in his arms and said, “…my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the sight of all people” (Luke 2:30-31). Here it is clear that salvation refers to God’s final rescue, when he puts a final end to all his enemies and takes us away to heaven’s safety.

That is nearer every day. More than that, “The night is nearly over, the day is almost here.” Jesus could return at any time, or he could end our lives in this world at any time, and our days here are limited. I don’t know about you, but there are people I know personally whose own salvation is doubtful at best. The clock is running out on our time to win them.

Perhaps I can’t spend every moment of every day trying to work on them and their faith. Living a life of love goes beyond personal witness and evangelism. It helps support our lives of witness and evangelism. But it ought not become the reason we neglect personal witness and evangelism. We need to understand the present time. It is time to wake up and put our faith to work, because the night of this world is almost over, and the day of heaven is almost here.