By Joshua Franks
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Bruceton
Focal Passage: Galatians 4:1-7
In 2000, I had the opportunity to hear Billy Graham preach in Nashville. I don’t remember what the sermon was about. I don’t remember how many people were saved. What I do remember is how brief it seemed.
In my young life I had heard thousands of sermons but I had never heard one like that. He preached for almost an hour and I didn’t even notice.
Many of the sermons I had heard in the past seemed to stretch on into eternity as my mind wandered and I counted ceiling tiles in the sanctuary. But Billy Graham’s sermon was different. It was the same length but seemed to fly by.
Time is funny like that. There are moments in time that are brief. And there are moments in time that are excruciatingly long. But it’s those extreme moments in time that define our lives.
Our lives are not defined by all the time we wasted sitting on the couch watching Netflix. We’re not defined by all of the hours we spend at work. When you look back on your life, you remember the moments. You remember the things that impacted you the most. You remember those events that changed you. And because they changed you, those life altering moments become the things that define your life.
However, there’s a terrifying truth in that. Many of those moments that change you are completely out of your control. I can think of at least three.
Hebrews 9:27 tells us, “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” The first moment we see here is that there is a moment of death that is out of your control.
No one knows the day or the hour of their death. It is an appointment that is set by God. You can’t delay it, cancel it, skip it, or ignore it. The moment of death will come and it is completely out of your control.
Second, there is a moment of judgment that is out of your control. We all have an appointment with death.
But our journey doesn’t end there. After the moment of death, we will all find ourselves in a crisis. Every single person has a moment where they must stand before the Lord and be judged on how they answered a single question: Was Jesus your Lord?
That moment is inevitable. It is inescapable. But there is also a third moment that every life must reckon with. There is a moment of hope that is out of your control. Our focal passage says, “When the set time had fully come, God sent his Son” (Galatians 4:4).
At just the right moment, Jesus was born. The same God that appointed the moment of your death also fixed the moment that Jesus would redeem the world. And in the greatest act of grace that the world would ever know Jesus made it possible, not only to be forgiven from your sins, but to be adopted into the family of God.
There is a moment where you can become a child of the king. Don’t let that moment pass you by. There are many life-changing moments that are out of your control. This isn’t one of them. What you do with the moment of hope that Jesus offers will define you for all of eternity. So make the most of the moment and give your life to Him.