Excuse Me, Do You Know What Time It Is? — Carter Conlon

The Urgency of Romans 13

Romans chapter 13, message title is, Excuse Me, Do You Know What Time It Is? And Father, I thank you, Lord, for the touch of your Holy Spirit. I thank you, God, for the ability to speak to this congregation and to those that are with us online as their pastor.

Lord, there are moments in time when you just say to your own people, come, let us reason together. So I ask you, Lord, that this might be one of those moments where as you unlock the text of your word and the thoughts of your heart to us, that our hearts would be warmed, we would be gladdened.

And if we're going in the wrong direction, we'd turn around and go in the direction that you would have us to go in. Give us courage, vision, faith, and strength to face these days we're living in. We thank you for it with all my heart today, O God.

Lord, it's only the anointing of your Spirit that can make the difference. If you don't anoint these words, they're just thoughts that are gathered and they produce no life, they produce no power. But when you anoint it, O God, something happens inside of us.

It causes us to grow in grace. And I thank you for this with all my heart in Jesus' name. I wanna just talk to you today. I wanna talk to you as your pastor. I wanna talk to you from my heart. I want to encourage you.

And I'm hoping that you will be encouraged, that you will be strengthened by the words that the Lord, I believe, has put in my heart to share with you today. Beginning at verse 11 in Romans 13. And do this, knowing the time that now it is high time to wake out of sleep.

For now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore, let us cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy.

But put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill its lust. You know, if somebody came up to you on the sidewalk tomorrow or today and said, excuse me, do you know what time it is?

Recognizing the Time of Harvest

There are two assumptions that we make. Number one, that you're expecting somebody and you're wondering if the time is approaching when that moment that you're waiting for is about to happen. Or the secondly, you need to be somewhere and are wondering if it's getting close to the time that you need to begin to head in a certain direction.

The writer of Ecclesiastes in chapter three, verse one, tells us to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven. In verse two, he tells us there's a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted.

I want you to think about a farmer for a moment out in his field with the implements of harvesting in his hands and yet the crop hasn't even broken forth from the ground yet. It would look to be a foolish thing if you were observing it, but he would be foolish to be absent from the field when the crop is ready to be harvested.

You'd be looking in your neighbor's field if you had, as I was, spent years on a farm and you look out and you say, that crop is ready to be harvested. If that farmer doesn't get out that soon, the rain's going to come and the rain's going to spoil that crop and bring it to a place where it's no longer of any nutritional value.

Jesus himself in Matthew chapter nine, verses 37 and 38 made the following observation. He said, the harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few. Pray you therefore the Lord of the harvest that he will send forth laborers into the harvest.

I can't help but wonder, I can't help but imagine today, what is the reason why, as back then today, there are so few laborers in the harvest, in America today, hundreds of thousands, if not in the millions or tens of millions of people are sitting in the house of God this morning as I speak all over the nation.

If we could have a panoramic view and we'd be shocked at how many people actually are attending church, do know in measure something about the words that I'm speaking to you today. They understand salvation is by faith in Christ and the cross of Christ alone.

And so many are sitting before God, but why are so few heart responding to that call of Christ to win the lost? What is the reason why so few people knowing the truth are moving into where that truth is supposed to lead?

Jonah and the Call to a Wicked Society

Now, here's what I feel the Lord has been speaking to my heart. In the book of Jonah, there was a prophet, he was called to go to a place where people were wicked. The Assyrians in Nineveh, they were known for conquering by force and conquest and they were known for their cruelty to people that they had conquered.

They were intolerant of any other way of life, any other viewpoint. They believed that the whole world had to be assimilated. That's Assyria was an assimilating society. Everything had to be assimilated into what they believed and there was no room for other opinion or alternate opinion and it's suddenly in the midst of all of this society, which is known for its violence, known for its cruelty.

God speaks to a man called Jonah and says, I want you to go to them and I want you to tell them that the justice they deserve is coming their way. Now, Jonah feared that God would be merciful and because of it, he took a ship and he went in the opposite direction and the scripture tells us that he fell fast asleep when he was supposed to be going as an ambassador to these people.

It's hard sometimes. Society can get so wicked. Society can become so vile. You can get so tired of the speech, so tired of evil flaunting itself and parading itself that all you want to do is to preserve yourself and just get through the storm.

I understand that many of God's people are like that. Just leave me alone. I just wanna get through the storm. Let this whole society be judged. That was Jonah's attitude. Let them be judged. I don't want anything to do with them.

They deserve judgment. They live in a manner that calls for judgment and you tell me judgment is coming, so just suffice to say, let me just ride out the storm and find a comfortable place. I just wanna rest.

I just wanna get through this. You know, Jesus himself said in the last days, iniquity will abound to the point where the love of many will grow cold. The love of people will grow cold. The love of the work of God will grow cold.

The love of following God's ways will grow cold. And Jonah, the scripture tells us that he took this journey and there was a great storm. It came onto the sea where he was traveling and a mighty tempest and the ship was about to be broken up.

In other words, everything around him was starting to collapse. Not just the people that he was being sent to that were more or less a little far away, but the people in his immediate circle where he was traveling.

Everybody was scared and everything was starting to break up. Have you noticed that our society is breaking up? Have you noticed that young are turning against old? You notice culture is turning against culture.

Have you noticed that there's confusion even in our government? And sad to say, even in the house of God in some measure. And the mariners were afraid and every man cried out to his God and threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten the load.

But Jonah had gone down into the lowest parts of the ship and was laying down and was fast asleep. So the captain came to him and said, what do you mean sleep? Arise and call on your God. Perhaps your God will consider us so that we may not perish.

Jonah became unaware in his heart. He just wanted to be comfortable. You ever been there? You ever been in a place where you just say, I just got enough, I got enough fighting going on around me. I got enough fighting just listening to my kids in their bedroom at night.

I don't wanna add any burden to that. I do wanna rest. I wanna have some time to myself. Yes, society is going towards judgment, but leave me alone. Don't bother me with this. What he was unaware of was that all around him, there's a storm going on.

There are things being thrown overboard. There's a society that's about to be judged just a few days down the road from where he's going or where he is now. It's actually in the opposite direction. And his ears are closed to the cry.

It's a time, it's a divine time, but he doesn't recognize it. And that's the devil will do everything in his power to shut your ears to the cry of this moment we're living in in society. There's a cry like this lady in this testimony.

There are people that we look at along our journey and we just don't wanna be bothered, but we don't hear the cry. We don't see that person in the workplace going into a back room and saying, help me, somebody help me.

And we're not aware of it because we can become so focused on our own preservation, so focused on I just wanna get through. I just wanna be able to pay my bills. I just wanna raise my kids. I just wanna go to work and find a job.

I wanna come home. I wanna stay safe on the subway or the bus. I wanna raise my family. I don't want to hear the cry. I wanna go to bed at nine o 'clock at night. I wanna get up at five o 'clock in the morning and carry on my routine.

I don't wanna be woken up by the voices of people crying out for mercy. But that's why Paul the Apostle says, knowing the time, it's high time to wake out of sleep for now our salvation is nearer than we first believed.

It's time now to wake up. It's time to let ourselves hear the cry of those who have no voice that can cry out for them, but us. When Jonah finally woke out of his slumber, he came up on the deck of the ship and he said, the people, he told them he was running from God and the people said, what should we do?

What can we do to end this storm? And he said, pick me up and throw me into the sea and things will go well for you. I find it interesting. He couldn't even find the strength to climb over the rail himself and jump into the ocean.

It's like a type of a person who's here like said, I won't go to prayer unless somebody picks me up and takes me there. So maybe that's just what you have to start doing on Tuesday night. Maybe you got to make a friend in this church and say, look, call me, pick me up.

I'll meet you at the subway stop. We'll go to prayer together. We'll come home together. I just can't find the strength to do this on my own. But I know that it's only everybody's crying out to their form of God.

But I know the only one that answers is the God that I know. I know it's my voice that God wants to raise up and make a difference in this generation. Throw me into the mix. Throw me, he said, into this turmoil and it will cease for you.

Prayer as the Means of Moving Mountains

We are the only ones who know the God who can calm the seas. We're the only ones who can lift our voices. We sang it today in our worship. We can say to this mountain, be removed and cast into the sea.

The scripture tells us it will obey us, but it's not going to obey our song. It's going to obey our prayer. There's a huge difference. It's not just when we clap our hands and sing it in Spanish. It's when we come here and lift our hands and pray it to God and say, we command this mountain that's destroying our youth in this generation to be moved and to be cast into the sea.

And we ask you God to open the floodgates of righteousness and let a multitude too numerous to count begin to come into your kingdom and find you once again as Lord and Savior. That's how the mountain is moved.

It's when you and I say, God Almighty, wake me out of my slumber. Wake me, oh God, out of that place of just wanting to preserve myself and focus on myself. Wake me out of that place that we all have a tendency to go to, where we simply just want to get through the storm.

We just can't handle any more hassle in our lives. And prayer meeting is just another hassle to us. We don't want to come out. We don't want to be spent. We don't want to be given for the sake of others.

We want to just fold in and say, God, please just get me through this storm. God understands that. He's not offended by that. He understands that we all have to go through, but it's time to pray now. It's time to pray.

Do you know what time it is? Do you realize that society is falling apart all around us, not just here in America, but all over the world? This world is collapsing. It's going on its inevitable journey to falling apart.

People are beginning to be afraid and they may not vocalize it in the workplace. They may not tell you to your face on the street, but I assure you in that private place, they're leaning against the wall like our sister did and saying, somebody, please help me.

Somebody help me to get through. And you and I, this is not the time to be asleep. It's the time to be awake. It's the time to make that journey to the house of God. You will not regret this in eternity.

If you make the effort to come to the house of God, whether you come physically here Tuesday night or you come online, you will not regret making the journey to the house of God to pray. The second reason why there's so few laborers in the harvest today is that people live for self-satisfaction.

Self-Satisfaction and the Loss of Spiritual Testimony

It's like Solomon. It's so tragic in the sense he was given the guardianship of the physical testimony of God, the manifested physical presence of God on the earth. It was like a cloven tongue of fire that sat over the mercy seat.

And it was in that place that the mercy of God was to be made known to all who came into the temple. And you have that cloven tongue of fire inside of you as a born-again believer in Jesus Christ. You have that deposit of the manifested presence of God in the power of the Holy Spirit inside of your life.

You and I are, when the veil was rent in the temple, there was only one mercy seat that people could come to from all over the world. But when that veil was rent, you became the mercy seat of God. I became the mercy seat of God, where people could come in to the presence of God and they could see the mercy of God.

They could experience the mercy of God. They could be told about the mercy of God. There would be something of divine order that would be evident. And Solomon had that answer, just like you and I have the answer.

And after several years of successfully walking with God, when you study it, you can't arrive at any other conclusion, but he just got bored. And in Ecclesiastes, he said, I set out to find what makes people happy.

He got bored with the answer and set out to pursue the question. He had the answer. You have the answer. You have God living inside of your physical body. You have your name written in a book of life in heaven.

You have been forgiven. You already are seated with Christ in heavenly places at the right hand of almighty God. You have a mansion with your name on the door right now, being constructed in heaven. There are cities that you will rule and reign for all of eternity.

You have an expanse of eternity ahead of you with a glory that staggers your mind. And until that day comes, you've been given the assignment to let the rest of the world know about this incredible mercy, this incredible testimony of God.

What a tragedy that Solomon just walked away from the answer. What a tragedy it is when the church of Jesus Christ walks away from the answer and starts pursuing the question. That's why he says in Romans 13, verses 12 and 13, the night is far spent, the day is at hand.

Therefore, let us cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, I took time this week and I went into the Greek New Testament and studied each one of these words in the full context because sometimes it's conveying a thought that doesn't really translate into one word in the English language.

And so I took them all and put them together and wrote down the full definitions of these words and then put it into my own words what really is being conveyed in verse 13 in particular, where Paul says, let us walk properly as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy.

Here's what I wrote down. Don't be in a place where the over-drinking of wine could open your heart to other excesses, including forbidden sexual encounters and even living with someone as married when you are not.

It can lead to a frame of mind where godly borders are no longer recognized. Soon you will begin to argue with and strive against those whose Christlike behavior stands in stark contrast to yours. That's in effect what Paul was writing here.

Don't be given to this pursuing of happiness outside of what God has called you to be and what God has given you to do and who God says you are. I'm not saying you can't go down to the Christmas tree lighting here and clap your hands.

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about something that becomes a life pursuit, something that begins to dominate your thinking and threatens to swallow the testimony of God. That's what Solomon got involved in.

Remember the queen of Sheba walked into where Solomon was and she traveled from a far distance and brought a whole entourage with her. And she said to Solomon, when she saw the divine order, she saw the things that God had given him to create.

The temple was a creation of the spirit, but it was designed, articulated, may I say that, through the hands of a man called Solomon after it was given to him by his father David. And when she saw it and when she saw the attendance of the cupbearers, the way people moved, how everybody had such a divine order in their lives, her breath was taken away.

This is a person who also had a court. She also had attendants and servants and cupbearers, but she'd never seen anything like this. And she said, not the half was told unto me of what I see. She saw something divine.

She saw, remember when you first got saved, people were asking you, you weren't pushing them to tell them. They saw such a transformation in your life, most of you. They saw changes in your attitude, your behavior.

You weren't doing things the way you used to and you were doing things now that spoke of another life moving inside of yours, enabling you to do what you could never do on your own. Thank God she came in the early years of Solomon.

Thank God she didn't come in the latter years of Solomon. What would she have seen? Nice vineyards, nice cows, nice choir. Said he built vineyards. He built irrigation systems. He built hedges. He built gardens.

He planted fruit trees. He built walls. After he walked away from the answer. You see, that's what happens to the church. When we walk away from the answer, we start planting fruit trees and building walls and we start doing all these things and the stranger walks in and says, well, that's interesting.

Their breath is no longer taken away. You and I are supposed to live in a manner that people encounter us like they did on the day of Pentecost and say, surely there is a God in heaven. Surely God is real and you must not be satisfied until that is the manifestation of Christ in your life.

Don't be in a place where the overdrinking of wine could open your heart to other excesses, including forbidden sexual encounters and even living with someone as though you were married when you are not.

It can lead to a frame of mind where godly borders are no longer recognized and soon you'll begin to argue with and strive against those whose Christ-like behavior stands in stark contrast to yours. I find it sad today in the church of Jesus Christ with the world perishing all around us that one of the big theological arguments in the church today is how much wine can we drink before it's in?

I find it sad. My question is why is that even in your thinking? Where have our priorities gone? Are we doing like Solomon? Have we left the answer? Are we pursuing the question? Are we heading out away from what God destined us to be and moving to say, I'm gonna go and see what makes men's hearts happy?

Fear as an Enemy of Christian Witness

And then lastly, people are not responding to the harvest simply because of fear. And we're living in an age of fear. We're living in a time when people in Paris just meeting to hear a concert are suddenly gunned down without mercy.

We're living in a moment of insanity in this world on so many different levels. Living in a season where there's no longer an assurance of safety in our streets, on our subways, in our public gatherings, public places.

And of course, fear is beginning to grip the hearts of many people. We like to pretend like it's not there. But I don't know if you remember a couple of years ago down on, I think it's 57th, the manhole cover blew.

And people are just walking the streets. Everything is casual, like nobody's afraid. And when the manhole cover blew, everybody was screaming and running in all different directions. It was an unusual response to just a manhole cover blowing off.

But that tells you that deep, deep down, there's a deep fear in the hearts of people. And even in the hearts of God's people, I understand that. That's why Paul says, put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh.

Put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Put on an understanding that sometimes to stand for God is going to require us to take a stand against fear, which is our greatest enemy of all. Hebrews 12, two says, for the joy that was set before him endured the cross.

Let me say it this way, because of the eternal joy of seeing us here today and seeing us with him forever and for the joy of seeing also those who will share life and eternity because of us, Jesus endured everything hell could throw at him.

Believing that with God, all things are possible. And knowing that through the promises of the Father, neither he nor you and I could be triumphed over. He knew it was gonna hurt. He knew the day was dark, but he made the choice.

He made the choice to stand. He made the choice to go to a cross. Hell threw at him, just like hell's gonna throw at you and I everything it's got. It's gonna throw it at you in the news. It's gonna throw it at you through people in your workplace.

Some people are gonna get even thrown at you in your own home. All the fears, all the reasons why you shouldn't be standing for God. All the reasons why you should duck down in the belly of the ship and go to sleep.

All the reasons why you should seek a little piece of the action or cake just for yourself and learn what it is to be happy as this world sees it. The threats of violence, the threats of things could go wrong, but I wanna remind you that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but a power and of love and of a sound mind.

God has not given us a spirit of fear. God has not given us a spirit of fear. We have a love for him and we have a love for his creation. And John, the beloved disciple said these incredible words, perfect love casts out fear.

I love God, I love the work of God and I'm asking him to give my heart a love for those that are dying in sin, but created in his image that he died to redeem and let it cast the fear of anything this world has got to throw at me out of my heart and out of my life.

Gideon's Visible Stand of Faith

There's a time when you and I have to understand what time is it now? It's time to stand up and take a stand for God no matter the consequence. In the days of Gideon, when the Midianite army was coming in and just literally devouring everything that Israel, the people of God were trying to gather and this army would come in at appointed seasons and everything they were trying to put together would just devour it.

And then suddenly one day, the messenger of the Lord appears to just an ordinary young man, an ordinary person like you and I, and greets him and calls him a mighty man, a mighty woman of God. A woman of resources.

Says, I've given you a calling, I've given you a word, I've called you to do something. Gideon put together the army that he could. And then the Lord gives an instruction. At one point it was 22 ,000 against 135.

I think the Lord looked down and said, the odds are too much in your favor. Lest you should say you won this battle in your own strength, tell everybody that's afraid to go home. And so I don't know how many they thought would leave, maybe just a few, a dozen, 10%.

But when he told them to go home, they had 300 left. 300 left that are about to be sent on a suicide mission in the natural. They're gonna stand up against a well-equipped, an army that is used to governing and having things the way that they want it.

But God told him, he said, you're not to fight this battle stealthily, but you're to go into three companies in a visible place. And at the appointed time, you're to hold that torch high. And you're to say the sword of the Lord and the sword of Gideon.

In other words, the power of God through surrendered human vessels. That's what the church of Jesus Christ has always been. That's what the church of Jesus Christ will always be. That's where the victory of God is, was, and always will be.

The power of God in surrendered vessels. He doesn't need even 300. He doesn't need three. The power of God in somebody who has surrendered. The power of God in somebody who stands as a visible testimony of the reality of God.

The power of God in that heart that says, I will not sleep because this is a day of battle. I will not pursue wine and excesses because this is a day when I'm called to be sober. I'm called to understand the depth of the fight that God has put me into.

I'm called to a day when those who are called of God say, Lord, I will stand in a public place. I'm not gonna hide behind a door. I'm not gonna hide under a bushel, but I'm gonna stand on the hill and I'm gonna make one more time, one more time before you come, one more time a declaration of who God is, what God can do, how merciful God can be.

He can save the Ninevites. God Almighty. God Almighty can save people on a sinking ship. God Almighty. God can save to the uttermost everyone who calls out to him. I'm going to make that declaration of the one who went to a cross and he defeated the powers of death and hell and the grave and sin and won a victory for all of humankind who will turn to him.

And I'm not going to draw back. Nobody can tell me I can't pray. I'm not going to draw back and be driven into darkness and driven into hiding. This is the finest hour of the church of Jesus Christ. It's time now.

The Church Called to Pray and Witness

It's time for the body of Christ to rise up. It's time for men and women to begin to pray. It's time for us to believe God. It's time for us to begin to speak again. It's time to lay hands on the sick and believe that they shall recover.

It's time to cast out devils. I'm not going down at the end of my life with a history book in my hand of what somebody did or what God did through somebody some other time. It's time in history. Now I'm going to leave this earth with a bushel full of souls in my hand by the grace and by the power of Almighty God.

That is the cry of the Christian now. Do you know what time it is? We're living at the end of time, my friend. Christ is coming. It is coming soon. It is coming suddenly. We're living in a season of sorrows when this world is starting to shake like perhaps it never has in history.

We're living at a time when those who know their God, as Daniel said, shall be strong and do exploits. We're living at a moment where he is willing to be glorified again if we long to have him glorified.

Another season in the church of Jesus Christ where David walks into the camp one more time and says, why is nobody fighting for the honor of God? Why are you allowing these voices to rise up and defy the armies of the living God?

Why is there nobody willing to stand up and give his life if necessary that God might be glorified in our nation once again? I challenge every person who's listening online. I challenge this church to recognize the hour we're living in.

It's time to wake up. It's time to go to the house of God. It's time to pray. It's time to turn away from everything that dulls our testimony so that people can't see the life that God's willing to give them.

And it's time to stand publicly and be a testimony of the mercy of God. I know what time it is. May God help us. May God help you. May God help all of us to take the stand that we need to take in this time in which we're now living.

A Prayer for Courage and the Holy Spirit

Father, I thank you, Lord, with all my heart. Lord, for how you are calling us to something deeper than we've ever known. You're calling us to pass through the valley of the shadow of death, to sit at a table, even in the midst of our enemies, and to see what you and you alone are able to do.

You're calling us to care about a generation that are becoming so dark they don't know their right hand from their left. You're calling us to care about people all around us who are perishing in their sin and they're crying, yet we don't yet hear it.

You're calling us to take a visible stand everywhere that we are for the truth that we know. You're calling us, Lord, to find our delight in doing your will. Father, I thank you for this with all my heart today.

And I pray that you would encourage those who are afraid of these days. Give us the grace, give us the strength that we need in Jesus' name. I just wanna give an altar call for people who are afraid. It's a fearful time.

I say, God, I hear you. I hear you calling me to pray. I hear you calling me to be given. I hear you calling me to take a stand, but I'm afraid. And we're gonna come and just worship together for a little while, and then we're gonna pray and believe God for a miracle.

I'm reading that, a miracle of courage to come into your heart, especially at Christmas time. This is not a time to be silent anymore. It's a time to speak. And so as we stand in the balcony, you go to either exit, please, in the main sanctuary, just slip out into the aisle, in the annex.

You can step between the screens. Let's stand together and just come. We'll worship for a little while together, then we're gonna pray. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. Father, in Jesus' name, Lord, it's always with the broken people.

It's always, Lord, with people who don't have any confidence in ourselves that you choose to touch another generation and glorify your name once again. And so, Lord, I'm asking you to give us what you gave them.

Give us your Holy Spirit, God, in unrestrained measure. Give us that life that can only come from you, Lord, that clove and tongue of fire that sat upon those early believers who stepped out of the upper room and transformed their generation, and their influences even felt in ours.

God, help us, for we're facing a dark time, and we cannot strategize our way through this. Lord, we cannot try to imitate the world and have them interested in your kingdom. God, give us your Holy Spirit again.

Baptize us afresh, Lord. Give us a power that can only come from heaven itself. We bring no boast to you, Lord. Thank you for what you did yesterday, but oh God, without your power, there will be no tomorrow.

You have to come and glorify your own name, Lord. Forgive us, Lord, for the mistakes that we make along the way, as you forgave your early disciples. And you poured out your spirit without measure on them.

And God, they followed you to the ends of the earth, and they impacted their culture and their generation. And they knew their prayers could touch something of heaven. So Lord, deliver us, God, from everything that would keep us from being what you've called us to be.

Deliver us from our visions of ourselves, big or small, good or bad. Deliver us from everything, God, but your purpose and your plan for our lives. Help us as a body to move forward, recognizing that there are no big people, no little ones.